Udaltsova, Nadezhda Andreevna

Childhood and years of study

Born in Orel in the family of a gendarme officer Andrei Timofeevich Prudkovsky. Thanks to the efforts of her mother, Vera Nikolaevna (nee Choglokova), Nadezhda and her three younger sisters, a love of art was instilled from early childhood and their creative imagination developed ^[4] .

In 1892 the family moved to Moscow, where home drawing classes continued, which became a “second life” for the sisters, and the isolation of their childhood world led to “internal depth”. The following years of study at the gymnasium, Nadezhda Udaltsova critically recalled: “The outside fussy world came along with the gymnasium. Learning, girlfriends torn from art ” ^[5] .

In 1905, she graduated with honors from the Moscow women's gymnasium of V.P. Gelbig and entered the private art school of Konstantin Yuon , where I.O. Dudin and N.P. Ulyanov taught ^[6] . Years later, Udaltsova wrote about the time of her apprenticeship:

“Everything that I did with Yuon and what my associates did was deeply alien to me. As a child, I saw the Hermitage, and the old masters amazed me ... The artist N.P. Ulyanov, who saw my children’s drawings, said that I didn’t need a school, that I was a ready-made artist, only having to find myself. This “finding myself” determined my whole way ” ^[5] .

Two events made a big impact on the development of the beginning artist: painting by old masters in the Dresden Gallery , seen during a trip to Germany in the summer of 1908, and visiting the collection of modern French painting by S.I.Schukin in the autumn of that year, upon his return to Moscow. Udaltsov “was overwhelmed by the courage of the new pictorial language of Cezanne , Gauguin , Van Gogh , Matisse and Picasso , and at the same time she realized the fundamental connection of these artists with the great masters of the past” ^[4] . The year before, she was greatly impressed by the posthumous exhibition of V.E. Borisov-Musatov , which delighted her with “not written off, but created images” ^[5] .

Studying with Yuon finally lost significance for Udaltsova (in 1908 she married A.I. Udaltsov and took her husband's surname). In 1909, she moved to the workshop of Karol Kish, a student of Shimon Holloshi , where at that time her peers who had already visited Holloshi in Munich, Konstantin Istomin and Vladimir Favorsky , were engaged. In 1911, Udaltsova began visiting the famous “Tower” - a collective free workshop on Lubyanka Square, where she entered the circle of artists of the emerging Russian avant-garde, which were Mikhail Larionov , Natalya Goncharova , Vladimir Tatlin , Lyubov Popova . ^[four]

Russian Cubist

In November 1912, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Lyubov Popova, Vera Pestel and Sofia Karetnikova went to Paris. Their trip responded with a pun in art workshops in Moscow: “Faith, Hope, Love, and even their mother, Sophia ^[7], left us, gathered in Paris, to study painting” ^[4] . However, Pestel and Karetnikova soon returned, and Udaltsova and Popova entered the Academy de La Pallet, the center for the spread of cubism , where they continued their education under the leadership of Dunwayie de Segonzac , Henri Le Focognier and Jean Metzinger , one of the theorists of new art, who created in 1912 together with Albert Glease the artistic manifesto of cubism. Udaltsova combined classes at the Academy with studying the collections of the Louvre and the Cluny Museum , and drew a lot on the streets of Paris. ^[eight]

“I lived in Paris for about a year, as if enchanted. The city in the cubes of its houses and the interweaving of viaducts, with the smoke of trains, with airplanes and airships in the air was depicted as a fantastic pictorial phenomenon of genuine art. The architecture of the houses with their ocher-silver tone was embodied in the cubist buildings of Picasso. There were frequent visits to the Louvre; studied Poussin, Leonardo da Vinci, Miquel Angelo; visits to the Cluny Museum and colored “vitros” explained to me the magnificent Matisse ” ^[5] .

