Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev painted a huge number of paintings during his life. Many of them are full of bright colors, sun, and fun. But not many people know that he spent most of his life in a wheelchair. Despite all the hardships and adversities that he had to endure, his work is striking in its cheerfulness. The biography of the great artist, as well as interesting facts, are brought to your attention.

Talented student

Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev is rightfully considered one of the famous artists of the last century. He was a student of the great Ilya Efimovich Repin. Boris Mikhailovich not only inherited the style of his teacher, but also introduced something special into it. The makings of a creative nature were laid in him in early childhood. Let's take a closer look at the fate of this amazingly talented and courageous man.

Boris Kustodiev: biography

He was born in Astrakhan on February 23, 1878. Boris Kustodiev's childhood was not carefree. He hardly remembered his father at all. He died when the boy was only a few years old. A very young mother, Ekaterina Prokhorovna, was left alone with four children. There was very little money, and the family often lived from hand to mouth. What they had in abundance was kindness, tenderness, and motherly love. Despite all the difficulties and hardships, the mother was able to instill in her children a love of art. Such upbringing allowed Boris Kustodiev to decide on his choice of profession already at the age of nine. He really liked to observe any changes in nature and transfer it to a piece of paper. Rain, thunderstorm, sunny day, any other phenomena of the surrounding world were reflected in his work.

When Boris Kustodiev turned 15 years old, he began taking drawing lessons from P. Vlasov, a talented artist. Thanks to these studies, in 1896 he entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. Popularity comes when he begins to draw the faces of the people around him. But the soul requires something else. He likes to depict genre scenes. He goes to Kostroma province. Here he is looking for a location for his competition film “At the Market”, and meets his future wife.

Fruitful time

Having brilliantly graduated from the Academy, he receives the right to a year-long retirement trip abroad and throughout Russia. Together with his family he goes to Paris. By this time they already had a son. Boris Kustodiev studied the work of great artists on trips to Germany, France and other countries. Six months later, returning to his homeland, he works fruitfully. New ideas are reflected in his work, and Boris Kustodiev’s paintings are highly appreciated by critics. As recognition of his merits, in 1907 he was accepted into the Union of Russian Artists.

Any information about the idol will always be of interest to his fans. We invite you to get acquainted with some details of the biography of Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev, which few people know about:

1. The boy first began to draw at the age of five.
2. My parents were very fond of Russian art, literature, and philosophy.
3. Together with I. Repin, Boris Kustodiev completed the famous painting “The Ceremonial Meeting of the State Council”.
4. The artist's paintings became known throughout the world when he was only thirty years old. He was trusted to represent Russia outside its borders, and his works won numerous medals.
5. He was an excellent photographer.
6. Worked in the theater. Prepared scenery for performances.
7. Due to his illness, Boris Kustodiev was forced to wear a corset from his chin to his lower back.
8. Before his death, the artist asked to plant only a birch tree on his grave instead of a gravestone.

Boris Kustodiev: creativity

His very first paintings were portraits. It was with them that he began his creative journey. But the peculiarity of this artist is that he did not just draw the faces of the people around him. He revealed the individuality of the human soul through the world around him. This is how the most striking portraits were created: Chaliapin, Roerich and others.

Later, the artist’s work switches to depicting the life of the people and the way of life of the Russian merchants. Every detail is in its place and carries a certain meaning. His paintings are always full of life and colors. Kustodiev liked to embody the world around him in his creations.

Most famous works

The artist Boris Kustodiev painted a large number of paintings throughout his life. There are more than five hundred of them in total. Let's remember the most famous paintings of Boris Kustodiev.

« Horses during a thunderstorm »

This most talented example of oil painting reflects the artist's love for nature. One of the most amazing and terrible natural phenomena - a thunderstorm - is depicted in the picture.

"Merchant's Wife at Tea"

The details here have a great meaning: a fat lazy cat rubbing against its owner’s shoulder; a merchant couple sitting on a balcony nearby; in the background of the picture you can see a city with shopping shops and a church; the still life of products located on the table evokes genuine admiration. All this is written incredibly brightly and colorfully, which makes the canvas almost tangible.

"Russian Venus" »

When the artist created this amazingly beautiful creation, he was tormented by severe pain. Knowing this, you never cease to admire the talent and fortitude of the great man. A girl washing in a bathhouse personifies feminine beauty, health, and life.

"Morning"

On this canvas, Boris Mikhailovich depicted his beloved wife and their first son. With genuine love and tenderness, he captured his loved ones in the picture. To paint this picture, the artist used only light and airy colors; he masterfully conveys the play of chiaroscuro in his work.

"Maslenitsa"

Boris Kustodiev wrote it after a long illness and surgery, which led to him being in a wheelchair. Despite the excruciating pain, he creates a picture completely permeated with light, fun and unbridled happiness. The main place on it is given to the racing troika, symbolizing movement. In addition, in the picture you can also see people participating in fist fights, festivities and booths. All this is painted so colorfully that it further enhances the whirlwind of dizzying emotions.

Family happiness

One can only envy his personal life. At the age of 22, in the Kostroma province, where he comes in search of nature, Boris Kustodiev meets his future wife. Yulia Evstafievna was only 20 years old when they got married. But for the rest of his life she became his support and reliable friend. It was his wife who helped him not break down after the operation and continue painting when it seemed that he had completely lost hope.

