Genuine art knows no old age. It is always new. Each generation discovers in him some other features that are close to him, consonant with his searches. Such art, being a living evidence of the life of the era, reflecting the ideas that own the minds and tastes of people, never sinks to the fleeting "topic of the day", does not allow itself to be crushed for the sake of fashion. An artist with creative insight sees the high and eternal in the world around him and embodies this vision of reality, whether it is human life or the life of nature surrounding a person, into sublime artistic, enduring images.
Nikolai Petrovich Krymov belonged to such artists, who adopted and implemented in their work the best features of Russian artistic culture with its high civic ideal, deep ideological content and realistic veracity of the artistic language, and at the same time among the innovative artists.
A wonderful master of landscape painting, he lived a long life full of creative searches and creative discoveries, creating a large number of beautiful works that reflected Russian nature with deep sincerity and poetry.
N. P. Krymov was not only a great artist, but also a serious, thoughtful art theorist. Observations on the life of nature, its various states, a close study of works of art led him to create his own method, his theoretical substantiation of the features of painting, which was, in essence, a systematization and deep generalization of the experience of the great masters of the world realistic and, above all, the Russian art school.
All the work of N. P. Krymov is imbued with some surprisingly joyful feeling of life, a feeling of the fullness and significance of human existence.
beauty of the world around us in all his works, even in those where there is no direct image of a person, a person is invisibly present.
What is the peculiarity of the creative method of N. P. Krymov, his creative searches? What makes his works so close to us, and their study so fruitful for our artistic youth, who are looking for new ways of the most expressive and emotionally effective reflection of Soviet reality?
Why are N. P. Krymov’s small, unpretentious, modest in their motives landscapes so captivating, what excites us, what attracts us, forcing us to peer for a long time, leaving in our souls a joyfully enlightened feeling of meeting with the beautiful? Whatever N. P. Krymov wrote - be it an abandoned old mill, a village street, the distant expanses of trans-Oka water meadows or the snow-covered roofs of Moscow houses so beloved by the artist - all these are not random motifs, not just pieces of nature - this is deeply thought out and heartfelt image by the artist. This is the “genuine truth of life”, which the artist strove to convey throughout his more than fifty years of creative activity, that artistic truth, which he taught his numerous students and followers to reproduce.
N. P. Krymov implemented in his work many discoveries and achievements that were characteristic of the artistic language of Repin, Serov, Levitan, Kuindzhi, Vrubel and others; what constituted the essence of the Russian art school, making them understandable and; clear, accessible to the understanding of every thoughtful artist.
N. P. Krymov was born in 1884 in Moscow. From an early age, he grew up in an atmosphere of art. At home, they drew a lot, wrote, argued about art, about its tasks and methods of work. Nikolai Petrovich's father is P. A. Krymov, who received an art education at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture under prof. S. K. Zaryanko, taught drawing in Moscow gymnasiums. The elder brother Vasily was also an artist and also a teacher. Naturally, the boy was drawn to a pencil and paints, filling his school notebooks and textbooks with images of the world around him and, first of all, with landscapes. This childhood hobby receives all possible support in the family. His father willingly works with him, preparing for admission to the school. In 1904, N. P. Krymov successfully passed the competition, showing at the entrance exam the good professional training received from his father and mastery of drawing. N. P. Krymov’s teachers at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture were wonderful Russian artists and sensitive teachers V. A. Serov, L. O. Pasternak, N. A. Kasatkin, who in many ways contributed to the rapid formation of his creative personality.
Recognition came to N. P. Krymov early. One of the artist's first independent works, "Roofs under the Snow" (1906), exhibited at the next student exhibition, was acquired by A. M. Vasnetsov, and two years later the Council of the Tretyakov Gallery, headed by V. A. Serov, acquired it for
galleries.
He graduated from N. P. Krymov College in 1911. But long before his graduation, he participates in various art exhibitions of the Association of Moscow Artists, "Blue Rose", "Wreath", at exhibitions of the Union of Russian Artists, which united the best artistic forces of Moscow, of which he became a member in 1910, while still a student. The work of N. P. Krymov is highly appreciated by the artistic community. They write about him, his works are reproduced, and the largest magazine of that time, Apollo, publishes a large article in which N.P. than the experiments of a promising young artist.” The article says that the youthful works of N. P. Krymov "drawn attention to themselves with their pure and lively lyricism, the artist's ability to take a very simple,
small topic and saturate it deeply with your feeling. In a word, in the early works of this remarkable artist, there was already something in the bud that later became the basis of his work.
However, the creative path of N. P. Krymov was not so simple and clear. The years spent at the School and the first years of independent creative life were years of intense search for his artistic language, his vision of the world. Subsequently, the artist will recall this period in his autobiography: “In the beginning, I wrote very modestly and truthfully. Then, under the influence of the prevailing trends in painting at that time, I became interested in various searches. In 1915, I again embarked on a realistic path, and in my further development I painted a lot from nature and strove to depict nature beautifully.
And indeed, from the artless simplicity and truthfulness in the transfer of the states of nature: "Roofs under the snow" (1906), "By spring" (1907) "Summer" "Sunny day" (1906) N. P. Krymov moves on to creating refined and refined in the spirit of the "Blue Rose" of such paintings as "After the Rain" (1908), "Two Rainbows"
(1907), with their conventional color scheme and somewhat mannered human figures, then to imitate popular popular print, inhabiting their landscapes, mostly truthfully painted, with some kind of primitive, somewhat coarsened puppet characters, as if playing uncomplicated genre scenes. These are some of the works of 1908 - "Square", "Tavern", to some extent "Rainbow". Some fragmentation, descriptiveness appears in these works. However, this passion quickly passes, and in the same 1908 and 1909 N. P. Krymov painted a number of landscapes, intense in color sound, distinguished by a sharp, deliberate generalization of forms, conditionally decorative character (“Yellow Barn”, “Cloud”). In other works of this period, he strives to convey stormy effects in nature, looking for the greatest expressiveness in the transmission of a stormy sky, storms, rain: the wind drives the clouds, bends the trees, raises roadside dust. Everything in nature is full of rapid movement (“Windy Day”, “The Herd”, etc.).
Many works of this period are full of soft humor, so characteristic of the character of N. P. Krymov, which will subsequently manifest itself clearly in his theatrical works. How much naive spontaneity and theatrical spectacle, some kind of deliberate "non-realism" and at the same time apt observation in the interpretation of human figures and animals, and in the landscapes themselves.
A born colorist, in love with nature since childhood, subtly feeling its various states, N. P. Krymov strives to convey his sense of nature, his knowledge and observations, without resorting to work from nature, as if afraid of being shackled by the immediacy of vision. He composes his landscapes and still lifes in the studio, achieving an almost classical construction, a strict balance of individual parts of the landscape, some special majestic calm - “At Dawn” (1910), “At noon. On the Road" (1910), "Dawn" (1912).
1914-1916 became a turning point in the artist's work. In an effort to get rid of the well-known stiffness, to which his work from himself inevitably led. N. P. Krymov spends the summer months in one of the picturesque places of the Moscow region, working hard and hard from nature. “From that time on,” the artist writes, “I began to fill spring and summer with diligent work ten hours a day, studying nature and its picturesque qualities and properties, trying to study and memorize them so thoughtfully and meaningfully, so that later I could write what I saw on this knowledge."
In the works of these years, a living breath of life appears, living, concrete observations. However, the artist is still hampered by the fear of direct communication with nature, the artificially set task of creating a “thoughtful and meaningful”, somewhat conventional image of nature. Such, for example, is "Landscape with a Pond" (1918) with this artificial blackness of the trunks, with sharply accentuated shadows and clear contours, with fragmentation in the image of foliage and a pond overgrown with greenery. Despite the general observation and, it would seem, fidelity to nature, the work still does not have that broad generalization, that freedom of pictorial language, which are given only by a deep knowledge of nature, the ability to find in nature itself those unusually subtle and true color combinations that are characteristic of a given state, - something that will become a feature of Crimean painting in the near future.
