Filonov's paintings, biography of the artist

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

The outstanding representative of the Russian avant-garde Pavel Nikolayevich Filonov from the beginning of the 20th century became known as the author of a special, analytical painting. His strong character became a legend, from which came the unshakable conviction of the artist in the correctness of his discoveries, his obsession in work and monastic asceticism in life.

His work is an integral part of the history of avant-garde painting. At the same time, Filonov's paintings are a surprisingly original phenomenon, the result of the master's theoretical developments, which constituted perhaps the most important part of his legacy.

Start

The future artist was born in 1883 into a poor family of Ryazan peasants who moved to Moscow in search of a better life. Father was a coachman, mother was a laundress. Fascinated by drawing, Pavel soon realized that painting would be his life's work.

After primary education at a parish school in Moscow, he completed courses in painting and painting workshops in 1901 already in St. Petersburg. There, after they were left orphans, he moved after his sister, who got married.

Working as a painter, which brought a modest income, sometimes allowed me to get some painting practice. So, the artist recalls his participation in the wall painting of some rich apartment and in the restoration of picturesque images on the dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral.

In parallel with these classes, Filonov attends the drawing classes of the "Society for the Encouragement of Arts" and tries to prepare for admission to the Academy of Arts. The first attempt - in 1903 - was unsuccessful, and Filonov entered the private studio of Dmitriev-Kavkazsky to continue his art education.

In 1908 he became a volunteer at the Academy, but two years later he voluntarily left, not finding understanding among the professors because of his too peculiar views on painting.

Artist Researcher

The analytical approach to the pictorial image is already expressed by Filonov's earliest paintings with the titles "Heads" (1910), "A Man and a Woman" (1912), "Two Women and Riders" (1912), "East and West" (1912). They do not yet have the characteristic of a master of composing an image from a multitude of flickering cells, but these are already clearly abstract works.

Here, professional skill serves to express an idea that is only indirectly related to the objects that the picture is saturated with. To varying degrees, these works of the artist ask questions about the society of his day, which has lost its goals, and express helplessness in the face of the coming upheavals.

The ambiguity of the painting by the artist Filonov "The Feast of Kings" (1912-1913) is notgives rest to the researchers of his work so far. The space is filled with figures that have clear biblical allusions, mythological symbols of a supranational scale.

It is full of cryptic allusions and mysterious references. She is considered the most mysterious picture of the master, while agreeing with her obvious prophetic qualities. Multi-tribal kings and queens, seated on thrones, make up an exciting composition, consonant with the public mood before the First World War. The ritual feast of the kings of Filonov is eternal and relevant for any time.

Participant in the process

Born on the eve of global upheavals in all spheres of public life, Pavel Filonov, whose paintings are distinguished by a clear originality in form and semantic aspiration, is part of the general artistic process, and not only Russian.

He participates in the activities of the Youth Union art association, later collaborates with futurist poets, including Vladimir Mayakovsky and Velimir Khlebnikov. In a discussion with the Cubists, he finally determined the ideological constructions of his creative worldview - analytical art.

In 1912, Filonov takes a trip to France and Italy, moving, in his words, on foot and earning a living as a laborer. He gets acquainted with the legacy of the great masters of the past and with the newfangled trends of the rapidly developing artistic life of Europe. He sees the first paintings by Picasso and other Cubists in the very center of the avant-gardeart - in Paris - and forms his own opinion about them.

Filonov's theoretical legacy

The tendency to constant and thorough analysis - this has always distinguished Filonov. His paintings are largely a derivative of such an analysis, and the master's theoretical works have remained in the history of art.

So, in the article "Canon and Law" he comes out with a sharp assessment of cubism and cubo-futurism, which was gaining victorious momentum, and in the manifesto "Made Pictures" he tries to formulate the concept of his analytical approach to painting.

As the artist Filonov wrote in his texts, the paintings of Picasso and his followers have the same defect of a one-sided view of reality as classical realism. They cannot achieve a true connection with the nature of things and the inner world of a person due to the quantitative limitations of artistic means and methods. Compared to the inexhaustible variety of properties of nature and thinking, their possibilities are scanty.

For a more accurate interaction with nature, new approaches are needed that involve the use of the entire spiritual arsenal of the human creator. The goal is to create paintings and drawings with the help of the hard and powerful work of man, working on every particle, every atom.

Freedom and diversity

Fundamental for the artist's work, Filonov's abstract paintings have even greater significance when the level of his professional skill becomes clear. The legacy of the master also includes portraits painted by him in a traditional, classical manner. ATthey mainly depict his sisters and people close to them.

In the autumn of 1916, Filonov went to war - Pavel Nikolaevich was mobilized and sent as a private to the Russian-Romanian front. He stayed there until 1918, when, after the liquidation of the front, the artist returned to Petrograd under the new government and was actively involved in work.

The theme of the World War is traced by researchers only in the works created before mobilization, and after his return from the front, Filonov's paintings are filled with a completely different content, although they sometimes contain post-apocalyptic motifs.

Struggle for new art

Like other leaders of the Russian avant-garde, Filonov expects from the post-revolutionary period the realization of his hopes for the birth of a new art, not bound by any conventions. He participates in the creation of the Institute of Artistic Culture (Inkhuk), and after becoming a professor at the Academy of Arts, he tries to reorganize it from the standpoint of the new time. His main business, besides hard and hard work in the workshop, is the "School of Analytical Art", founded by him in 1925.

Filonov's students were about a hundred young painters who shared his views, set forth in the "Declaration of World Prosperity" (1923) - the main theoretical work of the master. In it, he proclaims the existence of a vast world of phenomena that the “seeing eye” cannot detect, but which are accessible to the “knowing eye”. The modern artist must reflect this other reality, presenting it in the form of a form,inventive.

Many students could not avoid the influence of the energy that Filonov's paintings radiated and fell into pure imitation, but there were also those for whom the ideas of the master became a powerful help for their own creative aspirations.

Picturesque formulas

Filonov in 1927, together with his students, designed the interiors of the Press House, created the scenery and artistic design for the production of Gogol's "Inspector", working on the publication of the book "Kalevala", etc.

But hard work on new paintings remained the main component of the artist's life. His commitment to his ideas and self-denial in his work delighted some, while others, as usual in a creative environment, irritated.

Among the most significant works created in the 1920s and 1930s, there are many paintings called formulas: “Formula of the Petrograd Proletariat” (1921), “Formula of Spring” (1927), “Formula of Imperialism” (1925) and etc. This was another confirmation of fidelity to the ideas of analytical painting, which the artist Filonov kept until the end of his days.

The paintings "Narva Gates" (1929), "Animals" (1930), "Faces" (1940) are a reflection of the world that only the trained eye of a real artist can see.

Filonovshchina

In the artist's attempts to create a reality that exists separately from the harsh reality, official criticism and ideological bodies of that time saw at best an attempt to escape from the fronts of the struggle for a brighter future, and at worst, an attempt to undermine the unity of the armyand builders of communism. And gradually the artist Pavel Filonov, whose paintings had so little resemblance to examples of socialist realism, becomes an outcast.

To confirm his loy alty to the ideas of the proletarian revolution, he paints several paintings on the "correct" subjects: "Working champions at the Red Dawn factory" (1931), "Tractor shop" (1931), but this does not help - his deprived of livelihoods, harassed and isolated.

The fate of the master can be called tragic (he died of exhaustion in the very first month of the blockade, December 3, 1941), if you do not remember the great posthumous fame that came to him in more benign times. Today, his works are valued at the level of the world's greatest masterpieces, and the name is unequivocally ranked among the most significant in the history of pictorial art.