In 1913, Udaltsova returned to Moscow and worked in the workshop of Tatlin. In 1914, for the first time she exhibited one of her cubist compositions at the exhibition of the Jack of Diamonds society ^[9] , and in the spring of 1915 she participated in the first futuristic exhibition of paintings “Tram B” in Petrograd: among her 8 paintings ^[10] one of the most significant works of this period is Restaurant (1915), inspired by Parisian memories and conveying the mysterious, full of fuss, life of a night restaurant. The composition of the painting "is saturated to the limit with images of crushing and pulsating faces of transformed objects that create the illusion of their movement in space" ^[11] .

In the works shown in Petrograd in December 1915 - January 1916 at the Last Futuristic Exhibition “0.10” ^[12] , Udaltsova strove to free herself from excessive detail, preferring the simplicity and clarity of compositional solutions inherent to classical cubism. But unlike Tatlin, Malevich, Popova, she solved not so much constructive as picturesque tasks and did not lose her direct connection with visual impressions of nature ^[13] . The connection with nature was even evident in her Suprematist compositions, exhibited in 1916 at the "Shop" exhibition in Moscow. The composition “Picturesque Construction” (1916) reflects Udaltsova’s transition from cubism to the study of the interactions “of different color planes, the quality of which changed depending on their voltage, relative position and color intensity” ^[14] .

The first polemic speeches by Udaltsova also belonged to the mid-1910s, in particular, her response to derogatory articles by Alexandre Benois about futuristic exhibitions:

“How long will everything new in art be met only by mockery, mistrust and mockery?” Isn’t the law of evolution recognized in the life of science, why is art doomed to stand still and live out old truths?

We, as artists, pay tribute to the old days, and we know that they also fought for a new idea. We know that the crowd did not recognize Rembrandt, but before our eyes, Cezanne and everyone who followed him. And quite recently, they mocked the Cubo-Futurists, their exhibitions.

... Why do people, with their position as if set to find out every new phenomenon in art, always, as history shows, panic, scream, and swear? Does this mean that such people are unknown and incomprehensible in general art as such in form? They simply stuff their heads with volumes of research on art and can only judge what has been approved before them.

Art is free, and develops according to one inherent law of form change ”

- N. Udaltsova. The attitude of criticism and society to contemporary Russian art (1916) ^[15] .

In 1915, Nadezhda Udaltsova, as the author of the booklet “Vladimir Evgrafovich Tatlin” for the publication “New Journal for All”, participated in the creation of the first printed document dedicated to his work. In 1916, she entered the group of followers of Kazimir Malevich “ Supremus ” ^[16] . Together with Malevich, Lyubov Popova, Alexandra Exter , Ivan Puni , Ivan Klyun , Olga Rozanova and other famous suprematist artists, she worked in Verbovka .

Post-Revolutionary Period

Since 1917, after the February Revolution, Nadezhda Udaltsova, together with Vladimir Tatlin and Georgy Yakulov, actively participated in the creation of the Moscow Union of Artists, and began to teach. “These years of intense organizational work and the struggle in the school for new art left little time for painting” ^[17] . She was one of the organizers of the Left Federation of the Moscow Union of Artists, worked at the All-Russian College of Fine Arts, and taught at the Free State Workshops ^[16] - first as an assistant to Malevich, then as a chief master ^[17] . She took part in exhibitions of the All-Russian Central Exhibition Bureau as an exhibitor and promoter of contemporary art: on February 23, 1919, at the V State Exhibition of Paintings, which opened at the Museum of Fine Arts, Udaltsova made a presentation on cubism, outlining the theory of this movement and illustrating it with the cubist works presented at the exhibition . The report, addressed to students of the Free State Workshops, attracted the attention of a much wider circle of visitors and was noted in the press as an example of live communication between the artist and the public, which is “of great importance for the promotion of art” ^[18] .

In the early post-revolutionary years, despite close cooperation with Malevich, Tatlin and other representatives of Suprematism and Constructivism , whose art went beyond the framework of the easel painting in design, architecture, theater, Udaltsova, on the contrary, sought to work as an easel painter. In 1921, she “demonstratively left the Institute of Artistic Culture (Inhuk) , indignant at the slogan of replacing easel art with“ production ”” ^[19] . In terms of easelism, she draws closer to the artists of the former "Jack of Diamonds" I. Mashkov , P. Konchalovsky , A. Lentulov , A. Osmerkin .

