Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin's painting "Bathing the Red Horse" brought fame to the artist, made his name known throughout Russia and caused a lot of controversy. It was a landmark work in the artist's work. Painted in 1912, it was shown at the World of Art exhibition, and the organizers of the exhibition hung the painting not in the general exhibition, but above the front door - over the entire exhibition, "like a banner around which one can unite." But if some perceived "Bathing the Red Horse" as a program manifesto, as a banner, for others this canvas was a target.
Until the last moment, K. Petrov-Vodkin himself was afraid that the picture would not be exhibited for public viewing, since even then he guessed what interpretations were possible linking the image of the red horse and the fate of Russia. Indeed, this work was perceived by contemporaries as a kind of sign, a metaphorical expression of the post-revolutionary (1905) and pre-revolutionary (1917) era, as a kind of foreknowledge and premonition of future events. But if contemporaries only felt the prophetic nature of "Bathing the Red Horse", then the descendants already confidently and confidently declared the significance of the picture, declaring it "the petrel of the revolution in painting."
Work on the painting "Bathing the Red Horse"
Work on the painting "Bathing the Red Horse" began in the winter (or early spring) of 1912. The artist began to write his first sketches on the farm "Mishkina Pristan" in the Saratov province. Subsequently, K. Petrov-Vodkin himself recalled: “In the village there was a bay horse, old, broken on all legs, but with a good muzzle. I started writing bathing in general. I had three options. In the process of work, I made more and more demands for a purely pictorial meaning, which would equalize form and content and give the picture a social significance.
The first version (subsequently destroyed by the author himself) was already close to the final solution in terms of composition. It was an almost real scene of bathing horses and boys on the Volga, well known to the artist since childhood. And then a magnificent, bluish-green lake appeared before his eyes ... The frozen sky hung low, bare trees swayed their branches above the brown earth. The sun now peeped out, then hid, and the first blows of thunder scattered across the sky. The horses spun with their ears and carefully, as in a circus arena, moved with their front legs. The boys whooped, fidgeted on the shiny backs of the horses, beat them with their bare heels in the sides ...
The artist's hand slowly sketched horses, naked children, a lake, sky, earth and distant hills. Some kind of vague vision suddenly crept into this real and completely cloudless picture: behind the distant hills, the artist suddenly saw a large, painfully familiar and native country. Dark crowds of people with red banners were walking along it, and others were meeting them with guns ...
In the surviving preparatory drawings for the picture, at first the most ordinary, even seedy village horse was depicted. There was not even a hint of the image of a proud horse in it. The transformation of the old bay horse into a majestic red horse happened gradually. K. Petrov-Vodkin, of course, took into account the broad philosophical generalization of this image (Pushkin’s “Where are you galloping, proud horse?”, Gogol’s bird-troika, Blok’s “The steel mare is flying, flying ...”, etc.) and also sought to “elevate "his horse, give him an ideal, prophetic image.
At first, the horse was thought to be red, but then the red color, brought to the limit and cleared of any interaction with other colors, becomes red. True, some said that such horses do not exist, but the artist received this clue - the color of the horse - from ancient Russian icon painters. So, on the icon "The Miracle of the Archangel Michael" the horse is depicted completely red.
The epic power of a fiery horse, the tender fragility and peculiar sophistication of a pale young man, the sharp wave breaks in a small bay, the smooth arc of the pink coast - this is what this unusually multifaceted and especially sharpened picture is made up of. On it, almost the entire plane of the canvas is filled with a huge, powerful figure of a red horse with a young rider sitting on it. The fateful significance of the horse was conveyed by K. Petrov-Vodkin not only by the sovereign, solemn step and the very posture of the horse, but also by the humanly proud landing of his head on a long, swan-like curved neck. The burning of the red color is alarming and joyfully victorious, and at the same time the viewer is tormented by the question: “What does all this mean?” Why is everything around so painfully motionless: dense waters, a pink shore in the distance, horses and boys in the depths of the picture, and the very tread of the red horse?
The movement in the picture is really only indicated, but not expressed, the colorful spots seem to be frozen on the canvas. It is this stiffness that gives the viewer a feeling of vague anxiety, the inexorability of fate, the breath of the future.
In contrast to the horse, the young rider, a naked teenage boy, seems fragile and weak. And although his hand holds the reins, he himself obeys the confident step of the horse. No wonder the art critic V. Lipatov emphasized that "the horse is majestic, monumental, full of mighty strength, rush it - and you can not keep its indomitable run." The power of the horse, its restrained strength and enormous internal energy are precisely emphasized by the fragility of the rider, his dreamy detachment, as if he is in a special inner world.
“Bathing of the red horse” was compared, as mentioned above, “with a steppe mare”, identifying Russia in A. Blok, its origins were found in Russian folklore, considering the progenitors of his punishing horses George the Victorious, and K. Petrov-Vodkin himself was called Old Russian master, somehow miraculously caught in the future.
The artist abandoned the linear perspective, his red horse seems to be superimposed (according to the application principle) on the image of the lake. And it seems to the viewer that the red horse and rider are, as it were, no longer in the picture, but in front of it - in front of the viewer and in front of the canvas itself.
In this work, K. Petrov-Vodkin tried not so much to convey the color of this or that object, but to reveal the meaning of the depicted through color. Therefore, the horse in the foreground is red, the other horses in the distance are pink, tan and white. Resurrecting and restoring the traditions of ancient Russian icon painting, K. Petrov-Vodkin paints his picture loudly, cleanly, colliding colors, and not mixing them. The flaming red color of the horse, the pale goldenness of the youthful body, the piercing blue waters, the pinkish sand, the fresh greenery of the bushes - everything on this canvas serves both the unexpectedness of the composition and the master's own pictorial techniques.