Processing what he saw in accordance with his idea of nature, he strives to create an ideal landscape in which the immediacy of a life impression would be brought into some kind of decorative harmony. In order to enhance and convey to the viewer a certain state of nature, he enlivens his landscapes with figures of people - either bathers by the river, or a female figure, illuminated by the setting rays of the sun, sitting on the shore of a pond. However, they do not organically fit into the landscape, do not form a single whole with it. Later, in a conversation with young artists, N. P. Krymov, advising them to be closer to nature and, perhaps, recalling his own early hobbies. will say: “Never try to decorate nature, do not exaggerate the effects of lighting. It leads to salonism."
A huge influence on the final formation of the creative individuality of N. P. Krymov, according to the artist himself, was exerted by I. I. Levitan. “Starting from the first years of my independent creative life,” the artist writes in an article about Levitan, “I was struck in Levitan by his unusually subtle vision, the ability to convey the moments of the day and the nature of Russian nature ... For a long time I could not understand why, how Levitan with a broad stroke, he was able to freely, convincingly and completely materially depict grass, huts, trees and the sky. Finishing all the flowers, all the details of the landscape, I still could not achieve the correct transmission of this materiality of various elements of nature. Painfully searching for a solution to this problem, I gradually began to approach the truth. So, one day, while working on a landscape on a gray day, I over-lightened the general tone of the sketch and, no matter how hard I tried to accurately convey the details of the landscape, nothing came of it. Then I realized that the mistake lies in the wrong general tone. In painting, I call tone the degree of light intensity of color, and general tone - the general darkening or lightening of nature at the appropriate moments of the day. Painting is the transfer of visible material by tone plus color. And indeed, checking this position on the best works of Russian and foreign painting, I became convinced that where the artist correctly found the general tone of the picture, there objects, earth, sky - everything lives a true, full-blooded life. When the correct general tone is found, it is already much easier for the artist to paint all the details. He can no longer take care of the decoration; on the contrary, sometimes one correct hint, one correct spot is enough for the image to be perceived as a real object.
Levitan's landscapes are remarkable because, with an extremely wide writing and the freedom of his technique, they are surprisingly material, airy and truthful.
These words can be fully attributed to the works of N.N. Krymov.
Already in the 1920s, N.N. Krymov finds his own method, which makes it possible to convey the richness and subtlety of color transitions existing in nature with impeccable accuracy. The whole creative life of an artist is a further improvement and deepening of his method, his creative manner. A carefully developed theory of tonal painting gives him complete freedom in dealing with vital material. Like no one else, N. P. Krymov is able with such power to convey the beauty and charm inherent in nature so deeply and truthfully, awakening in the viewer a sense of joy from knowing the objectively existing beauty of the world. N. P. Krymov enthusiastically paints the cozy streets of the Savvinskaya Sloboda near Zvenigorod, immersed in the greenery of gardens, the whimsical bends of the river, meandering like a silver ribbon among the low banks overgrown with shrubs (“The River”), the snow-covered streets of quiet provincial towns (“Winter Landscape”, “In winter in the province”), clumps of trees, willows over the river, barns lit by the rays of the setting sun, village outskirts, abandoned mills.
During the last thirty years of his life, N. P. Krymov, from early spring to late autumn, lives in Tarusa, on the banks of the Oka, capturing this extremely picturesque friendly town and its environs in numerous beautiful landscapes. Despite the seeming monotony of motives, it never repeats itself, revealing more and more sides, more and more poetry in the simplest, most ordinary everyday reality that surrounds us.
With fine craftsmanship and poetic penetration, N. P. Krymov conveys various states of nature at different times of the day and year. A clear, gentle sunny day, bushes filled with heat, trees dozing in hot languor, quiet streets, or a gray day with fine drizzling rain and low hanging
gloomy sky, with softly melting outlines of objects - winter twilight, or early morning with cold, blue shadows, or the rays of the setting sun, gilding the tops of trees and flashing brightly on the walls of houses. The works of N. P. Krymov can be fully attributed to the words of the remarkable
Russian landscape painter of the 19th century Fyodor Vasilyev, which he said in one of his letters to I. N. Kramskoy: “If you paint a picture consisting of this blue air and mountains alone, without a single cloud, and convey it as it is in nature, then, I am sure that the criminal plan of a person looking at this picture, full of grace and endless triumph and purity of nature, will be put aside and will appear in all its ugly nakedness. The works of N. P. Krymov are full of this “endless triumph and purity of nature”, they are a hymn to the beauty of life, the beauty of the earth, and this is their deep humanistic, patriotic character.
from an article by M. Sitnina
It is necessary not only to love nature, but to be able to transfer this love to the canvas, where you need to sensitively guess the size of the picturesque spot, and all the subtlety of picturesque relations in nature, and the feeling of its beauty.
Krymov N.P.
It would be nice to have in painting, as in music, a tuning fork, that is, an object that would not lose its luminosity day or night, winter or summer, would be constant, not changing from the surrounding conditions.
Krymov N.P.
In the definition of the concept of realistic painting, we have a lot of confusion. Painting is often called a painted drawing, and in general everything that is done with paints. Some recognize only what is written in bold, sweeping and do not consider painting what is written in detail, smoothly and modestly.
Krymov N.P.
I really appreciate Degas, and Sisley, and Claude Monet, but does this prevent me from admiring the genius of Repin? But there are also those who deny both Levitan and Serov! Apparently, these people have potatoes instead of hearts!
Krymov N.P.
I am asked what is more important: color or tone? I answer: "Which leg is needed for a person, right or left?"
Krymov N.P.
Write whatever you like, even with your finger. If only it was good.
Krymov N.P.
I can only paint bushes and fences, but this is what I do best.
Krymov N.P.
Krymov Nikolai Petrovich (1884-1958)
The work of Nikolai Petrovich Krymov is inextricably linked with the development of Russian and Soviet fine arts. His talent was most fully manifested in landscape painting. Along with painting, he was engaged in graphics and theatrical scenery. Krymov was an artist of happy creative destiny, who received early recognition. Perhaps a rare case when a work written by a second-year student of the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture was purchased for the Tretyakov Gallery. This is exactly what happened with one of Krymov's early works. His small study "Roofs under the Snow" in 1906 was acquired by the famous master of landscape painting Ap. Vasnetsov, and then on the recommendation of V.A. Serov, who in those years was a member of the board of trustees of the Tretyakov Gallery, in 1907 entered the famous collection of Russian art.
N.P. Krymov was born in Moscow on May 3 (April 20, old style), 1884, in the family of the artist Pyotr Alekseevich Krymov. The father of the future painter taught drawing in Moscow gymnasiums and was a good portrait painter. At one time he went through the school of the famous teacher of the Academy of Arts, Professor S.K. Zaryanko.
Pyotr Alekseevich early noticed the talent of his youngest son, his outstanding ability to draw. After Krymov graduated from the real school, the father himself began to prepare his son for exams at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, which he successfully passed, and in 1904 he was admitted among the first. In those years, the school had a very strong and authoritative staff of teachers.
Entering the school, Krymov became involved in the lively creative life of a large team of young artists. Krymov was in the thick of these events and pretty soon discovered his sympathy and commitment to the latest trends in art. Krymov's creative heritage of the early period, covering his student years, is diverse: working mainly in painting, he simultaneously made many watercolors, drawings, was fond of magazine graphics, and tried his hand at theatrical scenery. However, interest in landscape painting was predominant. "Twilight", "Landscape with the Moon" (1904), "Summer Night" (1905), "Moonlight Night" (1905) - these works belong to the first stage of his work. In them, Krymov sought to convey the mood of peace and the beauty of evening twilight, to emphasize the expressiveness of the unusual silhouettes of trees.
