Petrov-Vodkin K.S., Artist (1878-1939)

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PETROV-VODKIN Kuzma Sergeevich (1878-1939, Leningrad) was an artist, honoured worker of arts of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (1930). He trained at the Central College of Technical Drawing from 1895 to 1897, at the Moscow College of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture from 1897 to 1905, under V. A. Serov, in Munich in 1901 and Paris from 1905 to 1908. He was a member of the World of Art from 1911. He lived in St. Petersburg from 1909. He represented the symbolist school in the Russian painting. He invented a special artistic and plastic system based on the principle of spherical perspectives and the chromatic connections of the three colours blue-yellow-red originating from the traditions of icon painting. He created the parable painting Bathing of the Red Horse, 1912, exhibited in the State Tretyakov Gallery perceived by contemporaries as a symbolic image of the fate of Russia. During the Soviet period he created a number of canvases penetrated with revolutionary romanticism: Year 1918 in Petrograd, 1920, exhibited at the State Tretyakov Gallery, Death of the Commissar, 1928, The Year 1919: Anxiety, 1934, both are on exhibition in the State Russian Museum. He also painted still lives and portraits, including one of A. A. Akhmatova in 1922, exhibited in the State Russian Museum. He taught at the Zvantseva School of Arts from 1910 to 1916 and at the Academy of Arts from 1918 to 1933. He was one of the reorganisers of the system of art education in Leningrad. He was the first chairman of the management board at the Leningrad Department of the Artists" Union of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, a post he held from 1932 to 1937. He wrote autobiographical prose, essays and theoretical articles about art. Before 1924, he lived on 9 Eighteenth Line of Vasilievsky Island. In 1927-1936, he lived in the town Detskoe Selo (today Pushkin) at 2 Komsomolskaya (today Sadovaya) Street, from 1936, he lived in Leningrad at 14 Kirovsky (Kamennoostrovsky) Avenue where a memorial plaque is now located. He was buried at Literatorskie Mostki (the headstone was made in 1953 by sculptor B. E. Kaplyansky).

Works: Khlynovsk. Euclid"s Space. Samarkandiya. The second edition. Leningrad, 1982; Letters, Articles, Speeches, Documents, Moscow, 1991.

References: Русаков Ю. А. Петров-Водкин. Л., 1975; Селизарова Е. Н. Петров-Водкин в Петербурге - Петрограде - Ленинграде. СПб., 1993.

O. L. Leikind, D.Y. Severyukhin. Kaplyansky Boris Evseevich
Petrov-Vodkin Kuzma Sergeevich
Serov Valentin Alexandrovich
Zvantseva Elizaveta Nikolaevna
18th Line of Vasilievsky Island/Saint Petersburg, city, house 9
Kamennoostrovsky Ave/Saint Petersburg, city, house 14
Sadovaya Street/Pushkin, town, house 2
Русаков Ю. А. Петров-Водкин. Л., 1975
Селизарова Е. Н. Петров-Водкин в Петербурге - Петрограде - Ленинграде. СПб., 1993
Хлыновск. Пространство Эвклида. Самаркандия. 2-е изд. Л., 1982
Письма. Статьи. Выступления. Документы. М., 1991 Stieglitz Central Technical Drawing School
World of Art, Association
Russian Museum, State
Academy of Arts
Academy of Arts
Literatorskie (Literary) Mostki, the museum-necropolis