Nicolai Fechin

Nikolai Ivanovich Feshin (November 26 December 8 1881, Kazan - October 5, 1955, Santa Monica, California) - Russian and American artist. Painter, graphic artist, sculptor, carver, representative of Impressionism and Art Nouveau. Nicolai Ivanovich Fechin was known for his portraits and works featuring Native Americans.

Feshin was well known in Russia and the USSR, in the US it is considered a national American painter. He created more than 2000 works that are in the collections of more than 30 museums in the US, not counting private collections. The largest collection of works by Nikolai Feshin in Russia is in the Museum of Fine Arts of Tatarstan (Art Gallery "Hazin" in the Kazan Kremlin). His work is also represented in the museums of St. Petersburg, Cheboksary, Kozmodemyansk, Kirov, in private collections.

Nikolai Ivanovich Feshin was born in Kazan on November 26, 1881 (in the old style) in the family of the carver of the iconostasis Ivan Aleksandrovich Feshin, the owner of his own workshop. His father was from Arzamas, his relatives came from the village of Pushkarka, founded by the rebel gunners exiled from Moscow back in the 16th century. Mother - Praskovya Viktorovna Chistova, came from Kostroma. Workshop of Ivan Feshin in those years was awarded silver awards of local scientific and industrial exhibitions "for high quality of works and a variety of drawings".

At the age of four, Nikolai fell ill with meningitis and spent two weeks in a coma. According to the family legend, quoted by Feshin in the Autobiography, doctors advised parents to pray for a miracle; Father, well known among the clergy, agreed to bring home from the Annunciation Cathedral a miraculous Tikhvin icon of the Mother of God. Nicholas after that went on the mend, but the illness made the boy closed and lonely. Developing from an early age talent draftsman, he was completely focused on art.

The first experiments of Nikolai Feshin's independent work are traced from the age of six, the album of ornaments of that time was preserved. From the age of 9 Nikolai began to work in his father's workshop, taking part in the execution of orders. The talent of the boy was noticed by the first director of the Kazan art school NN Belkovich - the future father-in-law of the artist.

IA Feshin did not possess an entrepreneurial vein and, despite his fame, went bankrupt, he had to pay all his property for debts. He began to go to the villages to work, the family remained in the city, experiencing great need. Nevertheless, the son was able to get primary education in a public school. Nicholas Feshin himself recalled that the first earnings he brought a drawing of the iconostasis, made at the age of 13, this money (10 rubles) was sewn a school suit.

In 1895 an art school opened in Kazan, in the first set of which Feshin also got. This was the insistence of his father, who wanted his son to become an artist. By that time the family had broken up: Praskovya Feshina, exhausted by need, went to her parents in Kostroma, Ivan Feshin also left Kazan and was unable to help his son. Despite this, until the end of his life, his father was for Nicholas the highest authority. 14-year-old Nikolai Feshin was left alone in Kazan, starving to death and not having a permanent earning, some help was provided to him by his father's uncle, who owned a turpentine plant in the village of Kushnia 100 versts from Kazan. Hence Feshin's interest in the life and everyday life of the Mari who inhabited these places was due. Most of his time, Feshin spent in school, in Kazan, his pupil oil paintings, in particular, "Temptation" on the Gospel story, were preserved.

In 1900, Feshin graduated from the Kazan Art School and went to St. Petersburg to enter the Imperial Academy of Arts, according to the results of the entrance tests being the second. Among his fellow students were B. Anisfeld, I. Brodsky, D. Burliuk, A. Savinov and many others. In the first two years of training, his studies were directed by RK Zaleman and P. E. Myasoedov. Academic academic drawings Feshin did not survive.

NI Feshin did not pay tuition fees in the Academy on poverty and ate in the free canteen. Livelihoods gave him sketches for posters, programs for balls and masquerades, and even invitations, for the production of which a competition was announced. Decorative works of NI Feshin in a figurative system belonged to the modern. According to recollections, since 1902 he collaborated with the magazines "The Jester" and "Volnitsa" as an illustrator, but the earliest of the surviving drawings - cartoons from the people's life with humorous signatures - refer to 1904. This is a printed reproduction, the originals are lost.

In 1903 Feshin entered the workshop of IE Repin - the most numerous in the Academy and the most popular among students (it consisted of up to 70 people). An educational sketch of the first year of training at Repin - "Exit from the Catacombs after Praying" - was marked by the Council of the Academy, the artist was awarded the first prize. This sketch had to answer, among other things, a number of formal rules, in particular, demonstrate the ability to transfer three-dimensional space on the plane of the canvas using the laws of linear and aerial perspective, and so on.

During the training at the Academy, Feshin spent every summer in his native places, living with his uncles in Kushna or in Cheboksary at the relatives of Thermal. By the period of 1904-1906, a number of portraits of relatives and acquaintances include a number of technical techniques that later developed in Feshin's individual style system-the desire for broad, free writing. During his stay in Mstera in 1904, Feshin took up teaching for the first time, working in a local icon painting school. In 1904, Feshin met with engineer N. Izhitsky, who persuaded him to go to Siberia - to the South Yenisei taiga; He returned to St. Petersburg in the beginning of 1905. The artist did not stay away from revolutionary events: by 1905-1907 his sketches "Exit from the Factory", "1905 at the Factory", "Shooting" are included. At the next spring exhibition at the Academy in 1906, the censor did not miss the work of Brodsky, Shlughleyt and Feshin on a revolutionary theme. In the same year 1906 Feshin received an invitation to lead the drawing classes at the imperial porcelain and glass factories, but rejected it.

It is noteworthy that St. Petersburg, with its historical and cultural environment and spiritual atmosphere, did not have any influence on Feshin's artistic interests, which indicates its extremely early development and the integrity of the artistic nature.