In their marriage they had three children. The very first - Kirill - can be seen in one of Boris Kustodiev’s paintings. The second was a girl, Irina, and then a boy, Igor, but, unfortunately, he died in infancy. Yulia Evstafievna survived her husband by fifteen years, remaining faithful to him until the end of her life.

Terrible disease

In 1909, Boris Kustodiev showed the first signs of a terrible disease - a spinal cord tumor. The artist underwent several operations, but, alas, all of them only temporarily relieved the pain. It soon becomes clear that the disease has penetrated much deeper, and during the operation it is impossible not to touch the nerve endings. This can lead to paralysis of the arms or legs. The choice faces the wife, and she understands how important it is for her husband to have at least hope of continuing to paint. And she chooses her hands.

Now Boris Kustodiev is confined to a wheelchair, but one could only envy his willpower. Despite his illness, he continued to paint while lying down. It is impossible not to admire his courage and fortitude. Indeed, despite all the suffering and excruciating pain he endured, all his works are imbued with bright colors and cheerfulness. It seems that even illness receded for some time before the great power of talent.

last years of life

Despite the illness and wild pain that he constantly experienced, the artist painted pictures until the end of his life. Boris Kustodiev died at the age of 49. He has not changed his writing style, and even his latest works are permeated with light, goodness and happiness.

Kustodiev Boris Mikhailovich
Born: February 23 (March 7), 1878.
Died: May 28, 1927 (age 49).

Biography

Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev February 23 (March 7) 1878, Astrakhan - May 26, 1927, Leningrad) - Russian artist.

Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev, originally from the family of a gymnasium teacher, began studying painting in Astrakhan with P. A. Vlasov in 1893-1896.

Boris Kustodiev was born in Astrakhan. His father was a professor of philosophy, history of literature and taught logic at the local theological seminary.

His father died when the future artist was not even two years old. Boris studied at a parish school, then at a gymnasium. From the age of 15 he took drawing lessons from a graduate of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts P. Vlasov.

In 1896 he entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. He studied first in the workshop of V. E. Savinsky, and from the second year - with I. E. Repin. He took part in the work on Repin’s painting “The Ceremonial Meeting of the State Council on May 7, 1901” (1901–1903, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg). Despite the fact that the young artist gained wide fame as a portrait painter, for his competition work Kustodiev chose a genre theme (“At the Market”) and in the fall of 1900 he went to the Kostroma province in search of nature. Here Kustodiev meets his future wife Yu. E. Poroshinskaya. On October 31, 1903, he completed the course with a gold medal and the right to an annual pensioner’s trip abroad and throughout Russia. Even before finishing the course, he took part in international exhibitions in St. Petersburg and Munich (big gold medal of the International Association).

In December 1903, he came to Paris with his wife and son. During his trip, Kustodiev visited Germany, Italy, Spain, studied and copied the works of old masters. Entered the studio of Rene Menard.

Six months later, Kustodiev returned to Russia and worked in the Kostroma province on the series of paintings “Fairs” and “Village Holidays”. In 1904 he became a founding member of the New Society of Artists. In 1905–1907 worked as a cartoonist in the satirical magazine “Zhupel” (the famous drawing “Introduction. Moscow”), after its closure - in the magazines “Hell Mail” and “Iskra”. Since 1907 - member of the Union of Russian Artists. In 1909, on the recommendation of Repin and other professors, he was elected a member of the Academy of Arts. At the same time, Kustodiev was offered to replace Serov as a teacher of the portrait-genre class at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, but, fearing that this activity would take a lot of time from personal work and not wanting to move to Moscow, Kustodiev refused the position. Since 1910 - a member of the renewed "World of Art".

1913 - taught at the New Art Workshop (St. Petersburg). 1923 - member of the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia. In 1909, Kustodiev showed the first signs of a spinal cord tumor. Several operations brought only temporary relief; for the last 15 years of his life, the artist was confined to a wheelchair. Due to illness at work, he was forced to write while lying down. However, it was during this difficult period of his life that his most vibrant, temperamental, and cheerful works appeared.

He lived in Petrograd-Leningrad during the post-revolutionary years. He was buried at the Nikolskoye cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. In 1948, the ashes and monument were moved to the Tikhvin cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

Wife - Kustodieva Yu. E.

Addresses in St. Petersburg - Petrograd - Leningrad

1914 - apartment building - Ekateringofsky Avenue, 105;
1915 - 05/26/1927 - apartment building of E.P. Mikhailov - Vvedenskaya street, 7, apt. 50.

Illustrations and book graphics

In 1905–1907 he worked in the satirical magazines “Zhupel” (the famous drawing “Introduction. Moscow”), “Hell Mail” and “Iskra”.

Kustodiev, who has a keen sense of line, performed cycles of illustrations for classical works and for the creations of his contemporaries (illustrations for Leskov’s works “The Darner”, 1922, “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District”, 1923).

Possessing a strong touch, he worked in the technique of lithography and engraving on linoleum.