Perhaps it was important for the artist to tell not so much about the horse, the boy and the lake, but about his own (sometimes not clear even to himself) vague premonitions, which at that time did not even have a name. The red color of the horse speaks of passion, spiritual flame, beauty; about the cold, indifferent and eternal beauty of nature - pure and transparent emerald waters ...
Classics about the painting by Kuzmv Petrov-Vodkin “Bathing the Red Horse”.
This is how the classical poets spoke about the painting by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin “Bathing the Red Horse”.
One of the first responses to "Bathing the Red Horse" belongs to the poet Rurik Ivnev:
Blood-red horse, striving for the waves of the sea
With a languid youth on a convex back,
You are like a silent fire, spinning around me
You know a lot, you whisper a lot to me.
The painting by K. Petrov-Vodkin also struck the young Sergei Yesenin, who in 1919 wrote his Pantocrator under the double impression of both the picture and R. Ivnev's poems. And a few years later he will remember:
Now I have become more stingy in desires.
My life, or you dreamed of me.
Like I'm a spring echoing early
Ride on a pink horse.
The further fate of the painting "Bathing the Red Horse".
... The further fate of the painting "Bathing the Red Horse" is full of a wide variety of adventures. In 1914, she was sent to the Russian department of the Baltic Exhibition in the Swedish city of Malmö. For participation in this exhibition, K. Petrov-Vodkin received a medal and a certificate from the Swedish king Gustav V. The First World War, then the outbreak of the revolution and the civil war led to the fact that the painting remained in Sweden for a long time. Only after the end of World War II did negotiations begin to return her to her homeland, although the director of the Swedish museum offered the artist's widow to sell Bathing the Red Horse. Maria Fedorovna refused, and only in 1950 the canvas was returned to the Soviet Union (along with ten other works by K. Petrov-Vodkin). From the artist's widow, the painting ended up in the collection of the famous collector K. K. Basevich, who in 1961 presented it as a gift to the Tretyakov Gallery.
And once again I want to return to the ancient image of a horse in Russian art. Our ancestors believed that the sun rides a horse, and sometimes even takes on its appearance, that if you draw the sun in the form of a red horse, it will protect us from misfortunes and troubles, which is why Russian people composed fairy tales about Sivka-burka and decorated the roofs of their huts wooden skates. Isn't this what Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin's painting "Bathing the Red Horse" says?
“Bathing the Red Horse” by Petrov-Vodkin is a painting known as a symbol of the era, a symbol of the country, a symbol of the times. The life of the artist coincided with the turning points of the state, with changes in Russian and European art.
The fate of Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin remains a mystery, like many of his works. His paintings convey events, warn, give hope, inspire faith. It is one thing to survive the changes, another thing is to feel them, get sick of them and make them the crown of creation. He did not expect peace from life, because he lived in a rebellious time. He remained on the crest of events, as if protecting the souls, feelings, minds of people with his creativity.
One should look up to such great masters. Thanks to his bright mind, subtle sensitive nature, constant zeal for new knowledge, he discovered in himself the most talented painter, writer, musician ... His relationship with his parents, wife, and daughter is of particular admiration. In the formation of this outstanding personality, the origins of morality played a role: family, family values, family way of life ...
Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin was born on October 24, 1878 in the provincial town of Khvalynsk, Saratov province. The artist's father was a shoemaker. He was taken as a soldier in 1881, and soon his wife Anna Panteleevna and her son Kuzma moved to live with him on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, near the barracks of the Novocherkassk regiment. After the service, the family returned to Khvalynsk. Mother Anna Panteleevna began to work as a servant in the Mikhailov family and live with her son in the wing of the manor house.
During his school years, Kuzma spent all his free time in the workshop of the Old Believer icon painter Philip Parfenych. The boy never thought of becoming a painter. After graduating from a four-year city school and working in ship repair shops, he decided to enter the Samara railway school. Exams at the school failed, which was the reason to take up another kind of activity - "arts". In winter, Kuzma carried out random orders from Samara signers. In the spring of 1894, he came to the painting and drawing classes of F. E. Burov, who was already seriously ill at that time. The painter F. E. Burov, in love with art, instilled this love in his students, but in 1895 he died and Petrov-Vodkin returned to Khvalynsk again.
In his native town, the young painter was lucky. The sister of the hostess, a noble lady from St. Petersburg, Yu.I. Kazarina, came to the Mikhailov family, where Anna Panteleevna served, who decided to build a summer house near the city of Khvalynsk and ordered the famous architect R.F. The Mikhailov family told the architect about the artistic abilities of the young man who grew up before their eyes. Seeing the drawings, R. F. Meltzer offered support to Petrov-Vodkin in his further education. In August 1895, the Khvalynsk tradesman passed the exams at the Central School of Technical Drawing of Baron Stieglitz. However, the young provincial very quickly cools off for classes at the school, where they trained more artisans (“applied workers”) than artists, and in 1897 he was transferred to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (MUZHVZ), where they recruited students V. A. Serov, K A. Korovin, P. P. Trubetskoy.
At MUZhVZ, Petrov-Vodkin was one of the best students in drawing and general subjects. Possessing an inquisitive mind, he sought to join various fields of knowledge, attended courses in physics and chemistry, instead of concentrating completely on painting. In 1899, in his letter to his mother, he wrote:
“How many interesting things were revealed to me, which I knew only by hearsay.”
Combining literature and fine arts, for some time he dreamed of making literature the main craft of life. Passion for literature never left him alone and was expressed later in the form of literary works - autobiographical stories.