Krymov's works, shown at the XXVII exhibition of paintings by students of the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1904, immediately attracted the attention of critics. They characterize with sufficient certainty the circle of artistic interests and sympathies of the young artist, in particular, his great interest in the work of V.E. Borisov-Musatov and P.V. Kuznetsova. However, his subsequent works, depicting snow-covered roofs of houses and cozy courtyards, are “Winter. Etude (1906), Sunny Day (1906), March Frost (1906), Bullfinches (1907), By Spring (1907) testified to the close observation of nature and the choice of motifs, which were dominated by romantic traits. Thus, already Krymov's early experiments make it possible to note one extremely important feature of his work - the interaction of the romantic tendency and the natural basis, based on live, direct observation of nature. They found a peculiar combination in his famous painting “To Spring”, where Krymov is not limited to creating a poetic sketch from nature. The painting was successfully exhibited in 1907 at the Blue Rose exhibition. The common thing that united all the participants of the Blue Rose exhibition was the desire for emotional expressiveness of the works, the transfer of figurative emphasis to the sphere of spiritual experiences, “sensitive listening” to the echoes of the human soul.
Since 1907, Krymov has been actively collaborating with the magazines Golden Fleece and Scales. They often contain reproductions of his works, the artist takes an active part in the design of magazines, performing numerous headpieces, vignettes and drawings for literary works. At the same time, a new stage in the creative development of Krymov began. He refuses chamber etude motifs and creates large epic canvases. Pay attention to the size of the canvases, reaching one and a half meters. The viewer is presented with a beautiful world of idealized nature - majestic mountains, pine trees, sandy slopes, fast mountain streams. His landscapes of that time are reminiscent of tapestries: the artist transforms the forms of nature - bizarre garlands of roses and tree branches form in the foreground of the paintings a kind of backstage, behind which majestic mountain landscapes stretch ("Pines", "Mountain Stream", "Pines and Rocks", all - 1907). The period of creation of "tapestry" landscape paintings turned out to be short, but fruitful.
In the works of 1908 ("Square", "Landscape with a Thunderstorm"), a peculiar fusion of the landscape with the genre is observed. Appeal to the genre is typical for this stage of Krymov's work. In the works of this time, there is an interest in primitivism, which has become a noticeable phenomenon in the development of Russian painting. The study of Russian folk culture served as fertile ground for its development. Many artists were attentive to its various manifestations (lubok, toy, signboard, etc.), and some of them actively contributed to the popularity of folk art, creating works that frankly used techniques borrowed from the work of folk masters.
In the painting "Cloud" (1910), Krymov created a fictional image of nature, where there is its own measure of beauty. This world of perfect natural forms is not immediately revealed to the viewer, it is necessary to go deep into it, to be imbued with it, and then it begins to conquer with its figurative perfection and harmony of artistic embodiment. The painting "Cloud" was shown at the exhibition of the Union of Russian Artists.
After graduating from college in 1911, Krymov embarked on an independent creative path as a mature, established artist. In the 1910s, the young artist continued to develop the problem of the landscape-picture in his work. Krymov experiments a lot, looking for new solutions. Since 1913, the artist began to work in the open air.
In 1910, on the recommendation of the artist V. V. Perepletchikov, Krymov became a member of the Union of Russian Artists. The breadth of the creative positions of this association, its landscape orientation impressed Krymov and made it possible to carry out his searches in the field of creating a landscape-picture. In the first years after graduating from college, Krymov continues to develop in his works the principles that were so clearly manifested in the works of the late 1900s. At the XIII exhibition of paintings by the "Union of Russian Artists" he showed two paintings - "At Dawn" (1910) and "On the Road" (1910). In them, as well as in a number of stylistically close works of the subsequent time - "Dawn" (1912), "Hay Cart Leaving the Forest" (1912), the desire to rethink the traditions of Western European classical landscape painting of the 17th-19th centuries is clearly revealed. In one group of landscapes, there is an interest in the monumental forms of the Poussin landscape, in the other - in the more chamber and lyrical works of the Barbizon school. And almost always the artist includes motifs reminiscent of pastoral scenes in his work. In a number of paintings, idyllic-sublime intonations in the spirit of Poussin are combined with a prosaic, somewhat popular form. In the works of this time, Krymov appears as an excellent stylist and improviser. The world of his canvases is toy-theatrical, even somewhat naive, but at the same time surprisingly harmonious and whole in its artistic embodiment.
It is noteworthy that in the mid-1910s, Krymov's work came into contact with the art of A. I. Kuindzhi, whose posthumous exhibition was opened in 1913. Krymov was interested in the main thing in Kuindzhi's art - the principles of his plastic language. And in a number of works of this time, such as "Early Morning" (1914), "Morning" (1914), "Water Mill" (mid-1910s), Kuindzhi's influence is traced, which manifested itself in the principles of spatial construction of a picture based on the alternation of light and dark landscape masses, the undivided contours of trees, in attention to the applicability of color planes, in the use of lighting effects. The same features were reflected in such later works as "Summer Day" (1914-1920), "River" (1916), "Morning" (1918). In them, bright sunlight, meeting an object on its way, reveals its color with extraordinary effectiveness. With direct illumination, the texture of the surface of small parts, irregularities is almost not noticeable - they are all absorbed, as it were, by the power of light. This principle of solving a landscape image based on synthesizing natural observations and combining them with a decorative system of painting was developed in subsequent work.
A particular interest in the color of objects, in lighting effects, was reflected in his landscapes of the late 1910s, such as First Snow (1917), Evening (1918), Winter Landscape (1919), Morning (1918). ). That short-term passion for the bright colors of the landscape, which we could observe in the works of Krymov in the late 1900s, ten years later was embodied in a developed artistic program, enriched by the experience of field work and the influence of A. I. Kuindzhi's work. During this period, the artist, as it were, rediscovered the joy of pure harmonies of color, its emotional expressiveness. Studying nature more and more closely, Krymov gradually created his own artistic system, which finally took shape in the second half of the 1920s. In the meantime, he was only approaching her, continuing to work actively and every day.
The events of October gave Krymov a new impetus not only for creative work, but also for social activities. He participated in the work of the Moscow Council for Arts. Together with other artists, Krymov advocated the preservation of monuments of art and antiquity, ardently defended the need for a careful attitude to the classical traditions of art, seeing them as the basis for building a socialist culture.
The beginning of the 1920s is associated with a new stage in Krymov's creative biography. Conventionally, it can be called the "Zvenigorod period", since most of the summer months, from 1920 to 1927, the artist lived and worked near Moscow in the vicinity of Zvenigorod.
In Zvenigorod, Krymov's landscapes took on a kind of concreteness, one can easily recognize the streets of the Savvinskaya Sloboda, the hilly relief of the banks of the Moskva River in them. Here he developed a circle of favorite topics that captivated the artist for many years. One of them is the theme of the Russian village ("Russian Village", 1925; "Evening in the Village", 1927). He brings a sense of proportion and beauty to the landscape, he streamlines its forms, subordinating the laws of harmony.
The last period of Krymov's work is associated with the small town of Tarusa near the Oka. Here, on the Oka, he came every summer to work and rest. Krymov first came to Tarusa in the summer of 1928 at the invitation of the artist V. A. Vatagin, with whom he had a long friendship. The cordial creative atmosphere that reigned among writers, poets, artists who rested and worked in Tarusa was close to Krymov. The arrival in Tarusa turned out to be decisive for the artist, and until the end of his life he connected his creative destiny with these places. Here, on the banks of the Oka, Krymov finds new solutions in creating the image of nature. In many of his Tarusa landscapes, the Oka is present or can be guessed behind the steep slopes, behind the trees and shrubs. This brings free and free breathing into the paintings (Tarusa, 1931; Polenovo. The Oka River, 1934; Evening, 1935; Before Twilight, 1935; The Last Ray, 1935). Krymov believed that the most important thing is to convey in the work the general state of the environment. It is not enough to organize a picture compositionally, whether it be a genre composition, a landscape or a still life, it is necessary to ensure that everything is whole, everything corresponds to its place, the main thing is to “guess” the general tone, the general luminosity, expressing a specific state of nature.
