Master of landscape painting Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi. Kuindzhi Arkhip Ivanovich - the great Russian landscape painter Kuindzhi all paintings with names

This mysterious radiance comes from the very paintings of the artist, who was born on January 27, 1841. the site tells about the seven most outstanding canvases of the master, which can be seen in the collections of the State Russian Museum.

autumn thaw

The painting was painted in 1872 and spawned a whole line of bad weather paintings. Later, the master painted "Forgotten Village", "Chumatsky tract in Mariupol", where there are similar motifs. And the late painting “Autumn. Fog" is generally a mirror image of "Autumn Thaw". By the way, the place where this unforgettable landscape was painted is still not known.

The place where this unforgettable landscape was painted is still unknown. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

Moonlit night on the Dnieper

The canvas was painted in 1880 and immediately exhibited in St. Petersburg. Moreover, it was the only painting that made up the exhibition. Kuindzhi doubted whether he succeeded in this work. To understand the reaction of the public, the master invited friends, journalists, strangers to his workshop to observe their reaction. Even before the end of work on the landscape, Turgenev, Kramskoy, Mendeleev saw the work of Kuindzhi.

The public reaction was incredible. Huge queues lined up to see the landscape, many viewers visited the exhibition several times. Many visitors thought that Kuindzhi used some secret paints known only to him to paint the canvas. There were attempts to look behind the picture in search of additional light.

Kuindzhi was so inspired by the success that he painted two more copies of the painting, which are kept in the Tretyakov Gallery and the Yalta Livadia Palace.

Kuindzhi was so inspired by the success that he painted two more copies of the painting. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

Ladoga lake

The painting was included in the artist's trilogy about northern nature. It includes canvases "On the island of Valaam" and "North". The artist decided to paint them after visiting the island of Valaam on Lake Ladoga in 1873.

There is an interesting story associated with this painting. 10 years after writing Lake Ladoga, Kuindzhi accused the artist Rufin Sudkovsky of plagiarism. It turned out that at the time of writing the canvas, this man was Arkhip Ivanovich's neighbor in the apartment. And his painting "Dead Calm" is a bit like "Lake Ladoga". There were even publications in newspapers on this subject. The art world is divided into two camps.

The painting was included in the artist's trilogy about northern nature. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

Evening in Ukraine

The work of art was first shown in 1878 at the 6th exhibition of the Association of the Wanderers. The Wanderers are an association of Russian artists who opposed themselves to representatives of official academism. The Wanderers traveled extensively and organized traveling exhibitions. One of the brightest representatives of this trend was Arkhip Kuindzhi. Among his associates were Ilya Repin, Vasily Surikov, Ivan Shishkin, Vasily Polenov, Ivan Kramskoy and others.

Like many other works by Kuindzhi, "Evening in Ukraine" is strong in the master's attempt to understand the secrets of lighting, the play of light and shadow.

The artwork was first shown in 1878. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

Rainbow

It is considered a masterpiece of the late period of Kuindzhi's work. The painter painted this canvas for five years - from 1900 to 1905. The painting depicts one of the most beautiful natural phenomena - a rainbow after a heavy rain. With the help of well-placed color shades, the viewer literally feels this landscape around him. The viewer inhales the fresh smell of the earth after the rain, feels a light cool wind. The sight of a bright, luminous rainbow gives a feeling of joy and admiration. The heavenly light falling on the rainbow gives hope for the best and faith in a brighter future. Light colors and bright strokes in the picture create a feeling of idleness and splendor, delight.

It should be noted that Kuindzhi often turned to the topic of the rainbow, he has several similar works. But the landscape, stored in the Russian Museum, is considered one of the most famous paintings of the painter.

The painting depicts one of the most beautiful natural phenomena - a rainbow after a heavy rain. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

Night

The artist painted this canvas for three years, from 1905 to 1908. The picture is considered unfinished, it was painted in the last years of the master's life, he made many changes to it. Experts regard the canvas as a testament of the artist.

Experts regard the canvas as a testament of the artist. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

Ai-Petri. Crimea

The master painted this unique picture for 10 years - from 1898 to 1908. Kuindzhi adored the Crimea, as a child he went there to study with the great artist Aivazovsky. But he only instructed the annoying boy to paint the fence and grind the paint. During the years of seclusion, Arkhip Ivanovich bought a plot in the Crimea and lived alone in a modest hut with his wife. The artist devoted dozens of canvases to the views of this unique place. In the same place in the Crimea in 1910, the artist caught pneumonia, which had a very negative impact on his health.

Photo: Public Domain / "Ai-Petri. Crimea", Arkhip Kuindzhi, 1908

It was said about Arkhip Kuindzhi that his paintings outshine the works of other painters at exhibitions, leaving them no chance for the attention of the audience. “In order to become a good artist, you even have to sleep with an album and a pencil,” Kuindzhi said. Following this principle, he worked tirelessly, paving the way for Impressionism. Experiments with light, finely painted landscapes and a unique author's style brought Arkhip Ivanovich world fame.

The artist passed away on July 24, 1910. On the anniversary of the death of one of the most famous Russian landscape painters, we invite you to get acquainted with curious facts from his biography and, of course, his work - so that you yourself see that it was impossible to pass by his works at the exhibition:

Arkhip Kuindzhi lost his parents early, so he was hired while still a little boy. To earn money, he took on any business: he was a shepherd, served on the construction of a church, and also worked part-time at a grain merchant. Feeling a craving for painting, Arkhip tried to become an apprentice to Ivan Aivazovsky, but the artist did not notice him - as a result, the student only painted the fence and the paint.

On the island of Valaam, 1873

Ukrainian night, 1876

In his youth, Arkhip Ivanovich was seriously interested in photography and even tried to open his own studio.

Birch Grove, 1901

The artist was distinguished by a quick-tempered, impatient disposition. He did not know how to give in to difficulties, and he wanted to solve any problem here and now. Contemporaries told the following about him. Once visiting the artist Ivan Kramskoy, Kuindzhi found his sons in a mathematics lesson. The tutor was explaining a complex algebraic problem. Kuindzhi also wanted to listen to an explanation. “Leave it alone, Arkhip Ivanovich, you still won’t understand!” - Kramskoy objected to him. But he could not calm down: “Excuse me! This... I am a man... and therefore I can understand everything!..” Kuindzhi demanded to give him the conditions of the problem and the formula. Arkhip Ivanovich, who had never touched mathematics, spent the night on the problem, and in the morning, proud, appeared to Ivan Kramskoy - the problem was solved.

