The collection of works by the remarkable Russian artist, a classic of Soviet art, Sergei Vasilievich Gerasimov, is notable for its monographic completeness and, due to its high artistic quality, enjoys well-deserved prestige in our country and abroad. Various aspects of Gerasimov's multifaceted talent are widely represented, and each stage creative development reflected in typical patterns. A whole range of works is the pride national culture. The work of Gerasimov of the Soviet period is rightfully considered programmatic, clearly expressing the most fruitful tendencies of socialist realism.
All Gerasimov's works - whether it is a large-format plot-thematic painting or a small pictorial sketch, easel graphic composition or book illustration - are immediately recognizable, at first sight, testifying to his artistic originality, the uniqueness of what was done in art. They express - and expressed with talent - the spiritual and aesthetic ideal of the era in which the artist lived.
The collection of Gerasimov's works can tell about the artist's versatile interest in the world around him, about the transfer of both dramatic and harmonious aspects of life. Gerasimov was distinguished by close attention to the life of people and nature, to the life of an individual and the phenomena of a wide public resonance, to the “small” and significant.
Formation creative individuality Gerasimov took place during a period of kaleidoscopic change of various artistic trends, at a time of intense experimentation and intense ideological clashes between opposing groups, schools and ephemeral schools. The young artist was not carried away by the maelstrom of the maximalist attitudes of numerous avant-garde movements. He remained faithful to the aesthetic precepts of the realistic school of Russian painting. This was facilitated by the lessons he received from S.V. Ivanova, K.A. Korovina, V.A. Serov, A.E. Arkhipova, L.O. Pasternak while studying first at the Stroganov Central Artistic - industrial school(1901 - 1907), and then at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1907-1911).
The Tretyakov Gallery has two paintings artist, performed in the pre-revolutionary period of creativity. The main array of his works of this time in the gallery is graphics. This disproportion is not due to a gap in the assembly, but more so preference, which Gerasimov gave then graphic techniques More specifically, watercolors. He received the title of artist in 1912 for a watercolor sheet - “ Male portrait. Portrait of the book publisher and educator I.D. Sytin».
The most intense and effective young Gerasimov worked in 1905-1913. Watercolors of those years allow us to talk about his early creative maturity; even then he developed as an outstanding artist, found his themes and his own special intonation in art. His works testify to subtle observation, the ability to vividly and convincingly convey one's impressions. In such sheets as "" (1906), "" (1909), "" (1913) and many others, Gerasimov completely mastered the art of "erasing random features" from the depicted motif and revealing the poetic essence in it.
The nature of the selection of vital material and the chamber nature of the images in early works talk about the artist's attraction to lyrical art. He purposefully developed his own type of sincerely moody landscape and interior, a chamber everyday scene and an intimate portrait. He was worried about the theme of the Russian outback: the Russian provinces found in him a remarkably deep and thoughtful portrayer - a poet. With special attention and sensitivity, he looked closely at the undemanding beauty of rural nature, inseparable from life. common people.
In those years, Gerasimov did not see the people's life as idyllic at all: he noticed contrasts in it, a complex interweaving of joyful and everyday life. This is what she looks like in his work recruitment"(1911)," "(1911).
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In the early works of Gerasimov, the precious property of his art was already fully manifested: they are all surprisingly Russian, not only in terms of topics, but also in terms of attitude. One more thing important quality inherent in them: purity of lyrical intonation. The attitude of the young artist to the reproduced phenomenon as something extremely native, causing a deep personal feeling, and at the same time as something common, national - this attitude is expressed in them with naturalness and artistic ease.
In terms of the depth of lyrical experience, the image of Russian nature created by Gerasimov in the watercolor "" is akin to the "wind" landscape in the poetry of Alexander Blok. The main thing in it is not external details, but a strong sense of the Motherland, the thought of its "tearful and ancient beauty." The national note is clearly heard here, but expressed without any ethnographic accents in the plot.
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The content of this sheet is inherent in internal integrity, achieved by the organic fusion of landscape and genre-everyday images; and mentally they are inseparable, equally subject to a common artistic idea.
In search of a form adequate to the ideological and lyrical tasks, the master developed individual style techniques. He recreated the lively and changeable image of the surrounding world, as a rule, in an impulsive free manner. A dynamic watercolor (sometimes with an admixture of white) stroke, endowed with color-tonal richness, made it possible to convey the world in constant development and movement. This is typical Gerasimov's painting, capable of capturing instantaneous changes in nature, its most fragile states. In each motif, the artist was interested not in a static moment, but in a state understood as a process, as a life lasting and pulsating before the eyes of the viewer - whether it be the life of the human spirit or the surrounding nature. The genre scene in watercolor "" (1906) does not have a developed action, but is all permeated with a quivering mood. The poetic perception of an ordinary fragment of rural reality here is largely achieved by the finest harmony of warm and cold colors, the richness of, at first glance, a modest color palette, which is dominated by silvery-gray shades, as if melting at places of contact and transitions. Gerasimov continued the traditions of the Russian lyrical landscape, the traditions of A.K. Savrasova, I.I. Levitan, V.A. Serov, K.A. Korovin.