After graduating from college in 1905, Petrov-Vodkin went on his first trip abroad to Italy. Returning to St. Petersburg, the artist plunges into the production of his play "Sacrificial" in the Gaideburov Mobile Theater. The success of the play inspires the artist to further work on it. Arriving in Paris, Petrov-Vodkin works on a play and is intensely engaged in painting and drawing. In a boarding house in the suburbs of Paris, where the artist lived, he met the daughter of the hostess, Maria Jovanovich. Soon, young people get married at the city hall and move to Paris.
In 1907 the artist travels to North Africa.
In 1908, Petrov-Vodkin returned to St. Petersburg, where he took part in the Golden Fleece exhibition and joined the World of Art association. In 1912, the artist presents his famous painting Bathing a Red Horse at an exhibition.
The revolution of 1917 was accepted by the artist with enthusiasm. In the first years of the revolution, he joined the Council for the Arts, headed by A. M. Gorky, the commission for the reorganization of the Academy of Arts. In 1918 he became professor-head of the workshop of the painting department of the Higher Art School. In 1921, he was sent to Turkestan as a member of a scientific and artistic expedition to assess the state of crumbling architectural monuments.
In 1922, a daughter, Elena, was born in the family of Petrov-Vodkin. Kuzma Sergeevich wrote to his mother:
“I can’t describe what I feel when I look at this sucker with a pink, clean muzzle, with sparkling eyes, kissing the velvet of her hairs covering her head.”
The subsequent years of the painter's life were spent traveling and working. In 1924-1925 the artist and his family were on a business trip in France. In 1927 he was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis. The disease unsettled the artist, depriving him of hope for recovery. In 1928 he exhibited his works at the Venice International Exhibition, in 1936 his last two solo exhibitions took place in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
A serious illness prevented the artist from realizing his ideas and plans.
Work on the painting began in 1914 in Khvalynsk. The picture is based on the impressions of the provincial life of the author. Descending from the slope of the young women. A scarf is tied around the head of one of the women, like a crown on an icon around the head of a saint. A little girl is standing next to the women. The artist depicted her as a reduced adult, neglecting the proportions of a child's body. According to icon-painting traditions, the Virgin Mary is also depicted on the icons "Entering into the Temple". The eyes of the beautiful heroines are averted. The Vodka flavor attracts attention, where three primary colors are highlighted - red, blue, yellow. Open, bright colors give the work a monumental and decorative effect.
The picture resembles the frescoes of the Early Renaissance masters, seen by the artist during a trip to Italy.
"Herring" (1918)
The picture "Herring" reflects the military communist era. This is one of the most expressive monuments to the Petrograd herring of 1918. Two potatoes, a piece of bread and a herring are located separately from each other on a red tablecloth. The artist deliberately laid out the objects of the still life freely in order to give them significance. In front of us is a skinny herring with traces of rust, which has set the teeth on edge with its appearance, and yet is greedily eaten. Rye bread lies soldered. This is another sign of that time - the bread was not cut into pieces so that it would not be confused into crumbs. The strict amount of potatoes is reminiscent of the strict restraint in food during revolutionary everyday life.
Herring was a gastronomic symbol of that time. She was “taken out”, “received”, “given out”, exchanged for galoshes, woolen things, firewood. During the years 1918-1920, the herring went down in history as a potbelly stove, melted by old furniture and warming only part of the room, like A. A. Blok's poem "The Twelve".
Every story and story written about that time speaks of a herring. Here is how vividly Evgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin wrote about her in his story “X”:
“Everyone from eighteen to fifty was busy with peaceful revolutionary work - preparing herring cutlets, herring stew, herring sweets for dinner.”
Another picture of the era. Before us is revolutionary Petrograd: empty streets, gloomy houses, people in miserable, worn-out clothes, busy exchanging things for food and begging for alms.
The walls of the buildings are pasted over with proclamations fearfully bypassed by the townspeople. Behind the broken glass in the windows, deep darkness protrudes.
From the memoirs of Vladislav Khodasevich, who lived during the years of war communism in Petrograd:
“Houses, even the most ordinary ones, received the austerity and harmony that only palaces had previously possessed. Petersburg became depopulated ... and it turned out that immobility was more attached to it than movement.
Above all this disorder stands a woman with a baby in her arms. Her face is associated with the face of the Mother of God. She hugs her child to her chest, symbolizing the guardian of the future, the protector of children thrown under the wheels of history along with families, hopes and fears.
“1919. Anxiety" (1934)
The time of action of the picture is already mentioned in the title itself, but the viewer immediately guesses in this work “a suitcase with a double bottom”. In the year the picture was written, the country lived in the same anxiety, fear for the future of children and the lives of loved ones.
Before us is the family of an accountant or a petty clerk. A woman stands motionless in the center of the room, listening to the night noise in the courtyard of the house. The woman hugs her daughter by the shoulders, sheltering her from the disturbing darkness. Will she put her daughter to bed tonight? The little girl became a victim of fear. Anticipating imminent trouble, she lowered her hands from hopelessness and hopelessness.
The father, who pushed back the curtain and leaned his forehead against the window, understands that a threat looms over his family nest. And only a tiny son sleeps sweetly in his bed.
A crumpled newspaper hangs from a chair, in which the word "enemy" is clearly read. This word caught up unexpectedly, like a lightning strike. It ran in red in every newspaper in 1919 and 1934.
In anticipation of uninvited guests, time, both in the family and in the country, seemed to have stopped. Even the silence was disturbing. Anxiety has become the state of the whole country.
"Bathing the Red Horse" (1912)
The painting "Bathing the Red Horse" became a milestone both in the history of Russian painting and in the history of Russia. "Bathing the red horse" was a symbol of the upcoming changes in the country. The author was surprised at its new sound at the beginning of the First World War:
"So that's why I wrote my Red Horse!"
Back then, in 1912, one could only foresee what awaited Russia. The organizers of the exhibition "World of Art" possessed forebodings, who hung the picture over the entrance like a scarlet banner.
