Artist n in Kuznetsov. Kuznetsov pavel

On November 17, 1878 in Saratov, the artist Pavel Kuznetsov, one of the most interesting Russian artists of the first half of the twentieth century, was born into the family of an icon painter. The parents of many artists were skeptical about the creative inclinations of their children, but Kuznetsov’s father did not oppose his son’s choice, although he dreamed of a career as a musician for him...

Pavel Kuznetsov (left) and Alexander Matveev

“I remember myself from the age of three, from the time when I first saw the rising sun in the spring, when my family moved to the flowering gardens... A golden sun appeared in the illuminated green-violet sky, reflected in the spring waters of the gigantic expanse of the Volga,” the artist recalled .

At the age of 13, he entered the Painting and Drawing Studio, where his teachers were the original and original Vasily Konovalov and the famous “singer of the Volga,” landscape painter, portrait painter, photographer, theater decorator Hector Salvini-Baracchi. There, Kuznetsov met another outstanding artist, Viktor Borisov-Musatov, and became friends with the future outstanding sculptor Alexander Matveev.

After studying at the Studio, Kuznetsov entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, passing the exams with flying colors, and continued to study with great enthusiasm. Here his teachers were the Itinerant Abram Arkhipov, one of the first Russian impressionists Konstantin Korovin and famous portrait painter Valentin Serov.
Kuznetsov’s collaboration with Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, with whom he painted the Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God together in 1902, turned out to be interesting; however, the free interpretation of the canon outraged the parishioners to such an extent that the paintings were destroyed. Remembering his colleague in his book “The Space of Euclid,” Petrov-Vodkin wrote:

“Splashes from it on a fathom, as if you had bathed in paint, your jacket and pants shine and glow. The hair on his temples and forehead flutters with the wind from his movements. Pavel attacks the canvas: he either rushes towards it with a jump, or sneaks towards it in order to take the gaping form by surprise. Don’t interfere with its rebound: it will crush you, knock you off your feet...”

Pavel Kuznetsov. Shearing

In the period 1905-1907, the young Kuznetsov came to an attempt to depict the ideal as a symbol, in the form of a blue and white fountain supporting itself and turning everything around it into a blue-white radiance. The paintings “Morning (Birth)” and “Fountains” became an expression of this principle. The same principle was used in the coat of arms of the new artistic association “Blue Rose” (a flower that became the image of a source of earthly beauty seen in the sky), which was created by Kuznetsov and his friends.

The association was fully formed already in 1907, after an exhibition under the same name was held. The public received the exhibition with enthusiasm, but critics were divided. And if Grabar spoke extremely negatively, saying that the beauty of the “Blue Rose” destroyed art, then Makovsky rightly suggested that the victory of the spirit over the flesh in the image could become a dangerous destruction of balance.

In “The Blue Rose,” however, judging by the further fate of the participants, they themselves understood that the young stage of “white and blue fountains” is not the limit, and stopping at this stage risks putting forced and unnatural mysticism in the place of inspiration.

Kuznetsov soon became friends with Symbolists, including the poet Valery Bryusov, and began publishing in the Symbolist magazines “Iskusstvo” and “Golden Fleece.” The Golden Fleece manifesto stated:

“Art is eternal, because it is based on the imperishable, on what cannot be rejected. Art is one, because its only source is the soul. Art is symbolic, because it carries a symbol within itself, a reflection of the eternal in the temporal. Art is free, because it is created by a single creative impulse.” The Goluborozovites also worked in accordance with this manifesto.

Pavel Kuznetsov. In the steppe. Mirage. 1911

Kuznetsov received recognition outside Russia in Paris (1906), where his works were given a deservedly high rating at an exhibition of Russian art, and he himself was elected a lifelong member of the Autumn Salon, an association of artists that included such world-famous famous masters, like Renoir, Cezanne, Modigliani, Chagall and Matisse.

Kuznetsov experienced a creative crisis at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, when his paintings began to raise suspicions that he had nothing more to say to the viewer. In an attempt to inspire creativity new life Kuznetsov went to the Trans-Volga steppes (1911-1912), and then to Central Asia for another two years.

This period gave the world the Kuznetsov we know - inspired, recognizable, the author of paintings as if shrouded in the ghostly haze of a dream or vision. Kuznetsov “hunts” for the moment when the image of an object just begins to appear before the viewer. Placed on the canvas, this moment creates dynamism in what is supposed to be motionless (still life “Morning”).

Kuznetsov’s “Kyrgyz Suite” is compared to the works of Gauguin, but there is a significant difference in the approach: the chthonic and archaic in Gauguin are usually beautiful in themselves, emerging from the earth, ready to merge with the beautiful nature. Not so with Kuznetsov, who shows the creative participation of man in elevating nature to the highest beauty, which arises only in merging with culture.

Just as the idealist Don Quixote cannot set off on a journey without the pragmatic Sancho, so the blue fountains of the Symbolists had to find a connection with the earthly. But it is possible only where harmony and community are found. In the paintings of the “Kyrgyz Suite” Kuznetsov found what he was looking for. He wrote about his discovery like this:

“A huge air-steppe space opens up, which does not interfere with a person’s thoughts and gaze from flying endless distances, rushing to the horizons, drowning and amazingly dissolving in the sky...”

Pavel Kuznetsov. In the steppe. 1912

His most remarkable work during this period is the famous “Mirage in the Steppe.” Everyday scenes of the earthly things turn out to be illuminated by a phantasmagoria happening in the sky, which seems familiar to the participants in the picture (that’s why they turned their backs to it), but this is not an image of a dream - this is an image of unity, usually noticed only in a dream, but constantly present in life, you just need to be able to notice.

October 1917 and the path to this event became for Kuznetsov another step towards discovering his talent, providing a lot of opportunities for activity in a variety of fields. Kuznetsov published a magazine, taught, and led the painting section in the department visual arts People's Commissariat of Education. One of his tasks throughout 1917 was to bring art to ordinary soldiers, who later made up the majority of the revolutionary people.

“I was instructed to draw up a work plan for the section and select a contingent of people capable of giving accessible lectures and conducting excursions to museums and galleries. All this had to be presented not dryly and coldly, but in such a way as to develop desire and interest in the new viewer, so that he would be involved in all manifestations of artistic life, so that real art would become his need, part of his spiritual life, would elevate him, develop his taste and the desire to express oneself in art,” Kuznetsov recalled about the task that inspired him.

Pavel Kuznetsov. Pushball. 1931

To implement these ideas, the Council of Soldiers' Deputies began already in June 1917 to publish a special literary and artistic magazine, “The Path of Liberation,” intended for soldier readers. Kuznetsov became the artistic editor. It is interesting that of all 16 participants in the Blue Rose, only three chose to leave Soviet Russia, while the rest perceived the idea of ​​a new state as a new opportunity for creativity, and, most importantly, to bring its fruits to all the people.

In 1923, the Soviet government sent him to Paris with an exhibition of 200 of his works, which was of great importance for refuting the false narrative in Western propaganda about the “Bolsheviks - destroyers of culture.” However, the trip that revealed to him a new artistic understanding of the world around him was a trip to the Caucasus and Crimea (1925-1930). The third peak of his creativity was marked by themes that had not yet been revealed to him:

“The collective pathos of monumental construction, where people, machines, animals and nature merge into one powerful chord,” Kuznetsov said about the works, inspired by Armenia.

Pavel Kuznetsov. Processing of Artik tuff. 1929

Crimea, with its bright southern flavor, forced the artist to move away from his beloved blue haze that shrouded his “eastern” works, and give free rein to green, yellow and red, as in the paintings “Spring in Crimea” or “Road to Alupka”. Starting from this period, the image of the sky changes greatly in his works.

The sky, which in the “Kyrgyz Suite” seems to dominate what is happening on earth, on the contrary, begins to acquire shades of the earthly things that a person does. The idea of ​​creation becomes central in his works, organically growing from the creative discoveries of his youth, and the theme of man and earth begins to prevail over the theme of heaven. His subsequent life was devoted to travel: he traveled around the country, alone and with students, working on new canvases, honing the authenticity of his impressions.

In 1928 he received the degree of Honored Artist of the Russian Federation, and in the post-war years he continued pedagogical activity, continuing to write until his death in 1968. The secret of Kuznetsov’s creative longevity is that he never confined himself to any one theme, and was not afraid to combine what, at first glance, seemed incompatible - for example, introducing elements of ancient Russian painting into his favorite oriental motifs.

Kuznetsov P.V.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Date of: 1900s

Kuznetsov Pavel Varfolomeevich– Russian and Soviet symbolist artist, Honored Artist of the RSFSR.

Biography
Pavel Kuznetsov was born on November 5 (17), 1878 in Saratov in the family of an icon painter. He spent his childhood and youth in hometown, where he studied fine arts first with his father, and then at the Painting and Drawing Studio of the Society of Lovers of Fine Arts with V.V. Konovalov and G. P. Salvini-Baracchi. Was well acquainted with V. E. Borisov-Musatov, who had a great influence on the development of Kuznetsov as an artist. Another source of inspiration for the aspiring painter was the Saratov and Trans-Volga expanses, about which he wrote in his memoirs: “From Sokolovaya Mountain I observed the Volga and the endless expanses of steppes starting from the opposite bank, and these mysterious distances irresistibly attracted me.” First with his brother, and then with other artists (P. S. Utkin, M. S. Saryan), Kuznetsov repeatedly traveled to the steppes, “so that, returning overflowing with the primitive feeling of space, smells and sounds, he could pounce on the canvases.” In 1897, Kuznetsov entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where he studied with A. E. Arkhipov, N. A. Kasatkin, L. O. Pasternak and in the workshop of V. A. Serov and K. A. Korovin. He maintained friendly relations with S.I. Mamontov, thanks to whom he made a trip to Arkhangelsk and Scandinavia. He worked in a ceramic workshop, mastering the technique of majolica; in 1902, together with N. N. Sapunov, he created the scenery for Wagner’s opera “Die Walküre” for the Bolshoi Theater, together with P. S. Utkin and painted the Kazan Church in Saratov. In 1904 he graduated from the Moscow School of Painting and Painting with the title of non-class artist, and in the same year he became one of the organizers of the landmark Symbolist exhibition “Scarlet Rose” in Saratov. In subsequent years, he participated in major exhibitions in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Paris, worked in the field of book and magazine graphics (magazines "Art" and "Golden Fleece"), was a member of the "Free Aesthetics" association and the "Blue Rose" society, which was formed back in school. Kuznetsov also carried out private orders, repeatedly traveled to the steppes and further east (Samarkand, Bukhara, Tashkent), in 1913–1915 he worked on sketches of decorative panels for the Kazansky railway station in Moscow, and collaborated with A. Ya. Tairov at the Moscow Chamber Theater. The Saratov theme is clearly represented in the artist’s work, in particular, in the works “Courtyard in Saratov”, “Near Saratov”, “Oars”, “Blue Fountain”, “Night in the Steppe”, “In the Steppe. Mirage”, “Rain in the Steppe” ", "Spring in the steppe". An equally important motive in creative heritage The artist is Central Asia, to which he also dedicated a series of paintings. Kuznetsov accepted the revolutionary events of 1917 with enthusiasm, under the new Soviet government he became the head of the art section of the Moscow City Council, participated in the propaganda decoration of Moscow for various festivals, and in 1918 he was elected a member of the Board and the Fine Arts Department of the People's Commissariat for Education. He taught at the First and Second State Free Art Workshops, organized the art society "Four Arts", in 1920-1927 he was a professor at the monumental workshop of VKHUTEMAS, in 1927-1929 - a professor fresco-monumental Department of the painting faculty of VKHUTEIN. In 1923 he went to Paris for his personal exhibition at the Barbazange gallery. In the 1930s - 1940s engaged in teaching activities, organized personal exhibitions (Tretyakov Gallery, State Museum fine arts), undertook creative trips (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Baltic states). The post-revolutionary period of the artist’s work is characterized by a gradual departure from the aesthetics of symbolism, the appearance of Soviet themes in his works and the influence of ancient Russian painting (depiction of oil construction in Baku, portrait of his wife E. M. Bebutova).

