→ Kustodiev's works. Custodian artist - biography and description of paintings

Kustodiev's works. Custodian artist - biography and description of paintings

Kustodiev was born on February 23, 1879 in the glorious city of Astrakhan. His father was a teacher at one of the local gymnasiums in the city.

Shortly after the birth of his son, the father died. Boris studied at a church school and later received his education at a gymnasium. He began to study painting professionally at the age of 15, with Pavel Alekseevich Vlasov. He studied with him for three years, before moving to St. Petersburg.

In 1896, Boris Mikhailovich moved to St. Petersburg and entered the famous Academy of Arts. In his first year, his teacher was Savinsky, and then the famous Ilya Efimovich Repin. Kustodiev immediately showed himself to be a talented portrait painter, but for the main competition work of the Academy of Arts, he chose a genre theme.

In 1900, Kustodiev met his future wife, Poroshenskaya. Soon the young people got married. In 1903, he graduated from the Academy of Arts, with honors, and was awarded a gold medal. The medal gave the artist the right to go on a tour of Russia and Europe. Boris Mikhailovich, naturally, took advantage of this right.

At the end of the same year, he and his family go on a trip. For about six months, the artist visited France, Germany, and Spain. While traveling around Europe, Kustodiev studied the artistic works of various art masters, copied them, improving his skills.

It is worth noting that Kustodiev participated in the publication of some revolutionary magazines. He is the author of many cartoons condemning the monarchy.

From the beginning of 1906, Boris Kustodiev released a number of paintings that covered the theme of the festive life of peasants, townspeople and provincial merchants. Kustodiev’s paintings from this period of creativity are characterized by brightness, multicolor, realism and a certain expansion. These were the most ordinary everyday scenes, which had an unusual execution.

The artist's work changed. The author moves away from vitality and transforms everyday paintings into theatrical ones. His characters are a collective image of one or another layer of society.

Kustodiev is a great master of portraiture. He developed his own artistic genre execution of portraits. The portrait of Boris Mikhailovich was inextricably linked with the landscape or interior. This was an obligatory and integral part of Kustodiev’s portrait paintings.

Boris Mikhailovich did a lot of work for theatrical productions. He solved decorative problems that did not always coincide with the thoughts of the director and author of the performances. He took part in many successful theatrical productions - “The Thunderstorm”, “Fleas”, “The Death of Pazukhin”.

Kustodiev was a subtle artist with a clear, specific touch. Boris Mikhailovich successfully designed illustrations for the works of classics of Russian literature, as well as for the works of his contemporaries.

In the post-revolutionary years, Kustodiev created posters and paintings on revolutionary themes. Boris Mikhailovich also took part in the decoration of St. Petersburg for the anniversary of the October events.

Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev died in 1927 on May 26. Last years spent his life in a wheelchair. The artist suffered from a form of tuberculosis, which resulted in death.

On March 7, 1878, Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev was born. It is difficult to find another painter so passionately in love with provincial Russia: original, bright, surprising

A number of researchers suggest that the surname Kustodiev comes from the Old Slavonic “custod” - the so-called watchman, church gatekeeper. It is not known whether Boris Mikhailovich’s distant ancestors were church ministers, but his closest relatives connected their lives with the church. My grandfather served as a clerk in one of the villages of the Samara province, and his sons, Stepan, Konstantin and Mikhail, followed in his footsteps. Boris Mikhailovich also studied at the theological seminary, but he entered it, rather, due to circumstances. After the death of his father, the family faced a desperate financial situation, and at the theological seminary the boy could receive an education at public expense. True, seminarian Kustodiev will not demonstrate outstanding abilities, making progress only in icon painting. The boy will devote most of his time to his new hobby - sculpture, carving figures of funny animals from soft stone.

Famous portrait

Boris Kustodiev is rightfully considered consummate master portrait - this genre has occupied a central place in his work since his studies at the Academy of Arts. After the appearance of the first works at exhibitions, the public appreciated the skill of the portrait painter - private orders began to pour in. Kustodiev himself admitted that these orders distracted him from the tireless search for language and style. Book illustrator Ivan Bilibin, historian and restorer Alexander Anisimov, poet and artist Maximilian Voloshin - in each portrait, Kustodiev managed to capture and convey to the viewer the complex essence of a person. But perhaps Kustodiev’s most famous work in this genre was the ceremonial portrait of Chaliapin. True, a number of researchers (including Valerian Bogdanov-Berezovsky) believe that the artist created, rather, plot composition, “in which the portrait itself, brought to the foreground, plays the role of the main, but still integral component.” It is interesting that in the lower left corner Kustodiev depicted Chaliapin’s daughters, Maria and Martha, walking accompanied by the artist’s secretary Isaiah Dvorishchin. At Fyodor Ivanovich’s feet is his favorite French bulldog Royka, painted from life, who was forced to “freeze” in the desired position while placing the cat on the closet. Chaliapin admired Kustodiev’s “great spirit” and often visited him in his Petrograd apartment. They remembered their native Volga and sang soulful songs: seriously and concentratedly, as if immersed in some sacred ritual.

