Brodsky Isaac Izrailevich: biography and photos of paintings

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

In the Soviet fine arts of the twenties there was an orgy of various styles and trends, born of the artistic searches of the beginning of the century. The pragmatic Bolsheviks had no time to understand the aesthetic merits of various pictorial movements, they had to choose one path that was best understood by the masses, far from art criticism discussions.

The personification of this path was a talented master of realism - Brodsky. Isaac Izrailevich became a "court" artist, in which the Soviet government needed no less than any monarchy of the past.

Failed architect

If his parents could see a little bit through the veil of the future, they would not convince little Isaac that the profession of an artist is too unreliable a way to secure a comfortable life. They liked the future architect by the name of Brodsky more. Isaac Izrailevich, whose family lived beyond the Pale of Settlement in the Taurida province, traveled a path that was unthinkable in another era. Imagine that their son will live in a big house in the center of the Russian capital, ownthe richest collection of works of art and become the personal painter of the rulers of a vast country, poor Jewish merchants from the small town of Sofiyivka near Berdyansk simply could not.

Born in 1883, the future head of the Academy of Arts first wanted to become a musician. But then he liked to redraw pictures from the church calendar. It turned out similar, and he wanted to learn to draw from real artists. The closest similar educational institution was the Odessa Drawing School, which soon became the Art School at the Academy of Arts. Brodsky became his student in 1896. Isaac Izrailevich did not heed the advice of his parents to study more reliable architecture and entered the painting department.

Repin's student

The ability to please people on whom your fate depends, backed up by diligence and undoubted talent, has always helped Brodsky in life. It also allowed him to become a student of the great Repin in 1903, when Isaac was transferred to the first year of the Academy in St. Petersburg after a brilliant graduation from the Odessa School. Repin's course was overcrowded, but Brodsky managed to get into the entrance exam in drawing living nature, which was conducted by the master. He got a place where the model was visible from a very difficult angle, but he managed to cope with this task. Among those whose work was highly appreciated by Ilya Efimovich was Brodsky. Isaak Izrailevich was one of the favorite students of the best painter of Russia for five years.

In addition to his virtuoso technique and sharp eyes, the young artist adopted from Repin his negative attitude towards various "antics" in painting, to any deviations from a realistic reflection of nature. Unlike other students of Repin, who fell under the great influence of the teacher and began to blindly copy his style of the master, Brodsky developed his own style, which was called "openwork" and which also became a role model. Repin defended his student when Brodsky was on the verge of being expelled from the Academy for caricatures of government officials at the time of the student craze for politics.

Trip to Europe

According to the results of studying at the Academy, the best graduates - holders of a gold medal - were given the right to continue their studies abroad. Brodsky also received the highest final award and the possibility of a paid trip to Europe. Isaac Izrailevich fruitfully spends time studying the masterpieces of the masters of the past and getting acquainted with new trends in painting. He works hard and exhibits, earning a reputation as an established master. At the end of the tour, after discussing his work, the Academy decides to extend his trip for another six months.

During the craze for the search for new forms and trends in art, Brodsky did not escape the influence of new European painting. Isaac Izrailevich, whose biography is the path of a convinced realist, used art nouveau and symbolism motifs in his canvases. But, following the precepts of his teacher and remembering Repin's words about "antics", hetakes hostility to the work of avant-garde artists. After visiting the workshops of Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Brodsky forever becomes an adherent of traditional, realistic painting.

Salon Painting Master

Among art historians, there is a belief that if in the autumn of 1917 there had not been a radical change in the social and political system in Russia, Brodsky would have quickly reached the position and standard of living of such stars of salon or, in modern terms, “glamour” painting like Konstantin Makovsky and Henryk Semiradsky. He had a lot for this: energy and diligence, virtuosity, the ability to please people from high society, the ability, in today's terms, to “be in trend.”

It is not known how sincerely the artist Brodsky welcomed the collapse of the autocracy and the subsequent victory of Soviet power. Isaac Izrailevich would certainly have been a successful painter somewhere in Paris or New York. But he remains, unlike many intellectuals, in Russia and experiences global upheavals with her, knowing how, however, to always be in the right place, near the people who became the head of a huge country.

Yesterday - Kerensky, today - Lenin

In Russia, there were times when exquisite peaceful landscapes and sophisticated portraits of women became irrelevant, and Brodsky went where history was being made to capture those who followed in front. After the February Revolution, the time came when the advanced Russian society, freed from the shackles of the monarchy, carried the Prime Minister of the Provisional Government Kerensky in their arms, and the artist paints his portrait. On theIn it, the former lawyer appears as a real hero, capable of reviving the country to a new glory. True, the artist completed this portrait after the arrival of other heroes.

Brodsky is one of the first to create pictorial images of Lenin and his associates, and the image of the main Bolshevik for a long time becomes the most important topic for him. Then he is fond of global multi-figure compositions: "Lenin and the manifestation" and especially - "The grand opening of the II Congress of the Comintern." This colossal canvas depicts several hundred real people from whom portrait sketches were made. Brodsky showed his outstanding organizational skills, consonant with the era and demanded by his later life.

Artist, teacher, collector

Three main circumstances determined the life that Brodsky lived from the beginning of the 1920s. Isaac Izrailevich, painter No. 1 for official power, stubbornly created a complete iconography of the Soviet leaders, with endless replication of its main images - Lenin and Stalin. To fulfill the main state order, he attracted a whole army of apprentices and often, like the head of a medieval painters' workshop, he only made minor corrections to the paintings and put a signature.

The second most important thing was the revival of the academic system of art education. When he became director of the All-Russian Academy of Arts, it was a ruin left after the barbaric activities of those who thoughtlessly deniedlegacy of the past, destroying both its spirit and the material fund accumulated over decades. Brodsky's merits in the revival of this temple of the arts are hard to deny.

The third part of his life - collecting - was a real passion. Among the connoisseurs of Russian painting of that time, there was no better expert than Brodsky. Isaac Izrailevich, whose photos of the interiors of a huge house show walls hung with paintings from floor to ceiling, has collected a collection that is second in volume and importance after the collection of the Russian Museum. The circumstances under which it was replenished are shrouded in darkness, and the fact that Brodsky bequeathed it to the state is called forced due to party and Chekist pressure.

Everyone has their own way

They say that when Brodsky invited Pavel Filonov, who was deprived of his job, mercilessly hounded by criticism and power, poor and hungry, to his luxurious dinner, he did not dare to come - he was afraid to spoil his biography. The reputation of a “red gentleman” who lived in relation to his superiors according to the principle “What would you like?”, which Brodsky possessed among artists, became an obstacle to him.

To use one, black or white, paint to describe the life path of any person means to make it flat and unambiguous. Isaac Brodsky did not deserve this due to his obvious talent, diligence and energy.