Learned from K.A. Korovin, the impressionistic principle of the equal existence of each individual object in a light-air environment is masterfully embodied in such things by Gerasimov as “ Mozhaysk ranks"(1908)," Bazaar in Mozhay"(1908)," Fair» (1908).
In graphics, which was Gerasimov's independent area of interest in the initial period of creativity, he sought contemporary themes, which he later developed into painting. IN " Portrait of A.G. Gerasimova, the artist's wife"(1913) translated into the language of painting and watercolor techniques: improvised fills, plastic hints. The form is created to a much greater extent by color than by academic chiaroscuro. Illusion achieved by color air environment around the female figure.
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The sketchy nature of the letter turned out to be equivalent to the lively and direct characterization of the model. It's a kind of mood portrait. For all the artist's enthusiasm for pictorial effects, the image of a person in the portrait is not reduced to a self-contained pictorial and plastic phenomenon. He attracts attention with a psychologically in-depth understanding of the internal state of the depicted.
Military service since 1914 causes a rather long break in the artist's work. Gerasimov returns to active creative activity only after the Great October socialist revolution. In the first years of Soviet power, radical changes took place in his art. If in the pre-revolutionary time, filled with the search for an individual creative style, Gerasimov was restrained, shunned extremes and throwing, did not enter into an internal dispute with himself, worked smoothly, developing calmly ascending to ever higher skill and professionalism, now he is reassessing the previously acquired values . This relatively short segment of Gerasimov's creative biography was a kind of period of storm and stress.
He responded to the events of the revolutionary era, which radically transformed the entire socio-emotional atmosphere in the country, by changing the style, updating the already tested artistic techniques and principles of shaping. A certain influence was exerted on him by the aesthetics and artistic practice of constructivism: for example, in some works of the first post-October years, he consciously exposes the process of plastic composition. Among them were also such works in which the influence of folk art, in particular the artistic primitive, was traced. In those years, more than one Gerasimov was infatuated with the primitive. Traces of this influence, as well as the impact of general searches related to the problems of monumental art and artistic synthesis, are visible in the sketch of the panel "" (1918). By working on a panel designed to decorate the building of the former Moscow City Duma, Gerasimov took part in the implementation of Lenin's plan for monumental propaganda.
The pictorial plane of the sketch was occupied by the figure of a peasant, whose large and confident step symbolized the movement of the Russian village towards a new life. At the heart of the image conveyed by the language of the "naive" folk art, the feeling persists real prototype. The sketch showed Gerasimov's desire to create a monumental style of the revolutionary era. Experience in the field of monumental art helped him to further create artistic images, epic in breadth of coverage of phenomena.
The desire to express the heroic-dramatic collisions of the era with the appropriate visual means led to the appearance in the art of Gerasimov of a monumental-expressive beginning. But in parallel with this stylistic line in his work, there is further development and the enrichment of lyrical motifs, to which he returned after plastic experiments. The lyrical and optimistic aspects of realism received new colors and emotional shades from the artist.
In those same years, work on a new topic for him became of fundamental importance for Gerasimov - self-portrait. The Tretyakov Gallery has two paintings of him, executed in 1923 and 1929.
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The basis of their content is determined by the idea of responsibility imposed on the artist by the era of grandiose social changes. The whole system of ideological and figurative characteristics in both works indicates a deep sense of the author's involvement in the new time. The power of expressing this feeling is brought in them to the degree of concentration at which the individual is organically transformed into the typical, and therefore the image of the person being portrayed is perceived as the personification of the artist of the Soviet era.
In the 1920s portrait genre Gerasimov has undergone a noticeable evolution: an intimate chamber portrait is being replaced by a portrait - type. It reveals the new character of the Soviet people and significantly enlarges the internal scale of the images. Gerasimov owes his fame as the greatest Soviet portrait painter to the typical images of Russian peasants. The most significant of these works: "", "". They summarize the destinies of people that took shape in the new historical conditions.
The hero of the portrait "" (1926) is a peasant, still dressed in a soldier's overcoat, who has just returned to civilian life.
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Newspaper reports give him a difficult thought about the peasant lot, about the need to break the old way of rural life. The personal and the public are intertwined in these reflections of the farmer, he measures his fate with the fate of a multi-million dollar peasant Russia reared up by the revolution. Preserving all the specificity of his model, Gerasimov transforms the impression of it into a holistic, picturesque image in nature, marked by signs of a capacious artistic generalization.
The search for the heroic in the everyday life of the Soviet village led Gerasimov to create a classic work of the era - “ Collective farm watchman» (1933). This portrait takes us back to the memorable years of collectivization and introduces us to one of the ordinary heroes of collective farm construction.
