Freezing sometimes at the pictures of great artists, you understand that you know nothing about either the canvas or the creator of it. But famous people in the past often lived so interesting life that when reading their biographies, a whole gamut of feelings arises - from admiration to bewilderment and even rejection. Today's story site is about a great artist who was famous and popular during her lifetime, but for some reason at the same time received miserable pennies for her work ...
“Each of her works caused an enthusiastic buzz,” said her fellow artist S. Makovsky about the work of the artist Zinaida Serebryakova.
The picture that became a pass to the world of great art
Born in a creative family
Serebryakova
To draw a lot, forgetting about everything, she began at a young age. Favorite children's hobby became a calling.
Yes, and Zina could not help but become an artist - her path seemed to be predetermined from birth: the girl grew up in a family where everyone was creative.
Grandfather and great-grandfather were recognized architects, father Eugene Lansere was a sculptor, and his mother was also engaged in painting. Ekaterina Nikolaevna, sister famous critic and artist Alexandra Benois. From the age of two, Zina found herself in the spiritually elevated atmosphere of the Benoit family: her father died of consumption, and the mother with all the children returned to Father's house to Petersburg.
There was a special atmosphere in the house, the younger members of the family constantly heard talk about the high appointment of art and the artist, visited the Hermitage, theaters and exhibitions.
Zina re-read several times rare books on art from the huge home library. All relatives were engaged creative work: painted, went to sketches.
Growing up, Zina worked in the studio under the guidance of the famous painter Ilya Repin.
The student copied the Hermitage canvases with talent, and greatly appreciated this occupation, because the works of the old masters of the brush taught her a lot.
Widowhood is a heavy cross
Glorious Morning
Serebryakova
Later, 21-year-old Zinaida, already a married lady, studied painting in Paris, where in October 1905 she went with her mother.
Soon joined them husband of the artist Boris Serebryakov, travel engineer.
They were close relatives to each other - cousins and sisters, so they had to fight for their happiness, as relatives prevented marriage between blood relatives.
After France, the young artist usually spent summer and autumn near Kharkov in the Neskuchny family estate - she painted sketches of peasant women, and left for St. Petersburg for the winter.
Happy for creative development Zinaida began in 1909, when she stayed longer at the estate.
Early winter came, the garden, fields, roads were covered with snow, and work with writing sketches had to be interrupted.
One sunny morning, the artist had the idea of painting a picture, which soon brought fame - self-portrait "Behind the toilet".
Waking up, Zinaida admired nature from the window, went to the mirror. She brushed aside her thick dark hair, waved her comb and froze.
The mirror reflected her face, which shone with peace and happiness. The artist suddenly felt the urge to paint her own reflection.
“Multi-colored bottles, pins, beads, a corner of a snow-white bed, candlesticks with long, slender candles, rustic, with jugs and basins, a washstand.
And himself in a white shirt that had slipped off his shoulder, with a slight childish blush on his cheeks and a clear smile. In general, the way she really was and would like to be a little, ”
This is how this one describes famous portrait artist researcher of the Hermitage V. Lenyashin.
The result was not a traditional self-portrait, but a genre scene, a story about one happy morning of a young woman.
The general public saw him at the exhibition of the Union of Russian Artists in the winter of 1910. Serebryakova's painting hung next to paintings by Serov, Kustodiev, Vrubel.
She did not get lost among the paintings of recognized masters, moreover - acquired the work of a debutante Tretyakov Gallery.
The fame of the Russian artist Zinaida Serebryakova began with the painting “Behind the toilet”.
Talent and money - one excludes the other
Family and loneliness
Serebryakova
She worked at the archaeological museum at Kharkov University when the revolution took place.
Troubled, anxious time, uncertainty, hard life filled the life of Z. Serebryakova's family. In 1919 she suffered great sorrow husband died.
After a long separation, they met in Moscow, and a month later, Zinaida persuaded Boris to go to Kharkov for three days to see the children.
After a short meeting with his family, he again said goodbye to his relatives - he was in a hurry to work. On the way, my heart suddenly seized and I had to return to Kharkov.
Boris boarded a military train, where he contracted typhus. The disease quickly mowed, he was dying in front of his bewildered wife and crying sick mother and children.
After burying her husband, Zinaida was left alone in charge of big family consisting of a frail mother and four children.
In her diary, the widow wrote with anguish about the everyday hardships that befell her, a depressed state of mind.
In the autumn of 1920, she received an invitation to transfer to the Petrograd Department of Museums and accepted it, but life didn't get easier.
"I still can't forget what strong impression her beautiful radiant eyes cast on me, - recalled a colleague of the artist G. I. Teslenko.
- Despite the great grief and insurmountable difficulties of life - four children and a mother! - she looked much younger than her years, and her face was striking in the freshness of colors.
Deep inner life, which she lived, created such an external charm that there was no way to resist.
Galina Teslenko became a friend of the artist for many years. “You are so young, loved, appreciate this time,” Serebryakova told her in 1922. “Oh, it’s so bitter, so sad to realize that life is already behind us ...”.
Unusually emotional by nature, she sharply reacted to everything that happened around, took sorrow and joy to heart.
Contemporaries celebrated her amazingly sincere attitude to people, events, she vividly responded to requests, appreciated kindness in people, admired everything beautiful, hated evil.