This enigmatic picture combines the traditions of icon painting (the image of St. George the Victorious) and modernism.
The fiery horse, descended from ancient icons, is inspired by the icon painting tradition: in icon painting, the horse of St. George the Victorious symbolized the light force that conquers evil.
The first drafts for Bathing the Red Horse date back to the summer of 1912. Petrov-Vodkin made sketches from a horse, whose name was Boy. The artist saw this horse on the farm Mishkina Pristan near the village of Gusevka, Tsaritsyno district, where he and his wife stayed with the family of his teacher Natalia Grekova (daughter of General Pyotr Grekov). The horse was very liked by the wife of Petrov-Vodkin, Maria Fedorovna, who took long walks on it. In the autumn, when Maria Fedorovna left to prepare an apartment for the winter in St. Petersburg, Petrov-Vodkin wrote to her about the Boy:
“After the session, I caressed him a lot, - and for you; I asked him if he had forgotten you - it moved him to tears. No, really, one might think that he is yearning, remembering walks with the lady of his heart ... "
From the artist's memoirs:
“I started writing bathing in general. I had three options. In the process of work, I made more and more demands for a purely pictorial meaning, which would equalize form and content and give the picture a social significance.
Upon his return to St. Petersburg, the artist visited his parents in Khvalynsk, where he painted a boy riding a horse. The model for the young man was Shura's cousin.
There is a version that the artist captured in the picture his student Sergei Ivanovich Kalmykov, who looked very much like a representative of St. Petersburg bohemia. The contrast between the powerful, romantically beautiful horse and the refined young rider, as if coming from another world, remains a mystery.
Already in St. Petersburg, Petrov-Vodkin was struck by the color and composition of the Novgorod icons of the 15th century, cleared from later recordings. Thanks to the meeting with the Novgorod icons, the “Red Horse” turned red, and the picture acquired a symbolic sound.
At that time, the artist did not imagine that his canvas would be destined to become a symbol of the era. For a long time the canvas was abroad. Since the spring of 1914, it was exhibited at the International Baltic Exhibition, held in Sweden, and in connection with the outbreak of the First World War, it remained there. At the request of the artist's wife in 1950, the painting returned to Russia.
In this main work, the entire Vodka coloristic (three-color) system is presented, which determined the future work of the artist. It is known that Petrov-Vodkin endowed each national culture with “its own” color. In his opinion, red is the main color of Russia, complementing the green of the fields. He judged culture by the degree of its brilliance.
This work has a spherical perspective. The horizon is not visible here. The river, rising, forms a "vertical" background, does not rush into the distance. Its water swirls like thunderclouds ready to burst into lightning. From the legs of the retreating horse, formidable waves diverge, like cut folds of a heavy canvas.
The taut reins in the thin hand of the young man are also a symbol of the upcoming changes.
In Soviet times, the picture was interpreted as an omen of the coming revolutionary fires. Some researchers suggest a more complex, poignantly tragic subtext: the offensive of the power of a powerful folk element on the refined world of the intelligentsia, divorced from real life.
"Our Lady Tenderness of Evil Hearts" (1914-1915)
Petrov-Vodkin's acquaintance with ancient Russian icon painting happened in childhood, in his native Volga city of Khvalynsk. Since then, the artist has faithfully served the spiritual and stylistic traditions of ancient Russian icon painting.
While studying in St. Petersburg and Moscow, he acquired his own style of painting, which combined the traditions of ancient Russian icon painting and the achievements of Western European modernists. In the painting "Our Lady of the Tenderness of Evil Hearts" the painter's emotional response to the events of the First World War is conveyed.
In a traditional gesture, the raised hands of the Mother of God, the intercessor and patroness of people, are shown. The face resembles the bright face of the Virgin and the appearance of an intellectually refined and suffering contemporary of the artist. The Mother of God is depicted against the background of scenes of the Passion of Christ: she knows the future fate of her son.
The creative path of Petrov-Vodkin
The first steps in art began in the Old Believer icon-painting workshop of the city of Khvalynsk, when the artist took a brush in his hands for the first time, trying to repeat the work of icon-painting masters. Then his life was full of uncertainties, but the opportunity to touch the "miracle" shocked the boy.
The unfortunate incident with admission to the Samara railway school forced the young artist to turn to painting. In 1894, having entered the Burov Drawing and Painting Classes, Petrov-Vodkin learned the necessary basics.
From the artist's memoirs:
“Until the end of our stay at Burov, we never tried to approach nature, due to which we did not receive the real value of knowledge ...”.
The most useful were the years of study at the Stieglitz School, where drawing was considered the main subject. At first, the young man was known as the best student, but two years later, he escaped from German austerity to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.
The Moscow artistic life of that time was in full swing. The students of the Moscow School, who did not accept realistic painting in the spirit of the late Wanderers, sought and created new means of expression, forged their own artistic worldview. These searches led to the selection of "new idols". Borisov-Musatov and became idols for Petrov-Vodkin and his friends. Subsequently, Petrov-Vodkin said:
"Vrubel was our era."
The MUZHVZ students had a craving for exploring new horizons (Pavel Kuznetsov leaves for the north of Russia, Martiros Saryan - for Armenia ...) Our hero satisfied his passion for travel by trips to St. In 1901, a young man decided to ride a bicycle through Warsaw and Munich to Italy. In Munich, he was attracted by the school of Anton Ashbe. On the way, the cyclist made a stop in Dresden at the famous Art Gallery.
In the same year, Petrov-Vodkin got acquainted with the works of the French Impressionists (Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro) at the Eighth Art Exhibition. This acquaintance, according to the artist, "sowed in him discord with himself, and with Munich, and with the Moscow School."
The young painter was far from impressionism, and this meeting showed him the relativity of the ideals he served.