Lake Ladoga, 1870−1873

After the rain, 1879

Young Kuindzhi dreamed of entering the Academy of Arts. He "cut off" twice, but does not give up and creates a picture of "Tatar saklya in the Crimea." The play of chiaroscuro, the contrasts of the coast in the foreground, the cold moonlight, striking in its plausibility - all this did not leave the professors indifferent. He was awarded the title of free artist, after which he was allowed to take exams for a diploma. At first, Kuindzhi studied diligently, but after the success of his work at the exhibitions of the Association of the Wanderers, he stopped attending lectures.

Birch Grove, 1879

The artist carefully approached the issue of organizing exhibitions and always watched how his paintings were illuminated. Exhibiting his work Moonlit Night on the Dnieper in 1880, the artist directed a beam of electric light at it. The picture sparkled with new colors, striking the audience with spectacular color schemes. In general, many critics noted the amazing power with which Kuindzhi transmitted light.

Moonlit night on the Dnieper, 1880

Arkhip Ivanovich experimented a lot with color, trying to make his works as truthful as possible. He used asphalt paints, but over time they, alas, darken.

Snowy peaks, 1895

Fame quickly came to Kuindzhi, which means excessive attention. In the early 80s, he decides to become a recluse: he works on new paintings, but does not exhibit them. This period in the life of the artist lasts for 20 years. Arkhip Ivanovich creates new paints that must be resistant to light and air. “Art is not a game for fun. Playing with art is a grave sin,” said the artist. He worked systematically, without being distracted by the noise of fame, working out new techniques in painting.

Rainbow, 1900−1905

Night, 1905−1908

Evening in Ukraine, 1878

The artist was actively involved in charity work. So, he gave generous contributions to the Academy of Arts. Most of the funds were spent on charitable activities - Kuiji himself lived very modestly.

Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi (1840 (1842?) -1910) was born in the Azov city of Mariupol. Kuindzhi's father was a shoemaker. In 1845, his father died, and then his mother, and was left an orphan at an early age. The boy failed to get an education. Apparently, until the age of ten, he attended an elementary Greek school. And a year later he entered the contractor for the construction of the church, then served as a rich grain merchant. It was at this age that he developed a passion for drawing. However, soon a turn is planned in the fate of Kuindzhi - the Feodosia grain merchant Durante advises him to go to study with a man whom everyone considered an unsurpassed master of the brush - to I.K. Aivazovsky. Kuindzhi decides to become artist and goes to Feodosia on foot. Kuindzhi stayed with the famous marine painter for 2-3 summer months; most likely, he received his first painting lessons not from Aivazovsky, but from his relative Adolf Fessler. Returning to Mariupol, Kuindzhi became a retoucher for a local photographer, and then went to Odessa, which at that time was a major cultural center with a vibrant artistic life.

In 1860-1861. Kuindzhi is already in St. Petersburg. Not being a student of the Academy, he shows at the exhibition in 1868 the painting "Tatar village by moonlight on the southern coast of Crimea", for which he receives the title of a free artist. The lack of education was often blamed on the painter, he was reproached for the weakness of the drawing, for the naivete of the composition, for the variegation of color. But, perhaps, just this circumstance allowed Kuindzhi to preserve originality and originality, the immediacy of a sense of the beauty of nature until the end of his days.

For the next exhibition in 1869, Kuindzhi presented three landscapes: "A Fishing Hut on the Shore of the Sea of ​​Azov", "Storm on the Black Sea", "View of St. Isaac's Cathedral in Moonlight". They clearly felt the young artist's passion for the style and pictorial manner of I.K. Aivazovsky and his desire to master the basics of the academic school. Kuindzhi meets V.D. Polenov, V.M. Vasnetsov, M.M. Antokolsky, I.E. Repin and understands that the classical landscape was already yesterday for students of the Academy of Arts in the late 1860s.

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View of St. Isaac's Cathedral by moonlight

The life of Arkhip Ivanovich in St. Petersburg was at first extremely difficult, he had almost no means of subsistence. Trying to earn the minimum amount of money that makes it possible to improve in painting and drawing, the young man remembered his former profession as a retoucher. The work occupied all the days, only the evening hours remained for classes and meetings with like-minded friends. Even then, Kuindzhi attracted the attention of his comrades with his eccentricity of thinking and the depth of his statements about art, about social problems, but he did not manage to avoid the influence of ideas that were relevant among his artist friends. This is confirmed by the creation in 1870 of the landscape "Autumn Thaw". This work, seemingly sustained in the laws of the landscape genre, tells about the dull life of the Russian village, is filled with the same pain that permeates the best works of the Wanderers dedicated to the peasant theme. A cart slowly moves along the road, muddy in the rain, and along the path leading to the miserable huts visible in the distance, a woman with a child trudges with difficulty - these are almost all the details of the gloomy landscape. The picture is filled with deep compassion and sadness.

autumn thaw

Kuindzhi begins to feel the harmony of the soft colors of the northern landscape and, for a while, completely surrenders to new impressions. The source of inspiration for the painter is the island of Valaam, located on Lake Ladoga. There he found subjects for his future landscapes. A huge, like the sea, lake with clear water, granite boulders polished by rain and wind, dark mighty firs and pines, thin luminous trunks of birches, a sky overcast with clouds through which the pale northern sun sometimes peeps. Kuindzhi spends the summer of 1870 on Valaam, working a lot and enthusiastically from nature, creating dozens of sketches and drawings. Returning to St. Petersburg, Kuindzhi wrote two landscapes in 1873: Lake Ladoga and On the Island of Valaam. It is from these works that interest in Kuindzhi's work arises not only among artists, but also among the public.

"Lake Ladoga" with a relatively small size looks like a monumental epic canvas. The canvas is divided into two unequal parts, contrastingly opposed to each other. The sunlit, stone-strewn coast, the clear surface of the water and the high light sky with swirling clouds coexist in the landscape in an unstable balance. A lightly written piece of blue sky, a warm ocher tone of the coast relieve tension. Harmony and peace reign in the northern nature. With enthusiasm, the artist draws every pebble on the shore of the lake, achieving the illusion of the bottom translucent through the water column. He considered this effect his discovery and was proud of it.