Zinaida did not even think about remarriage, she was monogamous by nature. The times were hard, the Serebryakova family could barely make ends meet.
The artist, having received permission to visit the backstage of the former Mariinsky Theater during the days of ballet performances, made sketches for three years, the sessions continued at home, ballerinas came to her willingly.
This is how a series of ballet portraits and compositions. This work was almost the only source of income for big family.
Hope for an improvement in the situation appeared after Serebryakova's participation in a large American exhibition, organized with the aim of financial assistance Russian artists.
Two of her paintings were immediately sold. Encouraged by the success, Zinaida Evgenievna with the proceeds left for Paris.
She intended to live in a foreign land for several months, she wanted to earn money by private orders and return to Russia. But it turned out that she left the country forever.
Unappreciated genius
Serebryakova
... The two children of the artist remained in Russia, and the elders Alexander and Ekaterina came to their mother in 1925 and 1928.
The artist met her daughter Tatyana 36 years later, when she came to visit her mother in Paris. But even in a foreign land it was not possible to get rid of want, and here life remained difficult.
Serebryakova's skill seemed outdated to many, and her works were rarely purchased at exhibitions.
“If we compare the present time, helpless (in everything) in art, with past centuries, then after all, everything is no good, but still we continue to draw, ”the artist was surprised at her own endurance.
“Life now seems to me a senseless fuss and a lie - now everyone’s brains are very clogged, and now there is nothing sacred in the world, everything is ruined, debunked, trampled into the dirt,” the artist wrote.
... In the mid-30s, Zinaida Evgenievna Serebryakova was going to return to her homeland.
But it turned out that it was not fate: first, the paperwork was delayed, then the move made it impossible World War and the occupation of Paris.
After the war, children and Russian artists called her to return, but the old artist was already seriously ill and after two surgeries, she did not dare to move.
And the son and daughter, who also became artists, did not want to leave abroad. “In general, I often regret that I drove so hopelessly far from my own,” she wrote back in 1926.
And bitterly summed up the lived: “Nothing came out of my life here, and I often think that I did an irreparable thing, breaking away from the soil ...”.
Z. E. Serebryakova died at the age of 82 in Paris, in September 1967.
A few years before her death, the artist's friends and children organized an exhibition in Russia, and for many - not only compatriots - it was a discovery. genuine Russian talent.
Inna ININA
The modern generation knows very little or very superficially about Zinaida Serebryakova. Of course, not everyone, but most people know this famous “self-portrait of the artist at the mirror”, the real name of which is “Behind the toilet”. It is from him that the work of the artist becomes widely known. But there are many, many other masterpieces that remain long years in the shadow of the glory of one of the most famous canvases ... And the self-portraits themselves - so much narcissism in painting can only be found in Zinaida Serebryakova ...
In the history of Russian painting, women became known only on canvases, and as a rule, female images were painted by men ... A woman artist in modern world art is a familiar phenomenon, but it was not always so.
Today we will get acquainted with the works of one of the first Russian women who entered the history of painting - Zinaida Evgenievna Serebryakova, whose paintings are now sold at the most prestigious world auctions and auctions.
So for example, one of recent works artist, written in Russia - the painting "Sleeping Girl". In 2015, it was sold for 3.85 million pounds ($5.9 million). This amount is almost eight times higher than the estimated cost, which was 400-600 thousand pounds ($609-914 thousand). Buyers who participated in the auction by phone fought hard for the work.
The fate of this painting is noteworthy. There is a version that the painting depicts the youngest daughter of the artist Ekaterina, who also became a famous artist. Ekaterina Serebryakova died relatively recently - in 2014. The painting "Sleeping Girl" was part of the collection former ambassador of the Provisional Government of Russia in the USA Boris Bakhmetyev (1880-1951), who lived in exile in America after the October Revolution. He acquired it at an exhibition of Russian artists in New York in 1923.
It is known that with the money received for its sale, the artist went to France, from where she never returned.
Reading the biography of Serebryakova, it is very difficult to imagine a different path for little Zinaida, because in this artistic family everyone was born with pencils in their hands. Her grandfather Nikolai Benois was a famous architect, her father Eugene Lansere - famous sculptor, and mother Ekaterina Nikolaevna, daughter of architect Nikolai Benois, sister of architect Leonty Benois and artist Alexander Benois, was a graphic artist in her youth. The brothers of Zinaida Lansere Nikolai, a talented architect, another, Eugene, played important role in the history of Russian and Soviet art monumental painting and charts.
It is not surprising that on December 12, 1884, a talented girl, whose future was already a foregone conclusion, will be born in one of the most famous Benoit-Lansere families in art. Not by fate, but by family ...
By the way, Zinaida will become world famous already at the age of 25, having written one of the brightest and most cheerful self-portraits of all time - “Self-portrait in front of a mirror” (1909).
It is amazing how cheerful and bright canvases could be created by a person who was distinguished by isolation and wildness, and this against the backdrop of friendly and cheerful brothers and sisters. But it only seemed so, because the real inner world of a modest, weak and sickly girl was on canvas. Painting will become the most joyful occupation and vocation in the life of little Zinusha (as her relatives called her). And any directions will be portraits, landscapes and nudes.