Watercolor Rus'

Kustodiev’s favorite theme for many years was provincial Russia with its folk festivals and colorful fairs and main actors– residents of small cozy towns. Kustodiev’s paintings are immediately recognizable: bright, colorful, with overflowing life and many recognizable details. When he saw the Saturday fair for the first time, he wrote: “...it was a mind-boggling display of colors - such variety and play. No sketches, no fantasies will give anything like this - everything is so simple and beautiful.” Alexander Benois was convinced that “the real Kustodiev is a Russian fair, “big-eyed” calicoes, a barbaric “fight of colors”, a Russian settlement and a Russian village, with their accordions, gingerbread cookies, dressed-up girls and dashing guys.” In 1920, Kustodiev, commissioned by I. Brodsky, created the “Rus” series: 26 watercolors, each of which tells in great detail about the life of ordinary Russian people. Cab, drinking tea in a tavern, a representative merchant in a rich fur coat walking around the city, a sex worker hurrying to carry out an errand, a chest worker reading a newspaper, a cheerful baker praising his goods - each becomes a unique part of the picture, which is assembled into one huge puzzle called “Rus”.

Russian Venuses

When talking about the artist, it is impossible not to remember the “Kustodiev women” - the type of Russian beauties created by Boris Mikhailovich. He starts writing them during difficult times. Unbearable pain in his hands, which does not allow the master to work fully, forces him to go to Switzerland, where he is diagnosed with bone tuberculosis. It was during a long and grueling treatment, which actually did not bring results, that in 1912 Kustodiev began work on a gallery of unsurpassed female images. In 1915, the world saw the release of “The Merchant’s Wife” and “The Beauty” - unique images of Russian beauty.

The Edge of Talent

Painting, sculpture, scenography, book graphics, teaching - the original talent of the “hero of Russian painting” manifested itself in a variety of fields. Scenography attracted Kustodiev even as a student, but only in 1911, while undergoing treatment in Leysin, did he create his first independent work for Ostrovsky's play "Warm Heart" directed by Fyodor Komissarzhevsky. The work was highly praised. As one of the reviewers wrote, “the artist managed to clothe Kuroslepovshchina and Khlynovshchina in the soft tones of stylish memories.” In 1914, the artist created the scenery for the play “The Death of Pazukhin” based on the play by Saltykov-Shchedrin, and they turned out to be so expressive that twice more, in 1924 and 1938, viewers will see the production in Kustodiev’s design.
The most famous works of Kustodiev as an illustrator are drawings for rare editions of Leskov’s works “The Darner” (1922) and “Lady Magbet of Mtsensk District” (1923), as well as Nekrasov’s collection “Six Poems (1922). For the first book, Kustodiev designed the cover, “title” and created 34 illustrations. The illustrations, made using the technique of zincography, are “inextricably and harmoniously” woven into the thread of the narrative: landscapes of the Moscow Zamoskvorechye region alternate with event scenes marked with slight irony.

One day!

From 1905 to 1907, Kustodiev collaborated with a number of satirical publications: “Zhupel”, “Hellish Mail”, “Iskra”. This is how “Introduction” appeared. 1905 Moscow" - a response to Bloody Sunday, a number of sharp caricatures, including a satire on Witte published in the second issue of "Bogey". While working on it, Kustodiev muttered through his teeth: “Let’s depict, depict... Hypocritical and dodgy Count Witte... you are famous for your ability to find a third way out when there are only two!.. Do you want to hold two flags at the same time - the royal tricolor and the scarlet revolutionary? Play for two? Please!..” The third issue of the magazine was not published. It was banned by censorship.
After the events of 1917, Kustodiev created several panels to decorate Petrograd for the celebration of the first anniversary of the October Revolution and embodied the severity of the events on the covers of the magazines “Krasnaya Niva” and “Red Panorama”. In 1920, he painted the canvas “Bolshevik,” which is ambiguous in its interpretation - a huge giant with a distant look and a scarlet banner in his hands moves towards the church. Kustodiev expresses the feeling of spontaneity, loss of control and his fears of the death of traditions dear to his heart in this work with his characteristic skill. The authorities enthusiastically accept the “Bolshevik”, “glorifying a new cause.” Subsequent paintings, commissioned by the new government, will be distinguished by the absence of acute strain and an abstractly festive mood.

Thirst for life

The Berlin neurosurgery luminary Oppenheim did not confirm the diagnosis made in Switzerland, considering that Kustodiev had a spinal cord tumor. Despite the successful operation, in 1915 the pain returned - the disease attacked with such cruelty that the master could not move independently. He will undergo another operation, but will remain confined to a wheelchair until his death. However, it was during this period that Kustodiev would create his most striking works, filled with endless love of life and a whirlwind of emotions. Many of them will feature an unstoppable three, symbolizing movement - something that the artist was deprived of in life. Kustodiev was not broken by the incessant attacks of his colleagues: futurists scolded him for his indecisiveness and unwillingness to “cut the umbilical cord” that connected him with Repin, decadents defined his works as “hopelessly orthographic”, critics often recalled the “popularity” of the master’s canvases, and in the 20s called " the last singer merchant-kulak environment." But he's up to last days continued to sing of what was dear to his heart - the beauty and generosity of the Russian land.