The feelings, thoughts and deeds of the depicted collective farmer are enlarged by the epoch itself, born of the awareness of the need for his modest work, the understanding of the importance of his contribution to the common cause. The artist succeeded in a typical image Soviet man, whose spiritual image and moral beauty were forged in the crucible of a great turning point, in the conditions of a new social reality. The image of this energetic person is visually activated by the dynamic style of painting, the confident movement of a wide brush across the canvas. In an effort to generalize, Gerasimov does not depict household trifles and particulars, he shows the figure of a peasant in close-up, in strong movement.
In a number of paintings of the 1920s - 1930s, Gerasimov created a kind of group portraits rural workers. These works are also interesting as pages of history. Soviet country. In the painting "" (1927), the viewer is confronted by the seething passions of the many-sided peasant Rus', entering the threshold of a new life. The proletarian-communist throws a revolutionary slogan into this socially heterogeneous crowd, passionately and convincingly calls for a conscious reorganization of the world. In the center artistic research Gerasimov - the problem of self-determination and moral formation of the Russian peasantry in the first decade of Soviet power. In the depicted scene, the real impressions of the artist are condensed: in the depiction of each character, a lot of inessential is discarded and, on the contrary, attention is focused on revealing the socially typical. For the sake of this kind of expressiveness, Gerasimov deliberately uses some of the possibilities of grotesque imagery. Thanks to this, the expressiveness of the characteristics increases, and the meaning of the depicted scene is, as it were, exposed and becomes clearly visible.
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Fists - the rich with gloomy faces and leaden - heavy eyes are hiding behind the backs of the middle peasants and the poor. Among the latter, manifestations of enthusiasm and awakened faith in the possibility of a better life are noticeable. It is in the images of these peasants that Gerasimov notes the sprouts of a new consciousness. The sharpness of artistic vision, a deep knowledge of folk psychology helped him to mold outstanding characters. The era of a radical restructuring of the peasant worldview found in the person of Gerasimov an intelligent, historically perspicacious interpreter. Along with the colorfulness of the social type, the dynamic development of the plot and the expressive dramaturgy of the compositional construction play an important role in creating a tense image of the picture. As if restraining himself, the artist balances the expressiveness creative expression appeal to soft colors.
Close attention to the fate of the people should have aroused Gerasimov's interest in the historical picture. In the 1930s, his first works of the historical and revolutionary genre appeared. In the sketch for his famous painting "" (1932), the deep drama of the figurative solution of the plot has already manifested itself. Depicting the scene of the farewell of the red partisans with the dead comrade, Gerasimov gives it an epic meaning, permeates it with the harsh and high “music of the revolution”.
There is no hopelessness in its tragedy: it is a heroic tragedy, conveying to the viewer the courageous truth about the historical inevitability of revolutionary victims. The scene does not overwhelm with its content, does not produce a depressing impression. A private episode from the time of the civil war has grown into a collective image of the revolutionary era. The image of the event is freed from the power of details and genre everyday life. With the ideological and artistic conception of the work, the pathos of style, achieved by the increased emotional tension of plastic means and compositional construction, is successfully correlated.
The historical and revolutionary theme in the work of Gerasimov organically develops the images and themes that form the basis of plot compositions from folk life and, of course, portraits - paintings like " Collective farm watchman».
One of the most significant works in the creative heritage of Gerasimov is the painting "" (1928 - 1930). In it, he achieved that figurative completeness, which gives rise to a sense of universality, universality of content: somehow you forget that, according to its formal features, the picture is a work of everyday genre. Indeed, the massive boat seems to be a pedestal for a multi-figure monument to working people, and the scene of the dinner of the fishing cooperative is perceived as some kind of significant event, endowed with almost universal meaning. The ordinary everyday situation is important for the artist as an occasion for reflection on the moral beauty of labor, which is affirmed as the basis of a harmonious and sustainable social life. Gerasimov focused on the thickset human figures, endowing the images of the fishermen with epic power. Artel acts here as a keeper of high moral standards folk life.
It can be said about each of the characters: only by labor is a person strong and beautiful. In their manner of behaving - sedately, non-vainly, with a sense of dignity - Gerasimov emphasized those facets of the national character that were polished by the centuries-old experience of the Russian people. To match the people - an epic landscape with a wide breath of the river expanse. The reproduced scene is devoid of idealization: the characters are emphatically rude, brutal. Boldly sacrificing details, skillfully using the figurative possibilities of restrained color, the artist finds a laconic, plastically precise, monumental form.
Most famous work Gerasimov - painting "" (1937). This work of his fully met the requirements big style socialist era. The canvas depicts how at the festive table, right in the field, collective farmers honor the heroine of rural labor. She, with an order on her chest, sits in the center next to an elderly peasant woman and the chairman of the collective farm, who enthusiastically delivers a welcoming speech. Since the appearance of the picture on the All-Union art exhibition The "industry of socialism" was accompanied by continued success.
The secret of this popularity, again, lies not in the entertaining nature of the narrative, but in emphasizing the most essential aspects of Soviet life. Not a sluggish statement of well-known facts, but a poetic statement of collective farm news sounds in the figurative structure of the work. I want to believe that its author was completely alien to any social demagogy and the desire to embellish reality. He was truthful in the transmission main point and the historical subtext of the depicted event.