In Tarusa, Krymov developed a special type of summer landscape. In his canvases, the state is remarkably accurately noticed when life in a small town and its environs usually calms down at midday hours, and nature seems to fall into a dream. Considering the work of Krymov of the Tarusian period, one cannot limit oneself only to natural works. In winter, the artist often reminisced about the summer months spent outside the city. He paints many landscapes from memory. In their figurative sound, pictorial manner, they differ significantly from works written directly on nature. In them, he returns to composed landscape compositions, built on the basis of established classical landscape schemes. The same can be said about the artist's winter landscapes, which constitute a kind of line in his work. In winter landscapes painted in Moscow, more clearly than in other paintings, some traditions of pre-revolutionary creativity can be traced - an interest in the genre, in developed multi-figured compositions, in some generalization and even sketchiness of the forms of objects, their partial primitivization (“Winter”, “In winter in provinces", both 1933). Despite the fact that all these paintings were painted from memory and there is always an element of conjecture in them, they are surprisingly reliable in conveying the state of nature, lighting and general color, environment. And in this it is not difficult to see their connection with the numerous sketches of "roofs". For the artist, the "roofs" were a special world that helped him never part with painting during the difficult years of his illness. From the second half of the 1930s, being already ill and unable to once again go down the stairs to the street, Krymov was forced to work at home. From here, from the fourth floor of the house in Poluektov Lane (near Kropotkinskaya Street), a charming view of the roofs of old Moscow mansions opened up. The most famous works of this cycle are “Winter. Roofs" (1934), "Winter Morning" (1934), "Winter" (1944), "Roofs Under Snow" (1946), "Roofs" (1952).
The difficult years of the Great Patriotic War greatly undermined Krymov's health. All this time he lived in Moscow and almost did not work at all. Only a few works written during this period have survived. In the first post-war summer, Krymov leaves for Tarusa. The artist could hardly walk, so the balcony of the house where he lived was converted into a temporary workshop. The view that opened from it encompassed a wide and varied panorama of the town with a street and gardens descending to the banks of the Oka. In this only area of nature accessible to him, he found a variety of landscape motifs. It was from here that he painted such canvases as “Hot Day” (1948), “Flowers in a Painted Box” (1948), “Tarusa. Shed" (1954).
Among the Crimean heritage of the 1950s, there are many unfinished works. Those great physical efforts that the artist made during his work probably did not allow him to bring many paintings to the final degree of completeness.
In 1954, four years before the death of the artist, the second personal exhibition of Krymov's works was opened in the halls of the USSR Academy of Arts. It was a huge success and evoked warm responses from the general public. His creative achievements were highly appreciated by the state. He was awarded the honorary title of People's Artist of the RSFSR, was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Arts.
THEMES AND SERIES
Symbolism. Blue Rose Period
- "Tapestry" landscapes
- Primitivism. "Folklore" and "Lubok"
- Classicism
- "Noisy" pictures
- "Roofs under the snow"
- Winter
- Decorativism. Chiaroscuro volume
- Decorativism. Color
- Russian village
- Summer day
- Theater
- "Clean" landscape
Private collection
GTG, Moscow
State. Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Saratov thin. museum
Ryazan region thin museum
State. Museum of the Republic of Tatarstan, Kazan
Kostroma state. united hood. museum
Astrakhan region Art Gallery
Kirov thin. Vasnetsov Museum
Taganrog Art Gallery
Bryansk region thin museum
Vologda region Art Gallery
Kaluga region thin museum
Museum-apartment of I.I. Brodsky, St. Petersburg
Pskov Museum-Reserve
Sevastopol thin. museum
Smolensk region museum from. and appl. is-in
Tula region thin museum
Chuvash state. thin museum, Cheboksary
Yaroslavl thin. museum
N. P. Krymov entered the history of Russian art not only as one of the best Russian landscape painters of the 20th century, but also as a major theorist of painting and a teacher.
Born in the family of an artist. He received his initial professional training from his father. In 1904 he entered the MUZhVZ, where he studied with V. A. Serov and K. A. Korovin.
In the first years of his studies, Krymov was so poor that he often could not buy paints and used those that more wealthy students cleaned off their palettes and canvases. This taught Krymov to carefully handle paints and work on canvases of small formats.
The talent of the young artist developed rapidly. Already one of his first independent things - "Roofs under the snow" (1906) - was acquired by V. A. Serov for the Tretyakov Gallery.
Krymov participated in exhibitions of associations "Blue Rose", "Wreath", SRH. By the time he graduated from college (1911), he was already a well-known artist. Krymov's early works ("Sunny Day", 1906; "Bullfinches", 1906; "By Spring", 1907; "After the Spring Rain", 1908, etc.) can be called moderately impressionistic: a separate brushstroke, pure colors, though somewhat faded , so to speak "gentle" and "poetic" - quite in the spirit of the times.
In the landscapes of the 1910s. ("Moonlight Night in the Forest", 1911; "Pink Winter", 1912; "Evening", 1914; "The Edge of the Forest", the second half of the 1910s, etc.) Krymov sought to combine the immediacy of the impression with decorativeness, the generalization of form with thoroughness and subtlety of performance.
Krymov loves to paint water and reflections in it, when the world seems to double, when the sky merges with the earth, when unexpected spatial breakthroughs occur ("Morning", 1911; "Night landscape with a house", 1917; "Noon", the second half of the 1910s ). Nature in his paintings seemed to freeze; whatever natural states the artist portrays, everything is dominated by his own poetic-contemplative state.
But sometimes genre motifs appear in Krymov's works, which have a somewhat lubok character ("Landscape with a Thunderstorm", "Square", both 1908, etc.). During these years, Krymov's work, for all its originality, was still devoid of integrity, and in the artist's paintings one can find traces of the influences of various masters - from A. I. Kuindzhi to K. A. Somov and N. N. Sapunov.
However, the main thing for Krymov has always been a lively emotional perception of nature, fashionable far-fetched constructions and unrestrained experimentation are completely alien to him. This determined the nature of its further development.
In the works of the 1920s. - for example, "The Village in the Summer" (1921), "By Evening" (1923), "The Russian Village" (1925) - Krymov is already a classic, in the sense of a conscious return to the traditions of Russian realistic painting of the late XIX - early XX centuries. (Krymov's favorite artists are I. E. Repin and I. I. Levitan).
Honesty and more honesty. Nothing external. No learned tricks and underlined effects. Originality and originality will manifest themselves if the artist is really talented.
In working from nature, Krymov demanded unconditional fidelity to the visual impression. However, many of his landscapes are imaginative, where, using his excellent knowledge of nature, the artist creates a kind of pictorial equivalent to a certain emotional state. Krymov explained the generalization of his paintings by the fact that he "does not have time" to convey nature as a whole and at the same time in a variety of details, unlike, for example, A. A. Ivanov, who "had time".
Outwardly, the main creative principles of Krymov seem very simple, but they are based on a deep professional artistic culture. At the same time, the artist himself was not satisfied with the randomness of the results achieved, the lack of a well-thought-out method of work.
In 1926 he formulated the well-known theory of "general tone" in painting. Not color, but tone, that is, the strength of light in color, is the main thing in painting. Only a color correctly taken in tone really becomes a color, not a paint, it becomes spiritualized. As a tuning fork, which allows to determine the true degree of illumination of the image object, Krymov suggested using the light of a candle or a match. In essence, the artist tried to theoretically generalize the classical, finally formed in the 19th century. understanding of painting.
Based on his method, he painted many beautiful, subtle in painting and feeling landscapes: "Landscape. Summer Day" (1926), "Evening in Zvenigorod" (1927), "House in Tarusa" (1930), "Winter" (1933 ), "Before Twilight" (1935), "Evening" (1939), "Evening" (1944), "Flowers in a Painted Box" (1948), "On the Edge of the Village" (1952) and others. Krymov had a lot of direct students whom he taught according to a system specially developed in accordance with his theory. But an even greater number of artists had the opportunity to use his advice.
Krymov Nikolai Petrovich
N. P. Krymov entered the history of Russian art not only as one of the best Russian landscape painters of the 20th century, but also as a major theorist of painting and a teacher.
Born in the family of an artist. He received his initial professional training from his father. In 1904 he entered the MUZhVZ, where he studied with V. A. Serov and K. A. Korovin. In the first years of his studies, Krymov was so poor that he often could not buy paints and used those that more wealthy students cleaned off their palettes and canvases. This taught Krymov to carefully handle paints and work on canvases of small formats.