Painting

Kustodiev began his career as a portrait artist. Already while working on sketches for Repin’s “Great Meeting of the State Council on May 7, 1901,” student Kustodiev showed his talent as a portrait painter. In sketches and portrait sketches for this multi-figure composition, he coped with the task of achieving similarities with Repin’s creative style. But Kustodiev the portrait painter was closer to Serov. Painterly plasticity, free long strokes, bright characteristics of appearance, emphasis on the artistry of the model - these were mostly portraits of fellow students and teachers of the Academy - but without Serov's psychologism. Kustodiev incredibly quickly for a young artist, but deservedly won fame as a portrait painter among the press and customers. However, according to A. Benoit:

“... the real Kustodiev is a Russian fair, motley, “big-eyed” calicoes, a barbaric “fight of colors”, a Russian suburb and a Russian village, with their accordions, gingerbread, dressed up girls and dashing guys... I claim that this is his real sphere, his real joy... When he writes fashionable ladies and respectable citizens, it is completely different - boring, sluggish, often even tasteless. And it seems to me that it’s not the plot, but the approach to it.”

Already from the beginning of the 1900s, Boris Mikhailovich was developing a unique genre of portrait, or rather, portrait-picture, portrait-type, in which the model is linked together with the surrounding landscape or interior. At the same time, this is a generalized image of a person and his unique individuality, revealing it through the world surrounding the model. In their form, these portraits are related to the genre images-types of Kustodiev (“Self-portrait” (1912), portraits of A. I. Anisimov (1915), F. I. Chaliapin (1922)).

But Kustodiev’s interests went beyond the portrait: it was no coincidence that he chose a genre painting (“At the Bazaar” (1903), not preserved) for his diploma work. In the early 1900s, for several years in a row he went to perform field work in the Kostroma province. In 1906, Kustodiev appeared with works that were new in their concept - a series of canvases on the themes of brightly festive peasant and provincial petty-bourgeois-merchant life (“Balagany”, “Maslenitsa”), in which the features of Art Nouveau are visible. The works are spectacular and decorative, revealing the Russian character through the everyday genre. On a deeply realistic basis, Kustodiev created a poetic dream, a fairy tale about provincial Russian life. In these works, great importance is attached to line, drawing, and color spots; forms are generalized and simplified - the artist turns to gouache and tempera. The artist's works are characterized by stylization - he studies Russian parsuna of the 16th–18th centuries, lubok, signs of provincial shops and taverns, and folk crafts.

Subsequently, Kustodiev gradually shifted more and more towards an ironic stylization of folk and, especially, the life of the Russian merchants with a riot of colors and flesh (“Beauty”, “Russian Venus”, “Merchant’s Wife at Tea”).

Theater works

Like many artists of the turn of the century, Kustodiev also worked in the theater, transferring his vision of the work to the theater stage. The scenery performed by Kustodiev was colorful, close to his genre painting, but this was not always perceived as an advantage: creating a bright and convincing world, carried away by its material beauty, the artist sometimes did not coincide with the author’s plan and the director’s reading of the play (“The Death of Pazukhin” by Saltykov- Shchedrin, 1914, Moscow Art Theater; “The Thunderstorm” by Ostrovsky, which never saw the light of day, 1918). In his later works for the theater, he moves away from a chamber interpretation to a more generalized one, seeks greater simplicity, builds the stage space, giving freedom to the director when constructing mise-en-scenes. Kustodiev's success was his design work in 1918–1920. opera performances (1920, “The Tsar’s Bride”, Bolshoi Opera Theater of the People’s House; 1918, “Snow Maiden”, Bolshoi Theater (not staged)). Scenery sketches, costumes and props for A. Serov’s opera “The Power of the Enemy” (Academic (former Mariinsky) Theater, 1921)

The productions of Zamyatin’s “The Flea” (1925, Moscow Art Theater 2nd; 1926, Leningrad Bolshoi Drama Theater) were successful. According to the memoirs of the director of the play A.D. Dikiy:

“It was so vivid, so precise that my role as a director accepting sketches was reduced to zero - I had nothing to correct or reject. It was as if he, Kustodiev, had been in my heart, overheard my thoughts, read Leskov’s story with the same eyes as me, and equally saw it in stage form. ... I have never had such complete, such inspiring like-mindedness with an artist as when working on the play “The Flea.” I learned the full meaning of this community when Kustodiev’s farcical, bright decorations appeared on the stage, and props and props made according to his sketches appeared. The artist led the entire performance, taking, as it were, the first part in the orchestra, which obediently and sensitively sounded in unison.”

After 1917, the artist participated in the decoration of Petrograd for the first anniversary of the October Revolution, painted posters, popular prints and paintings on revolutionary themes (“Bolshevik”, 1919–1920, Tretyakov Gallery; “Celebration in honor of the 2nd Congress of the Comintern on Uritsky Square”, 1921 , Russian Museum).

Memory

In 1978, a series of stamps with a post block and an artistic marked envelope were published, dedicated to the artist and his work. Also, an artistic marked envelope with the image of B. M. Kustodiev was released in 2003 (artist B. Ilyukhin, circulation 1,000,000 copies).

In Astrakhan, next to the Astrakhan Art Gallery named after P. M. Dogadin, there is a monument to Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev.

House-Museum of Kustodiev B.M. in Astrakhan is located at st. Kalinina, 26 / st. Sverdlova, 68.

A street in the Vyborg district of St. Petersburg is named after B. M. Kustodiev.

