Filonov's paintings, artist's biography

Outstanding representative of the Russian avant-garde Pavel Nikolaevich Filonov from the beginning of the XX century became known as the author of a special, analytical painting. Legend was his strong character, from which there was an unshakable conviction of the artist in the correctness of his discoveries, his obsession with 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, which became the result of the theoretical development of the master, which was almost the most important part of his heritage.

Start

The future artist was born in 1883 in a poor family of natives of Ryazan peasants, who moved in search of a better share in Moscow. My father was a coachman, my mother a washerwoman. Carried away by drawing, Pavel soon realized that painting would be the work of his whole life.

After primary education at the parish school in Moscow, he completed courses in painting and painting workshops in 1901 already in St. Petersburg. There, after they were orphaned, he moved after the sister who had married.

The work of the painter, who brought a modest income, sometimes allowed to get some picturesque practice. Thus, the artist recalls the 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 studies, Filonov visits drawing classes of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts and tries to prepare for entering 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 an academician, but two years later voluntarily leaves, not having found the understanding of the professors because of too original views on painting.

Artist-researcher

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

Here, professional skill serves to express an idea, only mediated by the objects that are saturated with the picture. To varying degrees, these works of the artist ask questions about his society, which has lost its goals, and express helplessness before the coming upheavals.

The ambiguous nature of the picture of the artist Filonov "Feast of the Kings" (1912-1913) does not give rest to the researchers of his work until now. The space is filled with figures that have obvious biblical allusions, mythological symbols of a supranational scale.

It is full of mysterious hints and mysterious references. She is considered the most mysterious painting of the master, while concurring with her clear prophetic qualities. Varied kings and queens, located on the throne, constitute an exciting composition, consonant with the public moods before the First World War. Ritual feast of the Filonov kings is eternal and relevant for any time.

Member of the process

Born on the eve of global upheavals in all spheres of public life, Pavel Filonov, whose paintings are distinguished by their distinctive identity in form and in their semantic aspiration, is part of the overall artistic process, and not only of the Russian one.

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

In 1912, Filonov undertook a journey through France and Italy, moving, as he put it, on foot and earning a living as a laborer. He gets acquainted with the heritage of the great masters of the past and with the newfangled trends of the rapidly developing artistic life of Europe. The first paintings of Picasso and other cubists, he sees in the very center of avant-garde art - in Paris - and makes their own opinion about them.

Theoretical heritage of Filonov

The propensity to constant and careful analysis - this always differed Filonov. His paintings - in many ways, the derivative of such an analysis, and in the history of art there were also theoretical works of the master.

Thus, in the article "The Canon and the Law", he comes out with a sharp assessment of the winning course of cubism and cubo-futurism, and in the manifesto "Made pictures" he tries to formulate the concept of his analytical approach to painting.

As the painter 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. True connection with the nature of things and the inner world of man they do not reach because of the quantitative limitations of artistic means and methods. Their capabilities in comparison with the inexhaustible variety of properties of nature and thinking are scanty.

For a more precise interaction with nature, new approaches are needed, implying the use of the entire spiritual arsenal of the creator-man. The goal is to create pictures and drawings with the help of persistent and powerful work of man, work on each particle, each atom.

Freedom and diversity

Fundamental to the artist's work, the Filonov-abstractionist's paintings are even more significant when the level of his professional skills becomes clear. In the master's heritage there are also portraits written by him in the traditional, classical manner. Mostly they depict his sisters and people close to them.

In the autumn of 1916, Filonov got to the war - Pavel Nikolayevich was mobilized and sent by the rank-and-file to the Russian-Romanian front. He stayed there until 1918, when, after the liquidation of the front, the artist returned to Petrograd already under the new government and is actively involved in the work.

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

The struggle for new art

Like other leaders of the Russian avant-garde, Filonov expects from the post-revolutionary time the embodiment of his hopes for the birth of a new art not bound by any conventions. He participates in the creation of the Institute of Art Culture (Inhuk), and becoming a professor at the Academy of Arts, is trying to reorganize it from the perspective of the new time. His main business, apart from the intense and persistent work in the studio, is the School of Analytical Art, founded by him in 1925.

Filonov's disciples were about a hundred young painters who shared his views, set out in the "Declaration of World Bloom" (1923) - the main theoretical work of the master. In it he proclaims the existence of a vast world of phenomena that the "seeing eye" can not detect, but which are accessible to the "eye of the knower". A modern artist must reflect this other reality, presenting it in the form of a form invented by him.

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

Scenic formulas

Filonov in 1927, together with students, decorates the interior of the Press House, creates decorations and decoration for the production of Gogol's "Inspector", works on the publication of the book "Kalevala", etc.

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

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

The paintings "Narva Gates" (1929), "Animals" (1930), "Faces" (1940) - this is a reflection of the world that can only see the prepared eye of this artist.

Filonovshchina

In the artist's attempts to create a reality that existed 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 a rush to undermine the unity of the army and the builders of communism. And gradually the artist Pavel Filonov, whose paintings were so little like models of socialist realism, becomes an outcast.

To confirm his loyalty to the ideas of the proletarian revolution, he wrote several pictures of the "correct" stories: "Workers at the Krasnaya Zarya factory" (1931), "Tractor shop" (1931), but this does not help - it is deprived of means of subsistence, Subject to persecution and isolation.

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