Ladoga lake

On the island of Valaam

In the landscape "On the Island of Valaam", the dramatic interpretation of nature, only outlined in "Lake Ladoga", is intensified. The emotional impact of the image on the viewer also increases. The spiritualized image of the harsh northern landscape, embodied by the artist in the picture, as it were, combines the features of the ideal and nature. A heavy stormy sky hung over the deserted northern island. Two thin trees with broken branches - a pine and a birch - illuminated by a harsh light, seem especially lonely and fragile against the background of a dark solid spot of the forest. The slow rhythm of the image, the careful attention to detail, the accuracy of all elements of the composition contribute to the creation of an ideal image of the nature of the Russian North, severe and majestic, dramatic and spiritual. “On the Island of Valaam” is the first work by Kuindzhi bought by P.M. Tretyakov for his Gallery. Kuindzhi occupies a prominent place among the leading artists of his time.

In 1873, after the great success of the Valaam landscapes, Kuindzhi went on his first trip abroad. His path lay through Germany, in Munich and Berlin he was expected to meet with excellent collections of old masters. Then the artist stopped in Paris, visited London, Basel, Vienna. Kuindzhi believed that Russian painting was worth much more than the famous, but meaningless examples of the Paris Salon.

Returning from a trip abroad in 1874, Kuindzhi began work on a new landscape, The Forgotten Village, which was a natural consequence of Kuindzhi's close contact with the Wanderers. The artist exhibited it at the third exhibition of the Association. The picture seems to be deliberately devoid of eye-pleasing details. Everything in it is dull, bleak, dull. Gray, without a single gap, boring sky, flat brown earth, silhouettes of miserable village huts, barely visible against the sky, merge with the ground. The village seems to have died out, only the smoke curling from the chimney indicates that it is inhabited. The Forgotten Village is a picture of people's life, given indirectly, through the perception of nature. Hence the rejection of the landscape by some artists.

forgotten village

For the fourth traveling exhibition in 1875, Kuindzhi prepared three works: “Chumatsky tract in Mariupol”, “Steppe” and “Steppe in spring”. The artist turns to the southern landscape, but the "Chumatsky tract in Mariupol" continues the line of the "Forgotten Village". Working on the landscape, the painter first of all sought to express his civic position. Acute social problems, as it were, forced Kuindzhi to abandon the poeticization of reality. Again, the artist turns to the horizontally elongated format of the canvas, which creates a sense of extension. The autumn steppe, flat and even to the lowest horizon, is filled with carts of Chumaks. Fine sowing rain blurs the outlines of objects, and the carts in the background merge into a single stream. People sit dejectedly on wagons or wander, drowning in mud, with difficulty pulling ox carts, a dog howls. In the audience, this picture evoked a feeling of hopeless longing. It can be seen how the painting skill of Kuindzhi has increased. The color solution loses its monotony and is built on the subtlest relationships of cold lilac, grayish shades of clouds, thickening to purple spots of wagons, and warm yellowish-pinkish tones, in which the sky near the horizon is written. The picture already has a characteristic technique for Kuindzhi - a certain generalization of form, a transition from sculptural light and shade modeling of volume to a spot. Some artists were perplexed by these new qualities and were the reason for the accusation of the painter that he did not complete his canvases.

Chumatsky tract in Mariupol

After the "Chumatsky tract in Mariupol", the artist seems to start a new page in his creative life: from now on he paints landscapes in which he creates ideal images, full of harmony and beauty. The appearance at the traveling exhibition of the paintings "Steppe" and "Steppe in Spring", completely devoid of pessimistic overtones, full of light and air, was enthusiastically received by the audience. With "Steppe in Spring", the brilliant path of the true Kuindzhi poet, in love with the beauty of the world, begins.

Steppe.Niva

1875 was full of important events for Kuindzhi. He becomes a famous landscape painter, recognized by both criticism and the public, joins the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions, marries a Russified Greek Vera Ketcherji, whom he met in Mariupol in his youth. Kuindzhi again goes abroad, to Paris. The Impressionists did not attract Kuindzhi's attention. He studied the paintings of the painters of the Barbizon school. Kuindzhi's judgments about French painting were rather harsh.

In 1876, at the fifth traveling exhibition, Kuindzhi showed a picture that literally stunned everyone - this is “Ukrainian Night”. Against the backdrop of night silence, white Ukrainian huts, two pyramidal poplars, a quiet, slow river doze, illuminated by moonlight. A world full of bliss, beauty and peace. "Ukrainian Night" is the beginning of the master's maturity. The creative method of the artist is also determined. He refuses to write out, detail, generalizes the subject, making the main color spot in the composition. The construction of the picture is sustained in a leisurely, smooth rhythm of coloristic planes passing into each other. The foreground is painted almost sketchily, with broad strokes of deep blue. With a muted tone of blue and brownish shades, the emerald path shining under the light of the moon and the chilly yellowness of the walls of the huts effectively contrast.

Ukrainian night

A surprisingly original artist appeared in Russian art. "Ukrainian Night" was shown at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1878. Along with it, "Steppe", "Forgotten Village", "On the Island of Valaam" were shown, but critics noticed only "Ukrainian Night". Unfortunately, after a short time the colors of the "Ukrainian Night" began to darken catastrophically, the canvas withered. In "Ukrainian Night" the main elements of Kuindzhi's style were revealed: the desire for decorativeness of color, the construction of a composition through the rhythmic alternation of generalized spots, the flattening of the volume of objects, the combination of a romantic interpretation of the image of nature with convincing life details. The artist is attracted by the light of the full moon, purple sunsets blazing with fire.

In 1878, at the sixth traveling exhibition, Kuindzhi presented two landscapes: “Sunset in the Forest” (“Twilight in the Forest”) and “Evening”. "Sunset in the Forest" (or "Gap", as the critics called the picture) again caused a storm of responses. The landscape could not be called luck. Kuindzhi closely fills the space with tree trunks stretched upwards with cut tops. The trunks are illuminated by the pink light of the setting sun, which bursts into the landscape through the gap between the trees. There is something salon-beautiful, theatrical in this landscape. Was not accepted by the artists and "Evening". For The Evening, Kuindzhi again resorts to the national Ukrainian motif: a white hut with a thatched roof, immersed in the lush, curly greenery of trees. The walls of the hut are flooded with sunlight, which paints them in a bright pink-crimson color. Kuindzhi deliberately forces the color scheme, making it almost fantastic. For him, natural observations are only the starting point for creating an ideal image. Contemporaries could not yet fully realize the significance of his innovations.