In close connection with ideological content the pictures are her stylistic features. In order for the viewer to be imbued with the major atmosphere of a rural holiday, Gerasimov turns to plein air painting, creatively implementing the lessons of impressionistic decorativeness. Ringing colors, multi-colored reflections on the clothes and faces of collective farmers, a whole colorful symphony of highlights on the tablecloth and on every object that fell into the artist’s field of vision, subtle overflows of warm and cold reflections - all this forms an amazingly beautiful and spectacular picture. But the colorful radiance of the canvas and the entire light-color element of the picture is needed by the artist not as such, but for the internal filling of the scene with a certain content, for conveying the emotional upsurge and freshness of the feelings of Soviet people. IN " Collective farm holiday"There is that thoroughness in expressing a socially significant idea, which, as a rule, was excluded from the arsenal of tasks of classical impressionism, which sought to recreate instant visual impressions. Being program work Soviet art, "" became for many generations of our artists a school of pictorial skill, an example of an innovative solution to a modern theme.
It is easy to see that in the plot-thematic works of Gerasimov, the landscape is important not as a background, but as an organic, integral environment for a person. It is impossible to achieve such an impression if you do not deal with a pure landscape. For Gerasimov, starting from the first steps in art, the landscape has always been large and independent topic. In the landscape genre, the artist created a lot of aesthetically valuable and significant.
Nature in the image of Gerasimov evokes a feeling of calm balance and harmony; its innermost rhythms are inextricably linked with the rhythms of a person's spiritual life. The foregoing does not mean that the emotional palette of Gerasimov, a landscape painter, is monotonous. He did not close himself within the limits of only refined lyrics. Some of his landscapes are imbued with romantic elation and tension. And yet, Gerasimov preferred various gradations of poetic and fragile manifestations of her inner life to dramatic states in nature. The virtuoso skill with which he reveals the chaste beauty of the modest and ordinary in nature gives charm and deep content to the unpretentious motives of his works. Everything in them breathes naturalness and attracts with the immediacy of the transmission of the measured being of nature. Gerasimov's worldview is not characterized by pessimism. The inexhaustible mental health of the Russian people is expressed in his landscapes.
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The geography of Gerasimov's landscape motifs is extremely wide, but Central Russian nature has always remained his favorite topic. The city where the artist constantly returned was Mozhaisk. Here, in his native places, with which the artist's idea of the Motherland, of Russia, has firmly grown together. Gerasimov created his best landscapes. Their distinctive feature is the organic interweaving of local and national - Russian color. In the historical and artistic lexicon, the concept of " landscape by Sergei Gerasimov».
For the best works of this kind, such as "" (1929), "" (1936), "" (1939). " Evening in the city"(1940)," "(1940) and others, it is impossible to just look: they require careful scrutiny, you need to get used to them and listen for a long time to an almost physically perceptible rich sound palette - from barely distinguishable voices and rustles to the incessantly loud noise falling from wooden water dam.
"(1939) - one of the artist's most poetic creations. The figurative content of this masterpiece of Soviet landscape painting is perceived through the prism of " winter dreams» P.I. Tchaikovsky, " winter morning » A.S. Pushkin and other lyrical works of Russian art that recreate the picture winter nature. In the context of these associations, the national character of the landscape created by Gerasimov comes through especially clearly.
In a modest motif of a snow-covered village outskirts, on a gray day, the primordial silence of which is broken by the creak of sleigh runners and the sonorous barking of a dog, the artist noticed and revealed those qualities of Russian nature that we experience as something enduring, corresponding to the age-old ideas of our people about beauty and defiant we have a deep and precious feeling of love for our country.
The color range of Gerasimov's landscape works is subtly complex, built on pure watercolor shades and delicate reflections. All this melodic "color music" sounds, as a rule, within the general (in " winter"- silver) tonality. In constant changes in color qualities, in the vibration of shimmering colors - one of the explanations for the amazing vitality of the appearance of nature in Gerasimov's paintings. They allow you to feel the continuity of the processes taking place in it, to experience its inner spirituality and feel that "it has a soul, it has a language."
Twice, in 1935 and 1939, Gerasimov visited the Caucasus and wrote a cycle there. landscapes. The most famous are those created in Kislovodsk.
Like no one else before him, Gerasimov felt and captured the atmosphere resort town and surrounding mountain landscapes. The constant "hero" of the works of this cycle is the southern sun, flooding bright light crowded streets and intensifying black and white and color contrasts. Despite his attachment to the Central Russian landscape, Gerasimov perfectly, with the spontaneity and penetration inherent in his art, conveyed the original beauty of southern nature.
An important place in Gerasimov's creative heritage is occupied by industrial landscapes - images of a landscape transformed by the creative energy of Soviet people. They appeared, as a rule, as a result of the artist's creative business trips to various construction sites of the first five-year plans. The properties of this kind of landscapes can be judged from the painting " White Sea - Baltic Canal. Nadvoitsy knot» (1933). Russian writer Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin, having visited this place before the revolution, called it the land of fearless birds. Now a completely different land has opened before the artist - unrecognizably transformed. Gerasimov remains a lyricist in the industrial landscape.