The talent of the young artist developed rapidly. Already one of his first independent things - "Roofs under the snow" (1906) - was acquired by V. A. Serov for the Tretyakov Gallery. Krymov participated in exhibitions of associations "Blue Rose", "Wreath", SRH. By the time he graduated from college (1911), he was already a well-known artist. Krymov's early works ("Sunny Day", 1906; "Bullfinches", 1906; "By Spring", 1907; "After the Spring Rain", 1908, etc.) can be called moderately impressionistic: a separate brushstroke, pure colors, though somewhat faded , so to speak "gentle" and "poetic" - quite in the spirit of the times.
In the landscapes of the 1910s. ("Moonlight Night in the Forest", 1911; "Pink Winter", 1912; "Evening", 1914; "The Edge of the Forest", the second half of the 1910s, etc.) Krymov sought to combine the immediacy of the impression with decorativeness, the generalization of form with thoroughness and subtlety of performance. Krymov loves to paint water and reflections in it, when the world seems to double, when the sky merges with the earth, when unexpected spatial breakthroughs occur ("Morning", 1911; "Night landscape with a house", 1917; "Noon", the second half of the 1910s ).
Nature in his paintings seemed to freeze; whatever natural states the artist portrays, everything is dominated by his own poetic-contemplative state. But sometimes genre motifs appear in Krymov's works, which have a somewhat lubok character ("Landscape with a Thunderstorm", "Square", both 1908, etc.). During these years, Krymov's work, for all its originality, was still devoid of integrity, and in the artist's paintings one can find traces of the influences of various masters - from A. I. Kuindzhi to K. A. Somov and N. N. Sapunov.
However, the main thing for Krymov has always been a lively emotional perception of nature, fashionable far-fetched constructions and unrestrained experimentation are completely alien to him. This determined the nature of its further development. In the works of the 1920s. - for example, "The Village in the Summer" (1921), "By Evening" (1923), "The Russian Village" (1925) - Krymov is already a classic, in the sense of a conscious return to the traditions of Russian realistic painting of the late XIX - early XX centuries. (Krymov's favorite artists are I. E. Repin and I. I. Levitan). Honesty and more honesty. Nothing external. No learned tricks and underlined effects. Originality and originality will manifest themselves if the artist is really talented. In working from nature, Krymov demanded unconditional fidelity to the visual impression. However, many of his landscapes are imaginative, where, using his excellent knowledge of nature, the artist creates a kind of pictorial equivalent to a certain emotional state. Krymov explained the generalization of his paintings by the fact that he "does not have time" to convey nature as a whole and at the same time in a variety of details, unlike, for example, A. A. Ivanov, who "had time".
Outwardly, the main creative principles of Krymov seem very simple, but they are based on a deep professional artistic culture. At the same time, the artist himself was not satisfied with the randomness of the results achieved, the lack of a well-thought-out method of work. In 1926 he formulated the well-known theory of "general tone" in painting. Not color, but tone, that is, the strength of light in color, is the main thing in painting. Only a color correctly taken in tone really becomes a color, not a paint, it becomes spiritualized. As a tuning fork, which allows to determine the true degree of illumination of the image object, Krymov suggested using the light of a candle or a match. In essence, the artist tried to theoretically generalize the classical, finally formed in the 19th century. understanding of painting. Based on his method, he painted many beautiful, subtle in painting and feeling landscapes: "Landscape. Summer Day" (1926), "Evening in Zvenigorod" (1927), "House in Tarusa" (1930), "Winter" (1933 ), "Before dusk" (1935), "Evening" (1939), "Evening" (1944), "Flowers in a painted box" (1948), "On the edge of the village" (1952), etc.
Krymov had many direct students, whom he taught according to a system specially developed in accordance with his theory. But an even greater number of artists had the opportunity to use his advice.
Watermills. 1910-15. Oil
Landscape with a river. B. g. Oil
After the spring rain 1908. Oil
Nikolai Petrovich Krymov entered the history of Russian art not only as one of the best Russian landscape painters of the 20th century, but also as a major theorist of painting and a teacher. And for starters, I'll introduce you to the artist himself. / Be patient), the post is great and I really hope that it will be interesting and informative for you. His lessons will be not only useful for beginners and interesting for those who already know the secrets of mastery, but also for those who are lovers and admirers of the world of painting/. So:
Nikolai Petrovich Krymov, Russian painter and teacher, People's Artist of the RSFSR, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Arts.
Born April 20 / May 2 / 1884 in Moscow. His father Pyotr Alekseevich Krymov taught drawing in Moscow gymnasiums and was a good portrait painter. He noticed the outstanding abilities of his youngest son and himself began to prepare him for exams at the school of painting, sculpture and architecture. Among the 40 out of 600 who took the exam, Nikolai was accepted second on the list.
Student Nikolay Krymov saved on a lot of things, paints and canvases were expensive, he used what was left of more prosperous students.
- Do you know how I studied? The father was an artist. Big family. I studied at the School of Painting - in a word, we were beggars. I had nothing to buy paints. How did I get out of the situation? We had rich merchant students in our class. They started working in this way: there is a production - a stuffed bird. The bird is gray and dusty. The student squints, stares for a long time, takes out emerald greenery from the sketchbook, looks at the scarecrow ... and squeezes the entire tube onto the palette. And so are all the colors. After
writes with huge brushes and immediately cleans off with a palette knife, and the scraped off - right on the easel. When everyone left, I transferred the paint from the easels into shoe polish jars and painted with these paints on a small canvas, with one small brush ...
Probably for this reason, in his further works, the artist carefully spent materials, all his paintings are small in size.
- It is not necessary to paint huge canvases with broad strokes. You can write with one small brush on a small canvas and spend paint on a penny.
A rare case: a work written by a second-year student of the art school was purchased for the Tretyakov Gallery! This happened with one of Krymov's early works. At the fourteenth exhibition of the school there was his small study "Roofs under the snow",
who liked the then teacher of the landscape class Apollinary Vasnetsov, and he acquired the painting. And then the work of 22-year-old Krymov was appreciated by other artists, and on the recommendation of Serov, it was bought for the Tretyakov Gallery.
Nikolai Petrovich was a charming, sincerely generous, versatile gifted person. He was also a musician, sang beautifully, knew and loved literature, theater, and was a witty storyteller and cheerful
interlocutor, invariably attentive and benevolent to people, and irreconcilable to any falsehood and hypocrisy. The man is very gambling: he played billiards, went to the races. Outwardly, Krymov's life was modest. For forty-two years he lived with his wife, Elena Nikolaevna, the daughter of the artist Dosekin, in a small apartment in Poluektov lane near Prechistenka. He never had a workshop to work with, and when he was in Moscow, and not at his dacha, he wrote his works at the balcony window in the dining room.
All his life he put a new canvas on an easel, which once belonged to Serov and was transferred to Krymov by the widow of Valentin Alexandrovich. He also kept a wooden board for painting, a gift from Serov, and only a seventy-year-old old man painted his favorite Tarusa landscape on it.
He never craved honors and awards - they themselves found him: Krymov was awarded the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR in 1942, and shortly before his death - the People's Artist of the RSFSR. Since 1949 he was a corresponding member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR. Awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. Krymov's paintings were acquired by artists and just art lovers. His landscapes were in the collections of prominent Moscow collectors.
The theory of tonal painting by Nikolai Petrovich was necessary in classes with students. And Krymov became a teacher.
4th year, students have already painted two-figure productions and a nude model. Accompanied by the director and the head of the educational department, a tall, very self-confident man with a gray head, large features and intelligent eyes entered. He greeted the students very politely:
- Hello!
Glancing over the workshop and quickly passing it from end to end, Krymov said loudly:
- And the world is worth a penny here ... And now show your work ...
Well...you don't know how to write. Everything must start over ... I will teach you! I won't make artists out of you. An artist is born. Talent cannot be taught, it can only be developed.