Pavel Varfolomeevich died in Moscow on February 21, 1968.

Pavel Varfolomeevich Kuznetsov artist

He is an amazing colorist...
V. E. Borisov-Musatov

Philosophers are also born among artists. Every era knows such creators. They differ from others in their special vision of the world, understanding it in the categories: Good and Evil, Life and Death, Love and Hate, Earth and Space. Each object in their works is endowed with a soul, a thought, and speaks not only with other objects, but also with a person. For them, a person is a particle of the eternal and endless universe.

One of these artist-philosophers is Pavel Varfolomeevich Kuznetsov. He was our contemporary. 48 years have passed since his death. Since birth - 147.
The artist was born into the family of an icon painter in Saratov. The city was a merchant city. Its provincial appearance is far from a fairy tale. But Pavel Kuznetsov himself created a fairy tale. He was born a dreamer and visionary. On moonlit nights I loved going to the central city square. There were fountains built by a visiting Englishman. Their heavy bowls in the ghostly yellow-blue light seemed almost airy. Thin pearlescent streams flowed from the depths, and the sphinxes that adorned the fountains seemed to come to life. They turned their inscrutable faces towards the boy, and he ran away with a mixed feeling of delight and fear...
If the nights gave Pavel Kuznetsov communication with the mysterious, then hot summer days - diversity and multicolor real life. She came to his city along with caravans of calm camels and nomads in outlandish clothes. She brought with her the colors and smells of the Volga steppes, and alien speech. A different flow of time, different rhythms. The unrestrained color was combined with the leisurely, slow movements of people.
Dreamy, poetic Pavel Kuznetsov became a painter.

In Saratov there was a Society of Lovers of Fine Arts and a Painting and Drawing Studio attached to it. This was very rare for the province of that time. Teachers V.V. Konovalov and G.P. Salvini-Baracci did not particularly torment students in their classes with endless studies. They took them to the Volga, into fields and forests. Nature, Kuznetsov recalled, “... lifted... to the heights of creative excitement.”
As a nineteen-year-old boy, Pavel came to Moscow and entered the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. With great interest he visited the workshops of two major artists -
V. Serov and K. Korovin. The teachers were senior comrades. They exhibited their works together with the works of their students, and went with them to sketches.
He was interested in everything in the capital - new exhibitions, plays, poetry evenings, philosophical debates, lectures on art and music. Future painters also showed themselves in many ways.
Kuznetsov painted the scenery in Bolshoi Theater and staged amateur performances. While still at school, he accomplished a lot. I took part in several exhibitions and traveled to the North. In 1906 he went to Paris.
This city, always thirsty for something new, was discovered Russian art. Russian operas and ballets were staged in its theaters; icons, portraits of the 18th century, and paintings by contemporaries were shown at the Salon. They were brought to the French capital by Kuznetsov. He studied Paris, and Paris studied young Muscovites, including him. Nine of the artist’s works attracted the interest of the French press. He was recognized and one of the few Russian artists elected as a member of the Autumn Salon.
Not a student, but famous artist Pavel Kuznetsov returned to his native school.
What paintings allowed us to talk about Kuznetsov as a master with his own vision of the world and handwriting?
This is a series of paintings about fountains. I remembered the Saratov night impressions. The artist called his paintings about fountains and babies symphonies: “Morning”, “Spring”, “Blue Fountain” and others.

They are different, but connected by one motif - Eternal Spring. There is no earth and sky, but only strange, always bowed bushes of flowering trees. They seem to hug fountains. Their cups are always full. In a solemn, slow rhythm, shadow figures move towards them.
The colors of earth and sky, air and water, flowing into each other, seek their color essence. In the meantime, it’s as if they’re shrouded in a smoky veil.
Trying to solve the question for himself: what are the origins of life, the artist constantly varied this theme. He painted one picture after another. But at some point he realized that he was repeating himself. To move forward, he needed to understand life itself, and not just its origins. The familiar environment of Moscow with its exhibitions, meetings, and disputes began to weigh on him. In 1908, the artist left for the Kyrgyz steppes. And I realized: the huge sky, vast spaces, people with their homes, camels and sheep - everything speaks of the eternity of life. “Sleeping in a Shed”, “Mirage in the Steppe”, “Sheep Shearing”... On the new canvases there are no longer the same figures of people dozing and waiting by the bowls of the fountains. Sheep shearing, cooking, contemplating steppe mirages, sleeping in and near the sheds - everything is solemnly slow. The wisdom of this life is in the unity of three worlds: man, nature and animals.
For Kuznetsov, a woman becomes the embodiment of earthly wisdom - main character his paintings. It is she who is the source and center of life. Women in Kuznetsov’s works have no age, one is similar to the other and is repeated in the other, like grass in the steppe, or leaves on a steppe acacia.

Life in the steppe is harmonious and open - the color in the paintings of Pavel Kuznetsov is harmonious and open. Blue, green, cyan, red, yellow alternate with each other, repeating one another. They sound like the instruments of a large orchestra.
The artist returned to Moscow, amazed her with his steppe canvases and soon went to Samarkand and Bukhara.
He finally understood: everything that he saw in the Kyrgyz steppes and here, “... was one culture, one whole, imbued with the calm, contemplative mystery of the East.”
With the outbreak of the First World War, I had to forget about the planned trip to Italy and again to Bukhara. Something else lay ahead - first work in a prosthetic workshop, then service in the military office and, finally, ensign school.
In these years, when “...we had to arm ourselves with patience and spiritual strength,” when the work was extremely exhausting, and one kind of artificial arms and legs could make you forget about the beauty of the world, Pavel Kuznetsov painted the most joyful, bright canvases - still lifes. At night, when the tired artist stood at the easel, memory generously gave away what he had once seen. It was as if a bright ray of sunlight was bursting into the workshop. Crystal and porcelain vases, oriental fabrics and fruits, jugs and trays, mirrors and flowers appear on the canvases. The beam touched every object, and melons and apples filled with juice appeared. The crystal flashed with the colors of the rainbow, and the fabrics with outlandish patterns.
But why did people leave his paintings? Why did he fill all the space on the canvases only with objects? They either converged, as if in a round dance, or calmly rested on outstretched fabrics, reached out to empty houses, were reflected in mirrors and in each other. The objects seemed to want to renounce people engaged in war and the destruction of their own kind. War is always unnatural to the cycle of life. She was unnatural life philosophy Pavel Kuznetsov, and he protested as best he could.
Immediately after the October Revolution, the artist plunged headlong into social work. He was one of those who actively wanted to create a new proletarian culture. He worked in the Commission for the Protection of Monuments of Art and Antiquities, in the commissions for the nationalization of private collections, in the artistic council of the Tretyakov Gallery, and in the theater board.
Eleven years later, he returns to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, teaches, and runs a workshop. IN teenage years he wrote together with his teachers. Now he works with students on the streets and squares of Moscow. On the day of the celebration of the first anniversary of the October Revolution, a giant panel depicting Stepan Razin and his associates appeared on the facade of the Maly Theater. It was a joint work of Professor Pavel Varfolomeevich Kuznetsov and his students.
Social and pedagogical work did not reduce the creative tension of the master. He returned to the past with his memory. And the East again became the past. His new canvases combine Kyrgyz and Bukhara impressions. Familiar scenes and images appeared.

But now the memories did not hold Pavel Kuznetsov as sharply as before. The pulse of new life beat too strongly for the artist not to feel it. The main meaning of this life was creation. And the painter conceived a series of paintings united by the theme of labor.
In 1923, Pavel Kuznetsov was sent to Paris with his exhibition. She had to refute the opinion of the West that art has been destroyed in Russia. Kuznetsov brought about two hundred works to France: paintings, graphics, theater. It was an impressive exhibition that drew admiring reviews.
What topics worried the artist after his return? First of all, the theme of creation. Work in fields and vineyards, on tobacco plantations. The work of shepherds, builders, oil workers. Almost until old age, Pavel Varfolomeevich traveled around the country alone and with his students. He visited Crimean and Caucasian collective farms, the construction of Yerevan and Baku oil fields, and the cotton fields of Central Asia. But, working on new canvases, the artist now strived for authenticity and accuracy of natural impressions.
In 1930 he painted a large painting “Mother”. The wisdom of a mature artist crystallized in her. The main theme of the picture is work. A tractor moves across a huge field, leaving furrows of plowed land behind it. Almost the entire space of the picture is occupied by the figure of the mother. She feeds the baby. And here, for the umpteenth time, the artist affirms the idea: a woman is the source of life, of everything that exists on Earth.
From ghostly women at fountain bowls, from steppe Madonnas, he came to this image. Pavel Varfolomeevich lived for almost forty more years and painted many paintings. But “Mother” is one of the central ones in his work of the Soviet period.
On the threshold of old age, he mentally returned to his previous works. I thought about them, analyzed them, criticized them. He was especially picky about those that remained in the workshop. I reworked and rewrote many of them. Some were completely destroyed.
Fairytale fountains were the dawn of it creative life, Kyrgyz steppes - during the day. The master’s last canvases with intimate, laconic still lifes seemed to flow with the rays of the setting sun. Sliding across the ground for the last time, they disappeared beyond the horizon...

