Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin: biography, illustrations and paintings of the artist

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

Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin worked at the turn of two centuries, became famous as an artist, illustrator, a great master of theatrical scenery. He created his own style in graphics, which was very fond of the viewer and found many imitators. The fate of this amazing master and his exquisite heritage in art invariably remain in the center of attention of a modern cultured person.

The start of the journey

Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin was born on August 4 (16), 1876 in the village of Tarkhovka, near St. Petersburg. The artist's ancestors are well-known Kaluga merchants, famous for patronage and keen interest in the fate of the fatherland. The artist's father, Yakov Ivanovich Bilibin, was a naval doctor, then head of the hospital and medical inspector of the imperial fleet, participated in the Russian-Turkish war. The father dreamed of seeing his son as a lawyer, and young Ivan Bilibin, having graduated from the gymnasium with a silver medal, entered St. Petersburg University at the Faculty of Law.

The young man studied conscientiously, listened to the full course of lectures, defended his thesis. But next to this quite practical prospect, which promised a brilliant legal future, there always lived another dream. Since childhood he has been passionate aboutdrew. Simultaneously with his studies at the university, Bilibin comprehended the science of painting and graphics at the Drawing School of the OPH (Society for the Encouragement of Arts). For a month and a half, he took lessons at the private art school of the Austro-Hungarian artist Anton Azbe in Munich. It was here that the study of drawing was given special importance and developed in students the ability to find an individual artistic style. At home, Bilibin studied diligently in the painting workshop under the guidance of Ilya Repin.

Favorite topic

At the time of Bilibin's studies at the Higher Art School of the Academy of Arts, where Repin arranged the young man, there was an exhibition of Viktor Vasnetsov, who wrote in a unique romantic manner on the themes of Russian myths and fairy tales. The spectators of the exhibition were many of our artists who would become famous in the future. Bilibin Ivan Yakovlevich was among them. Vasnetsov's works struck the student to the very heart, he later admitted that he saw here something that his soul unconsciously rushed to and yearned for.

In 1899-1902, the Russian Expedition for the Procurement of State Papers published a series of books with excellent illustrations for folk tales. There were graphic paintings for the fairy tales "Vasilisa the Beautiful", "The White Duck", "Ivan Tsarevich and the Firebird" and many others. Bilibin Ivan Yakovlevich was listed as the author of the drawings.

Illustrations for folk tales

His understanding of the national spirit and poetry, which Russian folklore breathes, was formed not only under the influence of a vague attraction to folk art. The artist passionately wanted to know and studied the spiritual component of his people, their poetics and way of life. In 1899, Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin visited the village of Yegny, in the Tver province, in 1902 he studied the culture and ethnography of the Vologda province, a year later the artist visited the Olonets and Arkhangelsk provinces. From his trips, Bilibin brought a collection of works by folk artists, photographs of wooden architecture.

His impressions resulted in journalistic works and scientific reports on folk art, architecture and national costume. An even more fruitful result of these travels was Bilibin's original works, which revealed the master's predilection for graphics and a very special style. Two bright talents lived in Bilibin - a researcher and an artist, and one gift nourished the other. Ivan Yakovlevich worked with particular care on the details, not allowing himself to be out of tune in a single line.

Style specifics

Why is Bilibin Ivan Yakovlevich so different in his manner from other artists? Photos of his wonderful and joyful works help to understand this. On a piece of paper, we see a clear patterned graphic outline, executed with the utmost detail and colored with a bizarre watercolor range of the most cheerful shades. His illustrations for epics and fairy tales are amazingly detailed, lively, poetic and not devoid of humor.

Taking care of the historical authenticity of the image, which appeared in the drawings in the details of the costume, architecture, utensils, the master was able to create an atmosphere of magic andmysterious beauty. In this, Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin is very close in spirit to the creative association "World of Art", whose biography is closely connected with this group of artists. All of them were related by an interest in the culture of the past, in the enticing charms of antiquity.

Perception of the world in drawings

From 1907 to 1911, Bilibin created a number of unsurpassed illustrations for epics and for the fabulous poetic works of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. Here are delightful and exquisite pictures for The Tale of the Golden Cockerel and The Tale of Tsar S altan. The illustrations became not just an addition, but a kind of continuation of these verbal works, which, no doubt, master Bilibin read with his soul.

Ivan Tsarevich and the frog who turned into a princess, Koschey the Immortal and Yaga, Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Robber, Elena the Beautiful, Churila Plenkovich, Svyatogor - how many heroes Ivan Yakovlevich felt with his heart and "revived" on a piece of paper!