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

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

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

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

Types of provincial town

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A holiday embodied in colors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Artistic talent Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev a world-famous representative of Russian painting of the last century, gave us a nostalgic world, sunny and joyful, emphasizing bright colors holiday feeling. As a student, Kustodiev not only inherited Repin’s manner and style, but also introduced his unique play of colors, which involuntarily charges with positivity and happiness. It is worth noting that Boris Mikhailovich’s development as an artist began long before he met his teacher; this is evidenced by his work, permeated with the echo of childhood affections and experiences.

Kustodiev was born into the family of a seminary teacher in 1878 in Astrakhan. Fate decreed that Boris's father died when the boy was just over a year old, and all responsibility for raising him fell on the fragile shoulders of his mother - a 25-year-old widow with four children in her arms. Despite the very modest income, the family lived amicably, and mother's love brightened up the difficulties of life, giving the opportunity to develop a creative personality. It was the mother, Ekaterina Prokhorovna, who instilled in the children a love of high art - theater, literature, painting. This upbringing clearly determined Boris’s future, and already at the age of 9 he knew that he would become an artist.

In 1892, having entered the Astrakhan Theological Seminary, Kustodiev simultaneously began taking lessons from the local painter A.P. Vlasova. With the blessing of Vlasov, in 1896 Kustodiev became a student at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts and, after two years, was accepted into the studio of Ilya Repin. great artist immediately drew attention to the student, placing high hopes on him, which later resulted in joint work on a monumental canvas -. The consequence of such a successful start was the defense of a thesis with a gold medal and an internship abroad. On his trip to Europe, the artist went with his young family, his recently born son and his young wife, Yulia Evstafievna Proshinskaya.

Subsequently, in 1905, paying tribute to the fateful meeting with his love, Kustodiev built a house-workshop “Terem” near the city of Kineshma, on the Volga. “Terem” became the place of work and creativity of the artist, and here, almost every summer, Boris Mikhailovich was overcome by a feeling that is commonly called happiness, inspiring him to creativity and awareness of the fullness of life. A beloved wife, who became a faithful assistant, a son and a daughter, in the inviolable concept of family, were reflected in the artist’s work and became separate big topic in his painting (painting “Morning”).

A year earlier, in 1904, the artist spent several months abroad, in and around the world, visiting exhibitions and museums. The native expanses called Boris Mikhailovich to Russia and, returning to his homeland, Kustodiev plunged into the world of journalism, collaborating with the satirical magazines “Zhupel” and “Hellish Mail”. Thus, the first Russian revolution encouraged him to try his hand at cartoons and caricatures of government officials.

The year 1907 became eventful: a trip to, passion for sculpture, membership in the Union of Artists. And in 1908, the world of theater opened up for Kustodiev - he worked as a decorator at the Mariinsky. The popularity of Boris Mikhailovich is growing, the fame of the portrait painter is becoming the reason famous work Nicholas II in 1915, but long before that, in 1909, trouble came to the artist’s family - the first signs of a spinal cord tumor appeared. Despite this, he continues to actively travel around Europe and receives the title of academician of painting in the same year. After visiting Austria, Italy, France and Germany, Kustodiev goes to Switzerland, where he undergoes treatment. Subsequently, in Berlin in 1913, he underwent a complex operation.

It would seem that the disease had receded and 1914 was marked by exhibitions at the Bernheim Gallery in Paris, International Art Exhibitions in Venice and. In 1916, Kustodiev underwent a second operation, which resulted in paralysis of the lower body and amputation of the legs. Since then, the artist’s whole world is his room, memory and imagination. It was during this period that he painted his most vivid and festive paintings, depicting provincial life (, “Rural Holiday”) and the beauty of the body ().

But cheerfulness and optimism are unable to overcome the disease, which, as it progresses, allows the artist to hold a lifetime exhibition of his own works in 1920 at the Petrograd House of Arts. The last milestones of his life were marked by the design of the play “The Flea” and participation in the International Exhibition in Paris.

In 1927, on May 26, at the age of 49, Boris Mikhailovich died literally while working on a sketch of the triptych he had conceived, “The Joy of Work and Leisure.” Thus ended a difficult life, but full of light and joyful notes. famous artist who left us a legacy demonstrating a thirst for life and knowledge.

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

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

Biography [ | ]

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

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

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

Family [ | ]

Kustodiev Boris with his wife Yulia. 1903

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

Illustrations and book graphics[ | ]

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

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

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

Painting [ | ]

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of the artist’s friends recalled:

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

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

Theater works[ | ]

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

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

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

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

Significant works [ | ]

 

 
This is interesting: