Igor Grabar. Igor Grabar "Fantastic beauty": winter landscapes and still lifes

And grief Grabar painted landscapes and still lifes filled with light, was an architect and art critic. It was he who carried out the redevelopment of the Tretyakov Gallery and compiled its first scientific catalog. Grabar also organized exhibitions of Soviet artists abroad and worked to preserve ancient icons and frescoes.

"Sweet, wonderful smell of fresh paint"

Igor Grabar. Self-portrait (detail). 1942. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

Igor Grabar. Self-portrait with a palette (detail). 1934. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Igor Grabar. Self-portrait in a hat (detail). 1921. Private collection

Igor Grabar was born in 1871 in Austria-Hungary (today - Hungary), in Budapest. His father Emmanuil Grabar was a lawyer and member of the Hungarian Parliament. Because of his Russophile views, he was forced to leave for Russia in 1876. In the city of Egorievsk, Ryazan province, Emmanuil Grabar entered the local gymnasium as a teacher. Later, his wife and children moved in with him.

Igor Grabar fell in love with art as a child: “I don’t remember myself not drawing, I can’t imagine myself without a pencil, an eraser, without watercolors and brushes.” The boy drew from his imagination and copied military portraits from magazines. In the gymnasium of Yegorievsk, where he studied, drawing was taught by a local artist, and it was he who interested Grabar in painting.

I was dying to climb up to him somehow in order to see with my own eyes how pictures are painted and what kind of oil paints they were, which I knew only by hearsay. I thought I couldn't stand the happiness that filled my chest, especially when I smelled the sweet, wonderful smell of fresh paint.

In 1882, 11-year-old Igor Grabar went to study at the Moscow Imperial Lyceum in memory of Tsarevich Nicholas. Life at the Lyceum was not easy. He was a "living scholarship holder" there, and he was surrounded by boys from wealthy families who did not miss the opportunity to play a joke on Grabar's poverty. He plunged headlong into painting and drawing: “I had four opportunities to work from nature within the walls of the lyceum: to paint from windows, paint portraits of others, set still lifes for myself and compose scenes from the life and life of the lyceum, writing off details from nature.” He painted teachers and employees of the lyceum, acquaintances and classmates. He spent his days off at the Tretyakov Gallery and at Moscow exhibitions.

Grabar graduated from the Lyceum with honors, from Moscow he went to the capital. In 1889, he immediately entered two faculties of St. Petersburg University - legal and historical-philological. He managed to write biographies of artists and humorous stories for the popular Niva magazine, draw illustrations and act as an art critic with reviews of exhibitions.

Igor Grabar. Abramtsevo. Wattle (fragment). 1944. Samara Regional Art Museum, Samara

Igor Grabar. Spring landscape. April (detail). 1939. Private collection

The craving for art led Grabar to the workshop of the famous teacher, Professor Pavel Chistyakov, who taught Vasily Polenov and Valentin Serov in different years. Grabar wrote about classes in the studio: “Arriving at the workshop, the newcomer in an enthusiastic mood sat down in front of the model and began to draw her, and sometimes write directly. Chistyakov appeared, and when it was his turn, the teacher began to analyze every millimeter of the sketch he had begun, and accompanied his annihilating criticism with such jokes, catchphrases, grins and grimaces that the poor man was thrown into a cold sweat and he was ready to fall into the underworld from shame and embarrassment . In conclusion, Chistyakov recommended to quit for the time being and think about painting and confine oneself to drawing ... "

Nevertheless, Igor Grabar chose a career as an artist: after graduating from university, he entered the Academy of Arts in 1894, where he studied in the studio of Ilya Repin. A year later, Grabar went on his first trip to Europe, which dragged on for several years. He visited Paris and Italy, studied at the studio of the artist-teacher Anton Ashbe in Munich, popular with European masters. Soon he taught there himself, heading one of the departments of the school, and continued to study painting, sculpture and architecture.

In the spring of 1900, Igor Grabar visited the World Exhibition in Paris. He recalled: “Unforgettable are the impressions that I received from the retrospective section of the exhibition, in which for the first time such giants of French art as Millet, Courbet, Manet were presented so fully. But this exhibition suggested to me an idea that has haunted me since then - the idea that an artist should sit at home and depict his life, close and dear to him. Millet, Courbet and Manet wrote what they saw around them, because they understood it better than someone else's, and because they loved it more than someone else's. In 1901, Grabar returned to his homeland.

"Fantastic beauty": winter landscapes and still lifes

Igor Grabar. February blue (detail). 1904. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Igor Grabar. Hoarfrost (detail). 1905. Yaroslavl Art Museum, Yaroslavl

Igor Grabar. March snow (detail). 1904. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

In the capital, he became one of the main critics in the art magazine World of Art. In 1903 the painter moved from St. Petersburg to Moscow. At one of the Moscow exhibitions, he met the artist Nikolai Meshcherin, and he invited Grabar to his hospitable estate Dugino. Since then, he has been at the estate for a long time and here he met his future wife Valentina, the niece of Nikolai Meshcherin. Picturesque places were located around the estate, Russian nature inspired the artist very much. He worked hard: he got up at five or six in the morning and went to sketches, wrote, forgetting about rest and food.

In the early 1900s, Grabar became interested in impressionism. He loved winter and winter landscapes, on this subject he created the works "February Blue" (1904), "March Snow" (1904), "Hoarfrost" (1905). Changes in nature and lighting took place quickly, and the artist painted with passion, "throwing paints onto the canvas, as if in a frenzy, without thinking or weighing too much."

Igor Grabar. Untidy table (fragment). 1907. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Igor Grabar. Delphinium (detail). 1908. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

Igor Grabar. Chrysanthemums (detail). 1905. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

The idea for the "February Blue" was suggested to the artist by nature itself during a walk in the forest. He stared at the birch and dropped the stick, leaned over it and accidentally looked up. In the book "My Life" Grabar wrote about this case:

I stood near a marvelous specimen of a birch, rare in the rhythmic structure of its branches. When I looked at the top of the birch from below, from the surface of the snow, I was stunned by the spectacle of fantastic beauty that opened before me: some kind of chimes and echoes of all the colors of the rainbow, united by the blue enamel of the sky ... I immediately ran for a small canvas and in one session sketched with nature sketch of the future picture.

To achieve the impression of a low horizon, he made a trench in the deep snow and placed himself there with an easel and a large canvas. Grabar used different shades of blue to convey the color of the “blue enamel of the sky”. In two and a half weeks, he completed the canvas completely on location. The artist himself called "February Blue" his most significant work.

Igor Grabar often said that with the end of winter, the landscape genre lost its appeal for him. Then he began to paint still lifes. In Dugin, flowers grew all year round in the garden and the greenhouse, and among the still lifes of the 1910s, floral ones began to predominate in Grabar's work - he created the canvases "Chrysanthemums" (1905), "Untidy table" (1907), "Delphinium" (1908).

Architect, art critic and head of the Tretyakov Gallery

Igor Grabar. Winter evening (detail). 1903. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

Igor Grabar. Frost. Sunrise (detail). 1941. Irkutsk Regional Art Museum named after V.P. Sukachev, Irkutsk

Igor Grabar. September snow (detail). 1903. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

The master's talent manifested itself not only in painting and graphics, but also in architecture. Ekaterina Zakharyina, the widow of the famous doctor Grigory Zakharyin, suggested that Igor Grabar build a memorial hospital on their estate in memory of his dead son. He enthusiastically took on the project. According to Grabar's design, design engineers and builders built a large modern hospital with several buildings, houses for doctors and an operating room. After the completion of the project, he wanted to take up architecture again, but had to choose between architecture and science: at that time he was doing extensive work on the multi-volume History of Russian Art. Grabar became the editor and author of several key sections in the multi-volume edition for the publishing house of Joseph Knebel. He collected archival materials from all over the country and practically did not paint. “This “History of Art” is, in essence, almost already the history of Russian culture. I would like to publish 12 volumes… We need an entertaining story, close to the description of life and life in different eras, illustrated with works of art”, he wrote.

The first issue of "History" was published in 1908; in total, eight volumes were published before 1915. The books were successfully published, but work on the multi-volume edition was stopped: during the First World War, Knebel's publishing house was destroyed, and many glass negatives were lost forever. Grabar wrote: “After all, that's why I was forced to stop publishing History because all the negatives - up to 20,000 pieces - taken under my direction, and to a large extent by me personally, were destroyed. Among them were not hundreds, but thousands of the most precious uniques, documents that are no longer recoverable, because I traveled all over Russia, the whole North, all the significant estates in the central provinces. After this event, the artist could not work for several months. The monumental work "History of Russian Art" became an important milestone in Russian art history.

Igor Grabar. On the lake (detail). 1926. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

Igor Grabar. Rowan (detail). 1924. State Museum-Reserve "Rostov Kremlin", Rostov, Yaroslavl region

Igor Grabar. Autumn. Rowan and birch (detail). 1924. Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum, Nizhny Novgorod

In 1913, Igor Grabar headed the Tretyakov Gallery. In his letters, he said that he agreed to this position in order to study the art of artists not through glass, "but close, to the touch, with a thorough study of technique, signature, all the features." He carried out a large-scale redevelopment of the museum's exposition, which caused discussions in newspapers and even at meetings of the State Duma. The walls in the halls of the gallery before the arrival of Grabar were loaded from floor to ceiling with paintings, without any logic - "tiny sketches next to huge canvases." Grabar based the new exposition on monographic and historical principles that were innovative for that time. Museum staff re-planned part of the halls, removed shields and partitions. The private collection has turned into a European-style museum. The transformation was supported by artists: the artist Ilya Repin said that "an enormous and complex work has been done for the glory of the gallery of Pavel Tretyakov."

Grabar also compiled the first scientific catalog of the gallery: under his leadership, more than four thousand exhibits were checked and re-described. He also acquired for the Tretyakov Gallery paintings by the classics of Russian art Orest Kiprensky and Pavel Fedotov, as well as canvases by the "latest" artists - Ilya Mashkov, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Igor Grabar was the director of the gallery until 1925.

Grabar-restorer

Igor Grabar. Pears on a green drapery (detail). 1922. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Igor Grabar. Lilac and forget-me-nots (detail). 1905. Yaroslavl Art Museum, Yaroslavl

Igor Grabar. Apples and asters (detail). 1926. Taganrog Art Museum, Taganrog, Rostov Region

After the October Revolution, the artist remained in Russia and was engaged in administrative museum work. In 1918, on his initiative, the Central Restoration Workshops were opened in Moscow.

In the first third of the 20th century, historians and restorers did a lot of work to uncover samples of ancient Russian and Byzantine art - paintings and icons that survived in ancient monasteries and churches. Thanks to Grabar, many works of icon painting have been preserved and restored. At the beginning of the century, restoration was called a repair, and the masters had a corresponding approach: no scientific research was carried out before the restoration. Grabar, on the other hand, wanted to make restoration a science: he involved scientists - chemists, physicists and microbiologists in the work. He organized and participated in expeditions to Novgorod and Pskov, to the cities of the Volga region, to the Crimea and the Caucasus. Expeditions were carried out to find, restore and strengthen monuments of art and antiquity. In a letter to his wife Valentina, he said: “And now I have organized work on clearing all the cycles of frescoes and icons of Rublev, and at the same time on clearing the walls of Vladimir churches and mainly the famous miraculous icons of the Bogolyubskaya Mother of God, Maximovskaya and Vladimirskaya ... And I must say, the results have surpassed the wildest hopes: we already know things that have not been dreamed of recently ... The whole history of ancient Russian painting has to be redone.

Despite the fact that in the 1920s Igor Grabar was engaged in social work, he did not leave painting. The artist painted still lifes in order to “maintain the fluency of the hand”: “still life exercises” - this is how he called his canvases. In compositions, he combined different fruits and fabrics, achieved a contrast of textures and rich coloring of warm and cold colors, as in the paintings "Apples and Asters" (1922), "Pears on a Green Drapery" (1922).

In the 1930s, Igor Grabar created portraits of famous people: composer Sergei Prokofiev, poet Korney Chukovsky, academicians Sergei Chaplygin and Vladimir Vernadsky, art historians Abram Efros and Anatoly Bakushinsky. The artist traveled a lot around the world, he was invited by museums as an art expert. He was the initiator of the creation of the Town of Artists: on Verkhnyaya Maslovka Street in Moscow there were houses with workshops and apartments of painters, including Grabar's workshop.

In later years, the artist was the director of the Abramtsevo Museum-Estate, led. At the end of his life, Igor Grabar settled in the holiday village of Abramtsevo, a favorite place of many Russian artists. He continued to paint and work on The History of Russian Art. In a letter to a colleague, Grabar wrote: “You should have seen what a Russian expanse opens up from the third floor of my dacha - it’s simply breathtaking. I have been painting all summer... He created summer and winter landscapes, turned to his favorite winter theme in the works "Hoarfrost" (1952), "Winter Landscape" (1954).

In 1960, Igor Grabar died at the age of 89. He is buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

"History of Russian Art"
I. Grabar

Edition I. Knebel, 1910

Edition in luxurious semi-leather bindings with artistic gold stamping. Triple gold trim! Quality coated paper. Large format: 30x25 cm. the publishing house did not have enough skin, they used a lighter one. This outstanding publication on art is considered the most luxurious of all the books published by I. Knebel's publishing house. Excellent preservation. The publishing boxes in which the books were delivered to the store at the time of release for sale have been preserved. In this condition - a rarity!

The publication is of great artistic and historical value.

The luxurious edition of I. Grabar "History of Russian Art", which appeared at the beginning of the 20th century, still remains the most complete and thorough work on Russian painting, architecture and sculpture. The publication presents the entire history of the art of the Russian Empire, from ancient Rus' to the beginning of the twentieth century. Numerous color and black-and-white illustrations on separate sheets and in the text.

The most famous and outstanding figures of Russia took part in the processing and publication of numerous parts: Russian artists A. Benois, I. Ya. Bilibin, A. M. Vasnetsov, Baron Von N. N. Wrangel, architects F. F. Gornostaev, S .P.Dyagilev, academicians of arts N.P.Kondakov, S.K.Makovsky, prof. G.G. Pavlutsky, architect. V.A. Pokrovsky, N.K. Roerich, Rev.-Assoc. N.I. Romanov, prof. M.I.Rostovtsev, Pr.-Assoc. A.A. Spitsyn, priest. N.A. Skvortsov, prof. archit. V.V.Suslov, V.K.Trutovsky, prof. A.I.Uspensky, prof. B.V. Farmakovsky, architect. I.A. Fomin, architect. A.V. Shchusev and others.

T.1: History of Architecture: Pre-Petrine Epoch. - 508 pages
T.2: History of architecture: Pre-Petrine era: Moscow and Ukraine. - 479 pages
T.3: History of architecture: Petersburg architecture in the 18th and 19th centuries. - 584 pages
T.5: N.N. Wrangell. History of sculpture. - 416 pages
T.6: History of painting: pre-Petrine era. - 536 pages

Only I - III, V - VI vols. were published. Of volume IV, only one issue was printed, and it burned down in the printing house in a fire.

I.E. Grabar(1871-1960) - famous painter and art critic, People's Artist of the USSR (1956), Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1943) and full member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1947). He painted cheerful, light-filled impressionistic landscapes (“March Snow”, 1904), still lifes, portraits (“N.D. Zelinsky”, 1932). Supervised the publication of the first scientific "History of Russian Art" (1909-16); monographs on Russian artists. One of the founders of Russian museology, restoration and protection of art and antiquity monuments.

PS: To sell a similar antique edition

Moscow, I. Knebel edition, 1909-1917. Publisher's half-leather bindings with triple gold trim and gold embossing on spines and covers. With numerous illustrations in the text and on separate sheets. 4th volume in a modern soft cover, stylized as a publisher's.

Content:

Volume I. History of architecture. pre-Petrine era. , 513 p., 4 sheets. ill.
Volume II. History of architecture. Pre-Petrine era (Moscow and Ukraine). 480 p., 4 sheets. ill.
Volume III. History of architecture. Petersburg architecture in the 18th and 19th centuries. 584 p., 5 sheets. ill.
Volume IV. History of architecture. Moscow architecture in the era of baroque and classicism. Russian architecture after classicism (only 1 issue was out of print).104 p., ill., 1 sheet. ill.Rarity!
Volume V. Wrangel N.N. History of sculpture. 416 p., 4 sheets. ill.
Volume VI. History of painting. pre-Petrine era. 536 p., 4 sheets. ill.

Academician I.E. Grabar was the initiator and editor of the multi-volume work "History of Russian Art", the author of a number of its most important sections. The most valuable artistic and archival material collected in this work made it possible to widely show the richness and grandeur of Russian art. The most famous and outstanding figures of Russia took part in the processing and publication of numerous parts: Russian artists A. Benois, I.Ya. Bilibin, A.M. Vasnetsov, Baron Fon N.N. Wrangel, architects F.F. Gornostaev, S.P. Diaghilev, academicians of arts N.P. Kondakov, S.K. Makovsky, prof. G.G. Pavlutsky, architect. V.A. Pokrovsky, N.K. Roerich, Pr.-Assoc. N.I. Romanov, prof. M.I. Rostovtsev, Pr.-Assoc. A.A. Spitsyn, Rev. ON THE. Skvortsov, prof. archit. V.V. Suslov, V.K. Trutovsky, prof. A.I. Uspensky, prof. B.V. Farmakovsky, architect. I.A. Fomin, architect. A.V. Shchusev and others. It is no coincidence that it was I.E. Grabar became the creator of the complex multi-volume History of Russian Art. For the first time, the idea of ​​publishing The History of Russian Art came to Grabar in 1902, when the publisher of the Niva magazine A.F. Marx asked him to revise and supplement the History of Art by P.P. Gnedich. Refusing to "recycle" Gnedich, Grabar offered to publish "History of Russian Art" and, having received consent, for many years delved into the study of the archives of the Academy of Arts, the Academy of Sciences, the Senate, the Synod, the Ministry of the Court, etc. The first version of the "History of Russian Art" program was ready in January 1907. The entire edition was to consist of 12 volumes (3000 illustrations); the architecture was supposed to be separated into special volumes. In 1909-16, 5 volumes were published, and Grabar was not only the editor, but also the author of the most important sections. The most valuable artistic and archival material collected in this work made it possible to widely show the richness and grandeur of Russian art. Until now, this study remains the most complete and thorough work on Russian painting, architecture and sculpture.

Let us consider in more detail, for example, the 6th volume: Igor Grabar. History of Russian art. Volume 6 "Painting. Pre-Petrine era". The book contains a large number of black and white illustrations and several color ones. The theme of the proposed sixth volume is pre-Petrine painting, the beginning of Russian artistic history. Monuments of ancient Russian painting can be divided into two main types: wall paintings and icons on wood.

Important, but auxiliary monuments are manuscript miniatures and church embroidery. I. Grabar notes that a serious study of mural monuments is still ahead: ancient Russian frescoes are few, poorly preserved, and a significant part of them have been distorted by unsuccessful restorations. He does not even realize that in a few years most of the church paintings will be barbarously destroyed by the Soviet authorities. The main part of the volume is devoted to icon painting. In Russian chronicles there are oppositions of the terms "icon painting" and "painting", but these oppositions, corresponding to the literal meaning of the words, do not go further than the opposition of idealistic art to art based on reality. Therefore, icon painting should certainly be considered as a kind of art of painting. After all, we do not distinguish between "icon painting" and "painting", for example, by Raphael. The term "icon painting" retains only a certain technical meaning, as well as "fresco" and "miniature". The peculiarity of icon-painting art is that the activity of the artist is largely limited by church tradition. Limitation to a certain, albeit a very large selection of topics, forced the Russian artist to focus all his talent on the stylistic essence of painting. In terms of style, Russian painting occupies one of the first places among other arts.

The icon painter invested the entire volume of his soul in the formal interpretation of the theme, being able to be deeply individual in his composition, in his color, in his line, but he never dared to enhance the effect of holy images by adding his own feelings to them. “The Russian artist made little claim to depicting internal movements, and just as little was attracted by his depiction of external movement. Immobility stems from the idealistic basis of Russian painting. Its being does not need movement that could break the integrity of the sacred image and replace its timeless unity with episodicity. In Russian painting there is no idea of ​​succession in time. It never depicts a moment, but some infinitely lasting state or phenomenon. In this way, she makes the contemplation of a miracle accessible.

Volume content:

RUSSIAN PAINTING BEFORE THE MIDDLE OF THE 17TH CENTURY I.

INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF OLD RUSSIAN PAINTING II.

ORIGIN OF OLD RUSSIAN PAINTING III.

PAINTING OF THE PRE-MONGOLIAN PERIOD IV.

FOURTEENTH CENTURY V.

THE ERA OF RUBLEV VI.

NOVGOROD SCHOOL IN THE 15TH CENTURY VII.

Dionysius VIII.

NOVGOROD AND MOSCOW IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 16TH CENTURY IX.

MOSCOW SCHOOL UNDER GROZNY AND ITS SUCCESSORS X.

STROGANOVSKY SCHOOL XI.

THE EPOCH OF MIKHAIL FYODOROVICH Royal icon painters and painters of the 17th century XII.

FOREIGN PAINTERS IN MOSCOW XIII.

SIMON USHAKOV AND HIS SCHOOL Ukrainian painting of the 17th century XIV.

REVIVAL OF UKRAINE IN THE 17TH CENTURY Wall paintings in Russian churches of the 17th century XV.

THE LAST RESPONSE OF THE GREAT STYLE XVI.

FRESCO-LUBKI XVII.

WESTERN INFLUENCES.

Grabar, Igor Emmanuilovich(March 25, 1871, Budapest, Austria-Hungary - May 16, 1960, Moscow, USSR) - Russian Soviet painter, restorer, art critic, educator, museum figure, teacher. People's Artist of the USSR (1956). Laureate of the Stalin Prize of the first degree (1941). Nature endowed I. E. Grabar with many talents, which, to the considerable surprise of those around him, he managed to realize. He became a significant artist, art historian, art critic, restorer, teacher, museum figure, a wonderful organizer, even an architect. At the same time, for almost sixty years, thanks to his frantic temperament, he was one of the most active participants and leaders in the artistic life of the country. Born in the family of Emmanuil Grabar, Galician-Russian public figure, member of the Austrian Parliament. Baptized by an Orthodox priest of Serbian origin, the godparent was Konstantin Kustodiev, uncle of the artist Boris Kustodiev. Grabar's maternal grandfather was Adolf Dobryansky, an outstanding figure in the Galician-Russian movement, and his mother was Olga Grabar, who was also engaged in Russian educational activities in Galicia. Soon after the birth of his son, the father and his family were forced to flee from Hungary to Italy, where he got a job as a home teacher for the children of the millionaire P.P. Demidov, and after about three years he moved with them to Paris. In 1876 the family moved to the Russian Empire. From 1880 to 1882 he lived with his family in Yegorievsk, Ryazan province, where his father taught at the local gymnasium; studied at the gymnasium and attended the classes of Varvara Zhitova, the half-sister of the writer Ivan Turgenev. From 1882 to 1889, Igor Grabar studied in Moscow - at the Lyceum of Tsarevich Nikolai (graduating in 1889 with a gold medal), then - at the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University, from which he graduated in 1893. Unlike his older brother, Vladimir, who became a well-known lawyer, Igor chose a career as an artist. While still in Moscow, he attended drawing classes of the Moscow Society of Art Lovers and in 1894 entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, where I. E. Repin was his leader for some time. He graduated from the Academy in 1898, and then studied in Paris and Munich. Participated in the work of the creative associations "World of Art" and "Union of Russian Artists". In 1900 Grabar returns to Russia, and here begins, according to the artist, his most "creative period". After a long separation, he again falls in love with Russian nature, is stunned by the beauty of the Russian winter, endlessly writes "a supernatural tree, a fairy tale tree" - a birch. His most famous works were created in the Moscow region: "September Snow" (1903), "White Winter. Rook's Nests", "February Blue", "March Snow" (all 1904), "Chrysanthemums" (1905), "Untidy Table" ( 1907) and others. Grabar writes in the open air, taking into account the achievements of the French Impressionists, but, not wanting to blindly imitate them, writes in Russian, loving "substantiality and reality." "February Blue" is a majestic "portrait" of a birch. We look at it from the bottom up, from a deep trench in the snow, which the author dug and in which he worked, despite the severe frosts, overflowing with joy from "the chimes and echoes of all the colors of the rainbow, united by the blue enamel of the sky." The landscape is written in pure colors, strokes are laid in a dense layer. "March Snow" - "a brightly impressionistic thing in design and texture" - the artist also wrote in the open air "with such enthusiasm and passion that he threw paints onto the canvas, as if in a frenzy, without thinking too much and weighing, trying only to convey the dazzling impression of this cheerful major fanfare". In these works, Grabar managed to create another, new (after the Russian landscape painters of the 19th century), a generalized image of Russian nature. Back in the autumn of 1902, Grabar made a trip to the Russian North, to the Vologda and Arkhangelsk provinces (he had visited Novgorod and Pskov even earlier). This trip awakened in him a passion for Russian art, which became the basis of his whole life. Travels along the rivers Vychegda, Sukhona and Northern Dvina, where he sketched and measured churches, mills, huts, photographed icons, utensils, ancient sewing, confirmed his desire to comprehend and publish the collected material. Some of the drawings and photographs made in those years in the North were published in Russia on postcards. In 1903 he moved to Moscow. Since that time, Grabar took part in the exhibitions of the World of Art in the Salon and the Union; his works were also exhibited abroad - in Munich, in Paris, at the Salon d'Automne, in 1906 at an exhibition of Russian art organized by Sergei Diaghilev, in Rome at an international exhibition in 1909, etc. Soon after moving to Moscow, Igor Grabar met with the artist Nikolai Meshcherin; repeatedly visited the Meshcherins' estate Dugino (now the village of Meshcherino in the Leninsky district of the Moscow region). After the October Revolution, Grabar was also actively engaged in painting, creating both landscapes and official, "court" compositions. In addition to creating paintings, research and educational work played an important role in the life of the artist. I. E. Grabar wrote a lot about art in magazines - in the "World of Art", "Scales", "Old Years", "Apollo", "Niva", etc. He wrote the text in the publication "Paintings of Contemporary Artists in Paints" , of which he also served as editor; he was also the editor and the largest collaborator of the publication “History of Russian Art” undertaken by I. N. Knebel, as well as the series of monographs “Russian Artists”. In early 1913, the Moscow City Duma elected Grabar as a trustee of the Tretyakov Gallery; he remained in this position until 1925. 1910-23 the artist called the period of departure from painting and passion for architecture, art history, museum activities, and the protection of monuments. He conceives and carries out the publication of the first "History of Russian Art" in six volumes (1909-16), writes the most important sections for it, publishes monographs on V. A. Serov and I. I. Levitan. For twelve years (1913-25) Grabar headed the Tretyakov Gallery, significantly changing the principles of museum work. After the revolution, he did a lot to protect cultural monuments from destruction. In 1918, on the initiative of Grabar, the Central Restoration Workshops were created, with which he would be associated all his life and which now bear his name. Many works of ancient Russian art were discovered and saved here. Grabar was a key figure in the artistic life of Soviet Russia. He was friends with the wife of Leon Trotsky, Natalya Sedova, whom he met while working together in the museum department of the People's Commissariat for Education. At the very beginning of the Stalinist purges, Grabar left all his responsible posts and returned to painting. He painted a portrait of a girl named Svetlana, which suddenly became incredibly popular.

From 1924 until the end of the 1940s. Grabar again paints a lot and is especially fond of portraiture. He portrays his loved ones, paints portraits of scientists and musicians. The artist himself called the best "Portrait of a Mother" (1924), "Svetlana" (1933), "Portrait of a Daughter against the Background of a Winter Landscape" (1934), "Portrait of a Son" (1935), "Portrait of Academician S. A. Chaplygin" (1935 ). Two self-portraits of the artist are also widely known ("Self-portrait with a palette", 1934; "Self-portrait in a fur coat", 1947). He also refers to the thematic picture - "V. I. Lenin at the direct wire" (1933), "Peasant walkers at the reception of V. I. Lenin" (1938). Of course, he continues to paint landscapes, still preferring snow, the sun and the smile of life: "The Last Snow" (1931), "Birch Alley" (1940), "Winter Landscape" (1954), a series of paintings on the theme "Frost Day" . Grabar works in the traditions of Russian realistic painting of the late 19th century, remaining, as in other areas of his activity, the guardian of Russian culture. "The best rest is a change of work," said the artist. If he did not paint, he taught, performed, prepared exhibitions, or was engaged in art history research. In addition, in 1918-1930, Grabar led the Central restoration workshops in Moscow, and since 1944 he worked as the scientific director of the workshops and headed numerous commissions involved in the seizure, which was more often a form of salvation from inevitable destruction, paintings from estates and icons from monasteries. He was directly involved in the restoration of Andrei Rublev's icon "Trinity". The modern All-Russian Artistic Research and Restoration Center, which grew out of the Central Restoration Workshops created by Grabar, bears his name. He was a consultant of the Academic Council for restoration work at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, where Ignaty Trofimov was appointed scientific director and chief architect. In early 1943, Grabar put forward the idea of ​​compensating for the losses of Soviet museums by confiscating works from museums in Germany and its allies. He headed the Bureau of Experts, which compiled lists of the best works from museums in Europe, prepared "trophy brigades" sent to the front, and received trains with works of art. It is noteworthy that at the beginning of the war, the Nazis confiscated the works of the territories they conquered as part of the Linz project, and a large part was confiscated from the territory of the USSR. Death found him at work on a new multi-volume edition of the History of Russian Art. "We must consider it a blessing for Russian art that such a person really existed," S. V. Gerasimov. Full member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1943). Active member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1947). He was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery (site No. 8).

History of Russian art. Architecture

Summing up everything that has been done by Russia in the field of art, you come to the conclusion that this is primarily a country of architects. A sense of proportion, an understanding of the silhouette, a decorative instinct, an inventiveness of forms - in a word, all architectural virtues are encountered throughout Russian history so constantly and everywhere that they suggest the absolutely exceptional architectural talent of the Russian people. And if anyone could have doubts about the possibility of attributing these properties to the people among whom so many foreigners worked, then it is enough to point to the Russian North with its wooden architecture, created exclusively by Russian craftsmen. The originality of its forms cannot cause any doubts.

Among European art historians, there is still an opinion that Russian art before Peter the Great is only a slightly barbarized art of Byzantium, which fell from a universal city into a remote province and therefore inevitably degenerated into miserable forms, and starting from Peter it is only obvious mimicry of Amsterdam, Versailles and everything western. As the most typical example of the barbaric forms of pre-Petrine Rus', it has long been customary to point to St. Basil the Blessed in Moscow, this real “garden of monstrous vegetables”. But just Basil the Blessed is rather lonely in Russian art than typical of it. With somewhat greater right, they later began to point to another Moscow church, the small Church of the Nativity of the Virgin in Putinki, opposite the Strastnoy Monastery, and the church in Ostankino as the best examples of Russian style. The famous French architect and historian Viollet-le-Duc declared without hesitation that the first of them most clearly expresses the Russian architectural ideal and is the greatest creation of the Russian genius. There is no longer any Byzantium in it, and the Russian style unfolded here for the first time in a completely original way. The opinion of an authoritative Frenchman who had never been to Russia and who wrote about Russian architecture only on the basis of drawings selected and sent to him by Moscow friends was immediately accepted by everyone on faith and had a detrimental effect on an entire era of Russian art, especially on the architecture of the second half of 19 th century. This time can be called the era of “Putinkovism and Ostankovism”, an era when, due to the passion for small brick ornaments, architectural forms were completely crushed and led to ridiculous exhibition buildings “in Russian taste”, which are far from the ill-fated original as far as a star. Putinkovskaya Church if typical for Russia, then only for Moscow and only for the 17th century. True, the 17th century is still considered to be the heyday of Russian architecture. However, such an opinion is either still a belated echo of the enthusiasm of Viollet-le-Duc, or is caused by insufficient acquaintance with the truly great creations of Russian architecture of other eras. It is enough just to glance at the photographs included in this publication to make sure that the greatest monuments of architecture were created not during the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich, as is usually thought, but either before or after him.

Ancient era.

Along with Christianity, Russia received from Byzantium its first architects. That in Rus' they knew how to build even before that, there can be no doubt about it. Princes and noble people were already building, probably, intricate mansions, but architecture as an art, as a science, as a harmonious logical system, they first learned only thanks to the masters who arrived from Constantinople. Initially, in Kievan Rus, temples were built by these masters in exactly the same way as in Byzantium itself. However, even in this geographically closest region to Byzantium, some deviations from pure Byzantine models soon appear. These deviations in the distant Novgorod-Pskov region are poured into forms so bright and unexpected that already in the earliest monuments one can feel those local features, those native tastes and ideals, which later led to the brilliant art of Novgorod and Pskov. In the solemn smooth surface of the church walls, in the simple majestic forms of these temples, in the mighty lines of the heads - a proud consciousness of power and strength poured out: it is precisely such temples that befit a free city, Lord Veliky Novgorod. There is no fussiness and pettiness, nowhere are there small forms and unnecessary, intrusive ornamentation. The architect here is stingy with the pattern and tries to achieve the impression only with a strict logic of forms that never lose their constructive meaning and do not degenerate, as later in Moscow, into purely decorative appendages and outgrowths. If he resorts to a pattern, then he assigns a very modest place to the latter, seeing in it only a means to enliven the wall, and not the purpose of construction. That is why the temples of Novgorod, with all their grandeur, are completely devoid of any pomposity and feigned importance, and so captivate with their glorious modesty. The most significant of them are Hagia Sophia and the Cathedral of St. George's Monastery. The latter is important for the most ancient era of Russian art also because the chronicle has preserved for us the name of its architect, the Novgorodian master Peter, who proved with this majestic creation that Rus' already at the beginning of the 12th century knew how to do without the help of the Byzantines.

Along with these large churches, a type of small churches gradually developed, both urban and suburban and rural, differing, in contrast to the cold Sofia and the stern St. George's Monastery, rather by some warmth and comfort. These qualities appeared due to the fact that the techniques of wooden architecture gradually began to be applied to stone architecture. Arises special kind the church, covered, following the example of wooden huts, with steep slopes, of which there are usually eight, since the entire roof consists of two gable roofs set perpendicular to one another and intersecting mutually. Such are the churches of Theodore Stratilates and Peter and Paul in Novgorod.

The Pskovites went even further than the Novgorodians in the direction of intimate and cozy architecture, developing a type of charming small churches with belfries. Sometimes in belfries they achieve an impression of severe grandeur and gigantic power, as, for example, in Paromenskaya, but most often they are charming small structures, creations of a simple mind, but a truly warm feeling, imbued with subtle poetry and a sense of beauty. Such is the belfry at the fortress wall in Izborsk, standing alone in the midst of a wonderful landscape and playing against the background of the velvet green of the trees with its modest and slender forms.

But the old private houses of Pskov are especially good. Very few of them have survived, and not a single one is unquestionably unspoiled, and yet they testify to such a flourishing of civil architecture in ancient Pskov and its such originality that even these fragments of Pskov antiquity should be ranked among the most precious monuments of Russian art. . Moscow, which once put an end to the freemen of Novgorod and Pskov, erased with it all their art, which immediately stopped in order to never be reborn again.

One feature gives the architecture of the Novgorodians and Pskovites a completely exceptional charm: their buildings are not drawn according to rulers and squares, but, as it were, drawn by hand. Both in their general contour and in each line, in the rounding of the vault, in the bend of the dome, in the processing of the window casing - everywhere you feel a free, unrelated pattern, nothing but inspiration, thanks to which there is not a single dry place in the whole structure, a everything is alive and pleasing to the eye.

The very Byzantine principles from which the architecture of Novgorod Rus' grew were processed in a completely different way in Vladimir-Suzdal Rus' in the same era. Gradually changing, partly under the influence of local conditions, but mainly thanks to the innovations of Romanesque architecture brought from the West, these principles led to an art no less original than Novgorod-Pskov. One after another, the churches of Pereyaslavl Zalessky, Vladimir, Yuryev Polsky grew up, and behind them the churches of the Moscow Kremlin. The first buildings were somewhat overweight in proportions, but they still make an impressive impression with their massive walls rooted into the ground. Such is the cathedral in Pereyaslavl-Zalessky. Later there appeared a number of churches of such slender and exquisite proportions that they can be safely placed alongside the best creations of the same period in the west. The most elegant of them, the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl near Vladimir, is not only the most perfect temple created in Rus', but also one of the greatest monuments of world art.

Like all great monuments, the Veil on the Nerl is not transmitted in any reproductions on paper, and only those who saw it in reality, who walked in the shade of the trees surrounding it, experienced the charm of its indescribably slender silhouette and enjoyed the perfection of its details - only he able to appreciate this true miracle of Russian art.

Wooden architecture of the north.

Simultaneously with stone architecture, wooden architecture also flourished, especially in places remote from Novgorod, mainly in the northern forest regions. And until now, wood is the only building material there, and therefore in the Russian north one can get an incomparably closer idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe external appearance of wooden Rus' of bygone times than in the central provinces, in which wood has long been replaced by stone. A person who was in the north, who traveled along the Northern Dvina, Onega, Mezen or the Olonets Lakes, retains for life the memory of these fabulously beautiful dream churches, rising here and there among a dense spruce forest, as spiky as spruces, just like them, gray-haired. The skill with which these builders-poets chose places for temples is amazing: there is no way to come up with a composition better than the one with which they connected the tents rising from behind the forest or the domes of churches growing from behind the steep bank with the whole surrounding landscape, with the bend of the river, with a break in the hills, with the smooth surface of the meadows and with the bristle of the forests. An unusually strong impression is left by whole groups of such churches on the great northern rivers; from a distance they can be mistaken for fortified towns with many towers and domes. Especially good is the group of churches of the Yuromsky churchyard on the Mezen, directly captivating with the merciless severity of their simple contours.

Many such churches have already collapsed, many burned down, even more crippled by ignorant “benefactors”, and others have been abandoned for a hundred years or more, because they belonged to supporters of the “old faith”. Entire forests have grown around them since then, and the sight of these silent and submissive witnesses of the violence and persecution of past, dashing times makes an irresistibly sad impression. There are especially many of them in the Olonets province, where under Catherine II dozens of Old Believer sketes were closed, and among them the famous Danilov.

“Benefactors”, local natives, contractors who got rich in the capitals, returning from time to time to their homeland, rebuild these ancient architectural fairy tales in the metropolitan way with all the vulgar tricks of the modern suburban and country Russian style. The majority of the local clergy are delighted with such a “magnificent view”, and the beauty of the past is gradually waning and noticeably fading away.

Rise of Moscow.

In Novgorod and Pskov, the methods of wooden structures passed into stone construction very imperceptibly and with such gradualness that only after a century did new forms corresponding to wood be developed in stone. In Moscow at the beginning of the 16th century, this process took place with extraordinary speed, and one after another in the villages near Moscow, several churches grew up, in which wooden architecture was reflected in almost the entire sum of the forms developed in it over the centuries. The first and most perfect of them were the temples in the villages of Kolomenskoye and Ostrov; they begin a new era in architecture. It is customary to divide all pre-Petrine architecture into two periods - pre-Mongolian and post-Mongolian. Such a division, which takes into account not so much the history of architectural forms as political history, is too artificial and accidental. Undoubtedly, the era of the Tatar region had its influence on the tastes of Moscow, but this influence did not touch Novgorod at all, where everything went on in the old way even after the Tatar region. Much more decisive was the transfer of forms of wooden architecture to stone structures - a phenomenon observed in the construction of all peoples and, as is known, led to the creation perfect forms Greek temple. Therefore, there are more reasons to start a new era in Russian architecture with the appearance of the first stone hipped church, from the moment the dome was replaced by a hipped roof, a replacement in which the Tatars are undoubtedly the least to blame. As in hipped wooden churches, in the new type of temple the square base at a certain height passes into an octagonal tent, gradually tapering upwards. The transition of the square into the osmerik is made with the help of an ingenious system of arches, or kokoshniks, striving upward in several rows and giving the whole structure extreme lightness and elegance. Both churches stand in the most picturesque places on the high bank of the Moskva River and, like the northern wooden churches, have completely grown together with the nature around them and merged with it into a new, magical architectural whole. Concerning their origin, we know with accuracy only the time of the construction of the Kolomenskaya and approximately by the same time we have reason to date the laying of the Ostrovskaya.

In addition, some details of the latter suggest the participation of Pskov craftsmen in its construction, who had recently worked a lot in Moscow. Instead of the majestic masses in which the architecture of these churches is sustained, and instead of their strict logic, architecture soon appears, preferring the development of exclusively decorative details to the constructive. Instead of the consciousness of real power, which was among the Novgorodians or such Muscovite sovereigns as Ivan III, the consciousness that involuntarily poured out in their grandiose structures, in the entire construction of the Moscow tsars, starting from the second half of the ill-fated reign of Ivan the Terrible, one feels rather the intention to show their strength to others, rather than the strength itself. , one can see the desire to dazzle with the richness of decoration and purely oriental luxury. Instead of the noble grandeur of the Suzdal princes, which was also reflected in their temples, in the temples of the Moscow tsars there appeared pomposity, feigned importance. Novgorodians did not know her, calm for their freedom and loving the scope of wide smooth walls, only slightly touched by a modest pattern. On the contrary, in the fussy tangle of brick ornaments that have clung to the walls of other Moscow churches, there seems to be a hidden anxiety, a lack of firmness and confidence. Typical for the era of the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin in Putinki and Ostankino. The task of architecture was gradually reduced to the decorative processing of walls, and in this respect brilliant results were achieved, not so much, however, in Moscow itself, but in Yaroslavl, Rostov, Romanov-Borisoglebsk, and especially in Kargopol. Novgorodian traditions were very strong in the latter, and local architects, with an amazing sense of proportion, managed to process the massive smooth walls of their temples almost in Novgorod style using new Moscow techniques. Thanks to the extremely ingenious use of them, these walls seem to play with beaded patterns, which do not in the least dazzle the main masses and retain their entire strict and simple constructive framework. Such are especially the walls of the Church of the Annunciation. The south wall rivals the palaces of the early Florentine Renaissance in the refinement of proportion and the taste with which the patterned patches of windows are scattered across it; the eastern wall, with three altar semicircles, is a masterpiece of wall work in general. It is impossible not to be surprised with what insignificant, almost beggarly means, her happy architect managed to achieve the impression of stunning elegance.

All life at that time in Moscow was ostentatious, decorative, and it is natural that architecture should also fully serve as an expression of its time. Let there be no more Novgorodian constructive logic, let only many forms be toy, but it is impossible to refuse this solid decoration in beauty. And when you look at Rostov from the lake, in which the incomparable fairy tale of its hundreds of domes has overturned, your tongue does not turn to reproach its former builders for not so much building as decorating. For beauty is always more right than logic and always conquers. In front of some window architraves or in front of the porches, and sometimes even in front of the entire walls of the temple of the Moscow-Yaroslavl type, one has to admit that in the art of decorating Moscow has achieved no less than Novgorod and Pskov in the art of building. These are the walls of the church in the village of Markov near Moscow.

Civil and fortress architecture. The appearance of old Moscow.

The civil architecture of Moscow almost perished for us, since wooden Moscow - and all of it, with the exception of the Kremlin, was wooden - burned out, and apart from the Terem Palace, several buildings of a later time, and some remnants in the provinces, no civil buildings of the era have been preserved to us heyday of Moscow. The situation is much better with the buildings of the character of a serf, which include the ancient walls of fortified cities with their towers and gates and the fences of monasteries, which were, in essence, the same fortresses, and sometimes, like the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, and mighty fortresses. Many monuments of this nature have been preserved, and among them there are many structures that can compete with the homogeneous structures of modern Western Europe both in their design features and in the beauty of the overall composition. Among civil buildings, the Kremlin Terem Palace occupies a very special place in its significance, testifying to the great technical knowledge and outstanding taste of its architects. As for the appearance of old Moscow, the abundance of drawings left to us by foreigners who came here in the 17th century, and recent studies make it possible to recreate a picture of this strange life that is quite close to the past reality, so unlike all Western life and so striking every traveler. .

Baroque of Ukraine and Moscow.

Every great world style is inevitably an international style. It differs from the insignificant, random local styles of various peoples in that it has the power to draw into its circle of influence all of its contemporary humanity, at least all of humanity that comes into contact with it in any way. In the era of the Romanesque style, its constructive or decorative motifs appear in all countries of Europe, just as Gothic ones appear in the Gothic era. The Renaissance gave the world new values, which immediately spread with incredible speed throughout the world. Russia is no exception in this regard, and here, as in other countries, Romanesque and Gothic forms did their job, as was reflected in Russian architecture and the spirit of the revival. The influence of the latter made itself felt mainly in the era of its earliest and latest phases, bypassing the period of its heyday, in the virgin era of hopes and expectations with which the early Renaissance is full, and in the prim time of disappointments and fading, poorly masked by the magnificent unbridledness of the “Baroque” style. ". The first era was reflected in Russia mainly in various architectural details, changing only the methods of building technology and leaving the favorite types of buildings almost untouched. The Baroque era, on the contrary, led to the creation of completely new types. This architectural style, expedient, logical, especially inside spacious, high, light-filled buildings, with ingenious innovations in plan and construction, was perhaps the most international of all the styles that ruled before and after him in Europe, for never national features individual peoples were not to such an extent erased and reduced to zero, as it was during his two centuries of domination. Everywhere the same thing, the same methods, the same details and the same unchanging type.

And only Rus', at the very end of the 17th century, having adopted the elements of this autocratic style, managed to rework them into a completely special type that is not found anywhere else. The reason for this must be sought in the fact that the Baroque style took Moscow by surprise, and did not appear, as in other countries, in the form of the final link in a long chain of successively changing varieties and shades of the same great Renaissance style. Another reason lies in the fact that Moscow received the motifs of the new style not directly from the West in their pure form, or at least not exclusively from the West, but from the South, from the Ukraine, which in turn received them from Poland and Lithuania. The baroque of Ukraine, being, undoubtedly, the provincialism of the all-world style, nevertheless has a lot of purely local features, and in its noisy solemnity, somehow not going to all its handicraft-gingerbread character, the peculiar spirit of Zaporizhia was affected. Together with purely baroque decorative motifs, the type of a special hipped wooden church, in which the tent is cut not in the form of a continuous octahedral cone tapering upwards, like the tents of the northern churches, but is composed of several gradually tapering octahedrons, placed one above the other, also passed to Moscow from Ukraine. This type was transferred from wood to stone, and suddenly a completely new style grew out of these elements, for which a name has not yet been found that exhausts its content. Due to the special predilection for him by the Naryshkins, who built several similar churches, they tried to call him "Naryshkin"; according to the time of its appearance, there were attempts to assign to it the nickname “the style of the kings Peter and John”; finally, the name “Russian baroque” was suggested. The latter more defines its essence and outlines its connection with the Western Baroque, but, undoubtedly, it would be more correct and more accurate to call it “Moscow Baroque” in contrast to the Italian, German, Dutch and other Western baroque variants, as well as in contrast to the St. Petersburg Baroque, which, after all, is also Russian. In a little over a quarter of a century, the Moscow baroque style was born, began, like in a fairy tale, to grow by leaps and bounds, grew stronger, developed, reached amazing completeness, wholeness and perfection, in order to die just as quickly. And if from those short years during which he was loved by Muscovites and inspired their architects, time had saved us only one church on Fili, then even then we would have to recognize the era that created it as one of the strongest in the history of Russian art. That's when Moscow unfolded, and that's when it could proudly finally oppose the architecture of Novgorod and Pskov with its own. Not under Mikhail Feodorovich and not in the blooming time of Alexei Mikhailovich, but only at the end of his years, but most of all under Feodor Alekseevich, under Sophia and under the young Peter and John, Moscow waited for the most magnificent flowering of its architecture. Fortunately, many monuments of the Moscow Baroque have been preserved both in Moscow and its environs, and in those provincial centers that were drawn to Moscow. Even Pskov began to look at the samples of new beauty that were being erected in Moscow, and paid a belated tribute to the feeling of beauty in its Caves, although it came from a recently still enemy camp. The best of the monuments of this style is the Church on Fili, a light lace fairy tale, conceived and executed with such incomparable perfection that only the Intercession on the Nerl and the churches and belfries of Novgorod and Pskov can compete with it. Everything here is incomparable from top to bottom: both its plan, and this fascinating undertaking with sweeping stairs leading to wide platforms from which the temple itself grows, and all its delicately felt elegant, slender silhouette and lace belts crowning the walls - you can feel the hand in everything great poet and architect-sorcerer.

Baroque in St. Petersburg.

With Peter the Great, a new era begins in Russian history, and at the same time in Russian art. However, one should not think that by the mighty will of the giant who reared Russia, everything Russian was doomed to death and an overseas spirit was forcibly installed in its place. Peter himself, in all his makeup, in his methods, tastes, habits, in his very virtues and shortcomings, was Russian to the marrow of his bones, Russian, perhaps more than all his secret and open enemies, who cursed his anti-Christian innovations. Such a person, even if he wanted to, could not erase without a trace the beginnings of Muscovite Rus', and these beginnings were so sharp that even he would not be able to etch them out. But all that foreignness, the introduction of which is usually associated with the name of Peter, was not at all news in Rus', which had continuous relations with the West. There was a large colony of foreigners in Moscow, which founded a whole European town on its outskirts - the German Quarter. Here Peter spent his childhood, and here he fell in love with the customs, which he later began to plant in the new capital he erected. But while the neighborhood of a German settlement with a white city led to that bizarre amalgam of native and foreign elements, which resulted in the harmonious forms of the Moscow baroque, nothing in the young “Petersburg” already held back the influx of fashionable European style, which flooded here in several ramifications at once in baroque French, Dutch, German and Italian. At first, during the life of Peter, Petersburg architecture was a chaotic bazaar of all kinds of European forms, and in its noisy hustle it would be in vain to look for any hints of the peculiarities of the Russian warehouse and feelings. Not only foreign masters, who appeared in St. Petersburg as many as there have never been in all of Russia, but their Russian students were completely enslaved by the international character of the all-powerful baroque and did what was done in the West, but they did it worse, with less skill. and with less ingenuity. All the architects who were taken out by Peter and later discharged from abroad were, in essence, secondary and tertiary masters, with the exception of two, of whom one died, barely having time to cross the border, and the other shortly after arrival. Under these conditions, it is not surprising that they not only could not raise the building techniques in Russia, but, forced by the eternal haste to build somehow, dropped it even lower. And only with the passage of time, when Russians who studied architecture or children of foreigners born in Russia began to be sent abroad for improvement, technology rose again. And only then did the first features of originality appear in this alluvial art. Returning from their travels in different lands after studying with the best European masters and especially after studying ancient and new architectural monuments, these young men learned to look with different eyes at everything that they found in their homeland, and often admired things that had previously left them indifferent . With such feelings, Rastrelli, the son of a sculptor who was taken out of Paris, who studied abroad and created an entire era in Russia, should have once returned. In his time, Europe was dominated by a style that is usually distinguished from baroque, highlighting it in a special style, in the so-called “rococo” style. However, in architecture he did not create a single form that would be unknown to the masters of the Baroque, and only introduced new purely decorative techniques, which is why there is no reason to come up with a special nickname for the late Baroque. The largest creation of Rastrelli is the Smolny Monastery in St. Petersburg. Having received an order from Empress Elizabeth to draw up a project for this grandiose structure, the ingenious builder, before starting laying the foundations, made a model of the monastery with its main church and all the buildings, towers and walls. This model is in itself a marvel of art: not only is each building of this gigantic composition made of wood according to exact drawings, but every little thing and all the rooms inside the buildings are traced and carved exactly as it should have been in reality. The work was carried out under the direct supervision of Rastrelli, who personally went through the individual pieces and painted the model as a finished building. His idea, one of the most magnificent that was born in the heads of artists, captivating in its concept, captivating with unprecedented ingenuity and luxury of imagination, was never destined to be fully realized. The bell tower remained only in the model, and the cathedral itself was built by Rastrelli only in rough outline, but it was completed almost a century after its laying, moreover, with significant changes. The model, however, badly damaged, in some places completely broken, disfigured and close to destruction, is stored in the storerooms of the Academy of Arts.

When the author of these lines happened to bring it to light and managed to fold and place all the parts as they were conceived by Rastrelli, he had to experience a feeling of such admiration for this brilliant architectural dream, which was awakened in him only by contemplation of the greatest monuments of world art. At the sight of turquoise walls, on which white rods, cornices, columns and architraves play, at the sight of countless cupolas with gold patterns and crosses, one involuntarily recalls old Russian towns, half-towns, half-fairy tales like Rostov, which undoubtedly inspired the great architect. And this fabulous monastery must certainly be recognized as a product of the Russian spirit, for the latter dictated all of its naive-toy composition.

The birth of classicism.

Numerous students of Rastrelli carried his ideas to the most remote corners of Russia, but in St. Petersburg itself, and even earlier in the west, signs of the imminent collapse of all forms of baroque began to be found. The ever-increasing pretentiousness of these forms soon tired everyone and aroused a longing for simplicity, a thirst for calm lines and forms that did not tire the eyes. In literature, they started talking again, after a two-century break, about beauty ancient world, and how the excavations of Herculaneum struck everyone with thunder. The founding of the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg in the middle of the 18th century coincides with this moment. Subtly educated and following the evolution of Western tastes Yves. Iv. Shuvalov, creating the Academy, turns for assistance not to Rastrelli, for him too rude and pretentious, but to Kokorinov, who knew the charm of ancient simplicity and to the Frenchman De la Motte. Both of them are working on the design of the academic building, which is one of the most beautiful in Europe. The significance of Rastrelli falls completely with the accession of Catherine II, but soon the transitional style of Kokorinov and De la Motta gives way to a more pronounced classical trend of Rinaldi, the author of the Gatchina and Marble palaces. This is the era of the so-called Louis XVI style. Starting from that time, art with extreme swiftness goes back into the past, gradually plunging into the ancient world, and each generation goes further back into the depths of centuries compared to the previous one. First they carefully study Palladio, the most rigorous and classical master of the Renaissance, then go back, study the book of the Roman Vitruvius and at the same time measure, draw and restore the monuments of the Roman era, and finally set about surveying the Greek colonies in Italy, especially Paestum and the cities of Sicily, until they gradually reach to Athens, but they do not stop there either, but look for inspiration even further, in the depths of Egypt, under the shadow of its solemn temples. Each stage of this continuous deepening into the past corresponded to a certain period in the architecture of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Until recently, to define the entire era of this second revival of classical ideals, the term “false classicism” was in use, which did not at all mean to distinguish poets and artists who falsely understood the classical world from those who understood it in a different, “non-false” way: the whole end The 18th century and the beginning of the 19th were simply declared to be false classical. But to be consistent, one would not have to stop at this one epoch, but to christen as pseudo-classical all the art of the Romans, which grew entirely out of Greek, and even this latter, which to a large extent emerged from Egyptian, as well as the art of the Renaissance, organically connected with Roman. Those great, truly eternal beginnings that are given to us by the classics have more than once saved humanity from stagnation, more than once led it out of dead ends, from gloomy and musty rooms into light and space. And there can be no doubt that the world is destined to go back many times in order to draw strength from the treasury of ancient beauty for a new movement forward.

Starov, the builder of the Tauride Palace, was the first Russian "classic" who went through the baroque school, but who irrevocably ended it. This building, which has been remodeled many times, can now only give a glimpse of the genius of the first great Russian architect, who came out of the young Shuvalov Academy. It can be judged only by some details and by a whole series of drawings and descriptions of the magnificent chambers of the magnificent Prince of Taurida. Before the palace was adapted for the State Duma, one could still admire the grandiose colonnade, the only one in the world in terms of the majestic impression it made.

Since the creation of this fabulous forest of columns that divided the vast space of the main building into two halls, that period in Russian architecture begins, which can be called the “triumph of the column”. Since then, the column has been an inevitable part of every architectural idea, as if the central thought of the architect. He pays the most attention to the column, in its proportions and details he pours out his innermost thoughts and most intimate feelings. The column imperceptibly fell in love with everyone so much that it soon moved from palaces to private houses, from the capitals it was transferred to the provinces, and columns of “noble nests” and “houses with mezzanines” turned white all over Russia. And the columns so merged with the birch trees surrounding them and so opportunely came to the lines of Russian ravines that they gradually turned into an undoubted Russian heritage and even into some kind of exclusively Russian belonging to rural nature.

Catherine classicism.

Catherine II, by her own admission, was obsessed with a real passion for construction. Throughout her reign, from the first to the last days, she continuously built something. It happened that one palace had not yet been brought to the eaves, and she was already present at the laying of another and immediately instructed a third architect to draw up a project for a new gigantic structure. She built not only for herself, and it was not a whim that dictated to her more and more new undertakings, which, it seemed, had no end in sight - in all her construction activities, the same ardent love for her new homeland runs like a red thread, the same insane thirst to make and to see her beautiful, who did not leave her until her death. She built palaces, buildings for state institutions, hospitals and just private houses, which she rewarded her associates with. And her role was not limited to general instructions to the architect: not only the very nature of the building and the main distribution of rooms interested her, but she entered into the smallest details of architecture, looked through detailed drawings for decorating walls and, together with the author of the project, discussed, like a real specialist, all its advantages. and disadvantages. She herself drew and drew, and for her there was no greater pleasure than these conversations with her favorite architects. Starov was among them, just as Rinaldi and De la Motte were before him. But Starov was no longer Roman enough for her, and he is replaced by the Scot Cameron, who won her over with his brilliant projects for the restoration of Roman baths. AT a short time he erects real wonders of architecture in Tsarskoye Selo and Pavlovsk, but soon he seems to her still too elegant, feminine, not quite strict, and he is replaced by Quarenghi, one of the largest phenomena in the art of Europe. Once in Russia, for thirty-five years, until his death, he builds here all the most important buildings of this time. Outside of Russia, there are no buildings of his, except for minor works he did in southern Germany during one trip from St. Petersburg to Italy. Quarenghi seemed to Catherine a perfect Roman, and no one could replace him. In addition to such masterpieces as the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, the Hermitage Theater and a long line of other buildings in St. Petersburg, he built many estates throughout Russia and literally bombarded the provinces with his art, if not always his own, then very often reflected from him. Some of these estates were the luxurious palaces of Catherine's nobles, but few of them have survived in their original form - some have been crippled, others plundered, the rest are abandoned and are close to destruction or have already been destroyed. It happens that thousands of miles from the capitals, in a remote backwater, you come across ruins of fantastic beauty, a wonderful portico, a marvelous colonnade, and you just can’t believe that all this stands on the banks of some Dniester, and not the Tiber, and that this the only remains of a house built only by the grandfather of one of us, and not the ruins of the palace of the Caesars. And then an inexpressible longing seizes the soul, and horror binds the heart: what unworthy grandchildren of great grandfathers we are, if, not knowing how to create such beauty as they did, we could not at least preserve it, at least not destroy it. You feel such a feeling in front of the ruins of the palace of Cyril Razumovsky, built by Quarenghi in Baturin, Chernihiv province.