From the very first lesson, practical lessons in painting began, but they were not at all the same as before. Former teachers staged for painting the usual, apparently included in the tradition of art educational institutions, "performances": a still life from a beautiful vase against the background of draperies with folds, naked sitters, sometimes even two figures at once, also against the background of beautiful rags. The teachers tried to show their taste in these productions and tried to inspire, ignite and captivate students. This was also expected from Krymov. But what Nikolai Petrovich set was generally impossible to expect and foresee. It was a house knocked together from plywood and painted with white and brown paint - gouache, about fifty centimeters high. It stood on a table, against the background of a white wall opposite the windows, and on one side was illuminated by an electric bulb. From the point of view of the students, there was no more unpicturesque, unattractive and uninteresting object in nature for the artist. Nikolai Petrovich approached the students, very carefully compared
study with the model and immediately expressed an assessment:
- Very bad! Everything is wrong! .. Very good! .. Yours is the best! .. Bad!
It was evident that at that time he forgot about everything in the world and all went to work. His passion was transferred to his students, and the spirit of competition flared up. Work on such a seemingly unexciting model began to boil with might and main and captured everyone. For the next lesson, at the request of Krymov, the students knocked down a small accordion screen 80 centimeters high with doors about 15 centimeters wide from plywood. Then Nikolai Petrovich painted the sashes in different colors and put the screen on the table in the back of the workshop so that the warm-colored sashes were illuminated by daylight from the windows, and the cold-colored sashes were illuminated by an electric light bulb. It turned out to be an interesting, elegant thing that could be written only by taking the right color and tone. In the process of working on this task, the artists comprehended a lot of new things: it was a revelation for them that the white color illuminated by the lamp was equal in tone to the yellow light from the window fell on. After that, the master set another "simple task" for the students - a white cube, but one side of it was painted black and again strongly illuminated by an electric lamp ... Everyone realized that one of the secrets of painting was beginning to open before them. Students were also required to write a piece of crumpled paper. It turned out that it is more difficult to correctly depict this object, unexpected in form, than a plaster head.
- Once in some of my work I fiddled with white for a long time. There is white paint, but no white color. After all, paint is not a color! And now, imagine, I took a piece of white paper and went to the Tretyakov Gallery. He went up to some Repin portrait with white cuffs, put a white piece of paper on them, and the cuffs, it turns out,
dark grey!
Former teachers used to talk to students like this:
- Hm! Hm! So! So! You understood Cezanne correctly, but you were too carried away by him ...
Or in another way:
- Little, little sweat! Need to sweat more!
Almost no specific remarks were made, conversations were long, vague, mentioning Michelangelo, impressionism, Pompeian frescoes... Krymov came, and everything fell into place. "Creators" and "geniuses" turned into timid and industrious schoolchildren who attentively, timidly and with bated breath, listened to the words of their teacher.
- Not true! This should be increased by a hair. Draw a vertical from here! See how wrong you are!
Painting has become a job for students and very difficult, but concrete and understandable in its tasks. WRITE RIGHT! And only true, accurately conveying nature. Many thought at first that it was very simple. But is it that simple?
Here is a house, one side is lit by a lamp - it is orange, the other side is chilly, the drawing is not complicated, because they painted naked sitters against the background of carpets, but why does everyone work so hard, copying the same thing several times, what is the difficulty?
I came to talk to you about one of the most difficult types of fine art - painting. Draw some kind of view or still life, then touch it up a little with paint, and you get a painted picture. But will it be painting? As long as we keep silent. We do not know. You can draw something on canvas and then paint it with oil paint. It will also turn out to be a picture, but what to call it? Painting? We do not know. How can we be? How to establish exactly what painting is? Everyone has different ideas about this. Some look at a widely plastered picture, do not immediately understand what is depicted, and say: "Painting"! Others look at a picture cut with dots and say: "What kind of painting is this! You can immediately see that it is not! Because the painting is different, it is in broad strokes." It is rather difficult to explain this. We must first tell what names and concepts exist in it. Everyone has their own idea of what color is. Maybe my idea doesn't match yours. Let's agree on what the concepts of color, tone, etc. mean. I call paint a color. If I take a tube of watercolor paint,
let’s say crimson, and, having liquidly diluted this paint on water, I’ll put a spot with a brush, it will be pink, when I put the paint darker, taking less water, it will be darker pink, I’ll take the paint even thicker and put it on a piece of paper, it will be even darker . Finally, I will put it in full force, rubbing it thickly and almost without diluting it with water, so that the stain on the paper will be equal in strength to the paint itself. Can you tell me, please, are the paints on the paper the same color or different? One color, one paint, and these are shades of one paint. One is dark, the other is light, the third is even lighter. This is called tones of the same color. What is more important for an artist to see: tone or color? What is easier? Color is easier to see. Whoever sees tone poorly and cannot understand tone relationships is not a painter. I don't think it's right to start learning painting with watercolors. For an inexperienced artist, watercolor presents a great difficulty: when it dries, it brightens and you can’t keep up with it. However, watercolor has one pleasant quality: it is somehow written without bumps, dries quickly, and a picture painted in watercolor is distinguished by clarity and tenderness.
You can start working with watercolor when you understand how to handle it, when you master the technique of oil painting.
You will not name, perhaps, a single major watercolorist who would not know how to paint in oils. In search of an exact formulation, I came to the following definition of the concept of painting: PAINTING IS THE TRANSFER OF VISIBLE MATERIAL BY TONE. Why exactly tone and material? When you write something, for example, an inkwell, then with the right tone, in color, it will turn out to be glass. If it does not turn out glass, your work will not be approved. You can, of course, create the illusion of glass in another way: by pointing a small shine, but this method is not artistic. Another thing is if you lay several shades in the right tone and color along the shape of the inkwell. The inkwell will turn out to be glass, and it will be a painting. And where the material is not transferred, there is no painting. Why do I say "visible" stuff and not just stuff. If I take this inkwell into the shade, you will lose the feeling of materiality, the familiarity of the material. And so the artist often makes a mistake, trying to convey material where the material cannot be shown for the sake of achieving a picturesque effect ... There is a house, and behind the house there is some kind of haze. What are they doing there? Asphalt poured? We came closer and we see: this is a white house, but it stands somewhere there. in depth. What tone to write this house? Is it necessary to paint the house the way we saw it when we approached it, or the way it seemed to us when we thought it was asphalt being cooked? Yes, write as he seemed. You have no right to write instead of what you see, what you know. Silk linen hangs at a distance. How do I know that it is silk, maybe it is, the devil knows what. And so, the devil knows what, you write. If you take the glass farther away, where the material is no longer visible, and yet, knowing that the glasses are made of glass, I will hand over the glass, then I will lie ... How can you paint a picture so that it turns out to be picturesque? It is necessary to write, taking the relation of one subject to another. Where is the big mistake? If you lie in color, or if you lie in tone? Of course, if you lie in tone. What is holding the painting? Tone. We know pictures that are painted with two or three colors, but thanks to a very true tone, they make a good, true impression. If we write in one color, without conveying the difference in tones, then we will get nonsense. A strange thing - probably, all artists have noticed that the closer they take the shades of objects to nature, the better the material from which the object is made is conveyed. And vice versa, if these shades are not observed, the material of the transmitted objects disappears. Snow is made, if you write winter, with lime, silk with wool, the body with rubber, boots with iron, etc. CHANGE OF COLOR DOES NOT CHANGE TONE. You think about color, and you think about it the least. What color is this ashtray? You will all say with one voice: gray-brown-crimson. Which is darker: my pink hand or this red color? You will say: the ends of the fingers are darker than red. That's right, you saw the tone. This is the only thing you need to think about when you write a work of art. They say they lost their color. How can you lose it? Operate with tone, and color will never be lost. You can check this for all the great masters. They are all in tune. There are no bright, flashy colors anywhere. It is customary to say that Korovin has "luxurious" colors.
/ work by K. Korovin "Nasturtium" /
But take a closer look: in one place there is an umber, in another just a fuse, only in some places a faded pink. But all this is in unity, in harmony. So, when you have thoroughly studied the tone, I will tell you: "Now it is time to think about color." And you will no longer be able to think of color in isolation: you will always take color according to tone. And then your training will be completed....