Sunset in the forest

Whatever the attitude of artists towards Kuindzhi, his fame grows from exhibition to exhibition, becoming truly popular. People crowd in front of the master’s paintings, they are waiting for his works, hoping to see something new and unusual in them every time. At the seventh traveling exhibition in 1879, the artist had to present three paintings, and the exhibition was not opened, since Kuindzhi did not have time to meet the deadline. The artists were nervous, but the magical effect of the Kuindzhi name on the audience was so great that the opening took place a week later than scheduled. Finally, the artist presented three large canvases to the audience: "North", "After the Rain" and "Birch Grove".

In the "North" Kuindzhi again refers to the northern Russian nature. The picture is painted almost sketchily, with broad strokes freely lying on the surface of the canvas. In the vertical composition of the canvas, the image of a high light sky, painted with dynamic thick strokes, occupies most of the image. The foreground of the picture - a rocky mountain on which a lone pine tree grows - was painted by the artist in the same sketchy and wide way. On the contrary, the plain opening as if from above with a winding ribbon of the river is immersed in shadow and worked out more carefully and generally. "North" logically completes the trilogy begun by the artist back in 1870. The harsh northern nature no longer inspires Kuindzhi. Now he is looking for bright colors in nature, intense contrasts of light and shadow, unusual lighting effects.

After the rain

The second landscape "After the Rain" can be called one of the artist's successes. In fact, there are only two large color masses in the landscape - a stormy sky painted in the most complex combinations of brown, blue, greenish hues and a meadow shimmering with bright greenery. Several small details - houses, a grazing cow, trees - are concentrated in the center of the canvas and serve only as staffing to enliven the composition. In the construction of space, light plays an important role: the dark meadow in the foreground gradually brightens and, as if on the highest note, collides on the horizon with a dark sky, which, on the contrary, brightens towards the foreground.

Birch Grove

The Birch Grove enjoyed the greatest success at the exhibition. Next to her, all the other paintings seemed dull and dark, so bright and saturated was the sunlight. The newspapers were filled with laudatory articles. A cartoon appeared in one of the magazines, in which Kuindzhi was depicted at the time of work on Birch Grove: he has brushes in one hand, and an electric light bulb instead of a palette in the other, the sun rubs the paints, and the moon squeezes them out of the tubes.

"Birch Grove" - ​​the ideal of nature. There are no distracting details in the landscape, the meadow looks like a flat green spot, birch trunks with cut crowns look like conditional scenery, the sky and dense crowns of trees in the background look like a smoothly colored theatrical background. The sun becomes the main character in the picture. It paints details in pure, sonorous tones, flattens volumes, emphasizes the radiant clarity and purity of the world. The picture fully reveals the capabilities of Kuindzhi as a colorist. The limited palette of "Birch Grove" is filled with the finest shades of green, red, yellow, which sound differently in the light and in the shade. The artist had an unusually acute susceptibility to color harmony. In general, Kuindzhi strives for a decorative sound of color in the landscape.

This quality, still unusual for Russian painting, was immediately noted by critics, who at first perceived it as a creative flaw. Focusing on the problems of color, Kuindzhi sacrifices the illusion of the volume of objects. For his contemporaries, such an interpretation of the natural motive seemed unacceptable, some accuse Kuindzhi of ignorance and professional failure. The first among the critics was the landscape painter Mikhail Konstantinovich Klodt. It was because of him that Kuindzhi's quarrel with the Partnership took place, which ended with the artist's exit from the association of the Wanderers. In addition, Kuindzhi noticeably lost interest in the ideas of the Wanderers. In an effort to create an ideal image of nature, the artist turns to new plastic means of expression: he is occupied with the problem of form.

In the summer and autumn of 1880, Kuindzhi worked on a new painting. Petersburg, rumors spread about the enchanting beauty of "Moonlight Night on the Dnieper", a painting that became Kuindzhi's most famous work and, perhaps, the loudest phenomenon in Russian artistic life at the end of the 19th century. From early morning until late evening, endless crowds of people stretched from Nevsky Prospekt to the building of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. A new miracle picture of Kuindzhi was shown there. "Moonlight Night on the Dnieper" hung on the wall alone. Kuindzhi ordered to drape the windows in the hall and illuminate the picture with a beam of electric light focused on it. Visitors entered the semi-dark hall and, spellbound, stopped in front of the cold glow of moonlight, which was so strong that some viewers tried to look behind the picture in search of a light bulb.

Moonlit night on the Dnieper

The sparkling silver-greenish disk of the moon solemnly shines, flooding the earth immersed in night sleep with a mysterious phosphorescent light. A smooth mirror reflects the light of the waters of the Dnieper, the walls of Ukrainian huts are snatched out of the velvety blue of the night, clouds are drawn in the bottomless depths of the sky with a whimsical exquisite ornament. This majestic, solemn spectacle plunges one into thinking about eternity and the enduring beauty of the world. Achieving the desired effect, Kuindzhi applied a complex pictorial technique. To deepen the space, the artist contrasts the warm reddish tone of the earth with cold silvery-green hues. Small dark strokes in illuminated areas create a feeling of vibration of light. The foreground is written in sketches, while the sky is worked out with numerous glazes and becomes the compositional center of the picture. The painting “Moonlight Night on the Dnieper” was bought by the Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich and, going on a trip around the world, he wished to take it with him to the ship. Humid, salt-soaked sea air, of course, had a negative effect on the condition of the paints. The landscape began to darken irreversibly.

In 1881, Kuindzhi exhibited in the same room and under the same lighting a new version of the Birch Grove, written for the Ural miner P.P. Demidov. The deal was upset, and the picture was bought for a fabulous sum by the millionaire F.A. Tereshchenko. The landscape was sold for seven thousand rubles. This is ten times more than the amounts that were paid for portraits to Kramskoy, for landscapes to Shishkin. Birch Grove enjoyed no less success with the public than Moonlit Night on the Dnieper. The space of the new version of "Birch Grove" is densely filled with vertically elongated tree trunks, which part in the center, forming a triangle that leads the eye into the depths. In comparison with the first version of the picture, here all the details are written out more carefully. Kuindzhi, referring to his favorite motive, tries, experiments, thinks over various ways of expression.