Panoramic coverage of a huge space, it would seem, excluded any intimacy of the picture. However, this landscape, like other similar works, is psychological. For the artist, it is a form of reflection on the “footsteps” of the Soviet country, on the Soviet people who are economically settling in nature, which, as the artist shows, remains close and proportionate to man, despite the grandeur of industrial intrusions into it.
During the Great Patriotic War, Gerasimov's brush effectively served his people: in this heroic and difficult time for the country, he created the canvas "" (1943). It is dedicated to the feat of a Russian peasant woman, whose son, a partisan, is taken away to be shot. A simple Russian woman boldly throws angry words of a curse in the face of the fascist punisher. Ideologically - moral significance depicted scene lies in the nature of the collision of its two main participants, personifying two different, irreconcilable ideologies. The moral superiority of a woman - a mother over an executioner is shown with the degree of clarity that makes one recall the poster form: the declarative expression in art met the needs of wartime. The psychological completeness of the conflict gives visual persuasiveness to the main idea of the work, which has absorbed historically capacious content.
In characterizing the heroine, the artist proceeds from those lofty moral criteria, which were the only acceptable for the Soviet people in the harsh years of military trials: from the entire possible spectrum of a woman's feelings, he accentuates her feelings of civic duty and hatred of the enemy. The same categorical moral assessments are due to the pamphlet witticism in the depiction of the image of the fascist rapist. The smoke of conflagrations and the corpses of executed people, as well as a huge gloomy shadow falling from him and as if trampling on the Russian land, complete his characterization.
The image of a peasant woman in Guerrilla Mothers"embodied that unprecedented and unexpected rise in national self-consciousness for the invaders, which led to the mass heroism of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War. With all its figurative structure, the picture inspired the idea of the coming victory of the Soviet people in their righteous struggle against fascism.
In 1941-1943 Gerasimov worked in Samarkand. The amount of work he did during this period is astonishing. In addition to the painting "" he writes landscapes, creates extensive graphic series.
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After returning to Moscow, the artist makes a trip to the Ukrainian front, visits the newly liberated Iskov and Novgorod. Depicting the cities and monuments of ancient Russian architecture destroyed by the invaders, he each time raises his voice to an angry protest against the barbarism and savagery of the conquerors. Then Gerasimov starts work on historical canvas dedicated to the Pugachev uprising. It is known that the historical genre in the era of the Great Patriotic War experienced its heyday, and not only in the visual arts, but also in literature, cinema, and theater. Masters of art have drawn history into the service of today. Their works told about the heroic events of the past in order to support the contemporaries' sense of pride in their homeland and its freedom-loving people. The image of Pugachev captured the imagination of Gerasimov for a long time. The artist returned to work on it later, in the 1950s. With this image, he connected his ideas about the origins of love of freedom, inherent in the Russian character from time immemorial - that love of freedom, the heroic examples of which he observed during the war years. Watercolor "" (1943) introduces the artist into the world of these ideas and historical analogies.
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Throughout the war years, Gerasimov did not leave work on lyrical landscape. In love with native nature he drew moral and spiritual strength that helped him to endure the difficult trials of wartime. These landscapes were inspired by a deep attachment to the native land - a feeling that was then experienced especially intensely. In the canvas "" (1945), written at the very end of the war, Gerasimov expressed a mood of joyful hopes, a premonition of a long-awaited victory.
The theme of the eternal renewal of spring nature is perceived here as an artistic analogy of the victory of life over death. A similar comparison of moral forces with the inexhaustible forces of Russian nature can be found in B.L. Pasternak, who wrote in the same year, 1945:
.. Spring breath of the motherland
Washes away the trail of winter from space
And black from tears are circled
From the weeping eyes of the Slavs.
For the artist and poet, the spring revival of nature is consonant with the renewal of the feelings and moods of the Soviet people.
The freshness of the discovery of beauty in simple and everyday landscapes, sincerity and deep penetration are characteristic of a whole group of landscapes, which were executed by the artist in the post-war period. Gerasimov likes to depict panoramic wide views. And, even reproducing a closed space, he appreciates in it breakthroughs into the alluring distance - whether it be a patch of sky in the gap of the branches or a forest road that captivates the eye into the depths, as, for example, in his landscapes " First green"(1954) and" "(1955).
In all these works, visual authenticity in the depiction of nature is complicated and spiritualized by the transmission of its rich inner life. Tremulous admiration for the discreet beauty of a fragrant garden, washed with spring rain, is expressed in the painting "" (1955). At the sight of a wildly flowering lilac bush and reflections of the sky on window glass country house, at the sight of wet greenery and sunlight breaking through the foliage, the viewer is given to experience the fullness of being and comprehend intercom uniting nature and man. Gerasimov glorifies in such landscapes the morally cleansing power contained in nature.
A significant role in the creative practice of Gerasimov was played by the theme traditional for Russian fine arts “ Foreign world through the eyes of a Russian artist". The Tretyakov Gallery contains works depicting views of the cities of Austria, Greece, Italy, and Turkey. England.
Endowed with a subtle ability to capture the originality of new places, Gerasimov did not write their detailed " portraits”, and shared with the viewer the poetic feelings that they evoked in him.
Love for nature found expression in Gerasimov's appeal to the genre of still life. Still life in the understanding of Gerasimov is not a "staging", but an image of a part of life. The artist's credo is especially clearly expressed in " bluebells"(1940 - 1945), where plucked meadow flowers and the landscape spreading outside the window are combined into a picturesque whole, subject to a single life rhythm.
Gerasimov's art is imbued with inner integrity and completeness and gives rise to the idea of a single, progressive creative path in its development. Marked by originality, high professional culture and unique intonation, his works are included in the golden fund of fine arts.
Today, admiring the paintings of Soviet artists, it is difficult to pass by the paintings that belong to the brush of Sergei Vasilyevich Gerasimov: they are, in fact, beautiful and expressive.
Speaking about the biography of this famous artist, one must naturally begin with the date and place of his birth: and S.V. Gerasimov on September 14, 1885 in the city of Mozhaisk, which is now in the Moscow region. From an early age, Sergei Vasilievich was drawn to drawing and sought to capture on sheets of paper the world he saw.
From 1901 to 1907 he studied at the Art and Industrial School. G. Stroganov in Moscow. Then he continued his education at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, which he successfully completed in 1912. Moreover, at that time he was taught by such eminent artists as S. V. Ivanov and K. A. Korovin.
Revolution Gerasimov received enthusiastically and immediately directed his artistic talent to strengthen Soviet power: he was engaged in the design of the revolutionary festivities that were held at that time in Moscow. The artist’s work of that period mainly boiled down to writing plots that were simple in composition - oil paintings reflected mainly monochrome portraits of men and women and landscapes that were simple in terms of emotional message.
However, against this background, the paintings of Sergei Vasilievich Gerasimov, painted already in the post-revolutionary years, which have become a real asset of the country's art, stand out. So, in 1924, the artist writes a wonderful female portrait"Peasant woman with a rooster", which is now in the Russian Museum. Also, his outstanding work was male portrait- "Front-line soldier": today thousands of people admire this canvas when visiting the Tretyakov Gallery.
Analyzing the period of Gerasimov's work in the post-revolutionary years, one can see that his painting of the Soviet period reflects many genre scenes, mainly depicting the rural landscape and the difficult process of the formation of the peasantry in new Russia. The artist also turned a lot to historical and revolutionary themes: at the same time, his social realism appears in a monumental-epic plan. An example of such work is the painting "The Oath of the Siberian Partisans", written by him in 1933, which is currently in the Russian Museum.
Soviet painting of the 30s by Gerasimov reflects the general emotional upsurge of the people: his paintings become more pompous and jubilantly major. In order to be convinced of this, it is worth looking at his canvas "Collective Farm Holiday" (1937, Tretyakov Gallery). In the artist's landscape painting, an important place is occupied by the traditions of Russian plein air creativity. At the same time, Soviet artists and critics of that time recognized Sergei Gerasimov as one of the best Soviet landscape painters. Until now, looking at his paintings, you are amazed at their wonderful poetry, subtle sense of nature, freshness of color solutions.
It was at that time that he painted the paintings that are today in Tretyakov Gallery: "Winter" (1939), "The ice has passed" (1945), a series of "Mozhaisk landscapes", "Oats" and "At the crossing" (1954). Also during the years of the Great Patriotic War, the master created the canvas "Mother of the Partisan" (1943, Tretyakov Gallery), breathing with patriotic pathos.
In the post-war period, Gerasimov painted many thematic paintings, of which the most significant is the painting "For the Power of the Soviets", written in 1957 and also located today in the Tretyakov Gallery. In addition, at that time Sergei Vasilyevich drew illustrations for the books of A. M. Gorky, N. A. Nekrasov and others, and was engaged in teaching. In 1958 Gerasimov became People's Artist of the USSR, and in 1966 he posthumously received the Lenin Prize.
On April 20, 1964, the Soviet painter Sergei Vasilyevich Gerasimov died: he died in Moscow. However, his paintings survived the author and still delight people with their beauty and truthfulness.
Irina Alekseeva
From the site "Soviet painting"
Sergei Vasilyevich Gerasimov entered the history of Soviet fine arts as a master of thematic composition and genre painting, a penetrating portrait painter and subtle landscape painter, an excellent draftsman and author of book illustrations.
S. V. Gerasimov
Gerasimov's teachers at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture were famous artists A. E. Arkhipov, S. V. Ivanov, K. A. Korovin, from them he inherited the best traditions of Russian realistic art. Since 1906, Sergei Vasilyevich has been participating in exhibitions, exhibiting watercolor and pictorial portraits, poetic landscapes of Russia.
In the 20-30s. the artist embodies in his paintings and portraits the features of a new life, the characteristic signs of a new collective farm way of life. His works such as "The Arrival of the Communists in the Village", "Collective Farm Watchman", "Collective Farm Holiday" excite with the immediacy and accuracy of the pictorial language, the depth of the theme.
Images of Russian history and the October Revolution in the 30-40s. find an emotionally vivid solution in Gerasimov's work. Dynamic, filled with the hot breath of the history of "October in Moscow". Unforgettable in terms of strength and purity of dramatic intonations is The Oath of the Siberian Partisans - a kind of optimistic tragedy in painting. The monumental composition “V. I. Lenin at the II Congress of Soviets among peasant delegates.
S. V. Gerasimov. Collective farm holiday.
1937. Oil on canvas.
State Tretyakov Gallery. Moscow.
S. V. Gerasimov. Collective farm holiday.
1937. Oil on canvas.
State Tretyakov Gallery. Moscow.
Patriotic thoughts, inspired by the events of Russian history, formed the basis of the paintings "The Pugachev Uprising", "The Rebellion of the Peasants near Mozhaisk in 1866", "Kutuzov near Borodin".
Great Patriotic War, the struggle of the Soviet people against the fascist invaders sharpened the civic sense of the artist. The wonderful painting The Partisan's Mother (Tretyakov Gallery), painted in 1943, absorbed the author's anger and pain, his unshakable faith in the resilience and courage of the people.
S. V. Gerasimov. Mother of a partisan.
1950. Oil on canvas
State Tretyakov Gallery. Moscow
S. V. Gerasimov. Mother of a partisan.
1950. Oil on canvas
State Tretyakov Gallery. Moscow
Love for the Motherland, lyrical perception of its nature are reflected in numerous watercolors and picturesque landscapes of the master. The artist's hometown - Mozhaisk, the North, the Caucasus and Central Asia gave hundreds of motives and plots to Gerasimov's landscape art.
The appearance of a contemporary, features of his character, spiritual inner world constantly worried about Gerasimov the portrait painter. The images of masters of art captured by him are especially expressive. He was attracted by strong, large characters, which found its expression not only in the paintings, but also in his illustrations. "The Case of Artamonov" by M. Gorky, "Virgin Soil Upturned" by M. A. Sholokhov, "Thunderstorm" by A. N. Ostrovsky and other significant literary works found in book graphics masters of a convincing pictorial interpretation.
Gifted painter and graphic artist, master book illustration, a born teacher, S. V. Gerasimov successfully realized his talent in all these areas of creativity.
Girl in a blue sweater
Winter
He received his artistic education at the SHPU (1901-07), then at the Moscow School of Painting and Art (1907-12), where he studied with K.A. Korovin and S.V. Ivanov.
Kutuzov on the Borodino field.
V.I. Lenin at the Second Congress of Soviets among
peasant delegates.
In his youth, Gerasimov preferred watercolor, and it was in this fine technique developed an exquisite range of colors characteristic of his works with silver-pearl overflows of free, light strokes.
Urban landscape.
Early spring
Along with portraits and landscapes, he often turned to the motifs of folk life, but it was not the narrative and not the ethnographic details that attracted the artist here, but the very element of rural and provincial urban life ("At the Cart", 1906; "Mozhaisk Rows", 1908; "Wedding in the tavern ", 1909).
Golden autumn
For the power of the Soviets.
In drawings, lithographs, engravings of the early 1920s. (series "Guys") the artist was looking for a sharper, more dramatic expression of the peasant characters.
Illustration for the novel by A.M. Gorky The Case of the Artamonovs
collective farm holiday
These searches partly continued in painting: "Front-line soldier" (1926), "Collective farm watchman" (1933). Gerasimov is a lyricist by nature, an exquisite landscape painter.
Lilac in bloom
During the elections
His highest achievements are in small natural studies of Russian nature. They are remarkable for their poetry, subtle sense of life, harmony and freshness of color ("Winter", 1939; "Ice has passed", 1945; "Spring morning", 1953; series "Mozhaisk landscapes", 1950s, etc.). Meanwhile, according to the official hierarchy of genres adopted in his time, a painting with a detailed and ideologically sustained plot was considered a full-fledged work of painting.
cow in the meadow
Mother of a partisan
But to a certain extent, Gerasimov succeeded in such paintings only when he could convey a lyrical state in them, uniting the poetry of the natural environment: "On the Volkhov. Fishermen" (1928-30), "Collective Farm Holiday" (1937).
Winter
The beginning of spring.
Attempts to convey dramatic situations were not very convincing ("The Oath of the Siberian Partisans", 1933; "Mother of the Partisan", 1947). Among the artist's graphic works, illustrations for N. A. Nekrasov's poem "Who Lives Well in Rus'" (1933-36) and M. Gorky's novel "The Artamonov Case" (1939-54) gained the greatest fame; for them Gerasimov was awarded the gold medal of the World Exhibition 1958 in Brussels).
