Pavel Filonov: biography of the artist

Filonov Pavel Nikolaevich - an outstanding Russian painter, graphic artist, poet, art theorist. Born in a poor family in Moscow in 1883. From childhood, he had to face difficulties and hardship. Early orphaned, he earned his living by the fact that he retouched photographs, embroidered tablecloths and napkins, painted posters and packages for goods. The boy's talent for drawing appeared at the age of three or four.

In 1897, he moved to St. Petersburg, where he began to take painting lessons. In 1908, at the age of 25, Filonov entered the Petersburg Academy of Arts, but in 1910 he was expelled from it, because he ventured to rebel against the dictatorship of the academy professors who imposed classical standards on their students. From that time he tried to establish himself as an independent artist, intolerant of the generally accepted aesthetic traditions. In truth, Pavel Filonov spoke both against classical realism and against the vanguard of the beginning of the century, namely Cubism and Futurism. Indignant about the geometric and mechanical principles of this art, he believed that representatives of these directions interpret nature too simply, focusing only on its two aspects: color and form.

Being actually self-taught, a man of considerable intellectual ability, the artist never sold his paintings and did not write anything to order. Private lessons of drawing Pavel Filonov took from Lev Evgrafovich Dmitriev-Caucasian, engraver on copper, etching and draftsman, visiting his "Workshop for students." In 1911, the artist goes on a pilgrimage. Within six months he travels on foot across Russia, the Middle East, Italy and France. To pay for food and shelter, he painted the walls in the houses where he found shelter.

During the First World War, Pavel Filonov Fought on the Romanian front. Accurately took the October Revolution, was elected chairman of the executive council of the Danube region. Returning to Petrograd, he founded a painting studio, in which he created scenery for a number of theatrical performances, illustrations for the Finnish epic Kalevala.

Two works, written in 1910, anticipated the development of the analytical method of the artist. This is the "Peasant Family" and "Heads", because of which Pavel Filonov was expelled from the Academy. Contemporaries did not understand them.

"World flowering" - the name given to the artist's own system of analytical art, which is the result of the cube-futuristic experiments that he undertook in 1913-1915. It is characterized by a very detailed and multifaceted method - the picture is created from the point to the general image ("like a sprouting grain") of the thinnest of brushes and a sharp pencil on a relatively flat surface. Images have multiple points of view (as in Cubism), but are based on the principle of simultaneity, characteristic of futurism. The artist's philosophy was expounded in the work "Flowers of the World Bloom" in 1915. Then it was revised and published in the form of a "Declaration" in 1923, when Filonov Pavel Nikolaevich was appointed as a teacher in the Petrograd Academy of Arts. The "ideology of analytical art" was published in 1930.

Despite the fact that his incredible talent was recognized in the 1920s, the artist later does not find understanding in criticism. His exposition in the Russian Museum was virtually banned, but his students and friends left him. Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova emigrated, Velimir Khlebnikov died. He himself did not try to do anything to find any way out, because he was intolerant of any compromises. Refused to participate in exhibitions in Paris, Dresden, Venice, USA. Filonov wanted his works to be first seen at home, dreamed of creating a museum of analytical art. Three times he rejected the offer to take the post of professor at the Academy of Arts, motivating his decision by the fact that he was afraid of inconsistency with his position. In the 1930s, the life situation changed for the worse. But despite the plight, he continued his creative search. However, hunger and cold won. December 3, 1941, at the very beginning of the siege of Leningrad, Pavel Filonov was found dead in his apartment.