Dnieper in the morning

The landscape "Dnepr in the morning" is written in a different pictorial manner. There is no bright light source here. Kuindzhi paints the majestic river in calm gray-bluish tones. Colored with shades of blue and purple, the air blurs the clear outlines of the coast and the steppe.

In 1882, Kuindzhi performed several versions of "Moonlight Night on the Dnieper", wrote "Moonlight Night on the Don" close to it, created the landscape "Rainbow", reminiscent of the painting "After the Rain". None of these works enjoyed such popularity as the famous landscapes of 1881. The artist, faced with the difficult problem of continuing countless repetitions of an already found scheme or looking for new ways, chose to close the doors of the workshop for almost thirteen years. But the artist did not spend a day without taking up a pencil or brush, he worked hard, but he did not let anyone into the studio and did not show his sketches to anyone. The audience could see them only after the death of the artist, about five hundred sketches remained. The painter often rewrote his works, returning to them over a decade. Along with constant creative pursuits, Kuindzhi also shows his practical abilities. He becomes the owner of several tenement houses in St. Petersburg, buys a plot of land in the Crimea. Kuindzhi, having become a millionaire, continued to live extremely modestly, but spent large sums to encourage poor young painters, he did not refuse anyone to help.

Beginning in 1888, Kuindzhi turned to images of the majestic mountain peaks of the Caucasus - Elbrus and Kazbek. Kuindzhi first came to the Caucasus at the invitation of N.A. Yaroshenko, but then traveled there until 1909. The number of Caucasian sketches is enormous. It is noteworthy that Kuindzhi writes many sketches in the workshop from memory. The artist is attracted by the snowy peak of the mountain, either dazzling white, or bright crimson in the rays of the setting sun, or cold bluish in the evening.

Sunrise

Darial Gorge. Moonlight night

snow peaks

Elbrus on a moonlit night

Snow peaks. Caucasus

Elbrus in the evening

Flower garden. Caucasus

Around 1890, the artist turns to winter studies - “Moonlight Spots in the Forest. Winter", "Winter. Spots of light on the roofs of huts”, “Sun spots on frost” look like excellent examples of the artist’s use of the possibilities of direct work on nature. With their help, Kuindzhi comes to a generalization of the image of a winter landscape.

Winter. Thaw

Moon spot in the winter forest

Sun spots on frost

In a word, Kuindzhi's landscapes of the 1890s. lose the plastic clarity and harmony characteristic of his works of the late 1870s. They become more individualized in mood, reflecting the feelings experienced by the artist himself. Nature seems to Kuindzhi so grandiose that a person in it seems small, pitiful. Kuindzhi introduces disturbing, restless combinations of purple, blue, reddish-brown hues into his paintings. The theme of the frailty of earthly life and eternal beauty, the grandeur of nature, which appeared in the work of a number of artists of the late 19th century, is also heard in the works of Kuindzhi.

Despite the solitude in the workshop, Kuindzhi nevertheless took a keen interest in the artistic life of St. Petersburg and Moscow. He visited exhibitions, continued to communicate with the Wanderers. Kuindzhi believed that if the Wanderers were among the teachers of the highest art school in Russia, they would be able to win the minds of young people and influence the future of Russian art. Kuindzhi in 1889 accepted the offer of the leadership of the Academy of Arts to head the landscape painting workshop. The election of Kuindzhi as a professor was the reason for the artist's final break with the Wanderers.

In the teaching activity of Kuindzhi, all the originality of the master's personality was manifested. He did not put pressure on the students with the authority of the famous landscape painter, respected their individuality, talked with the beginnerstrong width=/praquo; hung on strong /pp style=wall alone. Kuindzhi ordered to drape the windows in the hall and illuminate the picture with a beam of electric light focused on it. Visitors entered the semi-dark hall and, fascinated, stopped in front of the cold glow of moonlight, which was so strong that some viewers tried to look behind the picture in search of a light bulb./pi artists as equals. It was not for nothing that the later famous landscape painters N.K. Roerich and A.A. Rylov, V.G. Purvit and F.E. Rushits, K.F. Bogaevsky and A.A. Kuindzhi's love for his students can only be compared with a father's love for children, and they responded to the teacher with no less ardent feelings.

Work in Kuindzhi's workshop went without a special system, but the logic of training was thought out very carefully. Kuindzhi believed that for a novice artist, the most important thing is thoughtful, long-term work on nature, the ability to see nature and honestly convey what he saw. Therefore, he demanded that students bring sketches to each lesson, which they all discussed together. In his workshop, future artists copied the landscapes of the artists of the Barbizon school, painted still lifes from nature, academic productions. Kuindzhi attached great importance to painting in the open air, but believed that the picture should be created from memory. Kuindzhi paid much attention to the acquisition of skills by students in the correct use of color harmonies, the master spoke a lot about composition, perspective, and the construction of space in a landscape.

In 1895, an exhibition of Kuindzhi's workshop was held at the Academy of Arts with great success. The master was able to bring up a group of like-minded people from people of different abilities, age, education, origin. Their works stood out against the academic background for their maturity, pictorial skill, and knowledge of the laws of composition. And this is a huge merit width=raquo; - this is a picture of people's life, given indirectly, through the perception of nature. Hence the rejection of the landscape by some artists.img style= width= Kuindzhi. February 15, 1897 Kuindzhi unexpectedly submits his resignation to the President of the Academy of Arts. The students, offended by the rector's rude behavior, decided to go on strike. Kuindzhi stood up for the students, for which he was removed from teaching. A.A. Kiselev became the head of the landscape workshop. Kuindzhi's students decided to leave the Academy, but he convinced everyone to complete their studies. As a result, the student exhibition of landscape painters became a triumph for Kuindzhi the teacher. In the summer, Kuindzhi took his students to his Crimean estate, and in April 1898 he took all his pupils abroad at his own expense. He was convinced that this was how he should spend his capital. The money went to encourage young talents. This ended Kuindzhi's short career in the teaching field, but he did not leave his students without help and support until the end of his life.