Spring again
Spring morning.
From a young age and throughout creative way Gerasimov was enthusiastically engaged in teaching: at the art school at the printing house of the Partnership of I. D. Sytin (1912-14), in public school printing business at the People's Commissariat of Education (1918-23), in Vkhutemas - Vkhutein (1920-29), the Moscow Polygraphic Institute (1930-36), MGHI (1937-50), MVHPU (1950-64). In 1956 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Arts.
The oath of the Siberian partisans.
Church of the Intercession on the Nerl.
Landscape with a tower. The beginning of spring.
Sergei Vasilyevich Gerasimov (1885-1964)- an outstanding Russian and soviet artist. In addition, he is known as the first secretary of the Board of the Union of Artists of the USSR, director of the Moscow State Art Institute. IN AND. Surikov and Doctor of Arts. His titles and regalia would be an honor to any other artist in our country. In 1947, Sergei Vasilyevich became an Academician of the USSR Academy of Arts, in 1958 - People's Artist of the USSR, and posthumously, in 1966 - the Lenin Prize Laureate. He illustrated the works of the great writers Gorky and Nekrasov. Gerasimov is considered a Russian impressionist and socialist realist.
Sergey Gerasimov was born in Mozhaisk in 1885, he studied painting at the Moscow Stroganov School of Industrial Art and at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. At the age of 30, the artist built himself a house-workshop in his native city. Sergei Vasilyevich was kind to native land and portrayed him on his canvases.
For example, it is worth noting the painting "Evening in Mozhaisk, 1959". It is written in clear traditions and post-impressionism (in some ways it even resembles canvases).
The warm tones of the palette convey the charm of an evening in the province, pink air clouds catch with their iridescence and peace. In the picture, nature comes to the fore, green luxurious trees. The houses in the background are depicted very schematically, as if yielding all the laurels to the beauty of nature. It would seem a rather sketchy canvas, but how much atmosphere, mood and warmth it has!
Singing the beauty of the motherland, Sergei Vasilyevich continued the creative traditions of A.K. Savrasova, . A distinctive feature of his paintings was lyricism. They are said to convey the breadth and kindness of the Russian soul.
Two of the paintings by Sergei Vasilyevich are now in. These are "The ice has passed, 1945" and "Peasant holiday, 1937".
“The Ice Has Passed” is a 76 by 103.6 cm canvas, painted in oil on canvas and purchased from the author in 1947.
The plot of the picture is unpretentious, it again depicts a small fragment of nature. The birch trunks near the pond echo the gray-white sky in colors, the faded ocher tones in which the earth is depicted very clearly let us feel the very time of the year when the ice has already melted, and spring has not come. The picture can be called cold and warm at the same time: the dullness and boredom of winter still sound in it, but a little hope for spring is already heard. This work is especially valuable in that Gerasimov succeeded in extremely realistic, despite the vague impressionistic brushstroke, “taking a photograph” of his native land.
By the way, Sergei Vasilievich also has another painting on this topic, “Spring, March”. It is also very interesting for its schematic.
The branches of the trees are written in quick, clear strokes, as if they were drawn with a sharp needle. And the sky ... What an amazing spring-air sky on this canvas! Every resident of Russia, looking at this picture, will say that the artist was able to catch that very feeling of spring in March.
But let's get back to the Tretyakov collection. The second painting kept in the gallery is Peasant Holiday, 1937. The picture captures a moment in the life of ordinary people: a table with the letter "G" with pies and a bouquet of modest wild flowers on it, a box of wine and beautiful, strong people with open faces. Deserves special attention color palette, glare and reflections on the canvas.
"Peasant Holiday" is considered a program Soviet work, many artists of our country subsequently painted pictures on similar subjects.
Revolution and war are depicted on many of the artist's canvases; they can be used to practically study both the history of our country and the life of ordinary people. For example, a painting on a military theme "Mother of a Partisan, 1943". It depicts a woman whose son is being taken to be shot. A barefoot peasant woman fearlessly blocked the path of a German soldier. There is excruciating pain in her eyes, the mother understands that her son will be killed. But she courageously meets grief and does not give way to the fascist. The painting symbolizes the inflexibility of the Russian spirit in the face of adversity.
Another picture on the theme of the struggle of the Russian people during the Civil War is called "The Oath of the Siberian Partisans, 1933". In the center of the picture is a red flag - the symbol of the "red partisans". This war (1917−1922) was one of the main themes of Soviet painters, even after a decade. In the picture, Sergei Gerasimov painted a crowd of people with rifles and distorted faces, and a coffin over which they hold a red flag. The faces of people are again written quite schematically, in the spirit of impressionism, but this schematicity perfectly conveys the emotions experienced by the heroes of the picture.
Sergei Vasilyevich Gerasimov has received many awards. His paintings are now in the Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the Institute of Russian Realistic Art in Moscow, Taganrog art museum, Krasnoyarsk State Art Museum named after Surikov. Sergei Vasilyevich was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