Ranks Academician of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1909) Works on Wikimedia Commons

Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev(February 23 (March 7), Astrakhan - May 26, Leningrad) - Russian Soviet artist. Academician of painting (1909). Member of the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (since 1923). Portrait painter, theater artist, decorator.

Biography [ | ]

Six months later, Kustodiev returned to Russia and worked in the Kostroma province on a series of paintings “Fairs” and “Village Holidays”. In 1904 he became a founding member of the New Society of Artists. In 1905-1907 he worked as a cartoonist in the satirical magazine “Bug” (famous drawing “Introduction. Moscow”), after its closure - in the magazines “Hell Mail” and “Sparks”. Since 1907 - member of the Union of Russian Artists. In 1909, on the recommendation of Repin and other professors, he was elected a member of the Academy of Arts. At the same time, Kustodiev was asked to replace Serov as a teacher of the portrait-genre class at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, but fearing that this activity would take a lot of time from personal work and not wanting to move to Moscow, Kustodiev refused the position. Since 1910 - a member of the renewed "World of Art".

In 1909, Kustodiev showed the first signs of a spinal cord tumor. Several operations brought only temporary relief; For the last 15 years of his life, the artist was confined to a wheelchair. Due to illness, he was forced to write his works while lying down. However, it was during this difficult period of his life that his most vibrant, temperamental, and cheerful works appeared. In 1913 he taught at the New Art Workshop (St. Petersburg).

In 1914, Kustodiev rented an apartment in a St. Petersburg apartment building at the address: Ekateringofsky Prospekt, 105. From 1915 until the end of his life he lived in the apartment building of E.P. Mikhailov (Vvedenskaya Street, 7, apt. 50). He was buried at the Nikolskoye cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. In 1948, the ashes and monument were moved to the Tikhvin cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra (photo of the grave).

Family [ | ]

Kustodiev Boris with his wife Yulia. 1903

Wife Yulia Evstafievna Proshinskaya was born in 1880. In 1900, she met her future husband in the Kostroma province, where Boris Kustodiev went to sketch in the summer. She reciprocated the young artist’s feelings and became his wife in the early 1900s, taking her husband’s surname. In their marriage, the Kustodievs had a son, Kirill (1903–1971, also became an artist) and a daughter, Irina (1905–1981). The third child, Igor, died in infancy. Yulia Kustodieva survived her husband and died in 1942.

Illustrations and book graphics[ | ]

In 1905-1907 he worked in the satirical magazines “Bug” (famous drawing “Introduction. Moscow”), “Hell Mail” and “Sparks”.

Kustodiev, who has a fine sense of line, performed cycles of illustrations for classical works and for the creations of his contemporaries (illustrations for Leskov’s works: “The Darner,” 1922; “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” 1923).

Possessing a firm touch, he worked in the techniques of lithography and linoleum engraving.

Painting [ | ]

Kustodiev began his career as a portrait artist. Already while working on sketches for Repin’s “Great Meeting of the State Council on May 7, 1901,” student Kustodiev showed his talent as a portrait painter. In sketches and portrait sketches for this multi-figure composition, he coped with the task of achieving similarities with Repin’s creative style. But Kustodiev the portrait painter was closer to Serov. Painterly plasticity, free long strokes, bright characteristics of appearance, emphasis on the artistry of the model - these were mostly portraits of fellow students and teachers of the Academy - but without Serov's psychologism. Kustodiev incredibly quickly for a young artist, but deservedly won fame as a portrait painter among the press and customers. However, according to A. Benoit:

“... the real Kustodiev is a Russian fair, motley, “big-eyed” calicoes, a barbaric “fight of colors”, a Russian suburb and a Russian village, with their accordions, gingerbread, dressed up girls and dashing guys... I claim that this is his real sphere, his real joy... When he writes fashionable ladies and respectable citizens, it is completely different - boring, sluggish, often even tasteless. And it seems to me that it’s not the plot, but the approach to it.”

Already from the beginning of the 1900s, Boris Mikhailovich was developing a unique genre of portrait, or rather, portrait-picture, portrait-type, in which the model is linked together with the surrounding landscape or interior. At the same time, this is a generalized image of a person and his unique individuality, revealing it through the world surrounding the model. In their form, these portraits are related to the genre images-types of Kustodiev (“Self-portrait” (1912), portraits of A. I. Anisimov (1915), F. I. Chaliapin (1922)).

But Kustodiev’s interests went beyond the portrait: it was no coincidence that he chose a genre painting (“At the Bazaar” (1903), not preserved) for his diploma work. In the early 1900s, for several years in a row he went to perform field work in the Kostroma province. In 1906, Kustodiev presented works that were new in their concept - a series of canvases on the themes of brightly festive peasant and provincial petty-bourgeois-merchant life (“Balagany”, “Maslenitsa”), in which the features of Art Nouveau are visible. The works are spectacular and decorative, revealing the Russian character through the everyday genre. On a deeply realistic basis, Kustodiev created a poetic dream, a fairy tale about provincial Russian life. In these works, great importance is attached to line, pattern, color spot, forms are generalized and simplified - the artist turns to gouache, tempera. The artist's works are characterized by stylization - he studies Russian parsuna of the 16th-18th centuries, lubok, signs of provincial shops and taverns, and folk crafts.