"I've known him for a long time and he's a very talented person. He's an amazing colorist, he has a lot of energy and he loves to work like a true artist." V.E. Borisov - Musatov.

Path P.V. Kuznetsov’s art was energetic and organic, like the growth of a mighty plant from the hidden life of a seed to a freely spreading crown. The turns of this sprout seem to be a chain of mutual reflections - memories of childhood, vague mystical premonitions of it. "Fontanov" and the harmonious harmony of light that illuminated the space in the steppe paintings. In the world Kuznetsova somehow you breathe especially freely, you feel the immensity of the flow of space and time. They are like a living spring that cleanses a tired soul.

Kuznetsov was one of the first to follow the path of bold innovations in Russian art at the beginning of the 20th century. and, which rarely happens, almost immediately received enthusiastic recognition and support from his teachers Serov, Korovin, Borisov-Musatov. Kuznetsov belongs to the Volga galaxy of followers of Borisov - Musatov. Young artists, future exhibitors "Blue Rose" 1907: M. Saryan, S. Sudeikin, N. Sapunov, P. Utkin unanimously recognized him as their leader.

Born in Saratov, into the family of an icon painter and artisan, he preferred to call himself from a family of gardeners. His grandfather Illarion was a gardener and a keen lover of nature, who wisely looked after the future artist. The stocky and enthusiastic Kuznetsov, among his friends - students of the Moscow School of Painting, received the nickname Pansa, in comparison with his melancholy fellow countryman Pyotr Utkin (Don Quixote). It would seem that nothing foreshadowed the sparkling temperament of this young mystical symbolist "Blue Rose", but he turned out to be the most serious and consistent in this direction. “Kuznetsov was a dreamer, his friends were funny people. He saw, they composed... Kuznetsov’s oddities were a “face”, the oddities of others were “disguises”. The basic qualities of his nature never betrayed him: childish purity and wisdom.”

And "Birth" Goluborozov's period of 1907 are reminiscent of morning dreams, dreams, echoing images of poetic symbolism: “I am like a dream before you, like a blue dream dozing off on a blue flower.”

IN "Fontanakh" ghostly creatures have not yet been born, have not separated from the morning opal fog, but are already involved in the elusive cycle of water and leaves; they dissolve again, like drops, splashes, only having time to reflect the distant shine.

Kuznetsov's early paintings fascinate with hints and suggestions.

Kuznetsov is so seriously trying to comprehend the most painful and beautiful secret of nature - birth and motherhood, that for some time he works as an obstetrician in a maternity hospital. But instead of a solution, touching the mystery burned the artist with disappointment. At the end of the 1900s, a feeling of painful breakdown in his work grew, faces distorted by suffering began to flash in fairy-tale gardens, and “miscarriages and deformities” appeared. These sentiments were reflected in "Self-Portrait" artist 1906.

Kuznetsov it becomes stuffy in the world of one’s own mystical visions. It already seems to his contemporaries that his art is fading away, but, having survived a painful crisis, the artist is reborn in a completely unexpected, new quality...

Kuznetsov’s flight from the suffocating life of cities to the Kyrgyz steppes is reminiscent of P. Gauguin’s flight to Tahiti, but if for Gauguin it was a break with European culture, then for Kuznetsov, despite all its unexpectedness, this flight was a long-desired return to the world of a child’s dream. After all, the steppe began near Saratov.

A true artist who preferred to express his thoughts with a brush and paints, P. Kuznetsov nevertheless, he discovered within himself an enthusiastic inspiration for describing the world of the steppes that had opened up to him.

In the early 1910s. the most significant pictures of the steppe cycle by P. Kuznetsov appear: 1911; "Mirage", 1912; "In the steppe. At work", 1913; , 1912

In the boundless expanses of the Kyrgyz steppes, everything is brought to generic unity: trees, animals, people with their homes, graceful mirage visions and the outlines of hills. They form an integral pattern, devoted to the laws of the wise world order: symmetry and the existing cycle. The paintings seem to take you into the world of human harmony and boundless space in the mythological Golden Age. The space is filled with rainbow tints of luminous air, spots of people and animals flash with sonorous color chords - everything is separated into infinity and at the same time flows into unity. There is no boundary between heaven and earth, man and the Universe.

Still life. Three bouquets. 1945. Oil on canvas.

1910s. Canvas, oil.

1930s. Canvas, oil.

In the works of the 1910s. the artist comes to the maturity of his talent, to a kind of monumentalism in painting, and combines the traditions of oriental art and ancient Russian fresco. The vivid originality of his gift appears in the unique artistry of his painting style, which can be called the music of brush movement. Kuznetsov emphasized that: “The touch of a brush to the canvas is a touch of the soul and the eye... pours out in the same way as a pianist’s touch of fingers on the keys evokes musical images.”

From the mid-10s. Kuznetsov is keen on painting experiments, sensitively responding to the surrounding artistic quests, works in the theater and in graphics. Magnificent portraits and still lifes appear: 1916, 1918.

The latter is especially noteworthy, since it is a portrait of the artist’s wife, Elena Mikhailovna, née Bebutova, an original artist who worked in the theater and applied arts. The Bebutov family personified the mutual enrichment of the traditions of Armenian and Russian culture. Elena Mikhailovna's bright and sophisticated oriental appearance was the embodiment of the aesthetic ideal of her husband, the artist. 1918 was the year of their wedding. This year was also marked by the flourishing of Kuznetsov’s portrait art. He created several portraits of his wife, each of which is a true masterpiece and reveals the grace and spiritual richness of the model.

In most paintings from the eastern cycle, faces are turned into masks, as if emphasizing the tribal unity of people. In Bebutova’s portrait, the beautiful oriental face - the mask is illuminated by the internal energy and light hidden under the lowered eyelids, which reflects the uniqueness of the bright individuality.

In the year of his fortieth anniversary, Kuznetsov entered the second part of his life, which took half a century, with a sensitive wife and inspiration.
In the first post-revolutionary years, like many artists, Kuznetsov is experiencing a creative surge. Sanguine by temperament, he is always in the thick of artistic events. His work gains pan-European recognition at an exhibition in Paris, where he and Bebutova go in 1923.

In the variety of artistic groups of three years, Kuznetsov, as in his younger years, tirelessly united around himself all the creative forces associated with high artistic culture. In 1924 he became the permanent leader of the society of artists "The Four Arts", which included masters of the former "World of Arts" And "Blue Rose". A retrospective exhibition of "Blue Rose" took place in the halls of the Trestov Gallery simultaneously with the first exhibition "Four Arts" in 1925. The very name of the association expresses the idea of ​​​​the commonwealth of four spatial arts: architecture, painting, graphics, sculpture. Kuznetsov embodied the idea of ​​high monumental art in his teaching practice.

As a true artist, being a fundamentally apolitical person, during the years of Bolshevik terror in the field of culture, he chose a unique form of protest by the immutability of the high spiritual and cultural principles of his work. Thus, with the exquisite monumentality of his paintings, he opposed the gigantomania and crackling lies of official socialist realism. Therefore, during the Soviet era, Kuznetsov was unable to realize his monumental plans.

But this does not mean that Kuznetsov did not react to changes in the rhythm of life around him. A striking example of this is a unique triptych on a sports theme, one of the parts of which is a composition from the Tretyakov Gallery in 1931. A simple sports game was turned by Kuznetsov into some kind of grandiose cosmic action. It seems that the players have a huge flaming planet in their hands. Art critic N. Punin, highlighting this composition by Kuznetsov among similar works by other artists, noted that instead of the usual people caught in absurd angles, Kuznetsov managed to convey genuine movement, “combining in one form several wishes of this form from different times.”

Almost a century of life in art is a test for an artist. Kuznetsov probably possessed the secret of constant renewal. Considerable credit goes to his eternal companion and inspiration, Elena Mikhailovna. But in the difficult atmosphere of those years, he did not escape the fading of his talent.

In the mid-30s, the Kuznetsovs acquired a house near Moscow, in Kratovo, which soon became overgrown with a flowering garden and vegetable garden. The artist recalls the behests of his grandfather, a gardener. The fruits of his loving gardening and horticulture become the subjects of still lifes and landscapes. It is the natural world he sees, into which the artist goes, that is one of the ways of confronting the surrounding reality.

Kuznetsov Pavel Varfolomeevich artist

Kuznetsov Pavel First steps in art and studies

But the history of Russian art also knows other remarkable painters to whom these words apply. So what is the originality and charm of Kuznetsov’s talent? And the boy first came into contact with painting, of course, in his father’s workshop, a master of painting and icon painting, where he and his brother Mikhail, later also an artist, watched how the canvases were primed, how the paints were ground, how the original drawing was applied to the primed base. Kuznetsov’s mother, Evdokia Illarionovna, who loved painting and music, helped introduce children to art. Not without her influence, Kuznetsov learned to play the violin, and, despite the fact that he did not later become a musician, like his younger brother, cellist Victor, his music studies were not in vain and were largely reflected in the musical structure of his paintings.

As reported in the questionnaire compiled on behalf of the State Academy artistic sciences(GAKHN) in 1926, “from the age of seven, his passion for drawing became completely obvious and received design and a certain direction thanks to the figure of the Italian artist Baracca, somewhat unexpected for Saratov.” Konovalov, a student of Pavel Chistyakov, informed Kuznetsov of the first concepts about the constructiveness of form; it was not for nothing that Kuznetsov recalled that Konovalov taught him special “cubist” drawing, meaning the identification of plans in the form. Salvini-Baracchi, according to Kuznetsov, knew perfectly well painting technique, “mastered colorful combinations with exceptional artistry.”
Kuznetsov's first works - Evening (1895), Blooming Garden (1892), Courtyard in Saratov (1896) - are clearly plein air in nature. Perhaps the influence of Borisov-Musatov was felt here, who, after his first trip to France in 1896, shared his impressions of modern trends in painting with his young comrades Kuznetsov and Utkin.
In 1897, wanting to continue his artistic education, Kuznetsov entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Just this year Valentin Serov began teaching at the School. With his arrival, and especially with the advent of Isaac Levitan (1899) and Konstantin Korovin (1901), the hitherto peredvizhniki character of teaching began to change. However, Kuznetsov met Korovin earlier: “I was lucky enough to meet Korovin early. He was not teaching at our school at that time. The acquaintance with him took place under the following circumstances: a “Periodic Exhibition” was opened annually on the premises of the Historical Museum. contemporary art, and Korovin was a participant in the exhibition and a member of the jury; I came up with the bold idea of ​​participating in this exhibition, and I took three things to the jury; they were accepted, and Konstantin Alekseevich, with a charming smile, shook my hand and spoke very approvingly of my paintings.” True, a little lower in the same memoirs, Kuznetsov wrote that Nikolai Tarkhov, with whom Pavel Varfolomeevich took the exam at the School, took him to Korovin’s workshop. It was then that the aspiring artists became friends, and soon Tarkhov brought Kuznetsov to Korovin, for whom, together with Serov, Polenov, Sredin and Tarkhov, he painted a nude model. Of course, this contradiction in Kuznetsov’s memoirs should be taken into account. But it is important to emphasize that Kuznetsov’s communication with Korovin began early, and from him the young artist could gain a lot in understanding the coloristic organization of the canvas and the ability to master complex color relationships. Serov taught his students to artistic discipline, to a deep understanding of plastic tasks, to thoughtful penetration into the inner essence of the created image. “You are the only one you can trust,” Kuznetsov wrote to his teacher.