Folk art also gave the master some techniques: ornamental and lubok ways of decorating the artistic space, which Bilibin brought to perfection in his creations.

Print activities

Ivan Bilibin worked as an artist and in magazines of that time. He created masterpieces of printing, which greatly contributed to the growth of this industry and its introduction into popular culture. The publications "People's Reading Room", "Golden Fleece", "Artistic Treasures of Russia" and others could not do without elegant and meaningful vignettes, headpieces, covers andBilibin's posters.

Global Glory

The works of the Russian master of graphics became known abroad. They were shown at exhibitions in Prague and Paris, Venice and Berlin, Vienna, Brussels and Leipzig. They were reprinted by foreign magazines, and foreign theaters ordered Bilibin sketches for the design of performances.

Satirical drawings

In 1905 the first Russian revolution broke out. Like most of the intelligentsia, Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin enthusiastically supported the decisive rise of the masses. Caricatures of the artist appeared in the satirical magazines Zhupel and Infernal Mail. He makes hilarious sketches, ridiculing the royal officials, in ink and, in his famous fairy-tale manner, draws a huge figure of the King Pea, arrogantly towering over his subjects. For revolutionary drawings, the artist was even arrested for a day.

Master of scenery and watercolors

Bilibin's career as an author of theatrical scenery began with cooperation with the Paris National Theater, which commissioned him to sketch sketches for Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Snow Maiden. Then there were scenery for productions in St. Petersburg and Moscow. The success of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Golden Cockerel in Moscow was largely due to the magnificent fairy-tale scenery created by the master's hand. Bilibin made sketches of costumes for Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov and Spanish costumes for Calderon's drama St. Patrick's Purgatory, as well as Lope de Vega's comedy The Sheep Spring. The artist skillfully designedclothing style for the Diaghilev ballet.

For ten years, starting in 1907, Bilibin taught graphics at the school of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts. After traveling through England and Ireland, Ivan Yakovlevich "fell ill" with the landscape. He tirelessly painted the sea, the sky and the harsh British shores in watercolor. The artist created rocky and sea landscapes in the Crimea, where he traveled every summer.

Revolutionary cataclysms, emigration

In February 1917, a revolution broke out in Russia. Ivan Yakovlevich accepted her too. He even created a sketch of a drawing with a double-headed eagle, which crowned the coat of arms of the Provisional Government, and much later was used in minting coins.

The October Revolution did not arouse enthusiasm in the artist. In 1920, he left the port in Novorossiysk abroad and ended up in Egypt. Here Bilibin was destined to live for four years.

Works of this time - sketches with mysterious and eternal pyramids, sketches and sketches of portraits of Cairo residents.

In the autumn of 1925, Ivan Yakovlevich arrived in Paris and began to work actively in print media, illustrating Russian, Western and Eastern fairy tales. At the time of emigration, Bilibin created magnificent sketches for icons and frescoes of the Russian church at the Olshansky cemetery in Prague.

For the decade between 1920-1930, Ivan Yakovlevich fruitfully and successfully worked on the design of theatrical productions: he made drawings for opera seasons at the Champs Elysees, worked in the Russian Opera in Paris enterprise, created outlandish sketches for Stravinsky's ballet The Heat -bird.

Return

Life in exile was rich and free, but the growing longing for Russia did not leave the artist. During his voluntary exile, he did not take foreign citizenship anywhere, and in 1935 he took Soviet citizenship. Then he created the monumental panel "Mikula Selyaninovich" for the building of the Soviet embassy in the capital of France. A year later, the artist and his family returned to their homeland. Bilibin was warmly welcomed by the new government and became a professor at the graphic workshop of the Institute of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture of the Academy of Arts in Leningrad. He did not leave work in the field of book graphics.

The famous artist died in besieged Leningrad in 1942 from starvation and was buried in a mass professor's grave at the Smolensk cemetery.

The trace that the amazing Russian artist Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin left in the history of world art is clear and bright. Paintings, frescoes, graphics and other examples of his inspiring creativity are now kept in public and private collections. They decorate the halls of the "Russian Museum" in St. Petersburg, are exhibited in the Theater Museum. Bakhrushin in Moscow, at the Kiev Museum of Russian Art, at the London Victoria and Albert Museum, at the Paris National Gallery, at the Oxford Ashmolean Museum and many others.