Masterpieces by Zinaida Serebryakova
Bath. 1913 State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
At breakfast. 1914
Harvest. 1915
Canvas bleaching. 1917 State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
Illuminated by the sun. 1928
Sleeping model. 1941 Kyiv National Museum Russian art, Ukraine
Maiden name Zinaida - Lansere, and she became Serebryakova at marriage. This story deserves a mention.
With Boris, her cousin, Zina had known each other since childhood, over time, friendship grew into love. The young decided to get married, but they did not succeed immediately. Parents were in favor, but the church opposed because of the relationship of lovers. However, 300 rubles and an appeal to a third, after two refusals, the priest was allowed to solve the problem. In 1905 they got married.
Peasant woman with pots. 1900s
Portrait of Olga Konstantinovna Lansere. 1910, Private collection
Bather. 1911, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
There is an assumption that The Bather is another self-portrait of the artist. Direction of gaze, face, hair, lips - the girl in this picture is very similar to the "Self-portrait in Pierrot's costume" - she is lower.
Pierrot (Self-portrait dressed as Pierrot). 1911, Odessa Art Museum, Ukraine
Girl with a candle. Self-portrait. 1911, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Zinaida traveled a lot. First Italy, where she went for treatment, then Paris, where she is engaged in a prestigious art academy de la Grand Chaumière. But as an artist, she was formed in St. Petersburg. First notable works created here - in the city on the Neva. It was the heyday of creativity of a talented artist. Endless exhibitions, hangouts in the famous society "World of Arts", the first recognition of talent - the famous painting "Behind the toilet", shown for the first time at a large exhibition, brings wide popularity.
The self-portrait was followed by Bather (1911, Russian Museum), Peasants (1914-1915, Russian Museum), Harvest (1915, Odessa Art Museum) and others… The most important of these works was Whitening the Canvas (1917 , State Tretyakov Gallery).
Nurse with a child. 1912 Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum
Peasant woman (with a yoke). 1916-1917, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Sleeping peasant woman. 1917, Private collection
Self-portrait in red. 1921, Private collection
In the ballet dressing room ("Big Ballerinas"). 1922, Ballet Ts. Pugni "Pharaoh's Daughter", Private collection
Ballet restroom. Snowflakes. 1923, Ballet by P.I. Tchaikovsky "The Nutcracker", State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
By the way, canvases with ballerinas are the so-called dialogue with another no less famous artist — French painter Edgar Degas, whom she admired all her life. His ballerinas delighted and inspired to write “their own”, so different from everyone else, in the manner of conveying grace, plasticity, thin lines, grace peculiar only to her…
Pay attention to the following picture - it is very symbolic.
House of cards. 1919 , State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
The picture shows the children of Zinaida and Boris Serebryakov. This period in the artist's life is akin to a house of cards. October Revolution, the death of a spouse from typhus. She is left with four children and a sick mother without a livelihood. Hunger. No oil paints - you have to switch to charcoal and pencil. "House of Cards", showing all four orphaned children - the most tragic work in all her work.
Further, everything is very typical for the whole creative intelligentsia- life under a command, you can’t write it, it’s possible. Advice to switch to a different style, unambiguous hints to paint portraits of commissars, but she refuses to accept the statutes of the "new masters of life."
In December 1920, Zinaida moved to Petrograd to her grandfather's apartment. She was lucky - the artists of the Moscow Art Theater Theater were settled in this apartment "for compaction". During this period, she paints on themes from the theatrical life.
Self-portrait with daughters. 1921 Rybinsk State Historical and Architectural and art museum-reserve, Yaroslavl region
Katya with dolls. 1923 Private collection
Bath. 1926, Private collection
In 1923, her works were included in an exhibition of Russian artists in the United States. She made $500, but they couldn't patch up the gaps in the family budget. Zinaida decides to leave for Paris in order to improve her financial situation.
She failed to earn money in a year, as planned. “No one understands that it is insanely difficult to start without a penny. A time is running, and I still fight in the same place, ”she writes to her mother in despair.
She was going to return to Russia, where her mother and children remained. However, she failed to return, and she finds herself cut off from her homeland and children. All the little money that she manages to earn, she sends back to Russia. She lives at this time on a Nansen passport (passport for refugees) and only in 1947 receives French citizenship.
The eldest daughter Tatyana Serebryakova recalled that she was 12 years old when her mother left. She left for a short time, but Tate was very scared. As if she had a presentiment that the next time they could see each other only after 36 years.
On the beach. 1927, Private collection
Once Zinaida Serebryakova received tempting offer- go to creative journey to depict the nude figures of oriental maidens. But it turned out that it was simply impossible to find models in those places. An interpreter for Zinaida came to the rescue - he brought his sisters and his bride to her. No one before and after that was able to capture the closed Oriental women naked.
Contrary to her efforts, the artist did not manage to realize herself immediately in Paris. The city of changeable moods and romance was in endless fashion trends and the style of a Russian emigrant did not suit this city. The demand for paintings was extremely negligible. On top of that, she simply did not know how to "do business."
The artist, who repeatedly helped Zinaida Serebryakova in Paris, said: “She is so pathetic, unhappy, inept, everyone offends her.”