Subsequently, Kustodiev gradually shifted more and more towards an ironic stylization of folk and, especially, the life of the Russian merchants with a riot of colors and flesh (“Beauty”, “Russian Venus”, “Merchant’s Wife at Tea”).

For “Russian Venus” Kustodiev did not have a ready-made canvas. Then the artist took his own painting “On the Terrace” and began to write on its reverse side. Boris Mikhailovich was very ill. He could only sit in a special wheelchair for no more than two or three hours a day, overcoming terrible pain throughout his body. Sometimes I couldn’t pick up a brush. His life at this time was a feat. This painting became, as it were, the result of his life - a year later Kustodiev died.

One of the artist’s friends recalled:

“He rolled up to his canvases and drove away from them, as if challenging... impending death to a duel...”

“I have known a lot of interesting, talented and good people in my life, but if I have ever seen a truly high spirit in a person, it was in Kustodiev...” Fyodor Ivanovich Chaliapin

Theater works[ | ]

Like many artists of the turn of the century, Kustodiev also worked in the theater, transferring his vision of the work to the theater stage. The scenery performed by Kustodiev was colorful, close to his genre painting, but this was not always perceived as an advantage: creating a bright and convincing world, carried away by its material beauty, the artist sometimes did not coincide with the author’s plan and the director’s reading of the play (“The Death of Pazukhin” by Saltykov- Shchedrin, 1914, Moscow Art Theater; “The Thunderstorm” by Ostrovsky, which never saw the light of day, 1918). In his later works for the theater, he moves away from a chamber interpretation to a more generalized one, seeks greater simplicity, builds the stage space, giving freedom to the director when constructing mise-en-scenes. Kustodiev's success was his design work in 1918-1920. opera performances (1920, “The Tsar’s Bride”, Bolshoi Opera Theater of the People’s House; 1918, “Snow Maiden”, Bolshoi Theater (not staged)). Scenery sketches, costumes and props for A. Serov’s opera “The Power of the Enemy” (Academic (former Mariinsky) Theater, 1921)

The productions of Zamyatin’s “The Flea” (1925, Moscow Art Theater 2nd; 1926, Leningrad Bolshoi Drama Theater) were successful. According to the memoirs of the director of the play A.D. Dikiy:

“It was so vivid, so precise that my role as a director accepting sketches was reduced to zero - I had nothing to correct or reject. It was as if he, Kustodiev, had been in my heart, overheard my thoughts, read Leskov’s story with the same eyes as me, and equally saw it in stage form. ... I have never had such complete, such inspiring like-mindedness with an artist as when working on the play “The Flea.” I learned the full meaning of this community when Kustodiev’s farcical, bright decorations appeared on the stage, and props and props made according to his sketches appeared. The artist led the entire performance, taking, as it were, the first part in the orchestra, which obediently and sensitively sounded in unison.”

After 1917, the artist participated in the decoration of Petrograd for the first anniversary of the October Revolution, painted posters, popular prints and paintings on revolutionary themes (“Bolshevik”, 1919-1920, Tretyakov Gallery; “Celebration in honor of the 2nd Congress of the Comintern on Uritsky Square”, 1921 , Russian Museum).

Significant works [ | ]

The list of examples in this section is not based directly on the subject of the article or its section. In Astrakhan, next to the Astrakhan Art Gallery named after P. M. Dogadin (formerly named after B. M. Kustodiev), there is a monument to B. M. Kustodiev. The house-museum of B. M. Kustodiev in Astrakhan is located at st. Kalinina, 26 / st. Sverdlova, 68.

Revolutionary changes B.M. Kustodiev accepted with enthusiasm, perhaps because they saw the possibility of realizing the dream of a joyful and free life for the people. In his paintings of the post-revolutionary years, the artist strives for a generalization capable of conveying the grandeur and greatness of the changes in the country. He created a new image of a national hero (“Bolshevik”, 1919-1920); in 1920-1921, by order of the Petrograd Soviet, he painted large colorful canvases dedicated to folk celebrations (“Celebration in honor of the Second Congress of the Comintern on Uritsky Square” and “Night celebration on Neva").

During these same years, Kustodiev actively worked in other areas, such as book illustration, posters, porcelain sculpture, engraving, decorative panels, and theatrical scenography. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not leave his homeland, although it was especially difficult for the sick, chair-bound artist in those difficult years. He painted his cheerful canvases in a dark Petrograd apartment, in a cold workshop, barely heated by an iron stove. Death found Boris Kustodiev on May 26, 1927, working on a sketch of the triptych “The Joy of Work and Leisure”...

Collection of works by B.M. Kustodiev, stored in the State Tretyakov Gallery, allows us to get a fairly complete picture of the stages of his work. Analyzing these works, which are very different in content and execution, we seem to look into the artist’s creative laboratory, revealing for ourselves his worldview, attitude to the problems of artistic form and painting technique.

Kustodiev managed to combine in his work the national-romantic ideal of folk art with the classical tradition, and did not neglect the new things that impressionism and modernism carried in themselves. His paintings are filled with luminosity, bright color contrasts and exquisite decorative stylization of forms; they immerse the viewer in the creative element of folk life. The artist seems to be admiring fairground, merchant Russia, which is inexorably fading into the past. Like other artists of the “World of Art”, this admiration is sometimes inseparable from Kustodiev’s subtle irony caused by the impossibility of returning to the past, however, due to the originality of the national-romantic theme of his works, he is still closer to the masters of the Union of Russian Artists.