At the School, Kuznetsov made great progress: his work at student exhibitions was noted by critics, and gradually he found himself in the center of a group of student youth. Among these young people are Saratov residents Pyotr Utkin and Alexander Matveev, Muscovites Anatoly Arapov, Nikolai Ulyanov, Nikolai Sapunov, St. Petersburg resident Sergei Sudeikin, a native of Khvalynsk close to Saratov, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, and Martiros Saryan, who came from the Armenian settlement of New Nakhichevan near Rostov-on-Don. All of them, with the exception of Petrov-Vodkin and Ulyanov, will form the core of the Blue Rose association.
In 1902, Serov recommended a number of works by the young master for the World of Art exhibition. Moreover, Serov purchased several works from Kuznetsov and, I think, not only in order to alleviate the artist’s difficult financial situation by that time. As Ulyanov recalled, looking at Kuznetsov’s works at one of the exhibitions, Serov exclaimed: “Damn it! Look! But nature breathes with him!”
Kuznetsov’s creative development was also facilitated by his rapprochement with Savva Mamontov, whom he met probably back in 1899 through Korovin. Then, after the trial and ruin of Mamontov, Kuznetsov and Matveev became regulars at his house at the pottery factory behind the Butyrskaya outpost.
True, at this time Kuznetsov still felt himself primarily as an easel painter. It was to improve his easel talent that he, perhaps not without the advice of Korovin and Serov, went to the North in June 1902, and the route of his trip was developed by Mamontov.
From this trip only two works have reached us: a sketch of a wooden church (1902), written in a free expressive manner, and the painting White Nights (1902). Of course, in this work there is already, perhaps, an unconscious desire to solve the problem of plane, “its filling and design with special attention,” which is especially important for painting, as Nikolai Punin wrote in relation to Kuznetsov. At the same time, Kuznetsov achieved here a romantic mood of thoughtful silence, mysterious, as if keeping a secret. If we could see Kuznetsov’s northern series in its entirety, perhaps the pre-symbolist motifs in it would appear more clearly before us, because symbolism will clearly make itself felt in the artist’s creative practice immediately after his return from the trip.

Blue fountain. 1905-1906

The symbolist stage in Kuznetsov’s work
Immediately upon his arrival in Moscow, Kuznetsov, thanks to his father, received an order to paint the summer chapel of the Church of the Kazan Mother of God in Saratov. At the same time, a contract was concluded with Utkin and Petrov-Vodkin. Sketches and photographs of these paintings have not reached us; they can only be judged by the statements of the artists themselves and their contemporaries. It seems that it was no coincidence that artists chose the field of monumental art, because it was by this time that creative intelligentsia calls began to be heard more and more actively for a synthesis of the arts, for the creation of works that would surround a person with truly beautiful things, and thereby influence his soul. These ideas were especially popular among the younger Symbolists - Andrei Bely and Alexander Blok, but they appeared in the depths of the Abramtsevo circle and dominated the thoughts of Mikhail Vrubel. Highly appreciating this artist, Kuznetsov, in his temperament devoid of a tragic worldview, was closer to another representative of symbolism in Russian painting - Borisov-Musatov, but this master, the creator of pictorial harmonies full of musicality, believed that “life should be beauty” (expression Andrey Bely).
So, already at the end of summer, Kuznetsov went to Saratov and with his comrades began painting, which, although they deviated from the canon, were full of both sacred mystery and spirituality. It is unlikely that otherwise such a poetic and chaste master as Borisov-Musatov would have described them as “terribly talented and artistically original.”
The mention of Vasnetsov’s paintings is indicative here. Borisov-Musatov, apparently, already understood that they contained the prerequisites for a new style, Art Nouveau, to which he saw in the paintings of the Church of the Kazan Mother of God. Judging by the memoirs of Petrov-Vodkin, Kuznetsov expressed Art Nouveau in the simplification of forms, and the understatement, the feeling of a dream, indicated that for Kuznetsov this style was the most consistent with symbolist sentiments, because the fact that the composition Christ and the Sinner was interpreted in the form of a vision, a dream, indicated its clearly symbolic nature. And it is no coincidence that Kuznetsov and his comrades read Maeterlinck, for whom dreams act as a second reality, and in the fall of 1902 (shortly after finishing the paintings) they even decided on our own stage Maeterlinck's play There Inside (Secrets of the Soul in the first Russian translation). We will have to talk about the closeness of some of Kuznetsov’s symbolist works to Maeterlinckian images.

In 1903, Kuznetsov painted a series of panels in which he seemed to strive to continue his quest in monumental and decorative art. He creates works imitating tapestries (not preserved). Everything in them is cleared of everyday reality; tracing the shapes along the contour, the flatness of the depicted deprives the motives of any illusory nature. It is characteristic that Kuznetsov created authentic embroideries in 1904, and one of them, The Death of Tentagille, was dedicated to the symbolist drama of the same name by Maeterlinck.
By 1904, a group of young artists led by Kuznetsov decided to show their works at a separate exhibition. “Scarlet Rose”, organized in Saratov, became such an exhibition. Moreover, it was preceded by an “Evening of New Art”, to which Konstantin Balmont specially came to Saratov to read poetry. In general, the evening was supposed to demonstrate the desire of its participants to introduce symbolism into the artistic life of the province. This trend was also visible in the “Scarlet Rose” exhibition, which opened on April 27, 1904. It owed its name to Mamontov’s romantic drama. By this, the artists seemed to emphasize the importance of the Mamontov circle in the formation of a new art, to which they included themselves. Moreover, Vrubel, Borisov-Musatov and his wife Elena Alexandrova were invited to participate in the exhibition. This demonstrated the continuity of the work of young artists from the Symbolists of the older generation. It should be noted that not a single world artist was invited to participate in the exhibition. Thus, Kuznetsov and his group contrasted their symbolism and modernity with the world of art. Apparently, by this time Kuznetsov and his friends, who studied in Moscow and considered themselves representatives of the “Moscow school,” came to the conclusion, which was later formulated by their colleague in the “Blue Rose” Vasily Milioti, that St. Petersburg and Moscow do not represent “two simultaneous schools, but two movements at different times,” such as, for example, older and younger symbolism in literature. Moreover, both Vrubel and Borisov-Musatov, in the opinion of young artists, were the forerunners of their particular direction.