Moving from the general classes of the MUZHVZ to the workshop of V. A. Serov, the novice painter immediately impressed his mentor. Here is what V. A. Serov said to his student:
“You have a wonderful apparatus, it works exactly and perfectly. You know how to take nature and make a painting out of it.
In the summer of 1902, the artist gained his first experience in church art. He, along with other students (Kuznetsov, Utkin), was sent to paint one of the churches in the city of Saratov. Borisov-Musatov, who blessed the young people for this work, highly appreciated their work:
“The painting of the entire Saratov church diocese, both old and new, is worth absolutely nothing in comparison with these paintings.”
However, the Saratov press saw in this mural a denigration of the faith, and by order of a meeting of the church court, the mural was destroyed. It is difficult to judge which of these "connoisseurs of art" was right!
The next experience was more successful. By order of Meltzer, Petrov-Vodkin made a large cardboard for the majolica image of the Mother of God for the facade of the church of the Orthopedic Clinical Institute. This image is still in the same place.
After graduating from college, the young painter found himself aloof from artistic life. He did not join the Blue Rose association of his comrades, although he had nothing to oppose their concept. Years remained before exact self-determination. Having made a trip to Italy, seeing the masters of the Proto-Renaissance and the Early Renaissance, he felt in their works closeness to his own frame of mind. The artist's style was honed after a visit to Paris, which became the main practical school, and also after a trip to North Africa.
Returning to St. Petersburg, Petrov-Vodkin exhibited his first work "Dream", where the author's desire for monumentality and symbolism is felt.
The early works of the artist, written by him at the MUZhVZ under the influence of Borisov-Musatov and all the trends that were then worn at the turn of the century, can only be considered a “pen test”. Beginning in 1906, "something symbolic" appears in the works written in Paris. They revealed the author's passion for French symbolism, in particular, the work of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Here is what the master recalled about his addiction thirty years later:
"Bypassing both the Louvre and the latest trends, I cowardly, as if from under the floor, admired Puvis de Chavannes."
In the works of Petrov-Vodkin of this period (“Coast” (1908), “Dream” (1910)) Puvi is visible: a tendency to plotlessness and significance of the image, faded “fresco” coloring, archaization, static poses.
A.N. Benois spoke about the monumentality of Vodkin's style as follows:
“I want Vodkin to achieve the walls and be given the opportunity to slowly, with peace of mind and with quiet concentration, express himself in a large scale, holistically and strictly.”
The years before the revolution and after it belong to the heyday of Vodkin's creativity.
After the revolution, Kuzma Sergeevich continued teaching at the Academy of Arts reorganized by him. Having become a professor-head of the workshop of the painting department of the Higher Art School, he could convey to the audience his theory of "three colors" and "spherical perspective". Not everyone was sympathetic to the professor. K. Somov refused to teach at this “renewed Academy”, speaking about Petrov-Vodkin as follows: “The same boring, stupid, pretentious fool ...”
According to Petrov-Vodkin, an event that happened to him in childhood prompted him to a spherical perspective. As a teenager, he climbed a hill and threw himself on the ground. Here is how the artist describes this case:
“Here, on the hill, when I fell to the ground, a completely new impression of the landscape flashed before me, which I never seem to have received ... I saw the earth as a planet. Pleased with the new cosmic discovery, I began to repeat the experiment with lateral movements of the head and vary the techniques. Outlining the entire horizon with my eyes, perceiving it as a whole, I found myself on a segment of a ball, and the ball was hollow, with a reverse concavity, I found myself, as it were, in a bowl covered with a three-quarter sphere of the firmament. An unexpected, completely new sphericity embraced me on this Zaton hill. The most dizzying thing about the capture was that the earth turned out to be not horizontal and the Volga held on, not overflowing on the sheer roundness of its array, and I myself did not lie, but, as it were, hung on the earth's wall.
This discovery was subsequently manifested in "Bathing the Red Horse" (1912), "Summer Noon" (1917), "First Steps" (1925).
At the height of Soviet power and avant-garde art, until the end of his life, Petrov-Vodkin wrote, exhibited his work and received commissions.
In the 1940s and 50s, his paintings disappeared from the expositions of major museums. TV 1966 held a posthumous exhibition of his paintings in the Russian Museum, after which the artist entered a number of outstanding Russian painters of the XX century.
The theme of motherhood in the work of Petrov-Vodkin
One of the main themes of the artist is the theme of motherhood. His interest in it arose along with a passion for icon painting, with a desire to “embrace” the fundamental concepts of human existence with art. In the work “Mother”, the heroine, breastfeeding a child, is shown as the queen of the world. A woman sits on a high hill against the backdrop of the endless expanses of the Volga. The boundless landscape gives majesty to the female image, lies like a green carpet under her bare feet.
The theme of motherhood is devoted to the painting “Morning. Bathers" (1917). This disturbing canvas anticipates the atmosphere of the "Petrograd Madonna". The artist depicted a defenseless mother and child, their sparsely arranged bodies and the soul glimmering in these fragile figures. 
This is interesting:
Petrov-Vodkin's painting can hardly be called a genre painting. In the painting "Behind the Samovar" (1926), which seems close to the philistine, there is no everyday meaning. It is not everyday life that catches the eye, but something disturbing, aching. One senses the fragility of relations, the fragility of all well-established everyday life, and it becomes scary for these two young people, for the effectively white porcelain dishes on the blue tablecloth.
You can't talk about "genre" in the genre painting "In the Line of Fire" (1916) with a wounded, pale officer who put his hand to his still beating heart.
portraits
Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin worked a lot in the portrait genre. It was important for him, a brilliant portrait painter, to show the spirit of the times in the portrait. Each portrait represents "a person in an era". It is known that a person lives in a certain time, absorbing the signs of the time. Indicative in this regard is the portrait of the writer S. D. Mstislavsky, painted in 1929. There are no additional details in the portrait, there is only a person and a conditional background. With this "meager" means, the artist managed to create a visible image of his contemporary, who endured the difficulties of 1905, 1914 and 1917. 