In 1920, Nadezhda Udaltsova married the artist Alexander Drevin , which became a key event in her further personal and creative destiny. In the early 1920s, they returned together to figurative painting . In the years 1922-1923. the works of Udaltsova and Drevin are exhibited at the 1st exhibition of Russian art in Berlin. Their works were acquired by Société Anonyme (the collection of the society was included in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery in 1941) ^{[20] [16]} . In 1923, together with former members of the Jack of Diamonds group, Udaltsova and Drevin were exhibited at the "Exhibition of Pictures" in Moscow ^[21] .

Since 1920 - professor of VKHUTEMAS , created on the basis of the State Free Art Workshops; taught at the main department, led workshops at the painting and textile departments ^[16] .

Second half of the 1920s - 1930s

The main genre in the work of Udaltsova from the mid-1920s is landscape. To prepare for the large exhibitions, Udaltsov and Drevin went on creative missions many times - to the Urals (1926-1928), Altai and East Kazakhstan (1929-1932), to Armenia (1933). The works of the Ural cycle Udaltsova “with a thick pasty manner of writing,“ gloomy ”color, conveying sunset states of nature” ^[19] , were exhibited, together with Drevin, at their personal exhibition in the Russian Museum in 1928 and caused discussions among artists. In the report “Udaltsova's Exhibition - Drevin and the Ways of the Development of Contemporary Art” Nikolai Punin wrote: “The attitude to Udaltsova – Drevin’s things is complicated by the previous era, which taught us not to see the landscape. The epigones of the Wanderers, then the “ World of Art ” with its sharp plot content, closed off our direct perception of reality. ” Asked whether the landscapes presented at the exhibition were “progress in the tradition of Russian culture growth or an accidental phenomenon, a step to the side,” Punin argued: “This is an honest, courageous step to go where no one would venture to go” ^[22] . The artist herself described her impressions embodied in the landscapes of the Ural cycle:

“The Urals, with its dowls and valleys, quickly burning Chusova in the evenings: bears in fir forests, gray cliffs, blue forests and flaming sunsets, villages on the banks of rivers, humming tones of children and women - all this was reflected in the landscapes of that time” ^{[17 ]} .

In 1927-1931 Udaltsova was a full member of the Society of Moscow Artists ^[23] , in 1928 her works were exhibited at the 1st exhibition of the Society ^[24] , in 1931 she and Drevin entered the composition of the exhibition “Thirteen” ^[25] .

In 1930, the closure of Vhutemas-Vkhutein removed Udaltsova and Drevin from teaching and worsened the financial situation of the family. In 1933, their work was attacked in the pamphlet by O. Beskin “Formalism in Painting” (in particular, Udaltsova’s paintings “Horse Racing” and “Altai Landscape”) ^[26] . In 1936, during another campaign to combat "formalism," many prominent artists were forced to repent publicly and declare their "break with formalism" or "naturalism." On March 10, 1936, A. Lentulov and N. Udaltsova were forced to make such statements at a meeting of Moscow artists ^[27] .

On January 17, 1938, Alexander Drevin was arrested and after a short investigation sentenced to capital punishment “for counter-revolutionary activities” ^[28] . Nadezhda Udaltsova managed to save her husband’s paintings and drawings from confiscation - during the arrest she gave them away for her work ^[29] .

Late Creation

Late 1930s - early 1940s became one of the most difficult periods in the life of Nadezhda Udaltsova, who became the wife of an “ enemy of the people ”, whose death she learned only years later ^[30] . During the war, when their son fought at the front, she did not leave for evacuation, she remained in Moscow and continued to work, leaving with a team of artists in military units:

“They wrote all day with greed, scattered; I wanted to capture everything: the images of the pilots, and the dugout, the airfield. Observations, sketchy at first, sketches, sometimes obscure, eventually began to take clear forms. The images of the defenders of our Motherland by omnipotent power captured me. After all, every face is the most precious thing for artists today ”

- N. Udaltsova (newspaper “For Courage”, May 1, 1942) ^[31] .