Lonely and irritated, she withdraws more and more into herself. Paris was shrouded in vengeance and new fashion trends in art. The local public, unable to distinguish the beautiful from the bad, liked everything tasteless and mediocre in the theater, music, and literature.
“Life now seems to me a meaningless fuss and a lie - now everyone’s brains are very clogged, and now there is nothing sacred in the world, everything is ruined, debunked, trampled into the dirt”
But with her children in mind, she continues to work hard. Soon, Katya manages to be discharged to her, and a little later, her son Alexander comes to her. And then the iron curtain falls.
Serebriakova does not dare to return, because her two children are in Paris, and she does not risk taking them to the USSR, where they can be declared "enemies of the people". In Paris, she cannot fully engage in new life, because half of her heart remained there - with Zhenya, Tanya and with her mother, whom the government refuses to let go abroad.
At the slightest opportunity, Serebryakova sends them money, but this is not always possible. In 1933, her mother in the Union dies of starvation.
Girl in pink. 1932, Private collection
It is possible to meet with the children who remained at home only after 36 years - during the Khrushchev thaw. In 1960, her daughter Tatyana (Tata), who became theater artist at the Moscow Art Theater. In 1966, large exhibitions of Serebryakova's work were shown in Moscow, Leningrad and Kyiv.
Suddenly she becomes popular in Russia, her albums are printed in millions of copies, and her paintings are compared with Botticelli and Renoir.
On September 19, 1967, Zinaida Serebryakova died in Paris at the age of 82. She was buried in the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery. Her dream - international fame came to her during her lifetime, but did not have time to gain financial well-being and independence.
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Girl with a candle. Self-portrait (detail)
Zinaida Evgenievna Serebryakova had a difficult fate, in which there was big love, and the happiness of motherhood, and the joy of creating, and many years of separation from children, and longing for the abandoned Motherland.
Artist Zinaida Serebryakova. Life and art
The future artist Zinaida Evgenievna Serebryakova (nee Lansere) was born on December 10, 1884 in the Neskuchny estate near Kharkov, in the family of the famous sculptor Evgeny Lansere and Ekaterina Lansere (nee Benois).
In 1886, the artist's father died suddenly and a large family settled in the apartment of the grandfather Nicholas Benois, the famous architect.
Zinaida's mother was a graphic artist in her youth. And there were also two famous uncles: the architect Leonty Benois and the artist Alexandre Benois.
In the family of Eugene and Catherine Lansere, in addition to Zinaida, two more children grew up: Nikolai (later an architect) and Eugene (later a famous artist).
Zina grew up ... a sickly and rather unsociable child, in which she resembled her father and did not at all resemble her mother, nor her brothers and sisters, who all had a cheerful and sociable disposition.
From the memoirs of Alexandre Benois
The childhood and youth of the future artist were spent in St. Petersburg, and in her beloved Neskuchny estate. The girl began to draw early and uncle Alexander Benois worked a lot with her talented niece.
One of the first paintings by Zinaida Serebryakova is "Apple Tree". This picture was painted in 1900 in Neskuchny. A young strong perky tree bends its branches under the weight of ruddy fruits. Many years later, art historians will say that the young Zinaida, subconsciously, depicted a symbol of fertility, free life in unity with nature. And this symbol determined the whole creative way artist for the rest of his life.
... In our Neskuchny estate, where everything, both nature and the peasant life that surrounded me, excited and delighted me with their picturesqueness, and I generally lived in some kind of "future of enthusiasm" ...
Zinaida Evgenievna graduated, in 1900, women's gymnasium and without special efforts St. Petersburg Academy of Painting entered. However, the girl did not like studying at the Academy, and very soon the future artist left the walls of the Academy and entered art school Princess M.K. Tenisheva, and some time later she began to take painting lessons from the famous portrait painter Osip Braz.
In 1902, the girl was sent to Italy for treatment and the study of Italian painting.
Now it’s hard to say how sick Zinaida Evgenievna was ... The thing is that the future famous artist was a cousin Boris Serebryakov. Young people were friends for a long time, were friends and fell in love with each other. Relatives knew about this connection, in the end they resigned themselves to the inevitable and stopped preventing the lovers.
In the end, all the relatives agreed to this marriage, but the church was against the wedding of close relatives. The issue was resolved with the help of a "gift" of 300 rubles - the priest married the young and the Serebryakov family (Zinaida Evgenievna took her husband's surname) left for Paris in 1905.
In the capital of France, Zinaida enters the Academy de la Grande Chaumière and studies with great enthusiasm, draws a lot from life, writes sketches.
In 1906, the young family returned to St. Petersburg. To a young spouse it is necessary to graduate from the university (he will become a railway engineer), and the young wife comes time to give birth to her first child.
In 1906, the son of Eugene was born, and in 1907, the son of Alexander.
The family lives in Neskuchny, Zinaida takes care of small children and writes a lot: sketches, landscapes and portraits. And he decides to exhibit his works at the 7th exhibition of artists in Moscow in 1910.
The self-portrait "Behind the Toilet" and gouache "Green in Autumn" are acquired by the Tretyakov Gallery. It was an undeniable and very resounding success.
behind the toilet
I decided to stay with the children in Neskuchnoye... My husband Boris Anatolyevich was on a business trip, winter came early this year, everything was covered with snow - our garden, fields around, snowdrifts everywhere, it was impossible to go out. But the house on the farm is warm and cozy, and I began to draw myself in the mirror ...