Alexander classicism.

Catherine's classicism drew its inspiration from the forms of Roman art, and these forms retained their charm well into the reign of Paul. The turn came only with the accession of Alexander I, when the forms of ancient Greece, moreover, archaic Greece, not of the fourth and third centuries and not of the Roman era, but of the sixth and fifth centuries, became decisive. From Greek archaism there was only one step to Egypt, whose influence was also not slow to be felt. Instead of the magnificent Corinthian columns of the Catherine's age - the beloved architectural order of the Romans - strict archaic columns, borrowed from the temple of Poseidon in Paestum, begin to come into fashion, and the Doric order becomes dominant. One elemental desire dominates all the thoughts and ideals of the era, this is the desire for possible simplicity. The outer and inner walls of Catherine's buildings no longer seem simple enough, and the architect discards everything that is not absolutely necessary, and for him there is no greater joy than the harsh surface of the wall. And only in places, only in order to further emphasize the solemn beauty of this smooth surface, he interrupts it with a sculptural frieze or a light ornamental figure, hinting at parts of the constructive skeleton of the building, just as simple, with merciless logic grown out of the plan, as simple and logical it is. decorative side. This feature makes Alexander classicism related to the architecture of Novgorod and Pskov. Comparing some of the monuments of that and another era, you are involuntarily amazed at the unexpected closeness of the ideals of architects, separated by a five-century distance. And the thought arises about the possible influence, even if only the most remote, of these past centuries of Rus' on Russia of Alexandrov. For the same passion for Greece and Doric simplicity swept over all of Europe in its time, but while there it was quickly replaced by new trends and left its mark almost only on paper, in album sketches, in unrealized projects and in decorative and applied art. - in Russia it has taken deep roots and, one must think, has found exceptionally favorable soil. All this led to such a flourishing of Russian architecture, which Rus' has not known since the times of Novgorod. Even more: under Alexander, Russia was the only country in Europe that gave the world a truly great architectural era.

A significant role in this peaceful conquest of the world was destined to play the charming, truly not yet appreciated personality of Alexander, this “sphinx, not unraveled to the grave,” according to Prince. Vyazemsky. There has hardly ever been such a truly crowned architect as he was on the throne. Having inherited from the great grandmother a passion for construction, through thoughtful study, he achieved that his buildings were finally freed from the taste of personal whimsicality, which sometimes broke through in Catherine's magnificent undertakings. And if the grandmother was justly proud of the beauty of the “Northern Palmyra” she created, then with even greater reason her grandson could consider Petersburg his creation, because most of it was erected under him and with his direct participation. Not a single private building in St. Petersburg could be built until his drawings were delivered to him and they were not “tested”. There is nothing to say about state and public buildings - everything in them was weighed, discussed, remade, and only after a long preliminary work was carried out. To many, it may seem inappropriate and even downright harmful such interference by the bearer of supreme power in the tastes and intentions of private individuals. To what extent this can slow down life and art, we will see later, in the era of Nicholas I, but history knows examples of the opposite effect. Suffice it to recall the age of Pericles, when, thanks to artistic autocracy, which probably bordered on a real tyranny of tastes, an eternal, unique acropolis was created in Athens. The thing is that the autocratic Pericles and Phidias were geniuses and with their artistic power so subdued fellow citizens that they did not even suspect about their aesthetic enslavement. Something similar happened in Russia in the age of Alexander the Blessed. He possessed such exquisite taste and such a flair for beauty that the thought of pressure from above on their tastes did not occur to his contemporaries. In the bright days of his reign, such an architectural discipline was born, which the world has not seen since ancient times. Not only individual buildings are being built, but entire squares and streets, in which all lines and contours are designed to enhance the beauty of the overall impression. In order to connect the newly constructed building with those surrounding it, they do not stop at the most wasteful demolition, they demolish everything around and create for the new work a new background from such construction projects that favorably put forward the central part of this gigantic composition.

The era of Alexander classicism is opened by Voronikhin, a master who was brought up on Catherine's architecture, which was reflected in the Kazan Cathedral he built, while in his other building, the Mining Institute, he already entirely belongs to the new time. The Doric portico of its façade, with its austere perspective of columns inspired by Paestum, is the first herald of an impending change of tastes.

We see even more scope and grandeur, and at the same time more simplicity, in the St. Petersburg stock exchange, the best of Thomon's creations. But the first place among all belongs, undoubtedly, to the builder of the Admiralty, Zakharov. This is not only the best building in St. Petersburg, but also one of the most ingenious in Europe. In it, as in a focus, all the best aspects of Alexander's classicism were combined in a perfect and purest form. Particularly magnificent are the pavilions crowned with dolphins looking at the Neva, and the main facade facing the Nevsky. The latter is closed, unfortunately, by trees that prevent you from enjoying all its captivating beauty, but even what you can grasp with your eyes if you come close to its walls leaves a deep impression, and the main gate directly stuns with the power of decorative fantasy and the power of inspiration.

Nikolaevsky classicism and the latest trends.

The first years of the new reign make almost no changes to the classical architectural style of the previous era, and buildings are still erected that should be attributed to Alexander classicism. The turn begins from the moment when the mood of architects began to be affected by the influence of romanticism - a trend that began, as always, in literary circles and from them spread to the field of painting, architecture and sculpture. When the menacing whirlwind of Napoleonic victories swept through and the comfort of a hearth, the silence of rural life and the peaceful appearance of a grazing herd became dear and sweet to everyone, there was no longer any need for the harsh lines and forms of the ancient world, which seemed to the younger generation cold and soulless. I wanted warmth, comfort and sincerity. At first they tried to introduce a new spirit into the old forms, but soon they were forced to look for new forms as well. At the same time, thanks to the liberation of Europe from the tyrant who had enslaved her, the instinct of national self-consciousness began to wake up everywhere, and it is natural that all peoples turned from Greeks alien to them to their own ancestors. Throughout the west, the study and resurrection of the Gothic began, the only great European style that escaped the influence of the classical world. It was natural to think that something similar would begin in Russia, and it really did not take long to wait. But due to a strange misunderstanding, Russian architects of that time set off to study not those national elements that were left to us by the art of Novgorod, Pskov, Suzdal and Moscow, but either the same Gothic, which was carried away in the West, or the style of Byzantium, which inspired the first Russian masters. At the same time, this style was crippled beyond recognition, impersonal and put into practice by the inexorable will of Nicholas I, who strictly forbade the construction of churches in Russia in other styles, except for the “highest tested”. The development of the canon of this new style, the only one supposedly befitting an Orthodox church, the only “truly Russian” style, belongs to the German Ton, the author of the Catherine’s Church on Peterhof Highway, the forerunner of the complete coarsening and savagery of tastes that soon began. It was followed by hundreds of churches in this absurd “Russian” style, with which all of Russia is now literally bombarded and which Moscow has not escaped, having received from the creator of the style and its inspirer such a magnificent example as the Cathedral of the Savior. However, the triumph of Ton did not yet mean the complete collapse of all architecture, and in the thirties of the 19th century there were still people who lived by the best architectural traditions. The most prominent figure among them is Stasov, who built a number of excellent buildings already in the Alexander era and continued to create such masterpieces as the triumphal gates on the Moscow highway in the Nikolaev era.

In terms of amazing rigor, simplicity and imperious architectural will, they can only be compared with the Tomonovo Stock Exchange and the Zakharovsky Admiralty. Rossi, the author of the Senate and the Alexandrinsky Theater with Teatralnaya Street and Chernyshevsky Square, was also an architect of the grand style. True, all of them, like the much less gifted, but still good architect Montferrand, who built St. Isaac's Cathedral, began their activities under Alexander I, but it was not easy not to be tempted by the laurels of the all-powerful favorite of the formidable emperor. There were several good architects who appeared during the Nikolaev reign, such as Alexander Bryullov and especially Plavov, the author of one of the most beautiful staircases in Russia.

Ton's "Russian style" was soon replaced by its even worse surrogate, the style of carved cockerels and towels, especially taken root in summer cottages near St. Petersburg. This style can be called "Ropetov" or "Ropetov-Stasov"; for it was invented by Ropet and raised to the pearl of creation by V. V. Stasov. By the capricious will of fate, the latter was the son of a great architect of the Alexander era, and no one contributed so much and diligently to the debunking of his brilliant creations, of which Russia has the right to be proud, just like his own son. The spirit of the Ropetov Russian style lives with minor modifications, in fact, to this day, and only very recently a reaction against it began, caused by several talented architects who tried to revive the tradition of Novgorod and Pskov and in its subtle art seeking inspiration for their own creativity.

Those who worked “in the Russian style” excelled at the same time in all the styles that came into fashion consistently in the West and replaced each other every decade. Most of the buildings that appeared in the second half of the 19th century in Europe and Russia were built in the style of a special decadent mixture of Renaissance and Baroque forms, in a style characterized by a random set of all kinds of details, sometimes borrowed from the good masters of the past, but impersonal and vulgarized. This prefabricated style can be called the “Second Empire style”, since it originated in Paris under Napoleon III, from where it spread throughout Europe.

Finally, St. Petersburg paid tribute to the architectural trend that arose in Europe in the last decades of the 19th century and was caused by a reaction against the collective style of the 60s. This “new style”, or “modern style”, which at one time was very liked by Moscow, where it poured out in especially vulgar forms, did not take deep roots in Petersburg, which, on the contrary, owed it several good buildings in which all its annoying side and given place to a more personal taste than the requirements of the fashionable canon.

Moscow in the 18th century. V. I. BAZHENOV

With the founding of St. Petersburg, all the architectural creativity of Russia can be divided into two groups, markedly different from one another, into St. Petersburg and Moscow. While in St. Petersburg in the first half of the 18th century there were and could not be any traditions, because there was nowhere to take them from, in Moscow they existed continuously. In St. Petersburg, only half a century after the founding of the city, we see the first signs of traditions, while in Moscow you come across them at the beginning of the 18th century, moreover, in such buildings that at first glance seem least of all Moscow, not even Russian at all, but foreign. When a building is built among thousands of others, the latter inevitably cast their light and their shadows on it, and in addition to the will of the builder, even sometimes contrary to it, in the new building there are some subtle features that make it related to the surrounding houses. Nothing like this can happen where the closest neighbors of the building are forest and swamp and water.

At the end of the 17th century, there were already excellent craftsmen in Moscow who knew how to build both temples and palaces to their credit and, as we know, in more than thirty years created a whole style, completely finished and beautiful. Thanks to the extraordinary abundance of new buildings erected during this time, an excellent school was formed here, from which several brilliant architects came out. The first place between them belongs to Ivan Zarudny, who built for Menshikov a completely exceptional church in its originality, which has survived to this day and is known under the name of the Menshikov Tower. Especially beautiful is its portal with two powerful volutes resting their curls on the ground.