In these years, she again turned to still life, and in May 1945 she showed her work at a small personal exhibition in the halls of MOSSX . The peculiarity of the new discreet still lifes of Udaltsova, far from the pathos of the then Soviet painting and escaped from formal decisions of her own cubist past, was noted by art critic Alexander Romm , who saw in them a certain outcome of “thirty years of searching for a picturesque image”:

“Udaltsova is not alien to beautiful things, but she clearly prefers unpretentious household items, modest wildflowers, vegetables and fruits. These heaps of apples, tomatoes, fish, laid out on rumpled napkins or simple plates, unpretentious jugs and mugs are not at all the beautiful objects that we admire in life, which other artists like to decorate the corners of their elegant interiors. In addition, these objects Udaltsova gives in combinations that in life would seem strange, unreasonable. Such still lifes do not create the impression of home comfort. They appeal not to worldly associations, but to our pictorial perception. For a true colorist is able to transform into significant and rich that which is negligible and scarce in life, the imaginary order - into a rhythmic pattern ...

The value of the depicted things as household items, bouquets and other things fades, they become musical notes of a different timbre, transformed by the artist into color melodies. But at the same time, Udaltsova also affirms the weight of matter in objects, gives them a lush relief ... Still life for her is now not only a balanced decorative ensemble - it is a diverse mobile microcosm, an organically soldered whole. She justified the system of color valers, the sequence of pictorial plans, the harmony of spatial and color rhythms. But there is no hint of deliberation, schematism, cold prudence. In every stroke, creative impulse, impulsiveness, passion ”

- A. Romm . Exhibition Udaltsova. 1945, May ^[32] .

In 1946, the artist was awarded the medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.” ^[25] But in the late 1940s and early 1950s, her life was again tested: in 1948, Udaltsova’s art became the object of another persecution of the struggle against “formalism and worship of the West”, followed by serious illness ^[31] .

Only “at the end of her life fate smiled on Udaltsova”: in 1958 her works were again exhibited at one of the group exhibitions ^[33] , after many years of silence in the newspaper “Moscow Artist” an article appeared that paid tribute to her painting. In early January 1961, the unexpected “triumph turned into the seventieth birthday of Udaltsova. Former Vhutemas students brought in a beautifully composed address on behalf of the Union of Artists ” ^[34] . The next day, the artist began work on a new still life. January 25th she was gone.

She was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery .

• Father - Andrei Timofeevich Prudkovsky (1854-1918), gendarme colonel, was dismissed on July 16, 1917 by a major general, arrested and executed during the red terror ^[35] .
• Mother - Vera Nikolaevna in the girlhood of Choglokov (1862-1913) ^{[35] [36]} .
• Sister - Lyudmila (1889-1918), artist ^[35] , girlfriend of L. S. Popova ^[30] .
• Sister Tamara (1893-1969), studied at VKhUTEMAS, did not graduate, married to Boris Kafengauz ^[35]
• Sister - Barbara (1896-1976 ^[37] ) after her husband for Alexander Nikolayevich Nikolsky, until 1934, an employee of the Medical and Biological Institute for Serum and Vaccine Control named after L. A. Tarasevich, in the 1930s he moved to Central Asia ^[38] .
• The first husband (from 1908 to 1918 or 1919) was Alexander Dmitrievich Udaltsov ^[30] , a historian.
• The second husband (civilian ^[35] ) (since 1920 ^[16] ) - Alexander Davydovich Drevin , artist.
  • Son - Andrei Alexandrovich Drevin (1921-1996), sculptor.
    • Daughter-in-law - Veronika Vasilievna Starodubova (1929-2010), Soviet and Russian art critic, Doctor of Art Criticism.
    • Granddaughter - Ekaterina Andreevna Drevina (b. 1950), art critic.