From the memoirs of Zinaida Serebryakova
Then there was a small, but very happy, break in creative activity: in 1912, the daughter Tatiana was born, and a year later - Ekaterina.
From 1914 to 1917 he creates a whole series of paintings about Russian nature and the Russian village (“Peasants”, “Sleeping Peasant Woman”, the famous “Whitening of the Canvas”), helps his brother Alexander to paint the Kazan Station, writes compositions based on ancient myths and a whole series of self-portraits.
It always seemed to me that being loved and being in love is happiness, I was always like a child, not noticing the life around, and was happy, although even then I knew sadness and tears ... You are so young, loved, appreciate this time , precious friend.
Letter from Zinaida Serebryakova to Galina Teslenko. Petrograd, February 28, 1922 =
And then the revolution broke out, and after the revolution came Civil War. Zinaida Evgenievna, together with her children, moved to Kharkov, where a job was found for her in the archaeological museum. The family estate near Kharkov "Neskuchnoe" burned down along with all the paintings of the artist. The husband went to Siberia to work, fell ill with typhus and died.
With a sick mother and four small children in her arms, without a livelihood, without a permanent home. It was at this time that one of the most tragic paintings of the artist "House of Cards" appeared. oil paints just not, and she writes with a pencil and charcoal.
The house of cards is her happiness, which suddenly collapsed, her four orphaned children. And their poor, exhausted mother.
In 1920, the Serebryakov family returned to St. Petersburg, to the apartment of their grandfather Nikolai Benois. Here, for the first time last years, luck smiled on the disadvantaged family - Moscow Art Theater artists, and not Soviet workers, were hooked into a large apartment “for compaction”.
Zinaida starts writing again. She paints several portraits of her late husband (now they are kept in the Tretyakov Gallery and the Novosibirsk art gallery), writes a whole series of works about the theater. It so happened that the daughter of Zinaida Evgenievna began to study ballet and the artist, along with her daughters, often visits the Mariinsky Theater.
Heavy hungry times are replaced by some revival - reborn exhibition activity. Serebryakova again works hard and in 1924 becomes a participant in a large exhibition of Russian artists in America. All her paintings have been sold, but the $500 received for paintings is catastrophically small for the life of a large family in Soviet Russia and inspired Serebryakova decides to go to Paris, arrange a personal exhibition and earn more money.
This is the official version. Or maybe she believed in her success and wanted simple well-being and international recognition? This is my version.
However, in Paris, even without Serebryakova, there is a huge number of Russian artists, and Paris is changeable and spoiled with an incredible offer of painting at very easy prices. In addition, Zinaida Evgenievna completely lacked a commercial vein.
Subsequently, Konstantin Somov said:
She is so pathetic, unhappy, inept, everyone offends her.
Serebryakova's first exhibition in Paris took place only in 1927.
Zinaida Evgenievna sends all the money earned in Paris to St. Petersburg to support her family. She herself lives in France on bird's rights (with a refugee passport. She received French citizenship only in 1947).
Life now seems to me a senseless fuss and a lie - now everyone's brains are very clogged, and now there is nothing sacred in the world, everything is ruined, debunked, trampled into the dirt.
Why didn't she return to Russia? Why didn't you move your family to France? Difficult questions which I can't really answer.
A few years later, daughter Katya arrives in France, and then son Alexander. And stop immigration from Soviet Union. Zinaida Evgenievna will see her daughter Tatyana only after 36 years with the onset of the Khrushchev thaw.
In 1961, two Soviet artist- D. Shmarinov and S. Gerasimov. It was they who helped organize exhibitions of Serebryakova's paintings in Moscow, Leningrad and Kyiv in 1966. Albums with her work are sold in millions of copies around the world.
Finally, such a coveted fame comes to her, and this fame came from abandoned Russia - after an exhibition in the USSR, a real hunt around the world begins for the artist's canvases. Serebriakova is compared with Renoir and Botticelli.
She never had time to gain the independence and financial well-being that she had achieved all her life.
But international fame remained.
Today, her paintings are sold not just "for a lot". In 2015, Sleeping Girl was sold at auction for $5.9 million.
Life is terribly unfair. Or fair? I have no answer.
Paintings by Zinaida Serebryakova
Sleeping peasant woman
Canvas bleaching
In the ballet dressing room ("Big Ballerinas")
sleeping model
At breakfast
Portrait of B.A. Serebryakova
Resting black woman
Lying Moroccan woman
Portrait of Vera Fokina
sleeping girl
Nude
House of cards
Greenery in autumn
Behind the toilet. self-portrait
illuminated by the sun
Self-portrait dressed as Pierrot
Portrait of Olga Konstantinovna Lansere
Bather
Girl with a candle. self-portrait
Nurse with child
Ballet restroom. Snowflakes
Self portrait with daughters
Katya with dolls
Serebryakova Katya in a blue dress near the Christmas tree
Katya with a still life
Portrait of A.D. Danilova
Portrait of V.K. Ivanova dressed as a Spaniard
Son Alexander in carnival costume
Z. E. Serebryakova grew up in an atmosphere of art. Her father, E. A. Lansere, was a sculptor, and she was brought up (after the death of her father in 1886) together with her brother, the future graphic artist E. E. Lansere, in the family of her grandfather (by mother), N. L. Benois, Petersburg architect.