In 1901, for the first time after twenty years of seclusion, Kuindzhi decided to show his work to selected viewers. Among them are students, an old friend of the artist D.I.Mendeleev, landscape painter A.A.Kiselev, architect N.V.Sultanov, journalists. Kuindzhi exhibits four paintings in the studio: "Evening in Ukraine" (1878-1901), "Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane", "Dnepr", a new version of "Birch Grove" (all 1901). The pictures were successful.

Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane

More and more often, works of a deep dramatic beginning appear in his work, accurately conveying the state of mind of the artist. It is no coincidence that the landscape painter Kuindzhi turned to a genre painting, a dramatic gospel story. “Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane” is a work in which the theme of loneliness, the doom of a person who has come into conflict with society, is clearly heard. The plot of the picture is decided by the artist with landscape means. The composition of the work, the dramaturgy of the theme are developed quite straightforwardly: the lonely figure of Christ, bathed in moonlight, is located in the center, the persecutors of Christ are depicted in the shadow. Intensifying the tragic intensity of the scene, the artist sharply collides additional colors: the background is painted in cold blue-green tones, the front in warm brown-reddish. In the figure of Christ, the colors suddenly light up with blue, yellowish, pinkish hues. The artist conveys the clash of good and evil by opposing light and shadow.

The master's appeal to a thematic painting is an episode in his creative biography. The artist could express a wide variety of feelings in the landscape. But still, the main thoughts of Kuindzhi in his work on the landscape were to convey the grandeur and eternal beauty of nature. The artist is looking for phenomena in the world around him that would amaze the viewer. Apparently, this explains Kuindzhi's special predilection for depicting sunsets. "Red Sunset" (1905-1908) was painted by the artist in the most complex gradations of red - from the brownish-brown tones of the earth in the foreground to the blazing shades of pink, crimson, purple in the sky. In "Sunset in the steppe on the seashore" (1898-1908), Kuindzhi makes a powerful color chord sound, consisting of pale shades of yellow, bluish, pinkish through yellow, red, blue, purple tones of the sky, turning into rich green, brown, brownish colors earth. Kuindzhi's "sunsets" are ambiguous: either they reflect the elegiac sadness of the contemplator at the sight of a fading luminary, or they are stormy and expressive.

Sunset in winter. Sea shore

Sunset with trees

sunset effect

Sea shore

Cypress trees on the seashore. Crimea

Crimea. South coast

Noon. Herd in the steppe

Ai-Petri. Crimea

Seashore with rock

Sunset in the steppe on the seashore

Sea. Crimea

Sunset in the steppe

After the rain. Rainbow

Having stepped aside from teaching at the Academy of Arts, Kuindzhi remained a member of its council until the end of his life. He actively intervened in all current affairs, defending his views with harshness and intolerance towards opponents. His temperamental outbursts at council meetings led to quarrels with many friends. Kuindzhi continues to help young artists in every possible way. In 1904, he allocates a fund of one hundred thousand rubles to encourage talented youth, which was intended for the annual payment of prizes to students of the Academy of Arts. So the competition named after A.I. Kuindzhi appeared. The first competitive spring exhibition opened in 1905. But it could not serve the ideas that Kuindzhi nurtured. He dreamed of a union where all artists would be equal and could create freely, without regard to the tastes of customers. In 1908, a number of painters - participants in academic exhibitions - decide to create a new society, in which Kuindzhi proposes to invest his millionth capital. It included N.K. Roerich, A.A. Rylov, A.A. Borisov, N.P. Khimona, V.I. Zarubin, V.E. and others. Thus, the core of the future association was Kuindzhi's students. Actually, it was a kind of "trade union" of artists, which was supposed to provide material and moral support to those in need, organize exhibitions, build exhibition spaces. By 1910, the Society consisted of one hundred and one people. Unfortunately, over the years of its existence, the association has not turned into a cohesive organization. Kuindzhi's dream of a creative unity of artists, of merging everyone into one family, was not destined to come true.

In 1909, Kuindzhi began to develop a severe heart disease. During the period of improvement in the spring of 1910, Kuindzhi went to his Crimean estate, but on the way he felt so bad that he was forced to stop in Yalta. He developed pneumonia, suffered debilitating attacks of suffocation. In a life-threatening condition, Kuindzhi was transferred to St. Petersburg. The suffering of the artist was unbearable. Roerich, Zarubin, Rylov were on duty near the teacher, replacing each other. July 11, 1910 Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi died. His apartment struck everyone with its modesty, but the number of sketches stored in the studio was enormous. According to Kuindzhi's will, all his capital and all artistic heritage were transferred to a society that bore the name of the artist.

Portrait by V. M. Vasnetsov, 1869

Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi - Ukrainian and Russian artist, master of landscape painting.

Kuindzhi Arkhip Ivanovich was born in 1842 in the family of a shoemaker in Mariupol. He lost his parents early and lived in great poverty, herded geese, served with a contractor for the construction of a church, then with a grain merchant; He learned to read and write in Greek from a Greek teacher, then briefly attended the city school.

From an early age, he showed an attraction to painting; he painted wherever he could, on walls, fences, and scraps of paper. Having been a retoucher for photographers in Mariupol, Odessa and St. Petersburg, he paints a large picture: "Tatar saklya in the Crimea", which he exhibits at an academic exhibition in 1868, and becomes an auditor of the academy.

In 1873, Kuindzhi exhibited the painting "Snow" at the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, for which in 1874 he received a bronze medal at an international exhibition in London. In the same 1873, he exhibited his painting "View of the Island of Valaam" in Vienna, and "Lake Ladoga" in St. Petersburg.

Ladoga lake. 1873

In 1874, at the exhibition of the Association of Traveling Exhibitions, Kuindzhi exhibited "The Forgotten Village", in 1875 - two: "Steppes" and "Chumatsky Trakt", in 1876 - the famous "Ukrainian Night". Critics unanimously appreciate the outstanding merits of his work. In 1878, "Ukrainian Night", together with "View of the island of Valaam" and "Chumatsky tract", appears at the world exhibition in Paris.

