Boris Kustodiev

Boris Kustodiev is a famous Russian artist of the early 20th century. He was a member of "The World of Art". His many pictures, drawings, and engravings depict the sunny, bright, and polyphonic world of the Russian provinces. Folk pictures (luboks), provincial signboards and trays influenced Kustodiev's manner. He was one of the first to feel their aesthetic value. His best pictures became classic straight away, now they are an element of national memory of Russian people.

Being born in the rich and old merchant town of Astrakhan at Volga mouth, where trade roads coming from Europe and Asia met, and having travelled a lot, Kustodiev knew well the life of big and small towns of Volga banks and the central part of Russia. His cheerful, sorrowless works, full of love and irony, show the Russian provinces as an all-sufficient world with its own way of life and its own aesthetics. Here, old traditions are carefully maintained, while towns character, people's clothes and behaviour freakishly combine the old and the new. The artist's favourite themes were bustling fairs; Shrovetide public fete with troikas and crowds of well-dressed spectators in front of show-booths; summer feasts with walking merchant families; Russian beauties - ruddy-faced, corpulent, and imposing.

Kustodiev was a prominent portrait painter. He created quite a number of portraits: children, women, and men of all classes of the Russian society; in painting, graphics, and sculpture. His self-portrait (1913) can now be seen in the gallery of self-portraits, the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Along with easel painting, graphics, and sculpture, the artist worked in monumental painting and illustrated works by N.V.Gogol, A.S.Pushkin, and N.S.Leskov. He made scenery for Moscow and St. Petersburg theatres and became famous for his participation in production of plays by M.Y.Saltykov-Shchedrin, A.N.Ostrovsky and Y.I.Zamyatin.

In the last decade of his life, the artist created many lively, cheerful images, but his own life was tragic - his disease caused hemiplegia. However, even in a wheelchair he went on working till his last day. It was then that he created Merchant's Wife at Tea, Russian "Venus", "Fyodor Shaliapin in an Unknown City", and a number of successful portraits, that he illustrated several books and mounted performances; he even turned to new genres of prints and posters.

Short Biography Boris Kustodiev was born in Astrakhan into the family of a professor of philosophy, history of literature, and logic at the local theological seminary. His father died young, and all financial and material burdens laid on his mother's shoulders. The Kustodiev family rented a small wing in a rich merchant's house. It was there that the boy's first impressions were formed of the way of life of the provincial merchant class. The artist later wrote, "The whole tenor of the rich and plentiful merchant way of life was there right under my nose... It was like something out of an Ostrovsky play." The artist retained these childhood observations for years, recreating them later in oils and water-colours.

Between 1893 and 1896, Boris studied in theological seminary and took private art lessons in Astrakhan from Pavel Vlasov, a pupil of Vasily Perov. Subsequently, from 1896 to 1903, he attended Ilya Repin’s studio at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. Concurrently, he took classes in sculpture under Dmitry Stelletsky and in etching under Vasiliy Mate. He first exhibited in 1896.

In 1903, he married Julia Proshinskaya (1880–1942).

In 1909, he was elected into Imperial Academy of Arts. He continued to work intensively, but a grave illness—tuberculosis of the spine—required urgent attention. On the advice of his doctors he went to Switzerland, where he spent a year undergoing treatment in a private clinic.

In 1916, he became paraplegic. "Now my whole world is my room", he wrote. His ability to remain joyful and lively despite his paralysis was amazing. His colourful paintings and joyful genre pieces do not reveal his physical suffering, and on the contrary give the impression of a carefree and cheerful life. His Pancake Tuesday/Maslenitsa (1916) and Fontanka (1916) are all painted from his memories.

In 1923, Kustodiev joined the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia. He continued to paint, make engravings, illustrate books, and design for the theater up until his death on May 28, 1927, in Leningrad.

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