Musatov, Grigory Alekseevich

Born in Buzuluk, in the family of icon painter Alexei Yakovlevich Musatov and Eleanor Kleofasovna Mikloshevich ^[1] . In a number of sources, the famous painter Viktor Borisov-Musatov is called an uncle or cousin uncle ^[2] .

He spent his childhood in Samara , where his father bought a house on Nikolaevskaya Street. All the children in the family received an education, the eldest son, Mikhail, became an engineer, daughter Catherine - a teacher, another son Alexander became an artist ^[3] .

Gregory graduated from the parish school , entered the Samara Commercial School, where the artist V.V. Gundobin was a drawing teacher ^[4] . Gregory became interested in drawing, his father did not resist the desire of his son and transferred him to the Penza Art School ^[3] . However, he did not finish it. According to the memoirs of V. G. Muratova, the wife of Gregory, he understood that the lot of graduates of the provincial school was a drawing teacher, but wanted to achieve more, so he transferred to Kiev ^[3] , where he attended drawing classes under the guidance of A. A. Murashko . During the holidays, he worked in his father’s workshop, helping him with the painting of temples ^[4] .

On August 14, 1914, Grigory Musatov married Vera Georgievna Elyashevich (04.10.1893 - 05.23.1971), daughter of the Penza merchant ^[1] . Unable to escape the fate of a drawing teacher in 1915, he served as a teacher of graphic art at the higher elementary school of the Melekess settlement in the Stavropol district of the Samara province ^[1] . However, he stayed there for a short time, moved to his parents in Samara. For some time he worked as a singing teacher in the Samara school No. 32-33 named after P. A. Stolypin, located on Sadovaya Street 57 ^[1] . According to the memoirs of his wife, Gregory did not earn anything, and he and his wife, and older brother Alexander, also a family man, lived on his father's support, doing painting, although there were not so many orders because of the war. Vera herself worked as an assistant pharmacist in a pharmacy ^[3] .

In 1915 he participated in an exhibition of paintings by Samara artists, in which his brother and former teacher Gundobin also took part. Grigory Musatov showed works on religious themes and portraits ^[3] .

He was drafted into the army, served as a clerk at the headquarters in Balashov , then, by the decision of the regimental priest, he painted the church for about a year. At the end of 1916 he was sent to the Saratov school of ensigns , after which he was sent to the southwestern front . During the mass desertion from the front in the summer of 1917, Grigory Musatov also left the army and returned to his relatives in Samara ^[4] .

After the outbreak of the Civil War, he joined the white movement . Together with his wife he reached Irkutsk , where he joined the army of Kolchak . However, later he again deserted and moved to Vladivostok . More than a year he lived according to other people's documents in the name of Melnikov, hiding from mobilization . He participated in the work of the local theater studio "Balaganchik", which arose during the literary and artistic society of the Far East, as well as the activities of the local society of futurists ; communicated with D. Burliuk , N. Aseev , V. Palmov and other representatives of the movement ^[4] .

After the Nikolaev incident, staying in the Japanese-occupied Vladivostok was considered unsafe. Earning money in the port, Gregory found a convenient opportunity to leave the city ^[3] , and in May 1920, on the Tver steamer, together with the Czech legionaries returning to their homeland, the Musatov couple left Russia. Through China, Singapore and Ceylon they reached Italy ^[4] . Upon learning that the President of Czechoslovakia, Masaryk, was organizing assistance to the Russian emigrant intelligentsia ^[2] - “Russian Action” ^[5] , in July, together with his wife, Grigory Musatov arrived in Prague ^[1] , suggesting that he would move to Paris in the future ^{[2] ]} .

Due to lack of money, the Musatov couple joined the Unity unity theater troupe ^[3] . At the beginning of 1921 ^[6] , in Havlíčkвv Brod, they met the family of the already well-known Czechoslovak artist Jan Zrzavoy , who helped them settle in the town of Kolin , where Vera Georgievna got a job as an assistant pharmacist in a pharmacy, and her constant salary allowed Grigory to return to work after long break ^{[4] [3]} .

Jan Zrzavyi, as a member of the Czech cultural society (Umělecká beseda), invited Musatov also to join it. To do this, he had to take part in three exhibitions. The prospect of merging into the local artistic environment, exhibiting and communicating with famous artists deceived Gregory and he began to write ^[3] .

At the end of 1922, after the Zrzavy Musatovs moved to Prague. Here, Grigory learned that back in 1919, on the family apiary near the village of Rozhdestveno , where the Musatovs often went to studies, his father, Alexei Yakovlevich, and brother Alexander and his wife and child were brutally killed, and the mother died shortly after this event. Thoughts of returning to Russia disappeared. Only occasionally Gregory corresponded with his sister Catherine ^[3] .

In 1923, after the required three exhibitions, Musatov became a full member of the "Art Talk" ^{[4] [3]} . He also took an active part in creating the Skif organization of emigrant artists ^[2] , in which he became deputy chairman ^[7] . He was a member of the Union of Russian Artists in Czechoslovakia ^[4] . His wife Vera entered the Russian Law Faculty in Prague, while trying to find a more paid job. Due to lack of funds and the need to pay for housing, Vera went to Paris in 1924, where she became a retoucher at a photo studio. However, Paris did not become a reliable source of income, and a few months later she returned to Czechoslovakia, continued her studies, while working as a traveling salesman from the Barrandov film studio, traveling around the country and offering films for viewing. Gregory got a job as a teacher of drawing in Prague Russian real reformed gymnasium ^[3] . One of his students was Andrei Belotsvetov , now called the “avant-garde classic”, whose work Musatov had a noticeable influence ^{[8] [9]} .

Gregory regularly exhibited with “Artistic Conversation” ^[3] , and in 1927 his first solo exhibition was held in Prague ^[4] . He also gained fame as an illustrator. At first he worked on the “Soviet ditties” (translated into Czech by N. Melnikova-Papoushkova ) of the publishing house (1929) ^[4] , then the publishing house decided to publish the complete works of F. M. Dostoevsky in translation of , and Grigory Musatov was supposed to illustrate it. The work, carried away by both spouses, took two years. Vera read aloud, and Gregory sketched the images he liked ^[3] . However, the publishing house changed its plans, and only three translations came out: “ The Brothers Karamazov ” (1929), “ Humiliated and Offended ” (1930), “ Demons ” (1930) ^[4] .

In 1931, the Musatovs had an only child, the daughter of Eleanor, by which time the proceeds from the sale of paintings allowed Gregory to leave his teaching career, focusing on creativity ^[3] .

In 1936, Grigory Musatov accepted Czechoslovak citizenship ^[4] . However, after the accession of the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany, he planned to emigrate again. At first in the USA , but at the last moment the invitation was broken ^[10] , then he turned to the Soviet consulate for permission to return to the USSR . However, he did not have time to get an answer, Czechoslovakia was abolished, and the consulate was evacuated.

On the day of the German attack on the USSR, Grigory Musatov suffered a heart attack , from which he no longer recovered ^[4] . After returning from the hospital, he conceived a triptych of three large canvases: "Mobilization", "Surrender", "Liberation" (in other sources - "Declaration of war", "Oath of troops in front of the General Staff" and "Victory"), but wrote only a few sketches . In November 1941, Musatov died.

During the Nazi rule, Vera Georgievna was able to hide her Jewish origin with the help of two friends who stated that she was Russian, knowing that this was not so ^[11] . However, fearing new inspections and interrogations, she was afraid to get official work ^[10] . Before the liberation of Prague, she and her daughter lived on funds from the sale of her husband’s paintings and their exchange for food ^[3] .

Vera Georgievna left memories that largely served as the basis for biographical information about her husband. The daughter of Eleanor (Nora) Musatov (1931-2010) became an artist ^[4] , exhibited both in Czechoslovakia and abroad, including in collaboration with Marc Chagall ^[10] .

The first exhibitions of Musatov’s works confirmed his role as a Russian artist who continued to live in Russia. As one of the exhibition catalogs testifies: “Musatov in“ Conversation “is a Russian artist, full-blooded and consciously emphasizing this” ^[3] . In total, Grigory Musatov participated in 27 exhibitions of the Art Talk Society, held in Prague and other cities of Czechoslovakia until 1941. Held personal exhibitions in Prague - in the hall to them. M. Alyosha (1927, 1932, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1940). In 1931, in Prague, in the Krasna Izba Hall, an exhibition of illustrations by Musatov, to the novels by F. M. Dostoevsky ^[4] , was a success ^[7] .

Musatov also participated in exhibitions of the Union of Russian Artists; at the first exhibition of the Union in 1929, a major work, “Stenka Razin,” was presented ^[4] . Together with the members of the Art Talk, he presented his works at an exhibition in Riga (1930) ^[12] . Also a participant in the exhibition of Slavic artists (1932) and Russian painting (1935) in Prague, Russian artists in Paris (gallery “La Renaissance”, 1932), Autumn Salon (1932) ^[4] .

Together with S. A. Mako exhibited in Paris, in the gallery Charpentier (1938) ^[4] .

In 1943, the first posthumous exhibition of the artist’s works took place in the Poshev Gallery in Prague. Also, the exhibitions were held in 1946 and 1959 (M. Alyosh Hall). In December 1981 - January 1982, a personal exhibition was held in Litomerice ^[4] .

Musatov does not belong to those artists who once having formed their style in the future only develop and polish it. On the contrary, over two and a half decades of his creative life, he radically changed his style, his style ^[13] . A common aspect on almost all the known creative paths of the artist was free painting, with a wide range of topics, not limited to any genre or style frames. Scenes from a small provincial town, memories and impressions of a long sea voyage, of war, of a short theatrical career, of Czech villages, even of Jewish traditions, known from the spouses' stories - a significant part of Musatov's paintings was a kind of artistic diary, the realization of the need for confession. Some themes came and went, the artist returned to others more than once ^[13] .

Musatov’s early works, performed by him while living in Russia, were not preserved or are unknown to specialists ^[14] . Only information that he wrote on religious topics, as well as realistic portraits, has been preserved ^[3] .

Photographic Period

In the 1920s, Grigory Musatov turned to neo-primitivism , with its characteristic methods - simplification of forms, violation of perspective and proportions, lack of proportionality of composition elements, and planar interpretation of images ^[14] . The defining role in the artist's interpretation of this method was played by mass portrait photography. Her influence on the style of the artist’s works was so significant that in his lifetime monograph on Musatov, written by A. Zhakovsky , the author called this period of Musatov’s work “a photographic period” ^[15] .

Zhakovsky noted the “frozen” scenes in the paintings, the artist’s orientation to reproducing scenes from the past ^[14] , the use of “faded colors of deliberately primitive photographs” ^[16] and called Musatov’s heroes “embalmed mummies <...> of the petty-bourgeois layer” ^[17] and “synthetic , even somewhat idealized portraits characterizing the entire class mentioned above ” ^[16] .

Pictures painted in the 1920s often depict provincial gentlemen and cutesy ladies, landscapes, and everyday scenes of the province's life. The names of the paintings themselves speak for themselves: “At the photographer” (1922), “Hooligans” (1922), “Soldier with a lover” (1923), “Boating” (1923), “Hussar” (1923), “Three friends "(1924)," Fortune-telling "(1924)," Military Orchestra "(1924)," Flirt "(1924)," Acrobats "(1925) and others.

Commenting on one of the characteristic paintings of this period, “Acrobats” (1925), which depicts a family of posing circus artists, critic F.V. Mokry described the characters as follows: “Acrobats in ridiculous tense poses shout to the world about the glory of their brilliant embarrassment, which covers their need " ^[18] , another critic N. A. Elenev spoke similarly about the painting" Three Friends "(1924):" The philistine ugliness of these silly "beauties", the artist’s lovingly sad smile over them, the pink ribbons of the grotesque are Musatov’s usual dream " ^[19] .

Zhakovsky is echoed by the contemporary researcher of the artist D. Kostin’s creativity, noting that Musatov painted his characters as if he were shooting in a studio with a camera with a long shutter speed: “in frozen poses with still faces, against the backdrop of draperies, painted landscapes or among the same furnishings”, the paintings are related with black and white photographs and muted gray-blue colors of paintings ^[14] . Pointing out that mass portrait photography came to Russia from Europe and basically retained its basic principles: composition, style, techniques, Kostina believes that one of the reasons for Musatov’s “photographic nature” is his desire to find a universal visual code, to turn to non-national visual skills thereby making their work more understandable in a foreign cultural environment. Another reason the art historian sees Musatov’s desire to materialize the images of an abandoned Russia, to compose his memoir photo album in order to preserve the past and at the same time part with it ^[14] , referring to the statement of F. Kafka ^[20] : “Objects are photographed to expel from consciousness” , and believing Musatov’s “photographic” paintings to be autobiographical with respect to the time at which the artist returned through them and which stopped them ^[14] .

Kostina concludes that although Musatov was one of many representatives of the Russian avant-garde who turned to portrait photography ( N. Pirosmani , I. Mashkov , P. Konchalovsky , A. Shevchenko , S. Adlivankin ), but this was not due to a fashionable trend, and deeply personal needs and aspirations, the artist’s work was his autotherapy, simplifying the process of his adaptation to the new sociocultural environment, and at the same time a way to make his work more understandable to an unfamiliar public ^[14] .

Musatov’s “photographic period” ended with the creation of one of the largest works, “Stenka Razin” (1928) ^[4] .

•  

  Hussar (1922)

•  

  Matchmaking (c. 1921)

•  

  Date (1924)

•  

  Flirt (1927)

The Psychological Period

Zhakovsky sees the roots of a change in the artist’s manner in 1928: “There is a complex degeneration of Musatov’s painting. Despite the strong, perhaps even purely Russian, psychological richness of the paintings, they are clearly switching to international painting, the painting of present-day Paris. And this period should be called psychological. The new texture of the paintings with an almost surrealistic tension of colors, freely sprouting into the outlines of objects, somewhat neutralizes his restless psychologism, the last sorties of which were the artist’s illustrations for Dostoevsky’s novels ” ^[3] .

He points out that Musatov’s paintings of this period become intimate, the landscapes are translucent, and the subtle images of the village and the province come to the canvas no longer allegedly captured with a “lens”, but reflected in the artist’s memory. According to the critic, such paintings by the artist as “Lumberjack” (1930), “Portrait of his wife” (1930), “Captain” (1928) bear a clear imprint of the author’s internal struggle, his already clear desire to free himself from the obsessive images of the past ^[21] .

Specialists single out a group of paintings dedicated to the apiary and beekeepers, indicating that although in general it is not necessary for Musatov to understand the vicissitudes of the author and his paintings speak for themselves, it is in this case that knowing the details of the artist’s biography can significantly change seen on the canvases. At first glance, the artist wrote memories of an idyllic childhood when his family kept an apiary. However, in fact, the works serve as a reminder of the family tragedy when his father and brother and family were brutally killed in this same apiary. Musatov first addressed this topic in 1929, years after what happened, probably in the period of mental disorder again resorting to art therapy, trying to get rid of painful memories. However, in this case, the previously tested method turned out to be ineffective; in the future, Musatov more than once returned to this topic ^[13] .

•  

  Our Lady (1929)

•  

  The Beekeeper (1929)

•  

  The Beekeeper (1934)

Industrial Period

In 1931, a serious change occurred in Musatov's work. This stage of the biography of Grigory Musatov, art critics call the "industrial period." The faded colors of old photographs are replaced by warmer and more saturated, more contrasting, giving the paintings a strong expressiveness ^[13] . The style of painting becomes more relaxed, more free, the paintings are saturated with air and light. Smooth texture, dull backgrounds, local decorative color fragments are replaced by a variety of strokes, dividing colors into a lot of shades ^[3] . The subject is changing, the main topic was technological progress, human feelings from rapidly changing times. The names of the paintings again speak for themselves: “Electrification” (1931), “Road to the Collective Farm” (1931), “Leap” (1931), “Signal” (1931), “Car” (1931), “Flight” (1931) ), “Airplane” (1931), “Express” (1931), “Isolators” (1931) and others. At the same time, the artist’s work still had a Russian basis. Even without seeing the life of the distant Motherland, the artist presented on the canvases the news that reached him, about collective farm construction, industrialization, and electrification, which, according to art historians, indicates that he still continued to feel like a citizen of Russia ^[13] .

Zhakovsky described Musatov’s new style as “anti-surrealism.” Assuming surrealism to be the ballast of the past, an art for the few chosen ones, inaccessible to the uninitiated spectator, he pointed out that Musatov turned to those spectators who were forgotten by other artists for whom surrealism became obscure, addresses their aesthetic needs, showing on their canvases genuine life but not returning to naturalism or realism , but creating a new reality - with the pathos of labor, industry, a rapid change in society and time. The novelty of Musatov's works, according to Zhakovsky, stemmed from his ability to use the latest achievements of artistic skill - the texture of surrealism, pouring into it the ideology of modernity. It is precisely such painting, in his opinion, that is the liberation of all creative possibilities for the artist, not limiting it to “neither the afterlife of the surrealists, nor the mechanical installation of paints or isolated things of cubists” ^[21] .

Zhakovsky noted that Musatov’s new art also had drawbacks, precisely because of its novelty, that the author had not yet found the ideal way to express his attitude, he too relied on surrealistic texture, hence infantilism , and the hyperbolicity of the depicted, but indicated that every new work the artist overshadows the previous ones, more and more returning to the “real” painting, requiring only visual perception, and not names, comments, guides, special training and study ^[21] . On the other hand, contemporary art critics note at Musatov’s works of this period not only the author’s admiration for the miracles of technological progress, admiration for speed, movement, but also a certain fear of the unknown in terms of how the new, technical society will develop. So cars on canvases: a car, an airplane, an express train, insulators, a chimney - represent a new, developing technical world. And people, symbolizing the old, slowly flowing world, gradually decrease from the dominant position in the early work “The Boy with the Snake” to a completely insignificant role in the “Signal” and often disappearing completely in later paintings ^[13] .

•  

  The Boy with the Snake (1931)

•  

  Flight (1931)

•  

  Signal (1931)

•  

  Electrification (1931)

Czech landscapes

Contrary to Zhakovsky’s assumptions and precepts, already in 1932 both the themes and the style of Musatov’s works are again radically changing. Industrialization is replaced by the summer Czech landscape, which has always been one of the main sources of the idea for other members of the Art Talk ( V. Rabas , V. Sedlacek , V. Rada ). Art historians attribute this to the recognition of Czechoslovakia as their new homeland: in the early 1930s, subsidies under the Russian share program were reduced, and Czechoslovakia established diplomatic relations with the USSR in 1934, as a result of which many Russian emigrants left the country ^[22] . Musatov, whose daughter was born in 1931, remained and even received Czechoslovak citizenship ^[13] .

Musatov’s paintings of this period are characterized by a noticeable influence on the part of impressionism, the best examples of which the author could meet in Paris, where he participated in a number of exhibitions in 1932. The paintings again changed color, becoming almost monochrome, although many colors were used, but one or two were prevailing: most often greenish, golden or red, orange-brown and cobalt-blue tones ^[13] .

In the memoirs of the artist’s daughter, in the late 1930s, Grigory Musatov, along with his new acquaintance, Czech collector Ivan Smetana, made a bicycle trip around the Czech Republic with a notebook. The impressions received by the artist during this journey formed the basis of a number of landscapes created based on "bicycle" sketches, most of which were acquired later by Smetana.

Jan Zrzavyi wrote about this stage of Musatov’s painting:

“His motives are always exclusively Russian. Only in the last years of his life did he turn to the environment in which he lived, to the Czech landscape and to the motives flowing from it. For us, his Czech landscapes are especially gripping for sympathy: we see in them our Czech expanse, but immersed in a deep Russian Duma, legendary, endless "

- Yancharkova, 2001

•  

  Dům u cesty

•  

  Cesta k vesnici

•  

  The village of Zheliv (1937)

•  

  Old Pond (1940)

The largest collection of works by the artist is in the National Gallery in Prague (21 paintings); Musatov’s works are also represented in many other Czech state collections and in private collections in Europe and the USA ^[4] .