In the wonderful portrait of A. A. Akhmatova, researchers are still occupied with a mystery: what does the strange background with a human figure mean. Some argue that her muse is depicted behind the back of the poetess. Others suggest that this is the figure of Nikolai Gumilyov, who was shot in 1921. 
Most often, K. S. Petrov-Vodkin portrayed relatives. These portraits are quite lyrical. The portrait of the artist's mother Anna Panteleevna Petrova-Vodkina, created in 1909, ranks first in terms of the degree of "soulfulness". 
still lifes
Petrov-Vodkin's student A. V. Samokhvalov recalled the lessons of his teacher:
“He said: if you draw a pencil lying on a table, your task is to determine not only the position of this pencil to the plane of the table on which it lies, but also its relation to the walls of the room in which the table is located, and the walls of this room - to world space, for every thing, even a simple pencil, is in the sphere of world space.
This rule was followed by the master in his still lifes. He sought to show the "planetary attraction", thanks to which the simplest compositions acquired integrity, significance and monumentality. These are the famous still lifes of the artist: “Morning Still Life” (1918), “Bird Cherry in a Glass” (1923).
This is interesting:
Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin was a talented violinist. Here is what Maria Fedorovna Petrova-Vodkina recalled about this hobby:
“One of his favorite activities was the violin. He played quite professionally Paganini, Mozart, but most often Mozart, whose music, full of youth, purity and sun, aroused the creative imagination of her husband.
Petrov-Vodkin said the eternal truth, defining the goals of art. According to the master, “art is in some way a school for the development of human morality. It is a waste of time to assert that art is higher or even on a par with reality. Numerous, varied are the beauties of life (reality), nature is inexhaustible in the material of the development of the soul. The question is, why the artist? Numerous beauties of nature are not accessible to everyone; sometimes they are located in such nooks and crannies of life that you need a mirror to find and reflect these beauties. It is difficult for a person with a material outlook on life to comprehend even a particle, it is even difficult to understand, to distinguish beautiful from ugly, dirty, and so on. An artist, on the other hand, is a person who has a subtle soul, capable of not only perceiving the ideal from life, but also reflecting it in a clear, understandable hint for everyone.
Writing activity
The artist wrote his biographical novels "The Space of Euclid" and "Khlynovsk" during his illness from 1928 to 1932. In "Samarkand" he described his journey through Central Asia, made in 1921. All three stories were reprinted several times and are the most important autobiographical material of the artist.
"Bathing the Red Horse" by Petrov-Vodkin is a picture of the artist's life, saturated with feelings-colors. In my story about the artist, I shared my impressions of his work and life. I really hope that the material will be accessible to the understanding of high school students.
Many people are well aware of Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin's painting "Bathing a Red Horse", but few people think of asking who the boy depicted on it was - after all, he seems more like a mythological character than a real person.
Nevertheless, not only the name of the boy is known - Sergey Kalmykov, but even the name of the stallion, whose name was just Boy. Sergei was a student of Kuzma Sergeevich. It is also known that the idea with the image of a red horse came to the artist under the influence of Sergei's works and conversations with him about Novgorod icon painting, where red horses are often found.
Subsequently, Sergei Kalmykov himself grew into a very serious artist, today art critics consider him one of the pillars of the Russian avant-garde. And he treated his youthful portrait with humor: “In the form of a languid young man, this banner depicts me in my own person.”
In 1935, Kalmykov went to live in Alma-Ata, as a result of which he escaped persecution - in a distant province he was perceived as a harmless madman, and his painting, which was very different from the prescribed style, was not hindered. He worked as a theater decorator. Lived alone. Died in poverty. And his extraordinary works are valued in Kazakhstan, and in Russia, and in the West.
The most controversial and most famous painting by the artist Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Bathing a Red Horse, still causes a lot of controversy among art lovers. The painting, painted in 1912, was shown at the World of Art exhibition, and the organizers of the event immediately singled out the painting by hanging it over the entire exhibition. In this regard, from the very first day, some paintings began to be perceived as a banner, others as a target.
However, Petrov-Vodkin, at the end of the painting, believed that it might not be posted to the public, guessing that the image of the red horse and the fate of Russia could become provocative in many ways. The picture was successfully shown, but indeed it caused some resonance, as contemporaries drew parallels between this picture and the events of the pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary era of the country.
Petrov-Vodkin began to work on the painting in the early spring of 1912. The artist began to make the first sketches on a farm in the Saratov province. At first, the author's idea was simply to describe the bathing of boys and horses on the Volga. This version was almost finished compositionally, but the author, in this scene, saw additional images. He looked at the lake in a new way, saw its bluish-green hues, saw how low the frozen sky hung, saw an unusual mystery in the swaying of bare trees.
Carefully and slowly, Petrov-Vodkin again began to sketch horses, children, a lake, land and hills. But a new image penetrated into this picture, even in the idea, the image of a crowd of people walking with red banners, opposite which others, with guns ...
In general, the image of a horse in Russian art is perceived meaningfully. In many layers of culture, the horse acts as an adviser, savior, seer, and so on. Accordingly, in the 19th century, the image of a horse was not bypassed by cultural figures, and it is on this tradition that Petrov-Vodkin creates his picture. Therefore, from the usual sketch of the scene, the author goes to the creation of a monumentally significant work, in which he moves away from the generalized image of a horse, to the image of a horse-symbol.
