Alexander Kuprin and his still lifes

Alexander Vasilievich Kuprin (1880-1960) I discovered for myself in 1969 in the halls of the Russian Museum: it was the Russian Still Life Exhibition. Actually, it was there that I opened up the still life like a genre.

A perplexing reader will ask: what about the Hermitage wealth? These overturned cups, old silver and spirals of lemon peel; How would the unable buns and crumpled napkins? And the Flemish School of the Plant SOR in the Museum of Fine Arts? After all, I grew up on Tverskaya, and Konchalovsky’s “lilac” always hung in the Tretyakov Gallery ... After all, it doesn’t mean to see! ..

And, of course, it has to be reminded that from the mid-30s not only individual artists, but whole artistic phenomena have been in our other than other people: they were not exhibited, not published or even mentioned. However, the landscapes of Kuprin were exhibited; While health allowed, he taught, and in 1954 he was elected to the Academy of Arts. But back to the origins.

Kuprin was born in 1880 in Borisoglebsk in the teacher of the teacher; Then the family moved to Voronezh. His childhood was happy while it was at all - Kuprin was sixteen when the family lost his father. From now on, the teenager himself had to support himself and decide his fate. He loved the music and composed it himself; he began to draw early, constantly studied and, apparently, was ready for any work, just to master skill.

In Voronezh, Kuprin was engaged in the Voronezh Free School of Painting and Drawing under the Society of Fans of Arts at L.G. Soloviev and M.I. Ponomarev. The general direction and methods of teaching at the school were based on a strict study of nature; All who wanted to draw were engaged - both old and young.

The dream was the admission to the Imperial Academy of Arts, but Kuprin was not a dreamer. It did not work out with the academy, but he still studied: in the studio L.E. Dmitrieva-Caucasian in St. Petersburg (1902-1904), then in the studio K.F. Yuon in Moscow (1904-1906).

In 1906, Kuprin was accepted into the curly class of Musvz, and on January 1, 1907 he was transferred to the grounding, where K.A. Korovin. Korovina Kuprin will be considered his teacher. However, already in February 1907, the artist was forced to interrupt his studies - he opened tuberculosis. I had to leave for almost a year in Crimea - in the future the artist wrote a lot of Crimean villages and mountains.

Kuprin returned to Moscow in 1908 and ended up in the very center of events. At the beginning of the 20th century, artistic life in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Odessa beat with a key. Together with domestic artists, various “Frenchmen”, “secession” and other representatives of the latest movements were exhibited. New art magazines came out, new monuments were opened - Gogol Nikolai Andreev, a monument to Alexander III, Paolo Trubetskoy, a monument to the first printer Ivan Fedorov, Sergei Volnukhin's work. Every month only in Moscow, two or three significant art exhibitions opened.

Kuprin wrote in his memoirs:

“But in 1908, for the first time in front of my eyes, a strong light flickered - then the Schukin Gallery, the Morozov Gallery, communication with Larionov and the Golden Fleece. For the first time, I saw the French-impressionists, post-impressionists and even cubists. I saw Monet, Cezanna, Van Gogg, Gauguin, Matisse, Derena, Marriage, Picasso, Ruo, Fields of Signac, Gren, and others. This painting, this fresh stream gave me the opportunity to breathe easier. It was a stream of oxygen, or rather, a large stream of fresh, mountain, clean, like crystal, water. ”

We must be felt in this atmosphere in order to evaluate the initiative of Larionov with the exhibition device called "Diamond Valet". To begin with, it was necessary to just draw attention, even if the name is not “autumn”, not “spring”, not “wreath”, but a playing map, a symbol of the mischievous, jester and impudent!

The first Moscow exhibition "Diamond Valet" opened in December 1910 at the Levisson house on Bolshaya Dmitrovka. The exhibition was large and noisy, M.F. Larionov, N.S. Goncharova, P.P. Konchalovsky, A.V. Lentulov, I.I. Mashkov, A.V. Kuprin and others. The undoubted success of both experts and the public.