Forgotten village. 1874

Chumatsky tract in Mariupol. 1875

Ukrainian night. 1876

In 1878 he exhibited "Forest" and "Evening in Little Russia", which aroused a lot of controversy and created many imitators. In 1879, Kuindzhi exhibited "North", "Birch Grove", "After the Thunderstorm"; in the same year, Kuindzhi left the exhibitions of the association of the Wanderers. In 1880, he arranges an exhibition of one of his paintings at the Society for the Encouragement of Arts: "Night on the Dnieper"; This exhibition was an unprecedented success; not only ordinary art critics wrote about it, but also Polonsky, Strakhov, Mendeleev, Turgenev.

Birch Grove. 1879

After the storm 1. 1879

In the same year, the painting was exhibited in Paris. In 1881, also separately, Kuindzhi exhibited Birch Grove, which had an equally great success, and in 1882 Dnepr in the Morning, along with Birch Grove and Night on the Dnieper. After this exhibition, until the very death of his Kuindzhi, he did not exhibit his paintings anywhere else, and until the 1900s he did not show them to anyone.

Dnieper in the morning

From 1894 to 1897 Kuindzhi was professor-head of the higher art school at the Academy of Arts. In 1904, he donated 100,000 rubles to the Academy for the issuance of 24 annual prizes; in 1909 he donated 150,000 rubles and his estate in the Crimea to the art society of his own name, and 11,700 rubles to the society for the promotion of arts for a prize in landscape painting.

At the academy, Kuindzhi made friends with Repin, V. Vasnetsov and others, and together with them joined the group of Wanderers; for this period, his "Autumn Thaw", "The Forgotten Village" and "Chumatsky Trakt" are most characteristic, although in the latter one can already notice an evasion from carefully writing out details and a desire for generalization.

Autumn thaw. 1872

Forgotten village. 1874

"Ukrainian Night" marks a turning point in Kuindzhi's work. Kuindzhi boldly paved the way for impressionism; he himself said that the artist is the one who knows how to capture and recreate the inner unity. He was fascinated primarily by the light effect, his goal was to convey the impression of light; he studied the laws of combining additional tones to convey the power of light. Sometimes the pursuit of the power of light led him to overly theatrical effects; his manner was sometimes rude, his drawing primitive, but his role in Russian painting is enormous; he was the first completely original Russian impressionist.

Despite the fact that since 1882 Kuindzhi did not exhibit anything, he worked hard in his studio and was deeply interested in art; he also took a close part in the development of a new charter for the Academy of Arts; having entered the leadership of the landscape class, he, having been a professor for only three years, created a whole school of artists.

Independent and independent, Kuindzhi played a big role in the academy; he made many enemies with his directness and harshness. A man of exceptional kindness, he sought to help his students and comrades both with advice and materially; his dream was to free the artist from the power of the market, to give him the opportunity to develop his talent outside of heavy material worries. The prizes he had founded seemed to him such a partial deliverance; the same goal was to be served by the society named after him, provided by him with large capital, the managers of which were the artists themselves.

The grave of A. I. Kuindzhi at the Tikhvin cemetery in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra (St. Petersburg)

Kuindzhi's paintings are in museums and private individuals; all that remained after his death were bequeathed by him to the Society in his name, which some of them transferred to the metropolitan and provincial museums. "Night on the Dnieper" is in the possession of the Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, "Birch Grove" and "Steppe" - in the Tereshchenko collection in Kyiv; in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow there are: "On the Island of Valaam", "Forgotten Village", "Steppe", "Chumatsky Trakt", "Ukrainian Night", "North", "Birch Grove", "After a Thunderstorm", "Dnepr in the Morning" and "Sunset in the Forest"; in the Museum of Emperor Alexander III in Petrograd - "Evening in Little Russia", "Fog on the Sea", "Rainbow" and sketches.

Ai-Petri. Crimea. 1898-1908

Seashore with a rock. 1898-1908

Birch Grove. 1880s

Birch Grove. 1901

Birch Grove. Spots of sunlight. 1890-1895

Birch Grove

Birch Grove. 1879

Buryan. 1875

The top of Elbrus illuminated by the sun. 1898-1908

Evening in Ukraine. 1878

View of St. Isaac's Cathedral in the moonlight. 1869

View of the Moskvoretsky bridge, the Kremlin and St. Basil's Cathedral. 1882

Waves

Sunrise

Head of a peasant - a Ukrainian in a straw hat

The mountains. 1890-1895

Oak trees. 1900-1905

Sunset in the steppe on the seashore. 1898-1908

Sunset in the steppe. 1900

Winter. Spots of light on the roofs of huts. 1890-1895

Kazbek

Fishing in the Black Sea. 1900

Moonlight night on the measure

Sea with a sailing ship. 1876-1890

Cloud

Autumn thaw. 1872

After the rain. 1879

Rainbow. 1900-1905

Grove. 1898-1908

Birch trunks. 1879

Steppe. Niva. 1875

Elbrus. Moonlight night. 1890-1895

The persistence of a poor Greek boy, who, despite all the circumstances, became the pride of Russian painting, is amazing. A brief biography of Kuindzhi speaks of the extraordinary talent, determination and generous soul of the great painter.

Childhood and youth

Surprise is already such a detail that the exact date of Kuindzhi's birth has not been established. The biography begins with hesitation - either 1841 or 1842. It doesn't matter, but it's weird. In the same unusual way, the translation of his surname, which meant a goldsmith, will be reflected in all his activities as a painter. Arkhip was orphaned early. He was raised by poor relatives. Studying without diligence, he continuously drew on all scraps of paper that only came to hand.

Poverty and poverty forced him to graze geese, work as a brick accountant, and then for a bread merchant. But there was a thirst to draw, which led him to Feodosia. 14-year-old Kuindzhi, whose biography was just beginning, dreamed of becoming a student of the great I.K. Aivazovsky. But it did not work out - he was only entrusted with grinding the paints and painting the fence. He returned to his native Mariupol and became a retoucher - not painting, but something similar. Until the age of 24, he rushed along the Black Sea coast, working all the same.

Petersburg

At the Academy of Arts, no one was waiting with open arms for Kuindzhi. Biography in St. Petersburg began with unsuccessful attempts to learn high art. He was simply not accepted into the Academy. But three years later, he painted a picture that he exhibited at the Academy exhibition. Then he was finally noticed, awarded the title of a free artist, and even allowed to pass exams in his specialty. The biography of Kuindzhi, who received a diploma, was enriched by his acquaintance with the Wanderers. In 1875 he exhibited his work "Chumatsky tract in Mariupol".