The change of the horse was gradual-evolutionary. In the preparatory sketches, it can be seen that initially the horse was a seedy red-haired village horse. Under the influence of the philosophical thought of that period, the author, in order to convey the necessary thought through the image of the horse, turns the animal into a majestic red horse. Petrov-Vodkin took the idea of a red horse from the paintings of ancient Russian icon painters, and in particular from the icon “The Miracle of the Archangel Michael”, where the horse is depicted in red.
In the picture, the red horse symbolizes some kind of epic power. The pale youth shows some fragility and sophistication. The waves in the bay and the smooth arc of the pink coast are also symbolic. Having a little disassembled the main components of the picture, its versatility and ambiguity immediately becomes visible. The solemn step and pose of a horse with a firm posture against a simultaneous background of red color, as it were, raises the question in the viewer: “What does it all mean?”.
The movement in the picture is also very curious. Rather, it is only indicated, but not expressed in any way, everything seems to be frozen on the canvas. Such an image only evokes a feeling of ambiguity in the audience, a sense of anxiety and expectation of something to come.
Against the background of the greatness of the horse, which was described earlier, the other hero of the picture, the young rider, seems small, weak and fragile. At first, it is striking that it is the young man who holds the reins of the horse, but a little later it becomes clear that even holding the reins in his hands, the rider does not control the horse. This is noticeable in many respects in the expression of the young man's face. His gaze is detached, he seems to be in his dreams, in his thoughts, in his inner world.
K. Petrov-Vodkin in his picture abandoned the linear perspective. His red horse, like an appliqué, is simply superimposed on the image of the lake, which gives a visual sensation of the rider and the horse being not in the picture, but in front of it. As directly in front of the viewer and the canvas.
Colors have a lot of meaning in the picture. It’s not just that the horse in the foreground is red, while the rest in the background are pink, tan and white. Such coloring comes from the old tradition of Russian artists, where colors collide, not mix.
The artist, among other things, in his picture probably also wanted to tell about his premonitions, vague feelings that he had at that time. All these colors, all this contrast, images and parts of the picture, all these are the experiences of the author, which are reflected through the canvas and the brush.
Poems of the most famous poets of that time (Rurik Ivnev, Sergei Yesenin and others) were repeatedly written about the painting “Bathing the Red Horse”. A blood-red horse, striving towards the waves of the sea With a languid young man on a convex back, You, like a dumb fire, spinning around me You know a lot, you whisper a lot to me. (Rurik I.)
The further fate of the picture was very interesting. In 1914, the painting was sent to an exhibition in Sweden, the city of Malmö. Due to the outbreak of the First World War, later the Civil War, the painting remained in Sweden all the time. Only after the end of World War II did negotiations begin to return the painting to its homeland. However, only in 1950, the canvas came to the Soviet Union in the hands of the artist's widow, Maria Fedorovna. Already from her, the picture got into the collection of the collector K.K. Basevich, and she, in turn, in 1961 presented it as a gift to the Tretyakov Gallery, where the painting is to this day.
What is the true meaning of the painting "Bathing the Red Horse"? In showing the foreshadowing of difficult events in the country? Perhaps the image of a horse symbolized light and protection? Or just the artist depicted the usual bathing on the Volga? In such ambiguity of the author's thoughts, perhaps everyone will find something of their own in the picture, something that will reflect his inner world at the time of studying the picture.
Shown in 1912 at the World of Art exhibition, the painting Bathing a Red Horse was perceived by the audience as an artistic revelation, becoming the most famous work of Kozma Petrov-Vodkin. Here, with rare force, the artist managed to achieve the erection of a “moment of living nature” into an “eternal real fossil” of a pictorial masterpiece that combines universal moral and artistic traditions.
The idea of the painting "Bathing the Red Horse" was born from a real motif and was polished in numerous field studies, which were given to the summer of 1912, spent by the artist on the Khvalynsk farm near the Don. In the final version, the solemn monumental canvas, starting from a real, earthly event, revealed its all-encompassing symbolic meaning. A sensitive viewer saw in her a kind of call and a premonition of the coming renewal, the purification of mankind.
Kozma Petrov-Vodkin
Bathing a red horse, 1912
Canvas, oil. 160×186 cm
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
When working on "Bathing the Red Horse", between the first version of the composition and its final decision, there was another oil sketch in the picture (location unknown, photograph preserved).
Compositionally close to the picture, differing only in details, it is still very far from it in figurative terms. The horse in this second version has already turned from a real village horse into that miracle horse, which we see in the picture. The bathing boy has disappeared and has not yet been replaced by the boy holding the reins of the horse, which has appeared at the left edge of the picture. The rider on the right remains the same, but the landscape has become simpler and, with the exception of the sandy spit on the right, is close to the final solution. Finally, the central figure of the rider, who leaned firmly (in the first version) with his left hand on the horse's croup, was seated in the same not very stable position as in the picture.
A comparison of sketches makes it possible to make sure that the main milestone in the creation of the composition had already been overcome when Petrov-Vodkin proceeded to its second version.
The strongest impact on the artist in the process of his work on "Bathing the Red Horse" was a meeting with Russian icons. She was not the first, but it should be borne in mind that the true artistic merits of the ancient Russian icon were hidden until the turn of the 1900s and 1910s, and only the most enlightened connoisseurs and collectors guessed about them. to the discovery of the Russian icon as an art phenomenon of world significance.
Icons, collected until then, mainly as monuments of ancient piety, turned out to be works of painting of rare beauty and spiritual purity. All this could not pass by the attention of Petrov-Vodkin, who keenly felt his blood connection with the national culture and was keenly interested in ancient Russian wall painting and icon painting. When visiting Moscow collections, Petrov-Vodkin saw icons that had just been cleaned, shining with colors, and they attracted him more and more, as they answered his own search for a monumental form and a clear plastic solution to an easel painting of a philosophical content.