- When I painted from life, I was looking for something ... Then it was called "search". Now there is less talk about searches. Then they said: the artist is looking for and does not find himself. These "quests" impressed the townspeople very much, but they were of little use. I blame the teachers who taught me. They walked around the classroom and threw the remark: "the arm is long." But how to make a picture picturesque, they did not say. But a long arm can be measured and shortened, but picturesqueness will not increase from this. Well, is it really possible to deal with such measurements, you ask? Of course you can. Everything can be done to make the painting good. When you are adult artists, will you really call everyone: "Look how I work, I don't measure anything, I take it by eye and guess." You can measure as much as you like. The artistry of your work does not depend on how you performed it, but on what results you came to. I confused myself and confused others. For example, I am writing a sunny day. The sky and highlights are so hot that I want to give the lightest paint. What kind of paint to take? You need to take the most dazzling. You wash the brush so that nothing dirty the paint, you run white everywhere so that it burns brighter. Nothing is on fire. You come to the exhibition, look at Repin, Arkhipov - they are on fire. Not a single bright color, but it burns. And it turns out the sun. Many artists write like this: green paint will make a sunny day and green - gray, only on a gray day they will add ivory. This is not true. The grass on a gray day is as green as the grass in a shady spot on a sunny day.
The shadow on the roof from the chimney on a sunny day is the same roof, only not illuminated by the sun, the same as it happens on a cloudy day.
When you learn how to correctly convey the tone, critics will write about you: "How he correctly expresses the morning, evening, gray day - how sad it is to part with his paintings!" The artist is happy, the critics are happy and everyone is happy. But the most important thing is still not in the transfer of the tone of individual objects, but in the transfer of the general tone.
The general tone is that degree of darkness, that luminosity of colors, to which the whole picture is subject as a whole.
The general tone of a gray day is one, and the general tone of a sunny day is another.
Hence the variety of tones, the variety of scales in the paintings of great artists. Take Repin's painting "The Procession"
What a sun in it, how strong and sonorous it is.
Or take "Veschernitsy" of the same Repin
Two candles are burning, and it is difficult to look at the crowd through them. Block these candles and you will see people sitting and smiling and laughing. In realistic painting, the stroke, texture, and manner of applying paint do not play any role. Repin, our brilliant painter, has no special texture. Everything is written very simply, but also very true, both in the general tone and in the individual tones of the picture. One would think that with such a view of painting, it would be monotonous and boring - everyone would start writing the same way and there would be no original artists. But this is not true. Vice versa, GENUINE ORIGINALITY APPEARS WHEN THE ARTIST DOES NOT THINK ABOUT IT.
One sunny day I went to write a motif that interested me. In a field, near the road, stood a white house with a group of trees adjoining it.
The illuminated house was unusually bright. To write it, I used
almost pure whitewash, to which he mixed very little yellow paint, fearing to pollute this color of the house, which had become yellowish from the sun's rays. Then, accordingly, I painted the rest of the landscape - the road, the trees, the bright green field and the blue sky. The next day was cloudy. I decided to make a new study of the same motive. When I arrived at the place, I saw that my house glowed like a white spot against the background of the whole landscape. To convey its color, I used pure white. Then
respectively painted the rest of the landscape. The next day I wrote the same motif in the evening, at sunset. The house burned like a dazzling orange against the landscape. To convey it, I took almost white white, carefully, again for fear of darkening, mixing very little orange paint with it. But when I put all three sketches side by side, I saw that on a gray day it came out lighter than on a sunny one, and in the evening landscape the house was painted in a tone equal to daylight. For me, the lie of such a depiction became clear. That same summer I happened to write an evening sketch.
To make the sky glow more, I tried to show the earth and trees dark
silhouette, and I painted the sky bright, as if it happened during the day. I succeeded in the silhouette even with the smallest writing out of the leaves and dressing the details. For several evenings I painted a landscape, but I saw that it did not convey the necessary and correct impression. In one of these sessions, lighting a cigarette, I pointed a burning match at the sky, and in relation to the fire of the match, it went out, faded ... Long before that, I thought about what it would be good to have in painting, as well as in music, a tuning fork, that is, an object that would not lose its luminosity either day or night, neither winter nor summer, would be constant, not changing from the surrounding conditions. I went over various objects in my mind, but it seemed to me impossible to invent this tuning fork. And here, in the evening, pointing a match at the sky, I realized that her FLAME AND MAY BE THAT FORKING FORK IN PAINTING, which I have been looking for for a long time, since neither sunlight nor any other source of light can change the tone of her fire. Whoever understands this will have in his pocket the KEY to the secrets of pictorial wisdom!..
The next day, I ran to the white building from which I used to paint sketches, and pointed a lit match on the brightly lit white wall - it completely merged with the house. Then I decided to repeat the three experimental studies made earlier without any regard for tone. Arriving on a gray overcast day to write this white house and pointing a match at it, I saw that it was as much darker than the fire of the match as the shadow falling from a tree on the illuminated wall of the house on a sunny day was darker. I had to darken the white tone of this house a bit. And when I attributed everything else to it - the earth, trees and sky, proportionally darkening, I saw that this sketch really conveys a gray day, space and material.
The same thing happened with the third, evening study. The orange tone of the house turned out to be much darker than the tone of the illuminated wall on a sunny day. And although I now painted it a second time with darker paint than in the first evening study, it shone many times stronger. At all, AN OBJECT CORRECTLY TAKEN IN TONE WILL SHIN MORE STRONGER THAN THE SAME OBJECT WRITTEN MUCH LIGHTER, but in the wrong tone. To see how truly the best Russian painters felt the general tone, one should walk through the halls of the Tretyakov Gallery, applying a piece of white paper to the bright places of their works. So that's the general tone. He plays a huge role in the film. And the artist who knows how to convey the general tone is a thousand times stronger than the artist who wrote out all the details, managed to observe all the nuances, but did not get into the general tone. The general tone is the main thing you should be thinking about right now.
Krymov set similar tasks for his students until everyone understood what they should achieve in their work.
- If you are not interested in writing, but you are forced, then good things will never work out. Write only what excites you.
- It often happens that an artist, having written incorrectly, having told lies from three boxes and trying to justify himself, tells me - "I see it that way." Then I tell him: suppose a person wants to be a singer, but instead of "do" he takes "la". To him
they say: "you are lying," and he replies: "I hear so." Then they say to him: "it means you can't hear well." A singer with poor hearing is not a singer, but an artist who cannot see correctly, not an artist!
In painting, as in music: everything must be coordinated and harmonious, as in a good orchestra. If, for example, you are listening to a symphony, and any instrument in the orchestra is out of tune, then the whole impression is spoiled and you no longer perceive the music. If in a big picture or in a small study there is a lie, at least in one detail, then the same thing turns out: false
the place is annoying and does not allow you to look like a mote that has fallen into the eye. But if there is a lot of lies in the picture, then there is no longer a mote, but a whole thorn.
The picture is finished when there is no lie in painting, when everything is checked and the general tone is correct. When intent is expressed.
“When you paint a landscape,” he continued, “take a certain state of nature and try to express it: the sun, so the sun, cloudy, so cloudy.
It happens like this: the artist painted a sunny landscape, but darkened it. The sun failed. The landscape has lost its expression. Trying to justify himself, the artist says: "The day was average - either the sun, or not." Then there was no need to write! Imagine a portrait where you can't make out whether it's a man or a woman. If such was the model, then it was not necessary to write it. Do not make it so that it turns out "neither fish nor fowl."
- When an artist does not trust the eye, but writes only from knowledge, such an artist will never convey the truth and will not create a real work of art. IN PAINTING YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE YOUR EYE. Otherwise, from time to time the artist will gradually completely forget how to see what he writes...
Do not look for spectacular motifs in the landscape. This is done by photographers who make "photo studies".
For a painter, beauty should not be in the plot, but in the painting. Don't try to beautify nature. She is already beautiful. In any part of it.