Types of provincial town

Special themes in Kustodiev’s work were “fairs”, “holidays”, “merchants’ women”, “Russian Venuses”, depicted with humor and good nature, as well as theatrically romantic paintings representing an idealized, “invented” Russian life. “They call me a naturalist,” the artist once said, “what nonsense! After all, all my paintings are a complete illusion!.. I never paint my paintings from life, they are all a figment of my imagination, fantasy.

They are called “naturalistic” only because they give the impression of real life, which, however, I myself have never seen and which has never existed.” Kustodiev boldly “mixed all styles and genres”: portrait and Volga landscapes, fairy-tale fantasies, grotesque, true monumentality and caricature, breadth of decorative feeling and pedantic “ethnography”; they often say about him - a generous, happy talent, sincere, temperamental, loving.

Back in the 1900s, the artist became interested in the theme of the province. The main line of genre painting of these years is associated with the types and life of a provincial city. The features of his talent are most clearly revealed in a series of paintings of “beauties”, representing a generalized, collective image of female beauty. These are "Merchant's Wife" (1912), "Merchant's Wife", "Beauty", "Girl on the Volga" (all - 1915). He was also attracted to fairs and folk festivals, where the creative potential of the people was expressed especially clearly and concentratedly, as if demonstrating “what they are capable of.” The hero of Kustodiev’s works is the masses, the festive crowd living and acting in the streets and squares.

The monumental images of the “holidays” whimsically and wittily combine the traditions of popular prints and high museum classics, mainly beloved by the artist of the Venetians of the Renaissance. Marked by a developed narrative beginning, fascinating to the eye, emotional, they represented a kind of dreams about provincial Rus' of the passing time - well-fed and well-groomed, bright and generous, self-satisfied and somewhat limited, about its beauties, about never boring holidays with booths, carousels, the ringing bells of threes, with the sedate conversation of old people and the cheerful talk of young people.

The decisive, “style-forming” influence on the artist’s work was exerted by the world of the Russian village - a special, primordial, simple and healthy way of life, unaffected by the diseases of modern “urban” civilization. Popular ideas about what is “good” - peaceful life, free labor, wealth in everyday life, abundance born of the earth, fun and joy, physical health - are reflected in rich decorative ornamentation, colorful applied art, in folklore stories and images .

It is these extremely positive images that Kustodiev borrows for his canvases. It reflects the poetic beginning in folk life, bypassing everything dark and tragic, to which the Wanderers artists, as well as Nekrasov, Pisemsky and other “people's sad people” devoted themselves. Kustodiev did not allow “rain and dirt, slush, drunken peasants, terrifying pavements...” into his art - he saw this in life, but he preferred to create an image of joy.

As visual material B.M. Kustodiev used many household items: painted sleighs, arches, chests, children's toys, carpets, shawls. Not a single thing is repeated and each one is created and decorated by the hands of folk craftsmen - Kustodiev admired all this and widely introduced it into his canvases.

Even the shop signs in Kustodiev’s paintings are figurative signs, symbols of Russian abundance. Their colorful symphonies evoke a sense of well-being, expressing popular ideas of contentment. From folk arts and crafts came into his work ornamental ornateness and a decorative understanding of space and form, rich richness of color, bold combinations of local colors, breadth and freedom of painterly strokes.

However, drawing inspiration and images from a folk source, Kustodiev reserved the right to creative invention and free paraphrase. He managed to recreate in his painting not the letter, but the spirit of folk art. It is no coincidence that Repin called Kustodiev “the hero of Russian painting.”

A holiday embodied in colors

Kustodievskaya painting is both musical and literary. Like a song, a story flows about a beautiful and fabulously abundant life. His characters with naive frankness show the audience themselves, their home, their habits and tastes; they ingenuously talk about their simple life: what they eat and buy at the fair, how they drink tea, sleep, go to the bathhouse, trade in shops, ride in troikas, have fun in booths, courtship, get married, die, what, finally, are their relationships with God.

“Maslenitsa” (1916) is a painting that embodies all the beauty and diversity of Russian life. Created from imagination and memory, it amazes with its amazing stereoscopicity, panoramic coverage of space and almost jewelry-like elaboration of details, which gives rise to a charming duality of perception - like a vision sweeping in the distance and, at the same time, a precious lid of a lacquer box. To embody the colorfulness of the holiday, the master finds a form close to folk art.

In this country, bewitched by the spell of frost and the setting sun, everything is permeated with movement: troikas rush, spots of bright colors flash, snow shimmers in many shades. The energy of movement and the joy of life seem to strive to dispel the spell of the cold kingdom of winter. The sunset rays, dissolving in the frosty haze, acquire an enamel glow. The artist is equally fond of church tents and carousel tents. For him, this is the personification of a single element of national life, most clearly expressed in the celebration of Maslenitsa. Kustodiev said: “The church in my picture is my signature, because this is so characteristic of Russia.”

A special “Kustodievsky” view of the village was clearly reflected in “Fair” (1906), which whimsically combines folk art techniques and a passion for modernist style. Tempera "Fair", created by order of the Expedition for the Procurement of State Papers as a popular print for the planned series of "People's Editions". In this work, similar to a skillful appliqué, the author achieved such sharpness of characteristics and vitality of the whole, which he had once only dreamed of while working on his diploma work “Bazaar in the Village.”