She did not receive a systematic art education and owed her enviable professionalism primarily to the influence of the environment, and even more - to her own efforts and the most severe demands on herself.
She continuously worked on location, mainly in Neskuchny, a small estate near Kharkov, making sketches, landscapes and portraits, among which images of local peasants predominated.
Serebryakova first came out to the public in 1910, showing fourteen works at the 7th exhibition of the CPX, including a small painting "Behind the toilet" (1909), which was a self-portrait. There was so much spiritual freshness and clarity in this picture, it was executed so confidently and maturely that they immediately started talking about Serebryakova as an extraordinary phenomenon.
"Behind the toilet. Self-portrait»
1909.
Canvas on cardboard, oil 65 x 75
Moscow
In 1912, she joined the "World of Art" association, with many members of which she had friendly and family relations. In 1914, Serebryakova spent several months in Italy (the trip was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I), where she closely studied the art of the Renaissance. In the same year she created charming picture"Children", group portrait their children.
"At breakfast"
1914
Oil on canvas 107 x 88.5
State Tretyakov Gallery
"Girls at the piano"
1922.
"Katya with a still life"
1923.
"Self-portrait with daughters" 1921
Katya in blue at the Christmas tree
"Tata and Katya at the mirror"
But the main forces of the artist were given to plots from peasant life. The paintings "Bath" (1912, 1913) were a spectacle filled with harmony of the mental and physical, the charm of unfeigned cheerfulness.
"Bath"
1912
"Bath"
1913
Canvas, oil. 135 x 174 cm
"Braiding"
"Bath."
1926
They were followed by the paintings "Peasants" (1914; a fragment of a large composition destroyed by the artist herself), "Harvest" (1915), two versions of "Whitening the Canvas" and "Sleeping Peasant Woman" (all 1917).
"Sleeping peasant woman"
"Nurse with child"
1912
"Harvest"
1915.
Canvas, oil. 142 x 177 cm
Odessa Art Museum 
"Peasants"
1914.
"Whitening the Canvas"
1917.
Canvas, oil. 141.8 x 173.6 cm
State Tretyakov Gallery 
"Shoeing Peasant Woman"
1915
These works are now perceived as a requiem for the best that distinguished the Russian pre-revolutionary village. Long-term observations of village life here were enriched by the influence poetry A. G. Venetsianova, whom Serebryakova loved very much, and the experience of great masters Italian Renaissance. The artist had an undoubted gift as a muralist, but life circumstances did not allow her to realize this gift.
Drawing on the art of antiquity and the Renaissance with their cult beautiful person, it seeks to display timeless aesthetic values. Following the tradition implies a clear drawing, accurate transmission of anatomy and plastics human body and Serebryakova handles it like a brilliant master. She managed to create a vital and at the same time romantic image of a young woman. Warm colors convey the fullness of the model's body, which stands out clearly against the background of cold shades of grass and sky. The woman seems gloriously glowing from within. Everything in the picture is set in motion: running clouds, grass bending under the wind, developing hair of a bather. We see and feel the author's striving for the ideal, for the beautiful, that inner closeness of Serebryakova to symbolist aesthetics, which is aimed not at denying reality, but at its most reliable image.
"Bather"
1911
Canvas, oil. 98 x 89 cm
State Russian Museum
The revolution invaded her life in a dramatic way. In March 1919, her husband died, and she was left a widow with four children, first living in Neskuchny, and when the estate was burned down, she moved to Kharkov, where she worked odd jobs. At the end of 1920, Serebryakova was offered a professorship at the former Academy of Arts, and she moved to Petrograd, but due to illness, she never started teaching. Then she worked briefly in the workshop visual aids. Finally, she managed to return to creativity - she painted portraits, most often of her loved ones.
"Portrait of B.A. Serebryakov"
Around 1905 
"Portrait of B.A. Serebryakov, the husband of the artist"
1908
"In the meadow. Boring»
1912.
Canvas, oil. 62.8 x 84.3 cm
Nizhny Novgorod Art Museum 
"Girl with a candle. Self-portrait»
1911
"Portrait of B.A. Serebryakov"
1913
"Portrait of E.E. Zelenkova, nee Lansere, sister of the artist"
1913
"Portrait of O.K. Lansere"
"Portrait of Olga Konstantinovna Lansere"
"Sleeping Katya"
"In the kitchen Portrait of Katya"
Among the images of children, two paintings are distinguished by their sadness. This is a symbolic canvas "House of Cards" and "Boys in sailor vests" through and through. In the year of their creation, tragic event- in April 1919, the husband of Zinaida Serebryakova, Boris Anatolyevich, died of typhus. Grief and the heavy need to raise 4 children alone and support her mother fell on the fragile shoulders of Zinaida Evgenievna, now she had to take care of the family alone. At the end of 1919 they would have to leave native home in Neskuchny due to the beginning of robberies and pogroms. Subsequently, the estate will be looted and burned. The painting "House of Cards" reflects the thoughts of the mother about the children, put by harsh circumstances on the brink of survival. An expression of confusion froze on the faces of the children, they are sad and concentrated, their eyes are directed at the house of cards crumbling in their hands. The game suddenly reminded me of tragic circumstances their lives, about easily destroyed unsteady happiness...