It does not yet have that Kuindzhi, whom we all represent in more mature independent works. This is a realistic canvas, characteristic of the Wanderers: gloomy color, impassable dirt. Everything is inspired by the theme of the hopeless life of the people, which the Wanderers loved so much. But he was noticed, and, believing in himself and making a departure from the "Partnership", Kuindzhi, whose biography is still unstable, leaves for sketches to the north.

Development

He creates landscapes "On the island of Valaam", "Lake Ladoga", which attract the attention of the public. Arkhip Kuindzhi, whose biography is on the rise, can afford to marry a girl he has long loved. A year later, he exhibits a picture that struck not only the public, but even sophisticated fellow artists - "Ukrainian Night".

This is a turning point in creativity that is visible to everyone, an exotic innovation inherent only in him alone. Now Kuindzhi will begin to think about everything - both themes and the style of writing, independently developing his achievements, deeply studying paints, color and lighting effects, enjoying their wonderful game. In 1878, at an exhibition in Paris, where Kuindzhi arrived with his young wife, he amazed the French public with an exhibition of his works. He was recognized as the most Russian and most original painter. In the same year, he began work on which he would work for 23 years - “Evening in Ukraine”. In France, he studied impressionism and, under its influence, would later write three landscapes - "North", "Birch Grove" and "After the Rain".

Long overdue, like an abscess, the exit from the "Partnership of the Wanderers" took place, and after that Kuindzhi exhibits one painting - "Moonlight Night on the Dnieper". It was an explosion. No wonder the artist experimented so much with colors and lighting, which he made special at the exhibition, darkening the hall and highlighting his canvas with light. But ignorance of chemistry played a bad joke on the work - over time, the colors darkened, and now it does not make an initial impression, although it is still beautiful.

This is already a new stage in creativity, the artist-philosopher Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi was born. The biography speaks of his reflections on reality, on other ways of expressing it on the canvas. He seeks to comprehend the depth of the material world. Remember that it was once just a poorly trained, almost impoverished orphan who did not graduate from the Academy of Arts. To what heights of spirit, with talent and diligence, a person can rise!

Privacy

In 1881-1882, Kuindzhi organized two more exhibitions, at which he showed Birch Grove, which thundered loudly among art lovers, and Dnepr in the Morning. This work was received with great restraint. After that, the painter retired from public life for almost twenty years. The biography cannot give an explanation for the seclusion of such a famous person as the artist Kuindzhi. At the zenith of fame, he disappears from the field of view of the public and criticism.

Working alone

Kuindzhi works by creating new paints that must be stable and not change their appearance over time and under the influence of air. He writes more and more new works, looking for a different style direction. In 1886, he buys a piece of land in the Crimea, where, living with his wife and students, he works in the warm season following the example of the Impressionists in the open air and writes “View of the sea and coast. Crimea”, “Sea coast. View of the Crimea”, “Crimea. Yayla”, “Mountain slope. Crimea" and much more. This is a completely different Kuindzhi, filled with light, sun and a salty breeze of a calm sea.

Caucasus

In 1888, at the invitation of one of the Wanderers, Kuindzhi visited the Caucasus and brought back fresh impressions and sketches, which he continued to work on in St. Petersburg. He reflected the majestic Caucasus by painting a series of paintings: “Elbrus in the daytime”, “Elbrus. Moonlight Night”, “Snowy Peaks”, “Snowy Peaks. Caucasus".

This is a brief enumeration of his works, in which he philosophically comprehends the grandiosity of the surrounding world. This is completely different, updated both technically and internally by Kuindzhi, when a romantic merges with a philosopher. Critics believe that it was the Caucasian period of Kuindzhi that influenced the works of N. K. Roerich in the Himalayas. After all, the Kuindzhi Caucasus is symbolic. This is the highest unattainable ideal, dazzlingly beautiful at the same time.

New exhibition

In 1901, the artist comes out of solitude and shows his friends and students the work begun twenty-three years ago - "Evening in Ukraine", as well as the works "Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane" (1901), "Birch Grove" (1901). In general, by this time the painter had created about five hundred works. In the same years, he created views of Moscow from the Sparrow Hills. Taking a theme, he fully develops it, and then, turning to another, he also creates a cycle of paintings connected to each other, without repeating himself and surprising when you look at his works in sequence. Surprisingly diverse are not only themes, but also their color solutions.

The exhibitions made by Kuindzhi again led the public into an enthusiastic state, disputes and talk about him again began, but the artist closed again. The reasons for this behavior of Kuindzhi, a brief biography, like his contemporaries, cannot provide. Maybe the artist is tired of empty talk, because he is sixty years old. True, by our standards, this is not so much, but then they thought a little differently.

Last years

For ten years, Kuindzhi created all new canvases. The absolute masterpiece of that time is the painting "Rainbow". It is in the Russian Museum. Kuindzhi worked on this work for five years. Along a huge, not yet overgrown field, the road winds intricately. Above them stretched the sky, occupying two-thirds of the canvas, with a sparkling rainbow. Everything is extremely simple, but such simplicity is given by great skill, observation and thought. Already written "Red Sunset" and "Night" (1905-1908).

Death of an artist

While in the summer of 1910 in the Crimea, he fell ill with pneumonia. It is still a formidable disease, for a long time incapacitating a person. And then there were no antibiotics. With the permission of the doctors, the loving, caring wife transported the patient to St. Petersburg, but the efforts of the doctors did not help. A sick heart could not stand it, and he passed away in July 1910. Now his grave is on the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

Charity

Coming out of the most unsecured lower classes of society, the artist, as soon as funds began to allow, began to engage in charity work, giving huge money for those times (one hundred, one hundred and fifty thousand rubles) to both the Academy of Arts and the Society of Artists. A. I. Kuindzhi for annual awards. He donated his estate in the Crimea to the same society. The artist himself and his wife were content with little, lived simply and modestly. After his death, she received the pension appointed by Arkhip Ivanovich, and the artist distributed his entire fortune among relatives and the Society of Artists.

Arkhip Kuindzhi went through such a difficult life path. A brief biography speaks of the extraordinary talent, determination and generous soul of the great painter.