In the 1970s the works of Nadezhda Udaltsova from the family meeting donated to the Tretyakov Gallery , the Russian Museum and the Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve, the son of the artist A. A. Drevin. Among them are Self-Portrait (1923), Hunting Still Life (1923), Gray Still Life (1941), two graphic Compositions (1916) ^[39] . In the 1980s, the granddaughter of Udaltsova, E. A. Drevin, donated paintings from the family collection to the Oryol Art Gallery , the Tula Art Museum and the Novosibirsk Art Gallery ^[40] . In 1977, the famous collector of the Russian avant-garde, G. D. Kostaki donated to the Tretyakov Gallery the cubist canvases of Udaltsova: “Seamstress” (1912–1913) and “Violin” (1914) ^[41] . Udaltsova’s works are also kept in the Dagestan Museum of Fine Arts , the Vyatka Art Museum , the Nizhny Novgorod Art Museum , the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts , the Rostov Kremlin Museum ^[42] , and the Irkutsk Art Museum ^[43] .

In the 1980s, the works of Nadezhda Udaltsova were exhibited at major international exhibitions: Moscow-Paris (Moscow, 1981), Art and Revolution (Tokyo, 1982), and Seven Moscow Artists. 1910-1930 "(Cologne, 1984)," Art and Revolution "(Budapest - Vienna, 1987-1988)," Russian Avant-Garde from Private Collections "(Helsinki, 1988)," Russian Avant-Garde. From Soviet private collections. 1904-1934 "(Milan, 1989)," 100 years of Russian art. 1889-1989 ”(London, 1989) ^[44] .

In 1991, in the halls of the Central House of Artists , a large-scale personal exhibition of Alexander Drevin and Nadezhda Udaltsova took place, which included over 300 works by two masters ^[45] . In 2008, the Gallery “House of Nashchokin” (together with the Tretyakov Gallery) hosted an exhibition of 60 works by Alexander Drevin and Nadezhda Udaltsova “Contrary to the era” ^[46] .

In 2010 , after the death of daughter-in-law Nadezhda Udaltsova, art critic V. V. Starodubova, a significant part of the works of Drevin and Udaltsova disappeared from the family meeting ^[47] .

• Завадская Е. В. Мой друг живописец Н. А. Удальцова // Творчество. — 1986. — № 10.
• Яблонская М. Н. Надежда Андреевна Удальцова. Александр Давидович Древин. // Огонёк. 1988. — № 25. — С. 24.
• Древина Е. А. Надежда Андреевна Удальцова (1886—1961) // Александр Древин. Надежда Удальцова. Exhibition catalog. — Союз художников СССР . — М. : Советский художник , 1991. — С. 85—90, 92—95, 123—131. — 144 с. - 2000 copies. — ISBN 5-269-00772-X .
• Удальцова Н. А. Автобиография (1933, в сокращении) // Александр Древин. Надежда Удальцова. Exhibition catalog. — Союз художников СССР. — М. : Советский художник, 1991. — С. 91—92. — 144 с. - 2000 copies. — ISBN 5-269-00772-X .
• Удальцова Н. А. Отношение критики и общества к современному русскому искусству (1916) // Александр Древин. Надежда Удальцова. Exhibition catalog. — Союз художников СССР. — М. : Советский художник, 1991. — С. 97—98. — 144 с. - 2000 copies. — ISBN 5-269-00772-X .
• Ромм А. Г. Выставка Н. Удальцовой (1945, май) // Александр Древин. Надежда Удальцова. Exhibition catalog. — Союз художников СССР. — М. : Советский художник, 1991. — С. 115. — 144 с. - 2000 copies. — ISBN 5-269-00772-X .
• Удальцова Н. А. Жизнь русской кубистки: дневники, статьи, воспоминания / Вступ. ст.: В. И. Ракитин ; коммент.: Е. А. Древина, А. Д. Сарабьянов . — М. : Лит.-худож. агентство «RA», 1994. — 207 с.
• Удальцова Н. А. Н. А. Удальцова. Живописец, график, педагог // Русский музей. Живопись. Первая половина XX века. Catalog. Т.13. С – Я. / В. А. Леняшин (науч. ред. тома). - SPb. : Palace Edition, Русский музей, 2015. — С. 103—105. — 207 с.

• Удальцова Надежда Андреевна. Biography
• Удальцова Надежда Андреевна. Biography
• Удальцова Надежда Андреевна. Биография, картины