"House of cards"
1919
Canvas, oil. 65 x 75.5 cm
State Russian Museum 
"Nude"
1920
Canvas, oil. 76.5 x 101 cm
Donetsk Regional Art Museum
Passion for ballet prompted her to create several small paintings and portraits of ballerinas.
Despite difficult conditions life, she, as before, knows how to see beauty in her surroundings, love loved ones, admire her friends. In her works, Zinaida Evgenievna strives to capture the external and internal beauty of a person, his dignity and nobility. During these years she created a series of works, dedicated to artists ballet. After Tatyana's daughter entered the Petrograd Choreographic School, Serebryakova had the opportunity to go backstage at the theater and make sketches. Her new sublime images will be connected with the theater... 
"Ballet dressing room. Snowflakes"
"Girls-sylphs (Ballet Chopiniana)" 1924
"Portrait of Valentina Konstantinovna Ivanova dressed as a Spaniard"
"Self-portrait dressed as Pierrot"
In 1924, Serebryakova left for Paris, intending to earn some money there and return to her homeland, but soon the return became impossible. Paris did not live up to expectations: she worked, still not sparing herself, but this did not bring prosperity and only allowed her to maintain life at the level of decent modesty, and what came out from under her brush was noticeably inferior to what was done in the pre-revolutionary years. The reason was not only in everyday difficulties, but mainly in the fact that she had lost her native soil.
"Helene de Roy Princess Jean de Merode"
"Princess Irina Yusupova"
"Portrait of a lady with a dog. I.Velan»
1926
At the end of her life, fate gave her several joyful moments. She met with her eldest son Eugene and eldest daughter Tatyana: in the 1960s, their arrival in Paris became possible. And in 1965, the Union of Artists of the USSR organized her large exhibition in Moscow, Kyiv and Leningrad. The exhibition also featured paintings painted in exile. The success of the exhibition was enormous, and it is difficult to imagine greater joy for the Russian artist.
She died on September 19, 1967.
Zinaida Evgenievna was buried at the Russian cemetery of Saint-Genevieve de Bois near Paris.
"This is a man's, man's world" - James Brown once sang, saying that the world is held by men. The history of painting is an indirect confirmation of this: try to close your eyes and name at least ten women artists of world renown. The classical representation of a woman in painting has always been unanimous: it is a muse, a model, a girlfriend of a male artist, whose image inspired and stood at the center of his work. Among the first female artists were brave women, ready to challenge society: they had to not only resist the male creative diaspora, but also establish themselves as an artist of the same high level.
One of these women was Zinaida Serebryakova: she led a number of the first women painters who entered the history of Russian painting. Despite her image of a fragile, feminine and young beauty, Serebryakova's fate was difficult, full of hardships and difficulties, and her work during her lifetime did not receive universal recognition.
Early years
Zinaida Serebryakova was born in St. Petersburg. The future artist began to draw from an early age. Her whole family came from a creative dynasty: father Eugene Lansere was a famous sculptor, grandfather Nikolai Benois was a famous architect, and mother Ekaterina Lansere was engaged in graphic pattern. Parents supported the children's creative endeavors in every possible way - from an early age, little Zina attends exhibitions in the Hermitage, goes to theaters for ballets, studies academic drawing and very enthusiastically reads large and rare books on art from the home library.
In 1886, misfortune befell the house - the girl's father, Eugene Lansere, died, and the family was forced to return to St. Petersburg. There Serebryakova graduated from the gymnasium and entered the art workshop, where Osip Braz and Ilya Repin became her mentors. Like the rest of the students, she went to the Hermitage and made copies from the canvases of the old masters. The girl continued to practice and, staying in Italy in 1902-1903, made sketches and sketches. Subsequently, this classical school” of painting will also be manifested in the manner of the artist: her nude models refer us to the best examples of the Renaissance.
"Young peasant woman in the kitchen" 1900s | "Portrait of M.E. Lansere (the artist's sister)" 1901
In 1905, two years after returning from Italy, the girl married her cousin, Boris Serebryakov, with whose name she would later go down in the history of Russian painting. After the wedding, the young family left for France, where the artist attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, making many sketches and drawings en plein air. A year later, the couple returned to St. Petersburg, to the Neskuchnoye estate, where Serebryakova worked tirelessly: sketches, sketches, domestic scenes. It was here that she would later form as an artist, creating the most magnificent and famous works that, after her death, would receive worldwide recognition.
"Terrace" 1910s
"Apples on branches" 1910s
"Cabbage. The village of Neskuchnoye" 1909
"In the meadow. Boring» 1910s
Beauty Russia
Zinaida Serebryakova can rightly be considered a truly Russian artist: her canvases reflect an immeasurable love for the motherland. Her works are windows into the boundless world of Russian nature, which allow us to admire its enchanting beauty, fields strewn with flowers and gold. Simple and everyday scenes - rural, street, domestic - these are the main plots of the artist, from which she drew her inspiration. She had a special love for the peasant way of life: her series of “peasant” canvases, written from 1914 to 1917, tells about life in the Russian village, about the everyday life of hardworking peasants, about the charming simplicity of their life. The titles of the works are uncomplicated and open, like their characters - these are "Peasants", "Harvest", "Sleeping Peasant Woman".