This is one of the most unexpected baroque creations in all of Europe, and it was not for nothing that Zarudny was commissioned to make drawings and complete a giant sculptural iconostasis for the newly rebuilt Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. The details of the Menshikov Tower indicate its undoubted connection with Moscow architecture of the 17th century. Among other architects famous in Moscow after Zarudny was Prince. Ukhtomsky, builder of the Trinity-Sergius bell tower and the Red Gate, teacher of Kokorinov and the brilliant Bazhenov. The latter, after graduating from the Academy of Arts, worked for a long time in Paris and especially in Italy, where he studied the classics; here he enjoyed such fame that one academy after another elected him among their members. He returned to Russia fully armed with knowledge, and when Empress Catherine II decided to start in Moscow the construction of a gigantic palace, unprecedented in its scope, which was supposed to replace all the Kremlin walls, she chose Bazhenov to develop and implement the project. For more than ten years he worked on this project and created, in addition to a number of marvelous drawings, the only model in the world, executed with such perfection that photographic shots from individual rooms inside it can be mistaken for shots from a completed building, and not a model. Compared with the latter, even the Rastrelli model seems like child's play. The project remained unfulfilled, and one can only rejoice at this, for it has preserved the Kremlin for us, this charming fairy tale that was doomed to perish. But if Bazhenov built his own palace, it would not only be the greatest in the world, for it would have to occupy the entire area of ​​the Kremlin, whose cathedrals would be in its courtyard, but would also be the most extraordinary in its appearance, plans, and variety of architectural receptions and for the insane extravagance with which the solemn reception halls, the luxurious chambers of the empress, the premises for close associates, the theater, services and all state institutions and government offices of Moscow are conceived.

Matvey Fedorovich Kazakov and his school.

The greatest architect of Moscow in the 18th century, and at the same time the greatest in Russia, was Kazakov, a contemporary of Bazhenov and his collaborator in the Kremlin palace. This mysterious man who received all his education in Moscow y Prince. Ukhtomsky and his successor Nikitin and who had never been abroad, possessed such an architectural genius that he can only be compared with the giants of the Renaissance. Having begun his activity in the reign of Elizabeth, in the era of the most unbridled baroque, he gradually went through all the stages of classicism up to and including Alexander, but at the same time remained highly individual, was always and in everything first of all himself and created his own “Cossack style”, which determined the entire future direction of Moscow architecture. If we compare St. Petersburg buildings of the same era with those in Moscow, one cannot help but notice in the latter some intimacy, warmth, and even good nature, while the former give the impression of stiff, official, cold, sometimes gloomy and, as it were, angry. This feature of Moscow architecture is especially strongly expressed in the work of Kazakov, who even knew how to bring the irresistible charm of his own soul and personal, intimate, warm feeling even into such solemn-ceremonial palaces as the Pashkov House, now the Rumyantsev Museum. With any other author, such an idea would inevitably turn cold and would not enchant with such tenderness as this true miracle of architecture, this one-of-a-kind house in Europe. Few people know even among the old-timers of Moscow another architectural masterpiece he created, the palace of Count Razumovsky, which now houses the department of the Nikolaev Orphan Institute.

Its middle part, the only one left almost unspoiled, with an entrance amazing in its unexpectedness, arranged in a huge niche, is simply incomparable in richness of ingenuity and flight of fancy. During the entire reign of Catherine and Paul, as well as in the first decade of the 19th century, not a single significant building was built in Moscow without the participation of Kazakov, who either built it himself, or made drawings that others built, or, finally, limited himself to advice highly valued by his contemporaries. And studying all the buildings he built, one cannot but be surprised at the infinite variety and flexibility of his natural talent. He created a school of numerous students who built up all of Moscow and a significant part of Russia with buildings of the Kazakov style, which inspired architects for almost a whole century.

Osip Ivanovich Bove and his school.

From the fire of the twelfth year, only a small number of buildings survived in Moscow, completely unaffected by it. The stone buildings stood for the most part without roofs, black with soot and close to destruction, while the wooden ones, with a few exceptions, were burned to the ground. With the departure of the enemy and the onset of spring, Moscow begins to quickly rise from the ashes. Already in May, the actions of the “commission for buildings in Moscow”, established in order to unite in one hand the gigantic work of reviving the dead city, open. Any difficulties that arise are immediately reported to Emperor Alexander, who is the soul of this matter. The commission is headed by disinterested and energetic workers, and the main supervision of the entire architectural side goes to the most gifted student of Kazakovsky - Beauvais.
Skalozub is not so far from the truth when, speaking of the newly rebuilt Moscow, he remarks that "the fire contributed to its decoration a lot." Indeed, never before and nowhere in the world have so many conditions been combined simultaneously and in one place that favored the creation of a great architectural era, as they suddenly appeared in Moscow after the twelfth year. The ruined city had to be immediately rebuilt: this was demanded by the pride of the people and such was the will of the emperor. It was ordered not to be shy about funds, and there was more money than needed. Between the well-born people who always had their palaces in Moscow, even if they lived more in St. Petersburg, between rich tax-farmers and merchants and between the heads of the “commission for buildings” - it was as if a silent agreement had taken place not only to resurrect the old Moscow, but to surpass it endlessly. It was not possible to dismantle all the surviving walls of stone buildings to the ground, and besides, they did not find the need for this and were content with adapting the old forms, Elizabethan and Catherine's, to the needs of the new time. Due to the fact that the skeleton of the house, built in the Baroque style, was supplied with details during plastering and decorated in the taste of Alexander classicism, it turned out, if not a completely new style, then at least a kind of this style that was unknown to Europe. Not a single public or even private building could be built if the facade of its all-powerful “commission for buildings” was not considered “decent” enough. In the latter case, either it was proposed to submit a new facade to the commission, or it was made by one of the architects of the commission itself. And in a short time, grandiose structures grew up in Moscow - hospitals, rows, public buildings and those lovely, charming mansions in which one can still feel the friendly spirit of Kazakov, who lived to see the rout, but did not survive it. One of the most charming among them is the house of Prince. Gagarin on Novinsky Boulevard.

Its facade was inspired by Razumovsky's palace - it was not for nothing that Bove, a faithful student of his great teacher, built it. If we recall that he was also at the head of the commission and that he had dozens of experienced architects at his disposal, whom he himself selected as employees, then it becomes clear what a brilliant era was soon to come in Moscow.

Dementy Ivanovich Gilardi and his school.

But among all the circumstances that so unusually favored the emergence of grand style architecture in Moscow, there was one that was of decisive importance. If all architectural creativity in this era proceeded only from an official institution, then with the best and purest intentions of its leaders, by virtue of the very mechanism of state authorities, devoid of flexibility and prone to rust, this living business was in danger of either dying out completely or turning into a soulless machine of incoming and outgoing papers. Bove and the commission for buildings inspired by him were official, but not the only arbiters of destinies in the architecture of that time. Simultaneously with Beauvais, another architect worked in Moscow, who also left the Kazakov school, but who appeared on the stage two years earlier than him - this is Dementy Gilardi, the son of the architect of the Moscow Orphanage. In his person, Russia had a man who managed to combine in his great work all the ideals that Russian art lived in its best time. All his contemporaries felt his genius, the charm of his artistic personality was so great that they did not consider it possible to subject his art to approbation by the commission itself. When it was necessary to build something out of the range in terms of its value, then they went straight to it. And in the commission for buildings, the influence of his imperious ideas was felt, and its architects themselves were already half his students and followers. In the art of Gilardi, in this huge phenomenon, one of the largest in the entire history of Russian architecture, one must look for the reason for such an amazing vitality of the official commission. It was truly a golden age.

In the architecture of Gilardi, only with a very careful study, it is possible to find features that make him related to Kazakov. He is stricter and more severe not only him, but also Beauvais. And yet it is incomprehensible to what extent they are devoid of rigidity, how warm and cozy even those straight, inexorably drawn lines are in him, which in the hands of any other architect would evoke the impression of an icy feeling. He was especially concerned about this in his mansions and garden architecture, in which he created such gems of art as the Naydenov House in Moscow.

Sometimes he deliberately avoids comfort, deliberately looking for solemnity and almost Egyptian severity of the impression, and then he reaches such amazing heights as the horse yard in Kuzminki. But the creations in which the best aspects of his genius were poured out must be recognized as Moscow University, the Technical School and the commissary warehouses on Ostozhenka. In all of Europe, one cannot find a hall that would correspond to its purpose - the solemn crowning of science - to such an extent as the great hall of the university with its mighty colonnade, against which the image of a man of science, crowned with laurels, was drawn to the builder's imagination.

The latest trends.

The further course of history in general coincides with the evolution of architecture in St. Petersburg. At first, the spirit of Gilardi still holds on, and his disciple Tyurin, the builder of the University Church, Grigoriev, Kutepov, Burenin, Bykovsky the father continue his precepts for some time, but soon the triumphant Tone stops all movement here, and an uninterrupted series of “Russian styles” begins, for them “second empire style” and “new”. And only very recently there have appeared signs indicating with certainty that the era of indifference and philistinism in art has come to an end and the dawn is again beginning to break over Russia, foreshadowing, if not a golden age, then perhaps still bright, clear days.

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Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts

A rare universality of interests and creative possibilities characterizes the activities of Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar (1871-1960). An illustrious landscape painter, one of the largest masters of still life among Russian painters, he proved himself both in architectural work and in research and museum work, which required enormous work, broad erudition, was a prominent art critic and scientist. Grabar's activities took place at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century and after the October Revolution. Just like Nesterov, he belongs to two eras and passed on the heritage of the previous era to the new revolutionary Russia.

The first significant paintings of the artist were created in the early 1900s, at the time of the active rise of advanced social forces, which was reflected in the major character of the worldview expressed in them. With these works, Grabar introduced impressionistic methods of color decomposition (divisionism) into modern Russian painting.

At St. Petersburg University, then at the Academy of Arts (1894-1896) and, finally, during his stay abroad (1896-1901), Grabar received a broad and versatile education. At the Academy, he studied in the workshop of I. E. Repin (1895). In Munich he studied with Ashbe (1896-1898), whom he greatly appreciated as a teacher. “Ashbe ... had his own system,” Grabar recalled, “he drew the attention of students only to the main thing, the main thing, forcing them to discard trifles. Only the "big line" and "big shape" were important. At the same time, Ashbe was guided by a very simple and clear "principle of the ball", on the example of which he showed the pattern of arrangement of the illuminated and shaded parts of the object. In European museums, Grabar enthusiastically studied the old masters, was especially interested in the technology of painting, got to know the paintings of E. Manet, the Impressionists, and Van Gogh more closely. Grabar’s first theoretical and critical articles date back to this time, in which he promoted innovative searches for modernity.

Since 1901, upon his return to Russia, the artist's intensive activity begins. He creates numerous landscapes, writes equally numerous still lifes, develops tireless critical work, takes an active part in the reorganization of the Tretyakov Gallery into a museum of national importance. Grabar is constantly looking for new opportunities to promote art and its impact on life, on the life of a contemporary, on aesthetic ideas.

During the years spent abroad, the artist’s horizons expanded, he gained considerable experience as a painter, got acquainted with new Western art, and upon returning to Russia, he decided on his passion for landscape, since a long separation from his homeland sharpened the perception of his native nature: “I haven’t been here for a long time, I reveled in impressions…” wrote Grabar. One after another, his most famous works were created: “September Snow” (1903, State Tretyakov Gallery, ill. 55), “February Blue” (1904, State Tretyakov Gallery, illus. color IX), “March Snow” (1904, State Tretyakov Gallery, ill. 56). As you can see, Grabar used the method of cyclicity, studied the same phenomenon of natural life - snow - in different conditions, as was typical of the Impressionists.

“The spectacle of snow with bright yellow foliage was so unexpected and at the same time so beautiful that I immediately settled on the terrace and within three days painted the picture that is now in the Tretyakov Gallery and is called “September Snow,” says in the artist's automonography. This is an open-air landscape, his painting is still somewhat traditional, the materiality of everything depicted is well conveyed in it, and especially the light, shining white of the first snow. The colorful harmony of this thing is based on the combination of pale cold, grayish shades of snow, the grayish brown color of the wet wood of the terrace and the dull gold of autumn leaves.