Obviously, the icons made such an impression on him that he rethought the figurative structure of the picture already begun in the sketch and its very content. Thus, the transition from the first to the second option was due to a strong artistic "shock", which forced Petrov-Vodkin to take a fresh look at the task of the picture and in general his painting, resolutely turning his eyes to the richest heritage of ancient Russian art.
Now Petrov-Vodkin wrote not only and not so much bathing horses. He wanted to convey in his picture a feeling of some kind of foreboding, not yet quite clear to him, but tormenting him, of purifying changes in the whole life of the country.
The alarming red color of the horse sounded like a call to a new life, unknown and beautiful. The vagueness of his forebodings was involuntarily confirmed by Petrov-Vodkin himself, who said two years after the creation of the picture, when the World War began, that "he suddenly had a thought for himself - so that's why I wrote" Bathing the Red Horse ".
With great reason, it seems, he could say this after another three years - with the onset of the blood-red revolution of the 17th year. It was that vague but prophetic foreboding that true poets and artists are endowed with.
So, from the bay village horse of the first sketches, Petrov-Vodkin comes to the heroic red horse, marvelous in its powerful article. His appearance is more associated with the images of the old Russian epic and songs than with a real horse.
Its color is that "red", which in folk songs means "beautiful", "kind", "strong", "glorious".
Thus, both the fabulously powerful figure of the horse and its color become a metaphor in the picture.
The image of a young horseman also matured in the process of working on the picture, but developed, so to speak, in the opposite direction: while the horse was filled with heroic power, the rider was from an ordinary muscular village boy (his cousin Shura posed for the artist on the Volga in the summer) turned in the picture into a weak-willed youth, with his thin, like a whip, his hand only holding on to the reins, and not holding the horse with them.
This has its own logic: an energetic plastic elaboration of the form would have come into conflict with the sonority of the color chord and would have violated the entire planar structure of the picture. The head of the young rider undoubtedly goes back to the appearance of the same Shura, but somewhat abstracted, as Petrov-Vodkin already once captured him ("Head of a Young Man", 1910, Art Gallery of Armenia).
Of course, one should not look for direct analogies to "Bathing" among the cleaned icons, but in a certain sense, the icons of George the Victorious - the victorious hero, the patron saint of Rus' - allegories of victory over evil and filth, could serve as its prototype for Petrov-Vodkin. If this is so, then it can be argued that Petrov-Vodkin very decisively transformed this image, re-emphasizing the main attention from the rider to the horse, retaining, however, in the appearance of the rider a timeless detachment from everything vain. The artist stubbornly strove for the effect, which he achieved in the picture - the red horse with its majestic gait froze, occupying almost the entire surface of the canvas; he goes, but does not leave, he is majestic and festive, and, of course, it is not for this weak, thin young boy to force him to obey.
The impression of the extraordinary power of the horse is born not only from his body, but also from the fact that his huge body, as it were, does not fit into the picture and is cut off by its edges, and because it is flooded with a solid, not fragmented, poster-flat spot of fiery red color. Modeling, obvious in the sketches-variants, is so muted in the picture that at first it is not noticeable at all, except in the energetic sculptural modeling of the horse's head, which, however, also does not violate the unity of color. Only the yellow body of the boy, the black harness and the horse’s dark and gold huge eye squinting at the viewer cut through this array of red, which contrasts with a clear silhouette against the blue-green water of the river. The stopped movement of the horse, riveting color contrast to itself - all this pulls the picture out of the environment and closes its composition within the canvas. The same impression is facilitated by the concentric construction of the second plan, where the arc of the coast is echoed by greenish waves and the movements of minor figures.
Shortly before the start of work on the painting, at the end of December 1911, Petrov-Vodkin participated in the proceedings of the All-Russian Congress of Artists in St. Petersburg and, obviously, had to listen to an extensive report by V.V. , in the absence of the speaker, N.I. Kulbin). Describing in detail his understanding of the primary colors of the spectrum, in particular red, Kandinsky wrote: "The cinnabar sounds like a trumpet and can be paralleled with strong drum beats." And further, tracing the various hypostases of red in the context of certain images, he specifically dwelled on the example of a red horse, arguing that "the natural impossibility of a red horse imperatively requires a similar unnatural environment in which this horse will be placed." It was on the example of a red horse that Kandinsky defended his thesis that "internal necessity" dictates to the artist a single measure of conventionality for all components of the picture. Did the final decision of Bathing the Red Horse turn out to be somehow connected with this idea of Kandinsky?
"Bathing the Red Horse" was the culmination of the entire previous path of Petrov-Vodkin. It assimilated various influences that the artist was exposed to in those years, especially the traditions of ancient Russian art and modern European symbolist painting. Never before had Petrov-Vodkin been able to prove so brilliantly that the desire for purity of pictorial means - integrity of form, clarity of color, simplicity of lines - is more effective and creates a more vivid, deep and memorable image than conscientious adherence to nature. Never was the "two-layered" nature of his paintings so obvious, because the gap between the everydayness of the depicted scene and the power of the figurative solution of another, incomparably more serious and important artistic task reached enormous proportions here.
Thanks to this, at the time of the rapid departure of many artists of the Russian avant-garde from figurative forms of art, they tried to make "Bathing the Red Horse" a banner under which young artists who could not succumb to the charms of non-objectivity could unite. This, I think, was what the organizers of the exposition had in mind when they hung the picture above the front door of the World of Art exhibition. And yet she did not become a banner, because the personal experience and course of Petrov-Vodkin's creative thought were so individual and difficult for others to implement that the picture was understood and accepted by a few. Thus, once again, the special position of Petrov-Vodkin in the art of the pre-revolutionary decade was determined - outside of any trends and artistic groupings. (