However, despite the obvious presence of symbolist works in “The Scarlet Rose”, which were performed by Sapunov, Sudeikin, Saryan, Feofilaktov, Kuznetsov and Utkin showed their plein air landscapes along with symbolist things. As for Kuznetsov, next to the Archangel, Withering, Capriccio, he exhibited northern works, as if trying to emphasize his movement from plein air works to painting of a different kind.
Immediately upon returning from Saratov to Moscow after the closing of the “Scarlet Rose” exhibition, Kuznetsov wrote a number of works where a decorative element is evident. He makes extensive use of tempera and often chooses a square canvas format. This is Morning in the Garden (1904), where a circle of a wheel for watering the garden (the so-called chigir) is inscribed in a square. The artist emphasizes the plane in every possible way and refuses chiaroscuro. By doing this, he subordinates the image to the wall as much as possible, bringing it closer to the fresco, the colors of bluish, greenish, pink, crimson flow into each other, creating, as it were, gently pearlescent combinations, and the light does not fall on top, “but is mixed inside the color,” which gives the impression of light emission from the inside of every object. The artist also uses these techniques in other works of 1904-1906, such as Morning (1905), where the brushstroke vibrates, conveying streams of water pouring from a fountain. In this vibrating brushstroke one can see a certain use of the impressionistic system, but if you look closely at the delicate veil, as if thrown over the work, then behind it you see wavy, rhythmically organized forms, which make it possible to classify these works as Art Nouveau. In this, the artist follows Borisov-Musatov, and the play of shades and subtle wavy forms give rise to musical associations, just like the painting of his mentor. And chigir, and fountains - everything that stood before Kuznetsov’s eyes since childhood is now acquiring symbolic meaning. It is not for nothing that Vyacheslav Ivanov, in his article On the Descent, wrote that in its “ascent” the fountain is a symbol of the tragic, and in its “descent” it is “a symbol of a gift, a monstrance of heavenly moisture. The ascent is rupture and separation,” the descent is the return and the gospel of victory.” It is significant that this article was published in the Moscow Symbolist magazine Libra, around which the future “Goluborozovites” grouped together with Kuznetsov. Not inclined to deep philosophizing, these masters were nevertheless carried away by the mental constructs of their fellow writers. Of course, they were also impressed by Valery Bryusov’s position expressed in the same magazine that “art is the comprehension of the world in other, non-rational ways. The path is intuition, inspired guessing.”
Pavel Kuznetsov publishes his drawings in Libra. He varies in them, as in painting, the theme of a fountain, the jets of which rhythmically repeat each other and alternate with branches bowing as if in a dream, with thin garlands of beads. Together with his comrades, Kuznetsov on the pages of Libra creates a new character of graphics, different from those of the World of Art, where, thanks to a line as thin as a cobweb, bending as if swayed by the wind, the paper sheet evokes the feeling of some kind of space in which the depicted floats, appearing as if from air and melting in it. This technique expresses a clear tendency to create a new artistic language that can express subtle and lyrical subtle emotional movements.
Since a symbol, unlike an allegory, is multi-valued, Kuznetsov’s fountains and chigiri expressed not only the ideas of “descent” and “ascent,” but also the idea of ​​birth, which was embodied by the ever-new appearance of jets and splashes. In implementing this idea, he was not content with depicting only water cannons. The great mystery of the birth of a new soul worried him so much that in 1905 he took several months of obstetric courses and worked in a Moscow maternity hospital. But the fact that it is not the physiological side of the appearance of new creatures, but rather the spiritual side that worries the artist, can be seen from his works Birth (1906), Mother’s Love (1905-1906, not preserved), Waiting (1900s). In Mother's Love, for example, female figures are adjacent to the jets of a fountain, babies lie at their feet (are they unborn souls?), and above the heads of the figures is a circle of a nascent cosmic body, as if setting a rotating rhythm for everything else. The blue overall color brings to mind Maeterlinck's Blue Bird (1905) with its kingdom of unborn souls. Alla Rusakova is right when she says that “here, of course, borrowings from one side or the other are completely excluded, and we can only talk about the significant stage-by-stage commonality of symbolist themes.” But, like Maeterlinck, Kuznetsov interprets the blue color that dominates the picture as the embodiment of the highest spirituality, since the time of the German romantic poet Novalis, interpreted as a person’s dream of purity, as a dream of the supersensible.
Perhaps this emphasized spirituality was manifested most clearly in The Blue Fountain (1905). The harmony of soft blue tones, ghostly, coming from the kingdom of sleep, is combined with the silver-shimmering jets of the fountain, again embodying the theme of birth, and with the lace of weeping branches leaning towards the pond. And at the edge of the pool, dozing children and women's faces, somewhat primitive, ugly, but at the same time touching and attractive. By the way, in these faces there is something from the characters of the French symbolist Odilon Redon. Perhaps Kuznetsov became interested in this master after seeing his works in the magazine Libra.
Kuznetsov's symbolist works found recognition with Diaghilev. In 1906, he showed them first in St. Petersburg at the exhibition “World of Art”, and then in Paris as part of an exhibition of Russian art at the Autumn Salon, he also subsidized a trip to Paris for the artist, who met with friendly criticism there.
Returning to Moscow in December 1906, Kuznetsov soon became involved in the preparation of the Blue Rose exhibition, which was subsidized by Ryabushinsky, who also participated as an artist. “Blue Rose” opened on March 18, 1907 in the house of porcelain manufacturer Matvey Kuznetsov; its main goal was to show the work of young Moscow symbolists from the circle of Pavel Kuznetsov as a single, integral movement in Russian art. Moreover, the very design of the exhibition, with its walls and floor covered in gray-blue fabric, was perfectly suited to the exhibited works of sixteen artists, two of whom, Pyotr Bromirsky and Matveev, were sculptors. Flowers of dim colors were fragrant everywhere, and music was playing quietly. ““Blue Rose” is a beautiful exhibition-chapel. For very few... And the paintings are like prayers,” wrote the influential art critic Sergei Makovsky in a review. And further he rightly pointed out the closeness of the “Goluborozovites” to French artists Nabi group, especially Maurice Denis, highlighting their attraction to primitivism, as a desire to return to the childish spontaneity of perception. The very name of the exhibition, on the one hand, emphasized its continuity from the Saratov exhibition of 1904, but the changed color of the rose was reminiscent of the blue flower that the hero of Novalis’ novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen was looking for, the flower of “mystical love”, the search for the unattainable, as in the Blue Bird Maeterlinck. Blue as the embodiment of unattainable spirituality has already determined the coloring of a number of Kuznetsov’s paintings created before the exhibition. As for the authorship of the exhibition title, it remains unclear. Kuznetsov himself attributed it to Andrei Bely, Rusakova is inclined to believe that it was Bryusov’s authorship. The daughters of Vasily Milioti told the writer of these lines that the author of the title of the exhibition was their father. And here is what Nikolai Feofilaktov said about this: “A group of Moscow artists decided to organize their own exhibition.
Kuznetsov was represented at the exhibition with eight paintings and one drawing. Of these, only one Birth (1906) has survived; the remaining things can be judged from reproductions in the Golden Fleece (1907, No. 5). Kuznetsov’s drawing Birth was very different from the paintings. Merging with the mystical power of the atmosphere. Waking the Devil (1906). It must be said that this drawing appeared as a result of a competition on the theme of the Devil, announced by the Golden Fleece in 1906. In the ethereal figures appearing in the foggy darkness there is no longer a feeling of harmony, a serene sleep, a poetic dream, but the impression of a painful hallucination is growing. And as a result, the image gives rise to a feeling of oppressive hopelessness. Perhaps this was a response to that “terrible world” that, outside the exhibition, was manifested in the bloody events of the first Russian revolution, because the tragedy of existence was felt very strongly in symbolist circles. And along with this, the impossibility of the artist to isolate himself in a “chapel for the few” was increasingly felt. And this manifested itself in the artist’s subsequent symbolist works. A terrible delirious atmosphere fills the painting Night of the Consumptives (1907), grotesque to the point of external disgrace and the figures of the Vintage Harvest and the Three Holidays (all 1907-1908, not preserved). And only in the Bride (1908, not preserved), the Woman’s Head (1907-1908, not preserved) and the Woman with a Dog (1908-1909) the grotesque is replaced by a tragic expression on the faces.
Sergei Makovsky, while highly appreciating the Blue Rose exhibition, at the same time warned artists about the dangers of trying to make painting “incorporeal.” “Painting must have flesh, moreover, a skeleton,” he wrote, “otherwise it faces the possibility of blurring, disappearing into fantastic smoke.” Perhaps Kuznetsov heeded this warning in his works of 1907-1909, but the dense painting introduced painful disharmony into the paintings. It also broke through in the poems of Alexander Blok (cycle Scary world) and Andrei Bely (Ashes cycle). The crisis of symbolism and the associated modernity began, because the utopian task was the characteristic attempts of these phenomena, sometimes truly heroic, to find, as Vladislav Khodasevich correctly put it, “a fusion of life and creativity.” It could only be carried out within the confines of a private home, and Kuznetsov, together with Utkin and Matveev, achieved it in the creation of an architectural and park ensemble on the estate of philanthropist Yakov Zhukovsky in the Crimea in Kuchuk-Koy (1907-1909). Here, indeed, an “earthly paradise” was created, unfortunately almost destroyed by now. Only from the sketches and some surviving majolica on the walls of the house one can see how Kuznetsov suddenly developed a craving for intense bright colors, this time subtly harmonized and as if reflecting impressions of the nature of Crimea, as if temporarily returning the artist’s mental balance.
It is characteristic that the Goluborozovites themselves felt the crisis of symbolism. And in 1909, both Libra and the Golden Fleece ceased to exist. Symbolism was relegated to the past. The symbolist period was also ending in Kuznetsov’s work.

Kyrgyz steppes, Bukhara and Samarkand in the works of Kuznetsov

The last issues of the symbolist magazines Libra and the Golden Fleece had hardly come out of print when it appeared in St. Petersburg at the end of 1909 under the editorship of Sergei Makovsky new magazine Apollo. He declared a desire to bring art out of the impasse created as a result of the crisis of symbolism and modernity. Benoit echoed Bakst: “What recently seemed subtle and charming, temptingly poisonous and mystical, in a new outlook, poor in knowledge, seems cloying and mannered; the ideals of the late century, prostituted by the excesses of the extraordinary and pretentious, have lost, weathered their gold, lost their charm...” One should not think that all these thoughts were shared only by world artists. A recent enthusiastic visitor to the Blue Rose exhibition, welcoming its opening, Makovsky wrote with bitterness: “The Moscow Blue Rose has degenerated into a bazaar of merchant decadence,” and about Kuznetsov he remarked: “Here is an artist, apparently, irretrievably lost!”
What must have been the surprise of the audience and the artistic community when, at the Moscow exhibition “World of Art” in December 1911, they saw Kuznetsov’s works, brought from the Volga steppes and dedicated to the life and life of the Kazakh nomads (then they were called Kirghiz) - clear in plastic structure , calm and harmonious, marked by a peculiar classicism.
Now it is difficult to determine with accuracy when Kuznetsov began working in the Kyrgyz (we will traditionally call them that) steppes. Kuznetsov subsequently dated his works arbitrarily, and on some works of the steppe series the date “1906” appeared, which is simply impossible, given their style. In his autobiography, Kuznetsov names 1908 as the date when he began to live in the Kyrgyz steppes. The first completed works of the Kyrgyz and Central Asian series date back to 1911, when Kuznetsov’s real masterpiece Sleeping in a Shed appeared.
But the overcoming of symbolistic complexity was evident back in 1909 in Spring in the Crimea, where clear colors are dissolved in light, but the generality of forms and color zones of plans are devoid of the impressionistic impression of “accident.” However, the new and highest stage of Kuznetsov’s art is his Kyrgyz and Central Asian cycle. Abram Efros believed that the impulse that prompted the search for a world of harmony and purity in the East, unclouded by modern civilization, was the art of Gauguin, seen in Paris in 1906. Gauguin’s art could stimulate the Russian artist’s search for nature, the lives of people living in unison with the Universe, but it is hardly fair to apply the term “Russian Hohenide” to Kuznetsov, as the artist was later called after Efros. Abram Romm quite rightly agreed with the words of Anatoly Bakushinsky from an article for the catalog of Kuznetsov’s exhibition in 1929, who said that Kuznetsov’s rush to the steppe is “a craving of like for like..., a return to the homeland after a short and purely external stay in the Babylon of European civilization. Moving away from “Goluborozovsky” symbolism, the master at the same time retained the ambiguity of the image.
The repetition of individual figures is combined in Kuznetsov’s Kyrgyz series with the repetition of motifs and themes. Thus, the artist repeatedly paints an evening in the steppe, shearing rams or sheep. How close are the rounding rhythms of the outlines of the figures in Sheep Shearing (1912, In the Steppe at Work (1913), Steppe (1910s)! These arcs of contours echo the rounded shapes of the sheds and bring a special musicality to the compositions. It should be noted that such a development of shades inside neither Gauguin nor Kuznetsov’s colleague in “The Blue Rose” Martiros Saryan, who in the 1910s also sought clarity and harmony of images in his works made in Turkey and Egypt, did not have this spot of color either. only in Henri Matisse, a Russian parallel to which is sometimes seen in the work of both Saryan and Kuznetsov. Here one rather recalls ancient Russian art, primarily the art of the Moscow school, Rublev, Dionysius, about the color of which Mikhail Alpatov, in particular, remarked: “The general impression of it. colors are the predominance of radiance and transparency.” Moreover, Kuznetsov himself not only loved ancient Russian art all his life, but sought to liken his works without any stylization to a fresco: the absence of illusory depth subordinates what the artist depicts to the plane; he thinks in general masses, laconically, omitting details. Two more works should be mentioned here: In the Steppe (Rain) from the Tretyakov Gallery and Rain in the Steppe from the Russian Museum (both 1912). In addition to them, there are several more works on the same motif, showing how Kuznetsov moved from natural observation to the creation of a synthetic image. In the work Rain from a private collection, painted in oil, everything is depicted too realistically, with a lot of details. Only the color, light and delicate, is full of poetry.
Less sketchiness and more coloristic harmony in the work Rain in the Steppe from the Moscow private collection; Only oil technology is too material for this motive. In another Rain in the Steppe from a St. Petersburg private collection, painted in tempera, the coloring became even more enlightened. But by surrounding the herd with horse figures, the artist may have introduced some fragmentation into the composition, which disappeared in Tretyakov’s work. It is different from the painting kept in the Russian Museum. It seems to convey the rain in early morning when nature is just waking up, when there is fog on the yellow strip of soil, on the shed, and on the horses. It seems to make one remember the works of the artist of the Symbolist period, when what was depicted could be perceived as a dream of morning nature, in which Kuznetsov saw reverent lyricism. And finally, everything takes on a classical certainty in the work from the Russian Museum. A rosary drawing of a sheepfold and two horses. The blue of the sky is contrasted by the greenish-ocher firmament of the earth. The sky, like the earth, is divided into stripes.

