Sokolov, Mikhail Ksenofontovich

He was born on September 6 ( 18 ), 1885 in Yaroslavl in the family of a craftsman. I was able to study as an artist thanks to the help of a Yaroslavl merchant. From 1898 to 1904 he studied with the teacher and artist Pyotr Aleksandrovich Romanovsky in the Yaroslavl city drawing classes . In 1904 he entered the Stroganov School . His teachers were S.V. Noakovsky and S.I. Yaguzhinsky . Since 1907 he studied independently.

In 1904-1907 , Sokolov's works were exhibited at exhibitions in Yaroslavl and Moscow. In 1907-1909 he served as a sailor on the ships of the Baltic Fleet . During the First World War he served in Petrograd. In 1916-1917 he participated in the exhibition "World of Art" (Petrograd - Moscow).

After the February Revolution he was appointed one of the leaders of the Baltic sailors. He supported the Bolsheviks. In the summer of 1917, due to a conflict with Kerensky, he resigned. He was no longer engaged in politics.

He earned a living by teaching drawing and painting in the city of Sergach, Nizhny Novgorod Province (1918-1919), in the Yaroslavl State Workshops ( VKHUTEMAS ) (1919-1920). In 1921-1922 he worked in the Tver State Art Workshops and the Yakhroma art studio at the manufactory. Since 1923 he lived in Moscow. He taught at the Moscow School of Memory in 1905 . Since 1934 - member of the Moscow Union of Artists . I didn’t have my own workshop, I worked there where I lived - in a ten-meter room of a communal apartment on Arbat .

Due to the fact that some boobies ranked him as a formalist , a person lives in incredible conditions, is starving - in short, is in poverty, perhaps, as we have few now. And the artist is truly wonderful, having absorbed all the noble traditions of French masters of the last century, he nevertheless created masterpieces with a very bright physiognomy that will be able to withstand the neighborhood of any impressionist . (From a letter from S. Orlov , 1937)

Arrested on October 26, 1938 . Convicted under article 58 (paragraph 10) and sentenced to 7 years in forced labor camps . He served his sentence at Taiga station. He continued to work in the camp and in letters to friends he sent art miniatures drawn by improvised materials.

Drawings were made on small pieces of paper, sometimes on candy wrappers, with a pen, a pencil and were slightly tinted. In Moscow they were admired as picturesque visions. They depicted taiga, snow, pines. ( N. Tarabukin )

He was prematurely released from the camp in 1943 due to a serious health condition. After his release (from 1943 to 1947) he lived in Rybinsk , taught painting at the local House of Pioneers. Sokolov failed to achieve the removal of a criminal record and recovery in the Moscow Union of Artists.

In 1947, in connection with an oncological disease (stomach cancer), he was hospitalized in the hospital named after Sklifosovsky . He died on September 29, 1947, was buried at Pyatnitsky cemetery in Moscow. Rehabilitated June 26, 1958 .

Wives:

• Shtemberg Nadezhda Viktorovna - from 1917 to 1919.
• Baskakova Marina Ivanovna (1902-1988) - from 1927 to 1935.
• Vereshchagina-Rozanova Nadezhda Vasilievna (1900-1956) - in 1947.

• Picturesque cycle "Moscow leaving"
• Picturesque cycle "Birds"
• Series of landscapes
• Still Life Series
• Graphic loops:
  • " St. Sebastian "
  • " Passion "
  • "The French Revolution"
  • "Circus"
  • The Riders
  • “Musicians”
  • Wandering Comedians
  • “Imaginary Portraits”
  • "To Hoffmann"
  • “To Dickens”
  • "The memory of old Spain"
• A series of portraits (including a series of female portraits and self-portraits)
• Illustrations to the novel “ The Adventures of Oliver Twist ” by Charles Dickens (1932-1933)
• Illustrations to the " Orleans Virgin " by Voltaire (1934)
• Graphic illustrations for the works “Dead Souls” by N. V. Gogol, “Anna Karenina” and “War and Peace” by L. N. Tolstoy, “Mozart and Salieri” by A. S. Pushkin (1945-1947)

The works of M.K. Sokolov are in many museum and private collections. The most significant collections of his works are owned by the State Tretyakov Gallery , the Yaroslavl Museum of Art and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts . From 1966 to 2003, about 20 personal exhibitions of the artist were exhibited in Moscow, Yaroslavl, St. Petersburg and other cities of Russia, as well as in Kassel (Germany).

From December 23, 2005 to December 22, 2006, an exhibition of Sokolov’s works was held in the Engineering Building of the Tretyakov Gallery , where the artist’s works stored in the collections of the Yaroslavl Art Museum were exhibited.

• Mikhail Sokolov in the correspondence and memoirs of contemporaries // Comp., Ed. and comment. Golenkevich N.P. - M.: Mol. Guard, 2003, 299 [5] p. : ill. ISBN 5-235-02526-1
• Mikhail Ksenofontovich Sokolov. To the 120th birthday // Series: Archive of the Russian avant-garde. - M .: RA, 2005, 240 s. : ill. ISBN 5-902801-03-6

• Curriculum Vitae
• Sokolov Mikhail Ksenofontovich. Biography, Painting, Letters
• Mikhail Ksenofontovich Sokolov in the Tretyakov Gallery
• Article by Igor Shevelyov “Another Master”
• M.K. Sokolov. 16 works of the 1910s - 1920s