An artist is one who sees this beauty in nature, admires it and can convey his feeling to the viewer through painting. Be sincere, write as you see, and if you are an artist, then your painting will not leave the viewer indifferent. He will feel the beauty you see in nature and share your admiration for it.. And in order to write as you see, you need to know the laws of painting. This is what I want to teach you.
Krymov knew the laws of the landscape so well that he could, without seeing nature, accurately, to the smallest detail, disassemble the sketch and accurately say where it was right and where it was wrong. One day one of the students showed a sketch, where logs were painted in the foreground. Having violated Krymov's precepts, he shortened them a little. So it seemed to him better in terms of composition. Glancing at the sketch and winking at the student with one eye, Nikolai Petrovich said:
- And you shortened the logs. You won't deceive me. You thought that I would not notice, because the logs can be of any length in kind, but you wrote from yourself that the place that was closed in kind by the ends of the logs, and this is immediately noticeable. It's not easy to fool me... Write truthfully, as you can see. Don't overthink and be careful. The more subtly you convey the truth, the better.
REMEMBER THAT IN ART THE TRUTH AND ONLY THE TRUTH IS IMPORTANT. Love nature, study it. Write what you truly love. Never fake. Be truthful, for BEAUTY IS IN TRUTH!
In creating the picture, Krymov did not deny the role of fantasy, as long as it was based on the observation of nature.
- Vrubel wrote his "Pan" from an old stump.
He returned from a walk late, he had ascended for a month already. Caught him on the way
old mossy stump. He saw his "Pan" in him and took all the colors from him into the picture. And his "Mermaid"
Do you think it's from the head? No! He was in the forest at night, after the rain; there was a moon, and he saw raindrops glistening on a huge web. From there and "Mermaid". ONLY NATURE!
Krymov could not stand falsehood in any of its manifestations, and could not stand an indifferent, bureaucratic attitude towards art. He was irreconcilable to careerists who were looking for easy glory or easy money in the art. Nikolai Petrovich always told the truth to such people with his characteristic directness, not being afraid to make enemies among them.
- Bandits. he said briefly. - Do you see this?
Nikolai Petrovich rolls up the sleeve on his big hand and with a crash puts his imposing fist on the table, clenching it so tightly that his hand trembles.
- When I was young, I talked to them using this tool. They are still afraid of me.
Nikolai Petrovich treated his students strictly, demandingly, but fairly. Once a student worked on a complex motive, which turned out to be beyond his power. Nikolai Petrovich looked at what he was writing for a long time, and then advised:
- See that garbage heap there. Well, try to write it.
He was taken aback by this suggestion and replied:
- But it will be boring to write!
“Then invite jazz,” Nikolai Petrovich said sternly.
He was ruthless in assessing their mistakes, but he loved his students like a father. He often helped them financially, arranged orders for them, introduced
them with interesting and significant people who can influence the fate of students. And they paid him ardent love and respect.
- Being a real artist is difficult even with great talent: you need to work a lot - write, draw, study, observe nature. But not everyone can. When I was still young, I knew such artists who have talent worth three kopecks, and they want to show that they have it for a hundred rubles. Without knowing how to write or draw properly, it is impossible to become famous, and for them the most important thing is to become a celebrity as soon as possible ... This is where they embark on a trick, begin to write something utter, and the more incomprehensible, the better. Because no one will ever think why this is happening. Especially the ladies pecked at this bait ... They naturally think that he writes this way not from incompetence, but that he is looking for "new forms of expression" of his feelings and thoughts. And then the ladies, in order not to seem like fools, begin to invent all sorts of nonsense, that they understand it, feel that it is original, new and even brilliant. Such a "mysterious" artist likes to gather spectators around him, especially these same ladies. And since not all ladies understand painting, but love mystery more, they begin to talk a lot about him, and this is what he needs. He becomes fashionable. You can trust me - I knew all this punks perfectly ...
The years of war severely undermined Krymov's health, he lived in Moscow and hardly worked. The artist walked with great difficulty. He could no longer go down the stairs again and was forced to work at home.
From here, from the fourth floor of the house in Poluektov Lane, a charming view of the roofs of old Moscow mansions opened up. In general, for the artist, the roofs were a special world that saved him during the years of illness, and numerous studies of these roofs helped him never part with painting.
Despite his illness, every summer Nikolai Petrovich continued to travel to the small town of Tarusa.
Here, on the Oka, he came every summer to work and rest... Due to illness he looked like an old man, but in his works he was young to the end, they were so lively and expressive. In the winter of 1958, illness finally bedridden him. He couldn't work...
The artist died on May 6, 1958. He was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow, not far from the monastery.
N.P. Krymov - "Artist and teacher. Articles, memoirs"
Nikolai Krymov was born on April 20, 1884, his father, as already mentioned, was an artist who painted in the style of the Wanderers he loved. The father passed on all his skills and abilities to his son, instilling in him a love of art from an early age.
The artist's family was not rich, therefore, while studying painting at an art school, student Nikolai Krymov saved a lot, paints and canvases were expensive, respectively, he saved, used what was left of more prosperous students. It is probably for this reason that the artist carefully used materials in his further works, all his paintings are small in size.
The talent of the artist was noticed almost immediately after his admission - in 1906, one of the earliest works of Krymov "Roofs under the snow" was bought by Valentin Alexandrovich Serov for an exhibition in the Tretyakov Gallery. The works of Repin I.E. had a great influence on the artist's work. and Vasnetsov V.M., it is their influence that is so noticeable in the earliest works of Krymov.
During the years of study from 1905 to 1910. the artist in his works leaned towards the impressionistic image of nature, delicate pastel colors and light strokes gave his canvases a spiritual and weightless look. During this period of creativity, Nikolai Petrovich Krymov was looking for his own individuality and his own style of performance. Early works include the canvases "By Spring", "Bullfinches" and "Sunny Day". All these paintings have a slightly blurred character, the hand of an inexperienced master in painting is visible.
The main achievement of Nikolai Krymov during the years of study was his special style of painting, combining the transfer of the naturalness of the landscape and its poetic romance, which became a kind of visiting card of the artist. Krymov's later works are spelled out more carefully and in more detail, the manner of execution is also slightly transformed, the paintings now have a more complete and finished look. Vivid examples of the work of this period are "Pink Winter", "Moonlight Night in the Forest", "Evening" and "Evening", written between 1910 and 1920. The manner of writing works of this period has many similarities with the paintings of Kuindzhi, the same plasticity of landscapes is noticeable, great attention is paid to light and glare.
The artist brought his talent to perfection in the 20s, becoming an adherent of Russian realistic painting. Krymov loved and was proud of his country and his people. Each of his canvases is literally saturated with this genuine love and tenderness. All his works are a contemplative look at Russian landscapes, in each of which the artist sees some kind of mystery and mystery. It is not for nothing that Krymov was so fond of depicting water, which created in the picture a kind of effect through the looking glass and otherworldliness of reality. A striking example is his canvases "Night landscape with a house" and "Noon". It seems that these pictures are wonderful illustrations for a fairy tale. The atmosphere of airiness and lightness was achieved by Nikolai Petrovich thanks to the exact selection of tones, which he considered the most important in the image and transmission of light.
A favorite theme for the works of late Krymov is the Russian village, and the artist saw nature as its center not people, but nature. All the works devoted to this topic are made so emotionally that it is simply impossible not to be inspired by the author's passionate feelings for his native landscapes! What is the picture "Village in Summer", written in 1921, worth. All of his canvases can be described as idyllic and a bit naive, but they reflect the Russian soul too subtly, which is simply impossible not to understand and give them a positive assessment.
It can be said that in the twenties the author's paintings acquire some concreteness, Krymov often depicts the landscapes of the city of Zvenigorod, in the vicinity of which he lived.
The last period of the painter's work is inextricably linked with the Oka River and the small town of Tarusa, where Krymov moved to stay, he was simply fascinated by the local landscapes and, of course, the Oka River, which, according to him, "breathed freedom." The paintings “Before Twilight”, “Polenovo. River Oka "and a number of others. At the age of 74, in the spring of May 6, 1958, Nikolai Krymov died. The artist left a magnificent collection of his works for the knowledge and admiration of his work to all subsequent generations.
