If someone upstairs plans human destinies, they decided against him to limit his imagination and not to stick to any framework. The son of a shoemaker from a remote province, with a double surname similar to a parody of a pseudonym, and with an Old Testament name, traveled to Europe and Africa and was married to a Frenchwoman of Serbian descent.
The paintings of Petrov-Vodkin are considered ideologically close by atheists and believers, aesthetes and marginals, red and white. He was called a prophet and a demon, and he was just an artist.
Shoemaker from Khlynovsk
Double surnames often become a reward for great feats - who does not know Suvorov-Rymniksky or Potemkin-Zadunaisky ... Burlak from the Volga Khvalynsk named Petr Vodkin either because of the famous addiction, or because of the moonshine of his mother Efrosinya, who kept a brothel for of people.
When his great-grandson Kuzma was born in 1878, they recorded him with Vodkin. Kuzma’s father, Sergei, was a shoemaker, but everyone knew him as a convinced teetotaler, and he kept repeating to his son: “First of all, you are Petrov, and then Vodkin.” So there was a double surname, awe-inspiring auctioneers, collectors and just lovers of painting - Petrov-Vodkin. Kuzma Sergeevich always remembered his origin, was proud of his parents and sought spiritual support on the banks of the Volga in difficult times.
Years of study
He began his journey by meeting with the Bogomaz, who introduced him to the technology of preparing paints, priming boards, and the techniques of icon painting. He did not immediately decide on the choice of an occupation for life, was a repairman on the Volga courts and wanted to go to a railway school in Samara.
Although he lacked a general education (which is why he did not pass the exam when he entered college at the railway), Kuzma was distinguished by a tendency to philosophical reflection and a generalizing outlook on the world around him. Petrov-Vodkin's paintings are built on the principles of a spherical perspective, and for the first time he thought about it in his youth. He described later how after a fight he fell on his back, looked up at the sky and felt the curvature of the horizon and the active bulge of the surface. Feel the Earth as a planet - he was guided by this himself and subsequently taught this to his students.
Classes of painting and drawing by the artist F.E. Burov in Samara, the Central School of Technical Drawing of Baron Stieglitz in St. Petersburg, the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow, the school of the artist A. Ashbe in Munich - these are the stages of the master’s training. He was a student of the great Serov and Korovin, studied landscape at Levitan, studied the collections of the best museums in Europe. The result was the highest level of knowledge, skill in drawing and painting, which later allowed him to become a teacher at the school, created on the basis of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts.
Stormy youth
He did not recognize the canons in either creativity or life. Writes prose, plays - at one time the question arose of choosing between literature and painting. With the money of a bicycle manufacturer, he makes a bicycle trip around Europe with an advertising purpose, at the same time he gets acquainted with European architecture and masterpieces of art collections. He studies geophysics and cosmogony and becomes a member of the French scientific community. Observes the eruption of Vesuvius and travels through the Sahara with the Bedouins.
In a guesthouse near Paris, he meets the daughter of the mistress and tells her that she will be his wife. Marie-Josephine Jovanovic, the daughter of a Serbian émigré, simply became Mara for him, although when he brought her to Khvalynsk to meet his mother, they decided for themselves that Marie was a French princess.
First steps in the world of art
He was ranked among the followers of Matisse and Gauguin, he was called the French Symbolist. For proponents of the academic style, he was a radical formalist, avant-garde artists considered Petrov-Vodkin's paintings terribly archaic.
Only when he exhibited his first significant works within the framework of the World of Art association did it become clear to many that an original European-level master with national roots and cosmic thinking appeared.
“Dream” (1910) - a picture that made Petrov-Vodkin famous. A sleeping young man, two women waiting for his awakening and the beginning of a volcanic eruption against the background, are expressive in drawing and palette. The debate about the picture reached scandals, many saw deliberate eroticism and nothing more. The Great Repin scolded for empty decadence, while Alexander Benois and Lev Bakst, on the contrary, pointed to a deep philosophical content.
The most famous masterpiece
In 1912, the painting “Bathing the Red Horse” by Petrov-Vodkin was shown at the exhibition of the World of Art association. It became for many a real revelation, its significance was realized by the most implacable ideological opponents of the artist. The strength of the impact of the picture was determined by a combination of artistic means - both contemporary of that era, and based on icon-painting traditions that are a thing of the past. And the content was clearly understood by all as a premonition of future global upheavals for Russia and the whole world.
The First World War, the red banners of the February and October revolutions, the red and white armies of the opposing forces in the civil war - all this periodically made the “Bathing of the Red Horse” very relevant. Petrov-Vodkin himself was sometimes surprised at the accuracy of his own foresight.
Mirror and the Prophet
“Playing Boys” (1911), “On the Line of Fire” (1916), “Bathers” (1917), “Petrograd Madonna” (1920), “Death of the Commissar” (1928) - Petrov-Vodkin’s paintings amaze with the novelty of the picturesque language and universal the scope of awareness of everyday phenomena and historical events.
From our historical far, we see the amazing visionary qualities of the master. Aware of this contemporaries of the artist and Petrov-Vodkin himself? Pictures - still life "Herring" (1918), "1919. Anxiety ”- seem to be accurate illustrations of the future Leningrad blockade and repressions that ended only with the death of Stalin.
The origin gave him protection from the attacks of the theorists of socialist realism, but too much freedom in choosing topics and in the way they are expressed would inevitably lead him to open ideological conflicts with the system. It is no coincidence that immediately after the death of the master, the work of Petrov-Vodkin was diligently hushed up. It was very difficult to do - the scale of talent, which was appreciated throughout the art world, is too large.
In 1939, the artist died from tuberculosis. But while there are people who can appreciate the greatness of talent and express gratitude to him for new emotions and thoughts, his path will continue.