The image of Kustodiev’s “Beauty” invariably attracts the viewer’s sympathy. There is a unique charm and a kind of grace in the image of a plump, blond woman with a sly and serene face sitting on a chest. In a clumsy and funny pose - naivety and chaste purity, in the face - kindness and gentleness. Kustodiev managed to combine the best traditions of world painting in the depiction of a nude model with a very “own”, very Russian ideal of beauty.

The golden-pinkish tones in which the body is painted rival the freshness and radiance of the colors with the beauty’s rich satin blanket. Surrounded by roses depicted on the chest and on the wallpaper, the young woman in all the glory of freshness and health herself resembles a lushly blooming flower. Every detail of the furnishings, including the porcelain figurines in front of the mirror, tells the attentive viewer about the simple tastes of the hostess, about the typical, “philistine” life. A.M. really liked the canvas. Gorky, and the artist gave him one of the versions of the painting. Kustodiev is an artist of the everyday genre, but he brings a monumental, epic element to everyday life.

In his paintings, scenes of harvesting, haymaking and grazing horses at night are perceived as a kind of ritual, filled with a high “existential” meaning. Life is interpreted as a continuous cycle, where everything is interconnected - new and old, work and rest, worries and fun. The most beautiful words of Russian folklore are applicable to Kustodiev’s heroes, any of his merchant’s women, as in a fairy tale, and “swan”, and “princess”, and “written beauty”. They are cleared of all negative things, kind, poetic, do not lecture anyone, are full of respect for the viewer and the life depicted - calm, self-sufficient, organized according to “centuries-old” laws and traditions, although somewhat limited, which causes a slight smile from the author.

Even in his youth, Boris Kustodiev became famous as a talented portrait painter. However, painting portraits was boring and he came up with his own unique style.

Self-portrait

He was lucky enough to become a student of Ilya Repin himself, but he rejected the canons of his teacher. The public refused to recognize him as an artist and called him an eccentric; a serious illness put him in a wheelchair, but he continued to write.

Astrakhan childhood of Boris Kustodiev

Artist Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev was born in Astrakhan in March 1878, in the family of a teacher at a theological seminary. And a year after Boris’s birth, his father passed away and the artist’s mother, who became a widow at the age of 25, raised and supported four children alone.

Boris studied at a parochial school, then entered a gymnasium. In 1887, when Boris was 9 years old at the time, an exhibition of Peredvizhniki artists came to Astrakhan. The paintings of the Wanderers impressed the boy so much that he firmly decided to learn to draw and draw truly skillfully. The mother met her son’s wishes and found money so that her son could attend lessons from a well-known artist in Astrakhan, a graduate of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, P.A. Vlasova.

Pyotr Vlasov instructed:

Learning to draw a little is the same as learning nothing. Art requires a lifetime. If you don’t know human anatomy, don’t try to paint nudes, you won’t succeed. Repin says: “Educate your eye even more than your hand.”

In a letter to his sister, Boris wrote:

I have just returned from Vlasov and am sitting down to write you a letter. I've been going to him for a whole month now and today I started drawing the head. At first I painted ornaments, parts of the body, and now I started drawing heads. The other day I painted two quinces and two carrots from life in watercolors. When I drew them, I was surprised - did I draw them or someone else?

Artist Boris Kustodiev. The beginning of a creative journey

Church parade of the Life Guards of the Finnish Regiment

In 1896, after graduating from high school, Boris Kustodiev went to Moscow with the desire to enter art school. However, Boris Mikhailovich was not accepted into the school because of his age - the future artist was already 18 years old at that time, and only minors were accepted into the school. Kustodiev goes to St. Petersburg and submits documents to the Higher Art School at the Academy of Arts.

Hurray, hurray, hurray! Virtue is punished, vice triumphs! I'm accepted! Yes! Today, after ten days of ordeal, they finally released me. At three o'clock the doors opened and everyone poured into the hall where our works stood. I found mine, it had “accepted” written on it in chalk.

Kustodiev studies with great diligence, works a lot and with soul, and is especially interested in portraiture. Boris’s “most important” teacher Ilya Repin wrote:

I have high hopes for Kustodiev. He is a gifted artist, loving art, thoughtful, serious; carefully studying nature...

In 1900, student Kustodiev went to the Kostroma province, where he wrote sketches and met Yulenka Proshenskaya, who in 1903 would become his wife.

Portrait of the artist's wife

In 1901, Repin painted a huge canvas “The Ceremonial Meeting of the State Council” and attracted his best student Kustodiev to paint the picture - Boris Mikhailovich painted 27 portraits for this canvas.

Ceremonial meeting of the State Council

In 1903, Kustodiev graduated from the Academy with a gold medal and, as a pensioner of the Academy, with his wife and three-month-old daughter, went to Paris, traveled around France and Spain, visited Germany, worked a lot in European museums and even entered the studio of Rene Menard.

Boris Kustodiev. Finding your way

The artist lives and works in Europe for six months, then returns to Russia, buys a plot of land near Kineshma and builds, with his own hands, a house, which he gives the name “Terem”.