Meanwhile, the “school of sculptures” has not been a quiet Waper for a long time. Back in 1909, V.A. Serov left for political reasons: the administration refused the famous sculptor Anna Golubkina, a student of Rodin (!), In her request to visit classes. After that, the students wrote a collective letter to Serov, expressing the hope of seeing him a mentor in another, not official school. And at the end of March 1910, a group of "rebels" - students, including A.V. Kuprin, M.F. Larionov, V.V. Christmas, R.R. Falk, focused on the "other" school.

In 1913-1914, Kuprin continued to study: he lived in Paris, traveled to France and Northern Italy. He expressed his artistic credo: “... painting, strong in color, shape, with the determination of expression, with a new manner of writing, free, wide, not painstaking and not gray, brown, but bright, colorful, with incredible pressure of aspiration and energy .”

We see the pressure of aspirations and energy in the stills of Kuprin, although his image objects are always the most modest. Flowerity is not at all about Kuzmin, but the color is most often represented by a traditional Russian tin tray, as well as a complex ratio of masses - whether it be clay pots, an earthenware mug or book. And he constantly wrote bright artificial flowers that he made himself and supplied them with friends-artists, so that the same flowers can be seen in the lifes of Mashkov and Falk.

Actually, Kuprin’s painstaking painting cannot be called, although the artist’s oil was always preceded by a constructively thought -out pencil sketch with oil. An instructive impression remains from comparing these sketches with finished canvases. Here it just becomes clear why Kuprin was nicknamed “Cezannist”: for the most part he writes the ratio of volumes and masses, therefore, not only his circles and jugs are so textured and voluminous, but also his city and “industrial” landscapes.

In addition to painting, Kuprin had another love - music. He even designed the organ that his friends gathered to listen - at first in the workshop in the area of ​​Lesnaya Street, later in Pertsov’s house, in the same attic rooms as the Falk workshop. Kuprina and Falki were connected by a long -term, non -oversized friendship; Even in the days of the first marriage, Falks two families rented an apartment together. Since 1905, Kuprin was married to his countrywoman and girlfriend Anastasia Trofimovna Polozantseva (1879-1957); In 1923, they lost an eighteen-year-old son who drowned in the Moscow River. After the death of Anastasia Trofimovna in his last years, Kuprin was married to the artist Tuan Sergeevna Anisimova (19041987), in his youth-a famous climber, who was in his workshop in the early 30s. Widow R.R. Falk, Angelina Vasilievna Shchekin-Krotova, left certificates of the life and life of the Kuprins family after 1938. She ranked Kuprin, like Falka, to the "Quiet Diamond Valets." According to her, “Kuprin loved to play Bach and Baksthuda and composed music in a similar style. <...> The workshop was closely forced: at one wall - an organ, at the other - piano, everywhere cabinets, cabinets on which lumber of louds, suitable for still lifes. "

Compared to Falcom, which after returning in 1938 from Paris did not have regular income at all, Kuprin was more or less “arranged”: he taught and exhibited. Kuprins were known as a hospitable family and eagerly received guests, treating them with pancakes with pumpan jam with pumpkin.

About Kuprins A.V. Then I wrote: “I also remember how Alexander Vasilievich came in the fall of 1948 and quietly put 1500 rubles from Falk, whispering:“ Don’t worry, we will manage, and you will have to go tight now. ”It was already after the notorious decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) about the magazines“ Zvezda ”and“ Leningrad ”, which was also affected by the creative fate of Falk <...> Kuprin. I reminded me of the debt, and I received a fee for a textbook in German according to the technology of mechanical engineering, They asked about my husband’s health and always forced me to eat and drink tea ” [1].

Kuprin was, of course, a great worker. He left a huge inheritance - as K.S. Kravchenko, author of the monograph album (A.V. Kuprin. M.: Soviet artist, 1973), after his death, a significant amount of his paintings simply remained in his workshop.

1. Www.russiskusstvo.ru/authors/krotova/a382/

Kuprin is extremely well represented in the network; More than a hundred works can be found here: http://cultobzor.ru/2012/11/kuprin/

See also: www.tphv-history.ru/books/hudozhestvennai-zhizn-rossi6.html-art life calendar in Russia 1909-1910