The lightest is near the horizon. But they are written in such a way that the plane is not disturbed, the assertion of which in the picture is facilitated by three wide oblique streams of rain running from top to bottom parallel to it; their rhythm introduces internal dynamics into an outwardly calm motif, but still the main task of these three oblique streams is to connect what is depicted with the plane .
Kuznetsov’s Kyrgyz series is characterized by an appeal to the same motif, even when this is not dictated by the completion of the sketch into a painting. He arranges works that are similar in composition into cycles, only slightly varying the color and objects in order to slightly change the internal plastic melody. These are the three options for Evening in the Steppe. The first of them is Saratov In the Steppe. Mirage (1911), painted in oil, which gives it greater materiality. But here there are already two trees depicted at the edges, and figures of women in blue and yellowish orange, and almost in the center of a sheep. Variants from the Russian Museum and the Tretyakov Gallery (both 1912) thanks to tempera became lighter, more airy, the difference is only in minor details. In color, both versions are full of that poetic harmony that characterizes the artist’s best Kyrgyz works. But Kuznetsov nevertheless weakened the color intensity somewhat in the version from the Russian Museum. It also has more pink, making the evening's melody more dreamy.
Later, synthesizing all the impressions from trips deep into the East, the artist created a series of autolithographs, which he provided with text where he described in more detail his observations of what he saw. It must be said that he especially liked Bukhara; it was not for nothing that he went there again in 1913. And now Central Asian works appear at exhibitions of the World of Art, which has turned into an exhibition association and where you can see artists of the most extreme movements.
The first Bukhara works of 1912 are decorative, bright to some extent sketches, where, despite the increased sonority of color, observations from nature are evident. Then the artist, based on them, paints pictures of Bukhara, already freed from any randomness. By the pond (1912-1913), several versions of the Teahouse (1913). Unlike earlier steppe works, in Bukhara works the space is closed, the color scheme sometimes resembles an oriental carpet (In a Buddhist temple, 1913).
But already in the picture there is Bukhara. The reservoir with its lively mother-of-pearl color, where each form literally shimmers with pink, purple, golden hues, where the space is subject to a circular rhythm, at the same time, in some geometrization of the buildings and the sides of the reservoir itself, one can see the influence of cubism. Let us recall that cubism at that time was widely used by representatives of the Russian avant-garde, and that cubist works by Picasso, Braque, and Derain were acquired by Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov. It is known that Kuznetsov especially liked Derain’s art. It is possible that to some extent he influenced the Russian artist. Moreover, the buildings in the Bird Bazaar (1913) are even more geometric. But Kuznetsov was far from cubism as a worldview; he was least interested in the intellectual analysis of visible structures. It is enough to look closely at the rectangular and cylindrical forms that enclose the space of the Bird Market (1913), and we will see some resemblance to their precious crystals, because the artist used yellow, pink, lilac and bluish shades to create an internal glow of these crystal-like forms that immerse what is happening into some magical atmosphere. The figure of a woman in the center, the folds of whose clothing are somewhat ornamental and rhythmic, is a kind of transition from a magical landscape, as if made of crystalline gems, to the figure of a man on the left, whose clothing is given a deep blue spot. The combination of this decoratively simplified spot and a faceted architectural landscape gives the picture a certain duality, but when Kuznetsov repeated the Bird Market a few years later without cubist elements, “the oriental fairy tale disappeared.”
The same geometrization of the architectural landscape is in the Eastern City (1913-1914). But Alpatov is right in seeing in it a resemblance to iconographic hills. Here I remember Giotto’s landscape backgrounds, Iranian miniatures, and Japanese engravings. Without stylizing his work under any of the listed arts, Kuznetsov passed the impressions from them through his own unique gift, and most importantly, endowed the work with qualities inherent only to his art. In the Eastern City, the already found iconographic principles are again repeated, again the artist is faithful to the search for the archetypal through the use of what has already been defined as the canon developed by the master. Thus, the figure in the center of the composition directly repeats the female figure from the Bird Market, and the pose lying on the right resembles one sleeping in a shed.
These words allow us to consider both steppe and Central Asian works as one whole, especially since the artist alternates Bukhara motifs with steppe ones after a trip to Bukhara. So, in 1913-1914, he again repeats the woman lying in the shed - In the steppe (Lying in a yurt) (1913-1914), again conveys the bottomlessness of the steppe expanses in Camels (1912-1913), In the steppe (1913), again achieving laconicism and monumentality in these works, suitable for a fresco.
In the Eastern Motif (1912-1913), the artist seemed to merge all his impressions together, achieving compositional unity by including various components in the work - mountains, steppes, individual trees, and women sitting and reclining by a pond, united by the rhythmic organization of everything canvas and combining compositional integrity with color harmony of golden yellow and blue.
Speaking about Kuznetsov’s remarkable gift as a colorist, one cannot fail to mention the painting Fortune Telling (1912). The artist highlighted the figure of a woman with a beautiful blue spot, again thickening in some places and weakening in some places the intensity of the sound of the color, very subtly selected the golden-ocher color of the walls of the shed as a background and, with shimmering moving strokes, gave the most complex tints of pink, lilac, yellow and blue-blue in the image of the floor. The soft crimson circle of the rug with cards at the feet of the fortuneteller fits perfectly into this exquisite color scheme. In 1916, Kuznetsov repeated this composition in a different scale (Fortune Telling. Evening), dressing the female figure in green and simplifying the color variety of shades in the interior. And the picture lost that feeling of a certain jewel that was created by complexly developed, sophisticated music, composed of colorful chords and polyphony of shades.
Rusakova saw in the Fortune Telling of 1912 a kind of “Japaneseism,” which, in her opinion, was reflected in the character of the fortuneteller’s face and in the laconic, unmistakably accurate color. We already recalled Japanese engravings when considering the Eastern City.
In addition to oriental subjects, Kuznetsov also painted a number of still lifes at this time. Moreover, in these still lifes the artist uses only oil painting. However, in Morning (1916) the paint is applied easily, it is transparent when depicting the houses outside the window, which are as decoratively cubized as in the Bird Bazaar. This blue transparent color also applies to the crystal vase, and only the fruits, clearly depicted in the foreground, dispel the feeling of a mirage without destroying the overall romantic mood.
And Still Life with a Tray (1915-1916) is marked by clear constructiveness. The shapes here are especially cubized. But the sharp lines outlining a glass bottle, a porcelain coffee pot and a cup again do not emphasize “thingness” (an expression by Pyotr Konchalovsky), but speak of the fragility of these objects.
The last two still lifes of Kuznetsov do not belong to the Kyrgyz and Central Asian series, but purely plastically they are connected with the Bukhara still life, and with Flowers and melons, and with the Still Life with Suzani. In the Morning, Still Life with a Tray, there is the same clarity, inner classicism, far from the secondary nature of neo-academicism that arose at the same time, noble simplicity. And it is no coincidence that the birth of the Chamber Theater of Alexander Tairov in 1914, who also sought classical clarity on stage, began with the production of Sakuntala by the ancient Indian author Kalidasa, designed by Kuznetsov.
It is curious that the costumes, which evoked Tairov’s praise, since they did not constrain the actor, but harmoniously merged with his body, were continued in the costumes of the characters in Nikolai Gumilyov’s dramatic poem Child of Allah, published in the magazine Apollo with illustrations by Kuznetsov. The amazing beauty of the lines, its smoothness and musicality, the perfect rhythmic organization of the compositions corresponded to what Gumilev, Gorodetsky and Kuzmin called for in the program articles of the magazine, fighting for the return of the “Apollonian” principle to art. And Kuznetsov’s art of the 1910s fully corresponded to this. His recognition by the magazine was evidenced in particular by Abram Efros’s article The Art of Pavel Kuznetsov, which, perhaps not coincidentally, was published in the same issues of Apollo where the artist’s illustrations to the already mentioned creation of Gumilyov, imbued with oriental impressions, were published.
Work in the theater and in book illustration indicated Kuznetsov’s wide recognition in artistic circles. But Kuznetsov did not consider these types of art to be the main ones for himself. And in the tenth years he continued to dream of monumental painting, of fresco.
In 1913-1914, he tried to realize these aspirations in sketches for the paintings of the Kazan railway station. Two of them have survived, where the wall plane was established by painting, as in the art of Old Russian or Italian Trecentist masters. Judging by the sketches, both the Fruit Gathering and the Asian Bazaar are frieze-like and, in their rhythmic organization of movement, are based on the experience of Borisov-Musatov. Only in them is Art Nouveau and symbolism completely overcome, and the color is more sonorous, although just as complex as in easel works dedicated to the East. It is difficult to say why these sketches were not translated into painting. Perhaps we should agree with the opinion that “Kuznetsov, regardless of his will, was deeply alien to the whole spirit of art of the author of the Kazan Station project - Shchusev, with his rationalism and scientific approach to the use of elements of ancient Russian architecture.”