On the terrace

The name of the house is not accidental, since while constructing the house, Kustodiev, at this very time, is painfully searching for his own style - he does not want to be an imitator of his teacher Repin. Boris Mikhailovich does not want to expose the ulcers of society; he does not like to write “realism”.

The artist is more attracted to “Russian beauty”, about which the artist has already formed his own idea. For example, he really likes folk festivals and fairs:

The fair was such that I stood there stunned. Oh, if only I had the superhuman ability to capture it all. He dragged a man from the market and wrote in front of the people. Damn hard! It's like it's the first time. You need to make a decent sketch in 2-3 hours... I’m writing a flexible woman - she’ll stand for at least a week! Only the cheeks and nose turn red.

Freezing day

Village holiday

In 1904, Kustodiev founded the “New Society of Artists”, became interested in graphics and wrote cartoons for the magazines “Zhupel”, “Hell Mail” and “Sparks”, illustrated Gogol’s “The Overcoat”, and created scenery at the Mariinsky Theater.

In 1909, Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev became an academician - his candidacy on the Council of the Academy of Arts was supported by Arkhip Kuindzhi, Vasily Mate and the “most important teacher” Ilya Repin. At this time, Kustodiev is enthusiastically working on paintings for the “Fairs” series.

Kustodiev is weird

Kustodiev is worried about attacks of pain in his arm. In 1911, these pains became unbearable, but medicine was powerless. The artist travels to Switzerland, where he is treated in a clinic, and then travels to Germany, where he undergoes surgery.

Returning to Russia, Boris Mikhailovich again plunges into work - he writes genre sketches and portraits: “Merchant's Wife”, “Merchant's Wife”, “Beauty” and others.

Gorgeous

These are not finished paintings, but experiments, searching for a theme and developing your own style. However, the public did not accept the “experiments”, and newspapers wrote:

The one who's acting weird is Kustodiev... It's as if he's deliberately throwing himself from side to side. Either he paints ordinary good portraits of ladies, like Mrs. Notgaft or Bazilevskaya... and then he suddenly exhibits some plump “beauty” sitting on a chest painted with bouquets... Deliberate and invented bad taste.

They treated Kustodiev the theater artist completely differently - there were a huge number of orders. Now the artist creates not only scenery, but also costumes, paints portraits of great Russian directors and actors of the Moscow Art Theater.

Illness, revolution and “Russian Venus”

In 1916, the artist again began to be bothered by pain in his hand. However, it was impossible to get to the German clinic - the First World War was going on. I had to undergo surgery in St. Petersburg, where the doctors made a terrible verdict - you can maintain the mobility of either your arms or your legs.

This is already the 13th day that I have been lying motionless, and it seems to me that not 13 days, but 13 years have passed since I lay down. Now I’ve caught my breath a little, but I was in torment and suffered a lot. It even seemed that all my strength had dried up and there was no hope. I know that it’s not all over yet and not weeks, but long months will pass until I begin to feel at least a little human, and not like something half-dead.

Doctors forbade Kustodiev to work, but he ignored this ban - too many ideas and plans had accumulated during his forced idleness. Boris Mikhailovich writes Maslenitsa, which is very well received by the public.

Maslenitsa

Merchant's wife having tea

During this period, Kustodiev wrote as much as he did not write in those days when he was healthy. There is a whole series of portraits, including the famous portrait of Fyodor Chaliapin, and the ideal of Russian beauty in “Gone Rus',” and posters for revolutionary propaganda, covers for the magazine “Communist International,” and the painting “Bolshevik.”

Bolshevik

Portrait of Fyodor Chaliapin

The artist, as in the old days, illustrates books and creates scenery for theaters and costume designs. Subsequently, director Alexey Dikiy recalled:

I have never had such complete, such inspiring like-mindedness with an artist as when working on the play “The Flea.” I learned the full meaning of this community when Kustodiev’s farcical, bright decorations appeared on the stage, and props and props made according to his sketches appeared. The artist led the entire performance, taking, as it were, the first part in the orchestra, which obediently and sensitively sounded in unison.

About a year before his death, Boris Kustodiev finished working on his secret painting “Russian Venus” - the artist was very ill, could only work a few hours a day, and therefore painted the picture for a whole year.

Russian Venus

At the end of March 1927, permission was received from the People's Education Committee to travel to Germany for treatment. In addition, a government subsidy was received for this trip. However, while officials were preparing a foreign passport, the artist Boris Kustodiev died. This happened on May 26, 1927.

I have already talked about how in his youth Kustodiev became famous as a portrait artist.

But here is what he says about the work of the artist A. Benois:

...the real Kustodiev is a Russian fair, motley, “big-eyed” calicoes, a barbaric “fight of colors,” a Russian suburb and a Russian village, with their accordions, gingerbread, dressed up girls and dashing guys... I claim that this is his real sphere, his real joy... When he paints fashionable ladies and respectable citizens, it is completely different - boring, sluggish, often even tasteless. And it seems to me that it’s not the plot, but the approach to it.

Even at the beginning of his creative career, Boris Mikhailovich developed his own genre of portrait - a portrait-painting, a portrait-landscape that combines a generalized image of a person and a unique individuality that is revealed through the world around him.

Spectacular works reveal the character of an entire nation through an accessible and understandable everyday genre - this is such a dream, a beautiful fairy tale about provincial life, a poem in painting, a riot of colors and a riot of flesh.

Maslenitsa celebration