At the same time, the features of the impressionistic creative method also affected the picture: the momentary, passing state of nature was captured (after all, such snow will melt very soon!). The snow was painted by him in the techniques of divisionism, as evidenced by Grabar himself: “... the painting of snow, its fluffiness and apparent whiteness, with deep tonality, were achieved with the help of non-mixing of colors, that is, in the end, through moderate divisionism.”

An equally poetic and even more joyful and festive image of Russian nature is created in the painting “February Blue”, which is painted in pure spectral color using divisionism techniques. Separate strokes give a lively vibration to the colors of the sky.
This is a painting, not a random sketch from nature. While working on it, the artist thought very carefully about the very process of creating the necessary effects in nature that delighted him: birches, coral branches and sapphire shadows on lilac snow. I was standing near a marvelous specimen of a birch, rare in the rhythmic structure of the branches ... when I looked at the top of the birch from below, from the surface of the snow, I was stunned by the spectacle of fantastic beauty that opened before me: some kind of chimes and calls to each other of all the colors of the rainbow, united by blue enamel sky".

In order to convey in the picture everything he saw exactly as it was discovered by chance (the artist bent down to pick up a stick), Grabar came up with an original way of working on a conceived canvas. He wrote: “I dug a trench in deep snow more than a meter thick, in which I fit together with an easel and a large canvas in order to get the impression of a low horizon and celestial zenith with all the gradation of blue, from light green below to ultramarine above. I prepared the canvas in advance in the workshop for glazing the sky, covering it on a chalky, oil-absorbing surface with a thick layer of dense lead white of various tonalities. “... I painted with an umbrella painted blue, and I placed the canvas not only without the usual tilt forward, facing the ground, but turning it with its face to the blue of the sky, which is why reflections from hot snow under the sun did not fall on it and it remained in the cold shadow, forcing me to triple the strength of the color to convey the fullness of the impression. I felt that I managed to create the most significant work of all that I have written so far, the most my own, not borrowed new in concept and execution.

"February Blue" opened a new path in the then Russian art, still unknown.

Indeed, at that time no one had yet conveyed such colors of Russian nature, the methods of divisionism were also unfamiliar in Russia, it was also an original version of impressionism, unlike the impressionism of other European schools.

The work "March Snow" is permeated with a cheerful feeling of the coming spring. Grabar recalled: “I was very interested in the theme of spring, March snow, which had settled, furrowed by horse and human tracks, eaten away by the sun. On a sunny day, in the openwork shade of a tree, on the snow, I saw whole orchestral symphonies of colors and shapes that had long been beckoning me. Having settled down in the shade of a tree and having before me the prospect of a road that had been carried away, and hilly distances with a new log house, I enthusiastically began to write. Covering almost the entire canvas, I suddenly saw a peasant girl in a blue jacket and a pink skirt walking across the road with a yoke and buckets. I screamed with admiration and asked her to stop for ten minutes, entered her into the landscape. I have long wanted to paint the figure of a woman with buckets crossing the road, finding this motif one of the most typical for the Russian village and most often striking to the visitor. This whole study was done in one session. The next day, I only touched something in places, also by nature, increasing strength and improving relationships. I wrote with such passion that I threw paints on the canvas, as if in a frenzy, not thinking and weighing too much, trying only to convey the dazzling impression of this cheerful, major fanfare.

Divisionism, quite clearly revealed in "February Blue", intensified in "March Snow".

All these canvases were created when the movement of impressionism spread to all European countries. However, impressionism was reflected in the work of Grabar
peculiarly. In most of his paintings, he sets himself not the narrow task of conveying light and air, although these tasks do not escape his attention, but to convey a sense of reality at the moment, which artists call "state". In Grabar's painting, one almost never observes that dissolution of an object in a light-air environment, which is so characteristic of the painting of the French Impressionists. In addition, its color most often acquires a distinctly decorative character. Understanding the picturesque beauty of the Russian countryside connects Grabar with the realistic democratic tradition of contemporary Russian art.

In the creative process, the artist is characterized by methodicalness and great rationality. Undertaking to study in painting any phenomenon of nature, for example frost, he practically established a huge variation in its varieties. They were recorded in numerous sketches, when he painted frost in the morning and evening, on a gray day and in the sun, made literally instant pictorial sketches in the cold in a few minutes, until the paints had time to freeze.

The suite "The Day of Hoarfrost" was conceived on twelve canvases. It also included the canvas "The Tale of Frost and the Rising Sun". Here Grabar wanted to summarize everything that he could take from impressionism, but to move on to synthesizing tasks. He deliberately simplified the color and lighting effects, achieved decorative effect. “From all these sketches and notes I combine in the workshop a large composition, very technically complex, built on all sorts of tricks, without which it would be difficult to convey the effect, both graphic and pictorial, observed on some frost days with certain types of frost, because the latter are very varied and varied..

There are few moments in the world that are as stunning in their colorful polyphony as a sunny day of hoarfrost, where the color gamut, changing every minute, turns into the most fantastic shades. In relation to painting, and thus to my own painting, a noticeable shift began towards purely color tasks, with a clear departure from impressionistic settings ... Not the impression of nature was now the focus of my attention, but the transmission of a trembling light, ”noted Grabar.

In addition to landscapes, a cycle of still lifes was painted, in which close creative tasks were resolved. Grabar wrote a whole series of such still lifes, calling them paintings. They are of a special, complex type, which soon became a household name for the artist Grabar. In a word, this is the type of painting in which a still life and an interior are linked together, always inhabited and in the general figurative system having the same meaning as the things in it. This is a picturesque picture of everyday life, jubilant, colorful. The interior is usually full of light and air.

An example is one of the first still lifes - "Flowers and Fruits" (1904, Russian Museum) - a reflection of forget-me-nots, white and yellow flowers on a black polished piano lid. To the flowers, Grabar added two apples and an orange, all three in colored crumpled light papers and in a bunch of green shavings from a fruit box. All this was set against the background of two windows reflected in the lid of the piano, and on one of the windows were pots with lilac campanulas. The still life was painted, according to Grabar, "with all the freedom of the brush, which he was only capable of." "Chrysanthemums" (1905, State Tretyakov Gallery, ill. white tablecloth, there is a crystal vase with a bouquet of pale yellow chrysanthemums.The room is filled with diffused light, softening the colors and outlines of objects.Light reflections of light tremble on the crystal dishes and tablecloths, reflexes fall.The picturesque charm of the canvas is in the subtle contrast between delicate colors and soft, transparent luster of crystal.

In the picture, as Grabar himself noted, “there is a single tone connected by a color chord, embracing everything, from top to bottom and from left to right, but the divisionist solution of the problem and the breaking light problem assign this picture a place somewhere close to impressionism.”

The Untidy Table (1907, State Tretyakov Gallery) completes the series of the artist's most significant impressionistic still lifes.

He believed, however, that the impressionistic task was partly obscured in this picture by another one: “... to convey the contrast of a rough tablecloth, shiny dishes and matte delicate flowers with the help of the texture and coloring nature corresponding to each object. The whole picture is painted in oil, but for the flowers I took tempera preparation, finishing it on top with watercolor glazes. The desired contrast is achieved.

With impressionism, the named still life is brought together by the task of depicting the play of light on the surface of objects. The stroke of the picture is very fractional, it will just create the desired effect, and the greenish reflections from the wallpaper enhance it even more.

"Pears" (on a blue tablecloth, 1915, Russian Museum) was Grabar's final departure from impressionism—the transition from light painting to a purely color perception of nature. This work is part of a series of still lifes painted by the artist without a background; the easel was almost at the level of self-nature, and the point of view was chosen from above, and all these techniques achieved the decorative effect of the image.

We can say that Grabar is one of the most significant masters of still life painting.

Grabar was a participant in a number of undertakings notable for the artistic life of the 1900s-1910s. In 1901, an art exhibition enterprise called "Modern Art" appeared, headed by Grabar.

It was something like a permanent exhibition of paintings, artistically designed interiors and applied arts (furniture, porcelain, jewelry, embroidery). The task of this enterprise was to promote the synthesis of modern forms of art, which, according to its organizers, should penetrate into different areas of life. This idea was put forward by the World of Art association, and its members, interested in an unusual business, created samples of modern artistically designed interiors A.N. Benois, L.S. Bakst, E.E. Ya. Golovin, as well as K. A. Korovin, who designed the “Tea Room”).

"Modern Art" organized an exhibition of Japanese engravings, about which Grabar wrote a small brochure, and an exhibition of works by K. A. Somov, published a monograph on his work. However, the enterprise did not live long: it was not created on a commercial basis and did not have the expected success.

Grabar was an active participant in another collective undertaking that arose on his initiative and on the initiative of the World of Art group, namely the publication in 1905-1906 of the famous revolutionary magazines Zhupel and Infernal Mail (see Chapter Twelve).

In architectural work, Grabar proceeded from the traditions of the classical style. Having an architectural education, he built a whole ensemble of buildings near Moscow in the spirit of the great architect of the Italian Renaissance, Andrei Palladio - a hospital (now named after A. G. Zakharyin, 1909-1914). Practical studies in architecture helped Grabar to master the specifics of the architectural form infinitely deeper than a book education could have given him.

Starting to publish a huge work, The History of Russian Art, which brought together many leading scientists in this field, Grabar was able to judge architecture with full knowledge of the matter not from books, but as an architect-practitioner. This desire to know in depth the subject that interested him forms the main feature of Grabar as an art critic, art historian and museum figure.

In this regard, Grabar revealed common goals with the then-established association "World of Art" (for this association, see Chapter Eight). As long as the "World of Art" functioned, Grabar was among its participants and active figures, especially in artistic and educational work. Her crowning achievement was the multi-volume History of Russian Art. It was not possible to complete the publication. In addition to a large introductory section, volumes were published on Ancient Rus', as well as Russian sculpture of the 18th and 19th centuries. They laid the foundation for a deep study of Russian art in combination with the entire artistic culture. A lot of new data, documents, monuments were published, many valuable, well-reasoned hypotheses were put forward, national independence and high aesthetic value of art, especially the previously underestimated 18th-early 19th century, were approved. However, erroneous views also had an effect, in particular the importance of the Wandering stage, which determined the enormous rise of the entire spiritual culture of Russia. The view that was widespread at the beginning of the 20th century was corrected by the scientist later, when he began working on a monograph about his teacher, I. E. Repin.

In parallel with the study of the history of Russian art of previous centuries, Grabar devotes a number of fundamental monographs of our time. Together with S. Glagol, he writes a monograph about I. I. Levitan, creates a monograph about V. A. Serov.

In these books, Grabar affirms the value of realist artists in the years when anti-realist currents began to intensify.

Grabar's tireless activity also extended to museum work. As a trustee of the Tretyakov Gallery, he set about turning it into a national museum, widely acquiring works of past centuries and the modern school, arranging the exposition in chronology and the unity of the artists' creative aspirations, taking into account the rules for preserving the things themselves; developed the form of inventory lists, started compiling a catalog. After the October Revolution, Grabar's activities unfolded throughout the country as multifaceted as before, and did not stop until his death.

Works mentioned in the article:

"September Snow" (1903, State Tretyakov Gallery)

"February Blue" (1904, State Tretyakov Gallery)

"March Snow" (1904, State Tretyakov Gallery)

"Hoarfrost. Sunrise" (1941, Irkutsk Regional Art Museum)

"Hoarfrost" (1905, Yaroslavl Art Museum)

"Flowers and Fruits" (1904, Russian Museum)

"Chrysanthemums" (1905, State Tretyakov Gallery)

"Untidy table" (1907, State Tretyakov Gallery)

"Pears" (on a blue tablecloth, 1915, Russian Museum)

Literature: History of Russian art. Volume 2. - Moscow, Visual Arts, 1981.