Kuznetsov's work during the revolution and the 1920s
Kuznetsov quickly and unconditionally accepted the revolution. He sincerely believed in the slogans it proclaimed and believed that just after the victory of the October Revolution, art should have been assigned one of the most important roles in the grandiose plans for building a new life. He actively participated in the design national holidays, was an proactive member of the Fine Arts Department of the Commission for the Protection of Monuments of Art and Antiquities of the Moscow Council of Workers and Red Army Deputies. At the same time, the artist worked at the College of Fine Arts, and even before the October days, in July 1917, he became the art editor of the magazine Path of Liberation, combining this with teaching monumental painting at the Stroganov School. In 1918 he was elected professor at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. In both educational institutions Kuznetsov led the workshops, and when the merger of two free art workshops took place, into which the Moscow School and the Stroganov School were renamed Vkhutemas (from 1926 - Vkhutein), Kuznetsov headed the united monumental workshop until the end of 1929.
As for his own art, for a long time he continued to be held captive by memories of the East. Most of the works of the second eastern series have not survived. The artist recorded many of his works. From photographs and the few works that have come down to us, it is clear that the graphic principle in them intensified and the drawing became more sophisticated. All this appears quite clearly in the painting By the Reservoir. Girl with a Jug (1920). One cannot help but pay tribute to the skill with which the artist assembled the figure into the vertical format of the canvas, how he uses reverse perspective in the image of a rectangular well in order to maintain flatness, but the captivating lightness and purity of color disappears from the color scheme; the range of this picture is maintained in dark brown tones , which may have arisen under the influence of Derain, but less organic for Kuznetsov. To once again be convinced of this, it is enough to compare the coloring of By the Reservoir with Still Life with Crystal (1919), written in a manner typical of the 1910s, in which enlightened blue colors predominate, where light strokes are mobile, often laid out in a fan shape. The composition of the still life is strictly structured, the objects seem to stretch upward, following the format of the canvas, but the painting surface is internally mobile, there is a breath of air in it, thanks to the gentle transitions of blue and slightly greenish. And the coloring of the painting By the Reservoir is heavy and even somewhat contradicts the exquisitely delicate proportions of the figure.
Perhaps the best painting from the second eastern series is Uzbek (1920), although it also differs from the artist’s pre-revolutionary works. The color scheme here is based on the sharp contrasts of the dark blue night sky, the white cloak, the black headdress and burqa, the yellow sleeves and the red strip of fabric between the burqa and the sleeve on the right. They create a feeling of tension, internal drama, never before seen so clearly in works dedicated to the East. There is something mysterious in the figure of the Uzbek woman, but the image, despite all the dissimilarity from Kuznetsov’s previous oriental works, is nevertheless marked, according to Alpatov’s apt definition, with rare charm. “Through the heavy fabric of her clothes,” the scientist wrote, “we guess the flexibility and grace of her figure. Before this mysteriously majestic stranger, one cannot help but recall the ancient Greek caryatids, slender as columns.”
And yet, with all the grace of some of Kuznetsov’s works, such as the Javanese Dancer (1918), Woman with a Fan (1919-1920), there is something secondary in the artist’s post-revolutionary cycle on oriental themes, which sometimes leads to some schematism and a certain pictorial dryness. They appear both in Ptichnitsa (late 1910 - early 1920s) and in Trud. Composition (early 1920s). The artist, apparently, felt this and tried, for the sake of expressiveness, to enhance in some works the cubist features in the spirit of Derain, which Kuznetsov’s wife Elena Bebutova was fond of. This is clearly visible in The Fruit Peddler (1919-1920, location unknown) and Breakfast (1919-1920, location unknown), clearly inspired by Derain's Saturday Afternoon, however, cubist techniques do not bring bright emotionality to these works.
Apparently, cubism seemed to Kuznetsov the means by which it was possible to solve the themes of labor, to which artists were encouraged revolutionary criticism. He painted Labor (1919-1920, location unknown) with three boys carrying cubes above their heads, against the backdrop of some strange geometric structures and pots of begonias. But the picture turned out to be far-fetched, and also overcomplicated, overloaded with cubized forms.
But in other types of fine art, Kuznetsov continued to create bright and emotional things. These were his sketches for theatrical productions, among which especially the works for the ballet Scheherazade (1923) to the music of Rimsky-Korsakov can be distinguished. The sketch for the curtain with multi-colored horses is especially decorative, setting the viewer up to immerse himself in a wonderful world fairy tales. And one has only to regret that the production of Scheherazade was not carried out.
It is known that in the 1920s there was a widespread tendency among artists to go into production and make things. Due to the nature of his talent, Kuznetsov could not, like Vladimir Tatlin or Lyubov Popova, become a pure “production worker,” but in 1919-1922 he worked at a porcelain factory in Petrograd and made sketches for sets. He introduced his impressions of the flora of Central Asia into the ornaments of the services, skillfully stylized plants and fruits and superbly combined the whiteness of the porcelain with a hot red-orange background. Eastern impressions did not let go of the artist. And further confirmation of this are two cycles of lithographs of Turkestan and a cycle of lithographs of Mountain Bukhara (all - 1923).
In contrast to the paintings on oriental themes of the late 1918 - early 1920s, schematism and derivativeness disappeared in them. Kuznetsov himself gave these “drawings” (that’s what he called his lithographs) great importance. He provided all three albums with brief introductions. It is not without reason that many of the drawings from which lithographs were made were transferred almost unchanged to the lithographic stone. Looking at the sheets of albums, we are immersed in that atmosphere, cleared of everything random, where instead of everyday life there is being, where everything seems to live according to laws that are not subject to time. In this sense, the series of lithographs seem to continue the perception of the East, which was so clearly expressed in the artist’s pre-revolutionary paintings. Moreover, Kuznetsov sometimes varied in lithographs what he found in the illustrations of Gumilyov’s Child of Allah, sometimes he used photographs taken during the trip, in which everything transient, prosaic and ethnographic was discarded. By the way, he did exactly the same thing, using motifs from Types of Kirghiz postcards sold in Bukhara and Samarkand. The master abandoned the hint of volume, making the background a conventional plane, and imparted melodiousness and subordination to a peculiar rhythm to the lines. And if we can talk about the monumentality of his oriental paintings of the 1910s, then there is no less of it in the lithographs. One need only look at The Melon Seller (1923) or The Goat Milker (1923) to make it obvious that these works can be enlarged to larger sizes without losing their effectiveness. By the way, this was confirmed by the poster for Kuznetsov’s 1964 exhibition, in which the Goat Milker was reproduced, almost three times larger than the original.
There are certainly similarities with the painting In the Steppe. Lying in a yurt (1913-1914), only in the lithograph the woman raised her torso and lowered her eyes, as if in thought.
Mountain Bukhara is already color lithographs. Moreover, they were made as follows: “On sheets of transfer lithographic paper (cornpaper), Kuznetsov made drawings, which were then printed in the tone of bistre. The prints were painted with watercolors... and from these samples the master chromolithographer prepared the stones for color printing.”
The first sheet - Sartyanka with a lamb - seemed to set the tone for the entire series with its balanced harmony. It is interesting that here the master used techniques in the depiction of rocks that are close to the depiction of hills in ancient Russian icons. And again this was done without any stylization, but something biblically majestic appeared in the image. And in landscape lithographs, Kuznetsov built perspective so that it did not break through the plane, while, of course, using the techniques of Persian miniature, which are combined with lapidary, clear and modern artistic language. Sometimes the master recalled compositions previously found in paintings. Thus, in the lithograph Sartyanka, his pencil Self-Portrait (1900) is marked by spontaneity and youthful purity; there is psychological depth in the also graphic Self-Portrait (1908) with symbolist figures of a muse and a baby lying, as it were, on the artist’s lap (isn’t this Kuznetsov himself, depicted newborn?). Finally, in 1912, the painter created a soulful portrait of his friend Alexander Matveev, where his face expresses immersion in creativity; it is not without reason that his works are depicted behind the sculptor’s back, which later adorned the Kuchuk-Koi ensemble.
After the revolution, Kuznetsov created a number of portraits of Elena Bebutova. The artist gave one of them (1918) a fantastic character, giving the female figure four arms with fans. Perhaps the artist remembered the many-armed Shiva, because Indian culture interested him during the years of work on the design of Sakuntala. A certain frozenness of the face seems to personify immersion in nirvana, and around him, in a seemingly endless movement, fans flicker among the cubized background, with the capitals of columns visible here and there. It must be said that the breaking shapes of the background are some tribute to the “left” directions, but here they bring a romantic phantasmagoric quality to the image. Of course, a certain polysemy of the image gives it something mysterious, which has its origins in the period of the master’s work, when he was the brightest representative of symbolism.
A different artistic solution is found in Portrait of Elena Bebutova with a Jug (1922). Here the desire for pure harmony prevails, which expresses itself both in the melodious lines of the slender figure of the artist’s wife, and in the musical echo of her rounded contour with the outline of the jug. And at the same time, the figure perfectly correlates with the detail of oriental architecture - a pillar with two decorative pointed arches, emphasizing the solemn aspiration upward. And the color structure of this work is soft blue shades, as if permeated with air, changeable, turning into pinkish and golden. Both the color scheme, the architecture, and the clearly oriental jug in Bebutova’s hands connect the work with the steppe and Central Asian series, although now the artist returns to oil technique. But the color here is light and not material. He transferred the high spirituality that Kuznetsov acquired in the 1910s both into this portrait of his wife and into another portrait of her, Rest (1921-1922), created almost simultaneously. In it, the artist, on the contrary, thickened the colors, making them darker. The dominant color of the chair is green, turning into blue at its edges. A terracotta table with an oriental jug of exquisite shape, but not clay, but metal, stands out clearly. But in this work there is no heaviness of color, due to the fact that everything is immersed in a light-air environment, softening the shape of the face, vibrating in the interior space. It seems that Bebutova’s portraits can be considered a worthy epilogue to the most remarkable thing that Kuznetsov created, and these are Kigiz and Central Asian works of the 1910s.

In the 1920s, active social activity Kuznetsova. In addition to teaching, he became involved in the work of the State Academy of Artistic Sciences, where he gave theoretical reports on issues of composition in painting and the peculiarities of artistic perception. Not a single major exhibition of Soviet art was complete without his works. And since Anatoly Lunacharsky favored him, it became possible for him to travel to France together with Bebutova to organize their exhibition. The exhibition was previously exhibited in Moscow, and then went to Paris. The basis of Kuznetsov’s works was made up of oriental works, and among them such masterpieces as Mirage in the steppe, Evening in the steppe, Fortune telling. Of course, these works were favorably received by artists and critics. From Bebutova’s memoirs we also learn about their communication with Pablo Picasso and Andre Derain. But it is quite remarkable that neither Bebutova nor Kuznetsov mention Matisse anywhere. Perhaps a certain proximity of Kuznetsov specifically to Matisse was the reason for this. Kuznetsov, apparently, did not rule out and was afraid of reproaches for imitating this artist, although despite their outward closeness they were very different from each other, because in Kuznetsov’s own words, Matisse’s painting seemed to him “denying the romantic impulse.”
The Bridge over the Seine (1923), The Arab Cooks (1923), and especially the Parisian Comedians (1924-1925), painted in Paris after returning home, differed from what the artist had previously done. Poetic harmony disappeared, and in some places the grotesque appeared, but it grew out of concrete reality. Despite all the skill in these works, there was no longer a sense of the integrity of the universe, manifested even in the smallest, as was expressed in eastern works. Everything became more specific, and therefore lost that unique poetic charm that distinguished Kuznetsov’s art in his best period of the 1910s. And yet, in the 1920s, Kuznetsov’s works still retained a high plastic culture. It was for its approval that he fought, creating the “Four Arts” society, becoming its chairman. It arose in 1925 and united the artist’s colleagues in “The Blue Rose” and many other bright artists (Saryan, Utkin, Feofilaktov, Matveev, as well as Bruni, Petrov-Vodkin, Istomin, Favorsky, Tyrsa, Miturich, Ostroumova-Lebedeva) . Bebutova and Kuznetsov believed that society should unite representatives of “all four arts”, based on the “urgent need to introduce a true synthesis of the arts into the life of Soviet society.” Architects included Zholtovsky, Shchusev, and Tamanyan in the society. Moreover, there were also masters of the left movement - El Lissitzky and Klyun. But, although Bebutova and Kuznetsov stated that “Art had to be realistic,” this association was immediately accused of “restoration tendencies,” and Kuznetsov was directly called the bearer of “mystical fatigue.” It was the solution of purely artistic problems, “an acute pictorial and color perception of the world, the search for new expressive constructive forms” that did not suit art officials, the future ideologists of “socialist realism”, who gave art a purely propaganda role. Such demands on art may have subconsciously influenced Kuznetsov. An example of this is the completely unsuccessful painting Lenin among children (1926, location unknown) shown at the first exhibition of the Four Arts. His landscapes of the Crimea were more successful, but in their naturalness, despite all the skill, there was less pictorial subtlety, which gives rise to high spirituality.
Since criticism called on the artist to glorify “liberated labor” and the theme of the working man, Kuznetsov painted such paintings as Peasant Women (1926), Kyrgyz Shepherds (1926), Shepherds’ Rest (1927-1934), Grape Harvest (1928), etc. The color scheme changes of his works - the color becomes more openly intense and at the same time more simplified. It must be said that these works of the artist cannot be denied monumentality. The figures pushed forward in Peasant Women or Kyrgyz Shepherds “hold the plane.” But the faces of the characters, while acquiring greater concreteness, at the same time lost that all-humanity, that involvement with the eternity of existence, which was in the Eastern cycle of the 1910s. Speaking about Peasant Women, Alpatov and Sarabyanov rightly remembered Venetsianov. Indeed, there is something about the woman with the sickle that is reminiscent of Venetian heroines. But the “Venetian” principle appears more externally than the common one that brought the works of the Russian artist of the first half of the 19th century closer to Kuznetsov’s steppe series. Now Kuznetsov began to see everyday life instead of being. It is felt both in Woman with a Bull (1927) and in the Crimean Collective Farm (1928). Of course, in these works, in the integrity of the figures, in the balance of the composition, in the skillful distribution of color spots, one can feel a great master, standing above many phenomena of the then Soviet painting. But one cannot but agree with Alexander Morozov: “The best thing about the late P. Kuznetsov is what he retains from the ups and downs of the Kyrgyz Suite.”
Of course, there is something majestic in the embodiment of the theme of motherhood in the film Mother (1930). The painting could be translated into a fresco, which the artist especially dreamed of at this time, naively believing that the new social system would allow him to “connect with the feeling of a working person.” He often used alfresco and alsecco techniques in his paintings. The space of the paintings deepens, plein air is even used in its interpretation, but the distances are so generalized, the objects are weightless, volumeless, that despite all the spatiality, even during this period Kuznetsov avoids naturalistic depth.
But even these paintings evoked harsh criticism from official criticism. Fedorov-Davydov, who was then in position vulgar sociology, wrote about Kuznetsov’s work: “It is dangerous, because from it... some of our artistic youth have already become infected. The interpretation of the theme outside of time, space and everyday life, the composition in the desert, the stunted color, the iconographic coherence of movements - all this Kuznetsov’s legacy began to pass on to our youth.”
Even Lunacharsky’s sympathetic review of the Portrait of E.M. cannot save the master. Bebutova. While reading (1926), which stated: “This woman is a person in the best sense of the word - new person" By the way, the portrait of Matveev (1927), which realistically conveyed the uniqueness of the individual, being inferior in ambiguity and depth to the earlier one, also did not satisfy Soviet orthodoxies. The works were still done in decorative colors, which began to seem like a vice.
And here is the result. In 1929, despite receiving the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR and a large personal exhibition in Tretyakov Gallery, the persecution of the artist at Vkhutein begins by part of the student body, committed to the principles of so-called proletarian art. The orthodox Bela Witz comes to the monumental department, who at the end of 1929, as class aliens, “swept away the representatives of bourgeois art with an iron broom: Kuznetsov, and Favorsky, and Istomin, and Bruni.” And in 1931, the Four Arts society was dissolved. An even more severe period for the fate of our art was approaching.

Kuznetsov's art in the 1930s and subsequent years
and technology." The Armenian cycle, of course, differed from the boring ones both in painting and in the construction of the works of “proletarian artists”, for opportunistic reasons who turned to an industrial theme - after all, it was a social order. But even in Kuznetsov’s works, the reddish coloring, dictated by the color of the tuff, became somewhat intrusive; in some works, the abundance of small figures introduced unnecessary verbosity into the paintings; The decorative principle inherent in his art, which Kuznetsov tried to preserve, sometimes turned into motleyness. The same can be said about the Baku landscapes with oil derricks (1931-1932).
Kuznetsov, pure in heart, perceived everything that happened as some kind of misunderstanding. He believed that his art was responding to the demands of the time. In 1930-1931, he traveled to Armenia and a new theme appeared in his work - the industrial landscape associated with the construction of Yerevan. Instead of concentrated depth, expressive movement, dynamic rhythms, and unexpected angles appeared in his works. We can talk about a certain influence on Kuznetsov’s work by OST artists with their passion for technical structures, with their desire to intensify the composition as much as possible. The master often chooses a point of view from above, striving for the acuteness of perception of what is depicted. Such, for example, is the landscape of the Outskirts of Yerevan (1930), repeated in the work Bridge over the Zangu River (1930), where the color structure is still clear, subordinate to the general silvery gamut.
But it changes completely, becomes reddish-red, in the landscapes Processing of Artik tuff (1930-1931) and in a number of works Construction of Yerevan (1930-1931). Kuznetsov said that he wanted to convey in them his sense of “the integrity of nature, human labor.
The industrial theme was alien to the artist, just like the theme of sports, which he turned to in the same years, I think, again not without the influence of the skeletons. The best of the paintings from the sports series Pushball (1931), in which, according to Punin’s observation, Kuznetsov managed to “combine in one image or in one form several different-time positions of this image and this form, to take into account the life of the depicted body in time.” But while agreeing with Punin in assessing the artist’s formal skill, you still catch yourself in the fact that this work does not evoke deep emotions, that it is deprived of that spiritualizing power that so excited and captured the viewer in Kuznetsov’s work earlier. Kuznetsov also demonstrates great skill in Sorting Cotton (1931), where the expressive rhythm of the figures of women in blue and dark brown in the foreground gives direction to the gaze upward, parallel to the plane, thereby establishing it, as in a wall fresco. And the painting was made with lime paints on damp limestone soil, like a monumental work. “In the painting Sorting Cotton there is more authenticity in conveying the situation than in the early paintings on the theme of shearing sheep,” Alpatov wrote. But this authenticity, in our opinion, reduces the universal human meaning of labor, an original, and therefore truly solemn act, which precisely gives a high harmonious and poetic harmony to the “sheep shearing” mentioned by Alpatov.
By the way, the following recognition by Alpatov, given by him in Memoirs, published already in the post-Soviet period, is noteworthy: “In the landscapes of the East, Kuznetsov realized his dreams of a golden age and at the same time managed to achieve accuracy of rendering. Kuznetsov's power of imagination surpassed even Vrubel and Borisov-Musatov.
His works are not always equally successful. In my album published by the publishing house “ Soviet artist“, a number of bad paintings spoil the impression of Kuznetsov’s work.” From conversations with Alpatov, I know that he considered the Armenian period to be a clear decline in the artist’s work. Of course there may be some
The exaggeration is that the scientist called some of the works published in the album bad, because they also exhibit certain plastic qualities. But they no longer open to the viewer a new view of the world, where everything is subject to the laws of supreme harmony. And therefore, for example, the monumentality of Cabbage (1932), which was a success among the artistic intelligentsia at the exhibition of the 30th anniversary of the Moscow Union of Artists in 1962-1963, but earned reproaches for formalism from those in power, nevertheless, carries a certain flavor of social order and therefore inferior to the monumentality of eastern works, in which the eternity of life is embodied.
And yet, let us be grateful to the artist for the fact that he managed not to become a submissive implementer of the common dogmas of socialist realism. And during the years of the Great Patriotic War, trying to capture the appearance of its participants, he is far from any pomp, and pictorial restraint, conveying the spirit of the times, is combined with the solution of pictorial problems that help to reveal the strong-willed principle in a person (Portrait of a pilot V.I. Andreev, 1941).
Since the second half of the 1930s, the artist’s main genres have been landscape and still life. In contemplating the beauty of the visible world, he found respite from the unfair criticism that led to the fact that in 1948 Kuznetsov was forced to leave teaching at the Moscow School of Art and Industry and, enrolled in the formalists, from that time on he practically stopped participating in exhibitions. But he wrote a lot - bouquets of flowers, Moscow and Baltic landscapes. At the same time, he returns to plein air painting, admiring the fresh breath of a summer morning or the changing shades of a Baltic sunset. These are mainly sketches; it is becoming more and more difficult for an aging artist to paint pictures. But sometimes an exquisite color melody (Peonies, 1950s) and rhythm penetrate into these sketches compositional construction(Flowers and Grapes, 1953).
During the Khrushchev Thaw, recognition returned to him, retrospective personal exhibitions were organized in 1956-1957 and in 1964, young artists are drawn to him, and he willingly shares with them his knowledge of art, his creative experience.
Nowadays, when there is a shortage of spirituality and kindness, wise, pure, full of deep humanity, in the best manifestations expressing the divine harmony that artists have dreamed of for centuries, Kuznetsov’s art is especially relevant as an example of the highest service to beauty, in the healing power of which the master believed throughout his long life.
Soon Sudeikin and Sapunov joined Kuznetsov and Matveev.
At Mamontov’s, the young artists communicated closely with Paolo Trubetskoy, Matveev’s teacher at the School, and with Chaliapin, whose portrait Kuznetsov would paint and exhibit at the “Scarlet Rose” exhibition. Mamontov began introducing future Goluborozovites to theatrical scenery. For the Private Opera, Kuznetsov, Sudeikin and Sapunov wrote the scenery for Camorra by Eugenio Esposito, Orpheus by Christoph Willibald Gluck, and Hansel and Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck.