ILYA IVANOVICH MASHKOV
. . . These fruits, loaves and meat are depicted with
a skill almost comparable to that displaced by the
masters of the Dutch still life in their achievements
hitherto unsurpassed. Mashkov's canvases are not only
truthful to the point of illusion but are possessed
of a rare beauty and radiance. His use of colour
resembles the swelling chords of an organ.
A. Lunacharsky
THE NAME OF ILYA IVANOVICH MASHKOV is associated above all with still-
life paintings remarkable for an elemental intensity of colour which verges
at times on the violent. Displaying a scope and boldness unusual in his
contemporaries as well as an acute feeling for the materiality of things,
Mashkov's bright canvases are striking for the breadth of their pictorial
range, for the deep sonority of their colours.
Mashkov was one of the boldest innovators in Russian painting at the
beginning of the twentieth century, an outstanding painter whose works
contributed to the development of Soviet art, an experienced teacher who
passed on his skill to many who would later become famous artists. Each of
these aspects of his creative activity is instructive and deserving of
special attention. Mashkov developed as a painter in the years preceding
the Revolution, at a time when artistic life in Russia was unusually
complex and full of contradiction. In the field of art there were clashes
between various principles and ideas, manifested as a struggle between
numerous schools. Painters of an older generation, — members of the Society
for Circulating Art Exhibitions (the Peredvizhniki), the World of Art and
the Union of Russian Artists, — were still active. At the same time a host
of aesthetic and artistic conceptions, precarious in their theoretical
foundation, were receiving wide attention. The overthrow of traditional
forms, aesthetic nihilism, the loss of firm links with reality could not,
however, delay the development of art. The search for new paths and new
creative principles went on, and Russian art was enriched by some
remarkable achievements. Just in this period there appeared a number of
talented young artists.
Despite the diversity of the new ideas and trends, one may clearly
discern in Russian painting of this time a general tendency towards the
perfecting of artistic form. Artists were striving for a certain synthesis,
they wished to reveal the generalized meaning of phenomena not susceptible
of concretization in time, and therefore not infrequently they refused to
represent movement and action in their work. As a result of this loss of
interest in the subject painting, the still life became the dominant genre.
Landscape and portrait also occupied an important place. And particular
attention was paid to the renewal of painterly techniques.
The evolving of a new system of pictorial representation advanced
through a series of agonizing explorations, which were often far from
successful. The principle of verisimilitude, which had prevailed in
nineteenth century painting, was supplanted by that of conventionality.
This testified to the inner bond linking the new trends in Russian painting
with Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism and Expressionism, for the
exponents of those schools sought support not in the traditions of European
Post-Renaissance realism, but rather in principles adopted from the visual
arts of different peoples and ages. The search for formal solutions
appropriate to these new stylistic norms was of decisive importance. This
tendency is not difficult to perceive in the works of such artists of the
late nineteenth — early twentieth centuries as Ruble, Servo and K. Korovin.
It was characteristic of the members of the World of Art and the Blue Rose
associations, but most strongly developed in the work of artists of the
Jack of Diamonds group and other representatives of the so-called avant-
garde in the beginning of this century.
In the artistic movements at the beginning of the twentieth century
there was much romanticism, much anarchic rebelliousness. Inner
contradictions were most sharply revealed in the various trends of the
avant-garde movement where subjectivism, having reached the limit of non-
representational depiction, was opposed by the real achievements of a few
artists of the Jack of Diamonds group, like Konchalovsky, Mashkov, Falk.
Lentulov. Kuprin, Larionov and others. These painters discovered a
successful balance in which expressiveness of colour, plasticity and
decorative composition helped express a particularly intense, yet at the
same time integral perception of reality.
Ilya Ivanovich Mashkov (1881—1944) was born in the village of
Mikhaylovskaya in the Don area. His parents were of peasant origin. At the
age of fifteen he lost his father, who had pursued various trades and had
had to endure constant poverty. From an early age Mashkov displayed an
aptitude for handicrafts; he also liked to draw. However, the cruel and
degrading existence he was forced to lead (in his early youth he had been
placed in the service of some local traders, supposedly as an apprentice)
was least likely to further his attachment to art. He was already in his
eighteenth year when he first heard that painting was something to be
learned. In 1900 he entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and
Architecture. After completing his life class, he transferred to the studio
of Servo and Korovin. A little earlier Mashkov had begun to give private
lessons himself. During his first years in the School he studied avidly and
diligently. Then there followed a period of doubt and disillusionment with
the creative principles of his teachers, a period which ended with a
complete change in his artistic orientation, as a result of which he was
expelled from the School in 1910.
This liberation from "academic chains" was to a great extent prompted
by Mashkov's first acquaintance with the Hermitage in 1907. In 1908 he went
on a trip to Germany, Paris, London, Madrid, Barcelona, Italy and Vienna,
during which he got to know the masterpieces of classical art as well as
contemporary French painting. Before his departure he had already become
familiar with the Shchukin and Morozov collections, where fine examples of
the most recent French art were represented, and in 1909 he visited the
Golden Fleece Exhibition, which was displaying works by the Fauvists.
Mashkov's answer to his expulsion from the School was to take an active
part in the creation of the Jack of Diamonds. The spirit of epater le
bourgeois which accompanied the activities of this group prevented critics
of the time from discerning the genuine artistic merit of the work produced
by its members. The emergence of a new trend in Russian painting and the
organization in 1911, by a number of young Moscow artists, of the Jack of
Diamonds exhibition society was connected with an eager movement towards
expressiveness, decorative quality and the concentrated use of colour — all
entirely characteristic of the age. Their experience of European art
enabled the artists to pass on boldly towards a generalized representation
of nature, refusing to follow the principles of Impressionism. Opponents of
narrative painting, illusion and aestheticism, they relied on experiment in
pictorial techniques. Hence their impulse towards the detail and their
preference for the still life, which was indeed to become the "laboratory"
of their new endeavours.
Their fidelity to a constructive line of artistic thought allowed the
painters of the Jack of Diamonds group to achieve a synthesis of colour and
form in their representation of objects from the surrounding world. They
profited by the experience of Cezanne and the Cubists, Cubism being for
them not so much a system as a means of enhancing artistic expressiveness.
This exploitation of formal expressiveness, as well as the concentrated use
of all the resources of painting, led to innovations in the pictorial
structure and style of their works. Many artists of the time were attracted
to the problem of creating in painting a sui generis artistic equivalent of
what was distinctively national in Russian life. Members of the Jack of
Diamonds group interpreted this problem as the return of Russian painting
to traditions preserved over the centuries in folk art. This link with the
principles of folk art and the desire to appropriate its expressiveness of
portrayal determined the character of their endeavours. They were full of
enthusiasm for the Russian lubok (popular print), the house-painter's sign,
the decorated tray, the folk toy. These painters thus enriched contemporary
art with the achievements of Russian folk art. The strength of their work
lay in the exaggerated emotionality and distinctiveness of their
portrayals, in the intensity and concreteness of their colour and in their
powerful optimism.
It is well known that the struggle carried on between the Jack of
Diamonds and its various opponents did not in fact unite the members of the
group. Harmonious as their first public appearance seemed to be, it was
quickly followed by a number of internal disagreements, which eventually
led to the society's dissolution in 1917. The first signs of Mashkov's
divergence from the group date from 1911, the year of his initial
rapprochement with the World of Art. In 1916 both Mashkov and Konchalovsky
simultaneously went over to this latter association.
By the beginning of the First World War Mashkov was already an
acknowledged artist. This was the time of his greatest popularity.
During the years of the Revolution Mashkov was engaged in strenuous
social, organizational and pedagogic activity. There was scarcely any time
for his own creative work. He was a professor at the Free Studios (the name
of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture since the
autumn of 1918). Attached to his studio were A. Goncharov, A. Deyneka and
other subsequently famous Soviet artists. It was only in 1922, when art
exhibitions began again, that the painter's creative activity regained its
former scope. He took part in the exhibitions organized by the revived
World of Art group and the Society of Moscow Artists (the former Jack of
Diamonds).
On his own admission, the years 1923 and 1924 mark a perceptible
turning-point in his views on the aims and purposes of art. This coincided
with the general impetus of Soviet artists towards realism. In 1922 a new
artistic group, the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (the
AARR), had already made its appearance, and this society was to play a
positive role in the formation of realistic art. At the end of 1924
Mashkov, along with his pupils, went over to this organization where he set
up art classes. Although he continued to participate in exhibitions held by
the Society of Moscow Artists, his creative output in the second half of
the twenties is mainly associated with the AARR. He took part in
exhibitions of the AARR and was a member of its Board. He left the
association in the spring of 1930, when its historical role had already
been accomplished. In 1928, for his services in the realm of
representational art, the Soviet government awarded Mashkov the title of
Merited Artist of the RSFSR. In 1930 he left for his home in the village of
Mikhaylovskaya where he lived almost continuously until 1938. He completed
his last works in 1943, one year before his death.
Despite the vividness of his style, it is no easy task to define the
individual quality of Mashkov's art in so far as it was the product of a
whole movement, many features of which were characteristic of their age and
common to a fairly wide circle of Russian painters.
Mashkov differed from those close to him in creative disposition by the
extreme spontaneity of his artistic talent and by his fervent attachment to
the world of objects. These are not, however, the only factors which
determined the painter's style. Reflecting the personal element in his
creative work. his style is clearly perceived through the plastic features
of his pictures. Yet while emphasizing the strong side' of his talent, it
is essential not to neglect the painter's weaker aspects, which are-of no
small importance where Mashkov is concerned.
In the works completed before 1909, there is as yet no evidence of
completely independent talent. Nevertheless, his Model (end of
1907—beginning of 1908), painted! in Serov's class, is well above the
average for an apprentice's work.
The still life Apples and Pears on a White Background (1908) was the
first won I to be completed after his journey abroad and is close to the
principles of late Impressionism. Indeed, it suggests some knowledge of
Cezanne's artistic conception. A work dating from the same time, Two
Models against a Drapery (1908, Leningrad, private collection), seems to be
a compromise between the principles of Impressionism and an impulse towards
two-dimensionality and generalized decorativeness.
Mashkov first achieves an individual style in the works of 1909 and
1910. These were portraits, still lifes and landscapes, some of which were
shown in Moscow during 1910 and 1911 at an exhibition of the Jack of
Diamonds group, while other-were displayed in Paris at the Autumn Salon in
1910. In the paintings of this time-he proclaims a new and unusual
conception of beauty. The exaggerated quality of their expression, the
careless sweep of their contours, often painted in black, their
polychromatic intensity—all this testifies to his denial of the artistic
principles of an older generation. The striking starkness of method, the
deliberate simplification of technique, reveal an attempt to invest the art
of painting with pristine energy, to overcome the refined aestheticism of
the fin-de-siecle, with its wavering forms and its faded colours, in short,
to restore art to both youth and health. Inspired in his work by the
products of folk art, Mashkov was guided largely by the formal
expressiveness of the lubok
The Portrait of a Boy in a Patterned Shirt was painted in March, 1909.
It is one. of the works which mark the beginning of Mashkov's creative
career. As well as demonstrating Mashkov's habit of heaping his early
canvases with contrasting colours. this painting already displays a
disregard of psychological realism very close to the polemical spirit which
would later characterize the works of the Jack of Diamonds group. The
artist makes no use of local colour. The pinkish hue of the boy's face is
reinforced by the gold of the forehead and the greenish tint of the eye-
socket. The hands are painted in contrasting reds, pinks and greens, while
a cold shade of pink is also introduced into the dark-green leaves which
form a pattern in the background.
Refusing to treat the problem of perspective in a traditional manner,
Mashkov reduces the elements of modelling to a bare minimum, as if
stretching the image out over the canvas and thereby achieving some intense
combinations of colour, largely independent of the representation of light
and shade.
In other portraits of this early period—for example, those of V.
Vinogradova (1909). E. Kirkaldi (1910), Rubanovich (Portrait of a Lady with
Pheasants, about 1910), Mashkov is not only searching for expressiveness of
colour, but is also concerned to organize his canvas on two-dimensional
lines. In these portraits perspective is almost ousted by surface design.
In his Model Seated executed in 1909, for example, the two-dimensional
effect disappears under the accumulation of contrasting colours, the artist
deliberately avoids exaggerated ornamentality, the picture's thematic and
spatial elements remain dominant, the vital connection between model and
still life is preserved.
Inspired by the principles of folk art, Mashkov sought to express the
immutable essence of thing's through form, dimension and colour. The medium
he most consistently used for these endeavours, as well as for his attempts
to discover new principles of composition, was the still life. He did not
aim at thematic variety; portrayals of fruit and berries on a round dish or
plate are frequently encountered in his work. In some instances the artist
would strictly adhere to such motifs, as in Still Life with a Pineapple or
Still Life. Fruit on a Dish (both about 1910). Sometimes the motif becomes
a detail in the total composition, as in Still Life. Berries with a Red
Tray in the Background (about 1910), Still Life with Begonias (before
1911), Still Life with Grapes (early 1910s), etc.
The emphatically naive, "primitive" method of portrayal revealed in
Still Life with a Pineapple, the bright intensity of its colours, and their
use in simplified combinations, bear witness to Mashkov's attempt to view
the world through the eyes of the masters of folk art. In his yearning to
penetrate the essence of things, to reveal their fixed, "eternal"
Страницы: 1, 2
