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

Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin created 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 the modern cultural person.

The beginning of the way

Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin was born on August 4 (16), 1876 in the village of Tarhovka, near St. Petersburg. The ancestors of the artist are well-known Kaluga merchants, famous for patronage and a keen interest in the destinies of the fatherland. The father of the artist, Yakov Ivanovich Bilibin, was a military ship's doctor, then head of the hospital and medical inspector of the Imperial Navy, participated in the Russo-Turkish war. Father dreamed of seeing his son as a lawyer, and young Ivan Bilibin, having graduated with a silver medal gymnasium, 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 and promising bright future, the future always had another dream. He painted with infatuation. Simultaneously with his studies at the University, Bilibin comprehended the science of painting and drawing at the Drawing School of the OPA (Society for the Encouragement of Arts). For a month and a half he took lessons in a private art school of the Austro-Hungarian artist Anton Azhbe in Munich. It was here that the study of drawing was given special significance and developed among pupils the ability to find an individual artistic manner. At home, Bilibin worked diligently in a painting workshop under the direction of Ilya Repin.

Favorite Topic

During the study of Bilibin in the Higher Art School of the Academy of Arts, where the young man organized Repin, there was an exhibition of Viktor Vasnetsov, who wrote in a unique romantic manner on the themes of Russian myths and fairy tales. The viewers of the exhibition were many of our artists who were famous in the future. Bilibin Ivan Yakovlevich was among them. Vasnetsov's work struck the student in the heart, he admitted later that he saw here what he was unconsciously torn and what his soul yearned for.

In the years 1899-1902, the Russian Expedition of State Securities Producing published a cycle of books, furnished with excellent illustrations to folk tales. There were graphic pictures for the fairytales "Vasilisa the Beautiful", "White Duck", "Ivan Tsarevich and Firebird" and many others. The author of the drawings was Bilibin Ivan Yakovlevich.

Illustrations to folk tales

His understanding of the national spirit and poetry, with 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, his poetics and way of life. In 1899 Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin visited the village of Yegna 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 Gubernias. From the trips Bilibin brought a collection of works of national artists, photographs of wooden architecture.

His impressions resulted in publicistic works and scientific reports on folk art, architecture and national costume. Even more fruitful result of these trips were Bilibin's original works, in which the artist's predilection for graphics and a very special style were discovered. In Bilibino lived two bright talents - a researcher and an artist, and one gift nourished another. Ivan Yakovlevich with particular care worked on the details, not allowing himself to falsify in a single dash.

Specificity of style

What is so different in his manner from other artists Bilibin Ivan Yakovlevich? Photos of his wonderful and joyful works help to understand this. On a piece of paper, we see a clear patterned graphical outline, executed with the utmost detail and colored by the bizarre watercolor range of the most cheerful shades. His illustrations for byliny and fairy tales are surprisingly detailed, alive, poetic and not without humor.

Caring about the historical authenticity of the image, which manifested itself in the drawings in the details of costume, architecture, utensils, the master was able to create an atmosphere of magic and mysterious beauty. This is very close in spirit to the creative association "World of Art" Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin, whose biography is closely associated with this group of artists. They all rooted interest in the culture of the past, to the attracting charm of antiquity.

World perception in drawings

From 1907 to 1911, Bilibin created a number of unsurpassed illustrations for the epic and 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 Saltan". Illustrations were not just a supplement, but a kind of continuation of these verbal works, which, no doubt, the soul read the master Bilibin.

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

Folk art gave the master and some techniques: ornamental and lubochnye ways to design art space, which Bilibin brought to their creations to perfection.

Activities in print media

Ivan Bilibin worked as an artist and in magazines of that time. He created masterpieces of polygraphy, which contributed a lot to the growth of this industry and its introduction into mass culture. Publications "People's Reading Room", "Golden Fleece", "Art Treasures of Russia" and others could not do without elegant and meaningful vignettes, screensavers, covers and posters of Bilibin.

World Glory

The work of the Russian master of graphics became known abroad. They were shown at exhibitions in Prague and Paris, in Venice and Berlin, in 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 with inspiration supported the decisive rise of the masses. In the satirical magazines "Bugle" and "Hell's Mail" appeared caricatures of the artist. He makes hilarious sketches, ridiculing the tsarist officials, with ink and in his famous fairy-tale manner he paints a huge figure of King of the Pea, arrogantly towering above the subjects. For the revolutionary drawings, the artist was even arrested for a period of 24 hours.

Master of Scenery and Watercolors

Career Bilibin as the author of theatrical scenery began with cooperation with the Paris National Theater, which he ordered him to sketch for the opera Rimsky-Korsakov "Snow Maiden." Then there were scenery for the productions in St. Petersburg and Moscow. The success of the opera Rimsky-Korsakov's Golden Cockerel in Moscow was due in no small part to the magnificent fairy-tale decorations created by the master's hand. Bilibin did sketches of clothes for Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov and Spanish costumes for Calderon's The Purgatory Saint Patrick, as well as Lope de Vega's comedy The Sheep Source. The artist talentedly developed a style of clothes for the Diaghilevsky ballet.

Ten years, since 1907, Bilibin taught graphics at the School of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts. After a trip to England and Ireland, Ivan Yakovlevich "fell ill" with the landscape. He relentlessly painted watercolor the sea, the sky and severe British shores. Rocky and sea landscapes the artist created in the Crimea, where he traveled every summer.

Revolutionary cataclysms, emigration

In February 1917, a revolution happened in Russia. Ivan Yakovlevich also accepted her. He even created a sketch drawing with a two-headed eagle that crowned the coat of arms of the Provisional Government, and much later was used for coinage.

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

The work of this time - sketches with mysterious and eternal pyramids, sketches and sketches of portraits of Cairo inhabitants.

In the autumn of 1925 Ivan Yakovlevich arrived in Paris and began to work actively in printed publications, illustrated Russian, western and eastern tales. At the time of emigration Bilibin created magnificent sketches for icons and frescoes of the Russian church at the Olshansky cemetery in Prague.

The decade between 1920-1930, Ivan Yakovlevich fruitfully and successfully worked on the design of theatrical productions: he made drawings for the operatic seasons at the Theater of the Champs Elysees, worked at the Russian Opera in Paris entreprise, created strange sketches for Stravinsky's ballet The Firebird.

Return

Life in the emigration was rich and free, but the artist did not leave growing longing for Russia. During the time of voluntary exile he never accepted foreign citizenship, and in 1935 took Soviet citizenship. Then he created a monumental panel "Mikula Selyaninovich" for the building of the Soviet Embassy in the French capital. A year later, the artist and his family returned to their homeland. Bilibin was greeted with warm welcome by the new government and became a professor at the graphic studio of the Institute of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture of the Academy of Arts in Leningrad. He did not leave work in the sphere of book graphics.

The famous artist died in the besieged Leningrad in 1942 from hunger and was buried in a fraternal professorial grave in the Smolensk cemetery.

Distinguished and bright is the track that left in the history of world art an amazing Russian artist Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin. Pictures, frescoes, graphics and other samples of his inspirational 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, the Kiev Museum of Russian Art, the London Museum of Victoria and Albert, the Paris National Gallery, the Oxford Museum Ashmoleans and many others.