"Peasants" 1914
"Harvest" 1915
"Sleeping Peasant Woman" 1917
Particularly significant was the painting "Whitening of the Canvas" (1917), where Serebryakova proved herself not only as a master of composition, but also as a talented muralist. The work was created as part of an epic cycle dedicated to peasant life, which also included the written “Harvest” and the planned “Sheep Shearing”. Along with female characters in the paintings of the artist, there is always another female image- the image of the beautiful Russia, its nature, its folk flavor.
"Whitening of the canvas" 1917
Zinaida Serebryakova gave the world a real Russian beauty - feminine, girlishly mischievous, tender, with a French flair in her eyes and a mysterious half-smile in the style of Rokotov. She painted the women of the most different professions and ages, including herself, breathing into all her images the invisible and alluring freshness of youth, that romance that she lacked during the difficult life path. In other words, she painted her desired life and herself in it. This was the famous self-portrait of Serebryakova "Behind the toilet", created in 1909: it reflects the state and mood of the artist, in which she would like to live. On her bright face there is a clear smile and the joy of realizing her life, beauty and youth, and the traditional depiction of painting objects is inferior to the depiction of attributes. female beauty- jewelry, perfume, charming boxes. Thus, Serebryakova seems to deliberately move away from the world of artists, as if declaring: I am first and foremost a woman - beautiful, young, eager to live. The picture of the young artist became her pass to the world of great masters: in 1910, after the exhibition of the Union of Russian Artists, the work was acquired by the Tretyakov Gallery, where the self-portrait is to this day. So the girl's talent for the first time gets its recognition.
"Behind the toilet. Self-portrait" 1908-1909
hard years
Serebryakova deliberately avoided modernism, remaining unshakably true to her style even in the hungry time of the revolution. Not wanting to make an instrument out of your creativity ideological struggle, she resisted with all her might the attempts of the authorities to impose futurism on her. Watching how art becomes a slave at the feet of power, Zinaida mournfully reflected in her diary: “Life now seems to me a meaningless fuss and a lie - now everyone’s brains are very clogged, and now there is nothing sacred in the world, everything is ruined, debunked, trampled in the dirt…” The shortage of paints forced her to create with improvised materials, and the exhibits of the archaeological museum in the Kharkov province became a field for creativity - while working there during this period, the artist continued to make graphic sketches. In 1916 Serebryakova became a member decoration Kazansky railway station, where she was attracted by A. Benois.
Panel sketches for the Kazansky railway station in Moscow, 1916
Life became unbearably difficult, money for food was sorely lacking. A new series of difficulties soon followed. In 1919, a terrible misfortune happened in Serebryakova's life: her beloved husband died of typhus. Zinaida is left alone with her mother and small children in her arms. Grief from loss exacerbates general mood society: the revolution takes people's bread, livelihood and all hope of life. That fresh, youthful feeling that was born when looking at Serebryakova's canvases was replaced by pain and a breakdown: fragile female happiness crumbled like a house of cards. It is this image that will give the name to one of Serebryakova's most famous paintings - here it is, the "House of Cards", which is being built by her children, who were left without a father. Their eyes are lowered, their faces are in humble sadness, they are building a turret of cards that can crumble at any moment, as a person's life can end ... Today, the work is in the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.
"House of Cards" 1919
Lack of funds and a burned-out estate forced Serebriakova in the 1920s. to return to St. Petersburg, to my grandfather's apartment. Here the little daughter of the artist Tatyana begins to study ballet, and her mother often visits the theater with her and constantly works: so, as a result of three years of fruitful creativity, Serebryakova created a number of wonderful canvases - compositions and portraits - on a ballet theme.
"Ballet room. Snowflakes" 1923
"Girls-sylphs" 1924
"Portrait of A.D. Danilova in theatrical costume» 1922 | "Portrait of VK Ivanova dressed as a Spaniard" 1924 | "Portrait of E.N. Heidenreich in red" 1923
Departure to a foreign land
After the revolution in the country began again And gain popularity shows and vernissages, works Russian artists began to exhibit abroad. Serebryakova was no exception: in 1924, her paintings were appreciated by visitors to the exhibition of Russian visual arts in America. The works were a huge success and soon they were all sold out. This encouraged the artist: in the same year she decided to go to Paris and work there. However After some time Serebryakova understands that she deceived. Her next exhibition abroad took place only in 1927. There were always not enough orders, and the art that you liked local public, Serebryakova considered vulgar kitsch, idle bad taste. He didn't have that sincerity e go, Russian, the spirituality that she sang in her work. For the rest of her life, Zinaida wanted to return back - to her children, mother, to that life in St. Petersburg, with which her creative path began, but until the end of her days she remained "locked" in France: the war and the occupation of Paris made it impossible to return to Russia. The artist will describe her boundless nostalgia at the end of her life in her diary: “Nothing came out of my life here, and I often think that I did an irreparable thing, breaking away from the soil ...”. Serebryakova died in Paris at the age of 82, never returning to her homeland. Her nostalgia for everything Russian is still alive in her amazing works, which have become messengers of the image of Beauty-Russia around the world.
