Russian artist Mikhail Larionov. Paintings

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Mikhail Fedorovich Larionov is a unique phenomenon in Russian and world culture. Painter, theater artist, graphic artist. He is grandiose as an avant-garde artist and theorist. The paintings of Mikhail Larionov and his personality have left an indelible mark on world culture. He is significant as the founder of Rayonism, an original trend in Russian painting at the beginning of the twentieth century. But, for all the scale of his figure, he is underestimated in his homeland, insufficiently studied and researched. Ironically, Larionov as a painter for a long time was in the shadow of his best student, comrade-in-arms and wife, the brilliant Natalia Goncharova.

Childhood

Mikhail Larionov was born in 1881. His father served as a military paramedic and was on duty in the Kherson province, in southern Russia, a hundred kilometers from the Black Sea. It was there, in these hot and unusually poignant places, that the childhood of the future artist passed. The observant boy had something to pay attention to, because Tiraspol, like any southernthe city was a dazzling mosaic of tribes, languages and traditions. This region covered the boy with a patchwork quilt of flowering gardens, military marches, motley people, market crowds and market noise. Little squash, long stables, countless swallows, trembling hot air and happiness, great happiness that embraced the boy's entire childhood. And then, when he grows up, until he leaves Russia forever, he will come to his beloved Tiraspol for the summer.

School

When Misha Larionov was twelve years old, the family moved to Moscow. Life in the capital flowed calmly and measuredly, Mikhail graduated from college and was preparing to connect his life with painting.

In those years, paintings by Viktor Borisov-Musatov made a particularly strong impression on Mikhail Larionov. Drawing since childhood, the boy Mikhail naturally entered the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. There, his bright, original talent was fully manifested, and his teachers were extraordinary - these were Valentin Serov, and Konstantin Korovin, and Isaac Levitan. In the same school, Larionov met his future wife, artist Natalia Goncharova.

Impressionism

After college, the life of Mikhail Larionov spun in a bright round dance of various cultural movements. He, like many artists of that time, began his work with impressionism. From under his brush came out a large series of works, in the spirit of the landscapes of Claude Monet. Paintings by Mikhail Larionov were received very well. Hebecame a prominent figure in the circle of creative intelligentsia, he was noticed by members of the World of Art association, and Sergei Diaghilev offered to participate in the Paris Exhibition of 1906.

In Paris, paintings by Mikhail Fedorovich Larionov and himself were a great success. But not so much success as Paris itself inspired him and left an indelible impression. There he learned that Monet was no longer the core of world impressionism, this place was firmly occupied by Paul Gauguin, Van Gogh and Cezanne. It was they who personified the novelty in world painting. Their expression owned the minds of admirers and those who were not indifferent. Larionov breathed Paris, lived in Paris, he visited exhibitions, explored museums, accumulated materials for his future growth. But he did not become a follower of Fauvism, a fashionable trend in painting, unfolding before his eyes and sweeping Paris. Larionov looked deep into, to the very root of creative quest, and there inside he saw something new. Having studied the geniuses of post-impressionism, he became an innovator. In his paintings, the artist Mikhail Larionov turned to primitivism.

1909-1914

His primitivism came from Russian lubok, from ancient peasant traditions. Larionov discerned in this simplicity the fundamental strength of archetypes and recognized far-reaching potentialities in uncomplicated folk art, waiting to be understood. Having immersed himself in new ideas, he showed unheard of efficiency, it was then that the series of paintings by Mikhail Larionov "Dandies", "Hairdressers" appeared, at the same time his rayonism was born.

Larionov studied advertising signs, inscriptions and drawings on fences, and transformed these grains of the Russian spirit into gems of new color textures. In those same years, Larionov did a lot of graphic work and showed outstanding organizational qualities. He established various associations of artists and staged outrageous exhibitions, the most famous of which are Jack of Diamonds, Donkey's Tail and Target. Larionov devoted a lot of time to designing the unique poetry collections of his Futurist friends: Velimir Khlebnikov, Alexei Kruchenykh and others. In all his manifestations, Larionov was an innovator and a locomotive. He was looking for new ways, a new look at old objects, and Rayonism became the quintessence of these searches.

Rayism

In 1913, Larionov proclaimed the manifesto "Radiants and Futures" and thus opened the era of non-objectivity in painting. This was the beginning of Russian abstractionism. Rayonism intertwined and reflected all the achievements of the artist in the presentation of color and texture. Objects as such do not exist in the concept of Rayonism, they are revealed only in the reflection and refraction of rays. And therefore, painting must be completely divorced from matter and expressed in new spatial forms, a new overlay of color and focus of thought.

At the Paris exhibition, the Luchist paintings by Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova made a splash and received universal recognition. Larionov becomes famous, arranges a European tour, meets many celebrities, including Pablo Picasso, Guillaume Apollinaire, JeanCocteau.

1915-1917

But at the peak of his creative activity, the First World War invades the life of Mikhail Larionov. He returns to his homeland and goes to the front. In 1915, after a serious injury and concussion, after recovering in the hospital, Larionov came back to Paris, where a new metamorphosis of the master took place - he began to design scenery for Sergei Diaghilev's ballets.

The artist meets the Revolution of 1917 in Paris and decides to stay there forever. The Parisian stage in the life of the master begins, a long and ambiguous stage. She and Goncharova settled on Rue Jacques Callot and lived in this apartment for the rest of their lives.

Paris Stage

In the second half of his life, Larionov began to devote much time and effort to literary creativity, he wrote memoirs and articles on the history of art. The artist Larionov Mikhail Fedorovich in his paintings departed from Rayonism and returned to graphics, still lifes and genre compositions. Something imperceptible, but very important, very real, has disappeared from his work.

In 1955, Mikhail Larionov and Natalya Goncharova formalized their relationship, and after fifty years of marriage, they became husband and wife. Mikhail Larionov died in 1964, in the suburbs of Paris, two years after the death of his muse Natalia Goncharova.

In 1989, Alexandra Tomilina, a longtime friend of the family, handed over Mikhail Larionov's archive to the Soviet government. So the return of the master to his homeland took place.