Care Repin from the Academy was the impetus for the disclosure of Feshin personality. The last two years spent at the Academy, Feshin read a lot and experimented with soils and paints. In particular, he refused to use the ready-made oil primer, replacing it with casein or gelatin, and along with the brushes he used knives. All this led to the adoption of a broader and more free manner of writing. The texture of the picturesque surface was now included in Feschin's arsenal of artistic techniques.

According to GP Tuluzakova, "Feshin becomes Feshin" with the creation in 1908 of the painting "Cheremis wedding". The summer of 1908, NI Feshin spent in the Mari village of Lipsha, where he collected a lot of artistic material, which he processed in his uncle's house in Kazan. As a plot, the artist chose the moment of removal of the young from the parental home, which takes place before the eyes of the whole village. An important role in the picture was played by contrasts, marked at different levels - an external action, underscored ugly faces, a gray landscape, the dynamics of the crowd of the second plan and the statics of the figures of the first plan, chromatic and achromatic. At the spring academic exhibition in 1909, "Cheremis wedding" was awarded the I Prize for them. Kuinji was sent to the exhibition in Munich. The work aroused the rejection of the German public and disparaging reviews of critics. Thus, I. Yevseyev wrote: "It's simply unfortunate that this artist, with all his virtues of the painter, apparently distorts the design with ingenuity, and in exaggeration gets ridiculous." Further, the critic complained that he was "ashamed of this caricature of Russian life" [Note 1]. In 1910 the Cheremis wedding was exhibited at the Carnegie Institution (Pittsburgh, USA), where it was purchased by financier William Stimmel, who since then has been deliberately collecting a collection of works by N. Feshin.

Program for Feshin was the picture "The Lady in the Purple." The name of the woman who served as a model for this portrait is unknown. For the etude, a recorded canvas was used, the colorful layer of which shone through the background of the Feshinsky portrait, complicating the color scale of the canvas. For the artist, the individuality of the model was particularly important, because of which the person was transferred almost photographically, all secondary takes the form of a semi-abstract space. This picture was awarded a small gold medal at the international exhibition in Munich, as Feshin wrote, - unexpectedly for him, since it was a teaching work.

1909 was the last for Feshin at the Academy. This moment coincided with the crisis in the Kazan art school. The Imperial Academy of Arts demanded that the Kazan school improve the quality of teaching, in 1908 its head GA Medvedev invited Feshin as a full-time teacher and a government workshop in the new school building. Since November 1, 1909 Feshin was approved by the staff teacher of the Kazan Art School in the class of painting and drawing.

The competitive work of Feshin was "Kapustnitsa", which has many parallels with the "Cheremiss wedding". He wrote it in Kazan. The artist again was selected plot from the village life - salting cabbage for the winter on Vozdvizhenie. The plot provided an opportunity to express the plexus of joyful and dull, healthy and wretched, etc. Feshin conducted extensive preparatory work in the village of Pushkarka near Arzamas, two versions of the sketch of the composition of the painting were preserved.

Nikolai Ivanovich Feshin graduated from the Academy with the award, which made it possible to make a trip abroad (the decision on awarding him the title of artist was issued on October 30, 1909). In the spring of 1910 Feshin left Russia for the first time in his life, visiting Berlin, Munich, Verona, Venice, Milan, Padua, Florence, Rome, Naples, Vienna. The journey ended in Paris. On the trip he was accompanied by Nadezhda Mikhailovna Sapozhnikova (1877-1942), a representative of the merchant dynasty of Kazan, an amateur artist.

Settled in Kazan, Feshin settled right in his workshop in the building of an art school. According to the memoirs, Feshin-teacher preferred the method of visual display, working in the studio with his students. At the heart of it was Repin's system: Feshin never theorized, explained everything very briefly, and if the student did not understand, then he took a charcoal, a pencil or a brush and himself showed everything. He never ruled the student's work, respecting all individuality (memories of GA Melentiev). One of the first students Feshina in Kazan was Nadezhda Mikhailovna Sapozhnikova, who was familiar with him since 1908. After Feshin finished her pensioner trip to Paris, she stayed there until 1912, working in the workshops of Vitya and Van Dongen. After the return of N. Sapozhnikova founded her own workshop in Kazan (in Petropavlovskiy lane, now - Rahmatullina Street), taught at an art school, she constantly gathered artists - teachers and students. Friendly relations between them were maintained until NI Feshin left for abroad. NM Sapozhnikova was also the first patron of Feshin: in her collection there were 11 of his works, including five portraits, sometimes written in her studio.

At school, Feshin had friendly relations with the artist Pavel Benkov and the poet Pavel Radimov, who taught art history at school. Communicated with him and P. Dulsky, subsequently wrote the first study of Feshin. Since 1909 Feshin's works have regularly participated in foreign exhibitions, including three times at the international exhibition in Munich, five times at the exhibitions of the Carnegie Institution (Pittsburgh), as well as at exhibitions in New York, Rome, Amsterdam, Venice, San Francisco and others. In October 1913, by decree of the Board of Trustees of the Art School, Feshin was presented for the awarding of the Order of St. Stanislav III degree. For correspondence with foreigners Feshin, who did not know any language, needed an assistant secretary. She became Alexandra Belkovich (1892-1983) - the daughter of the first director of the art school NN Belkovich, a student Feshina. In 1913 they entered into marriage, the bride was 21 years old, and the groom - 32 years. In 1914 their only daughter, Oia, was born. Feshin recalled that duties in art and the family at first seemed incompatible to him.

From the moment of moving to Kazan in the works of Feshin, an exceptional place is occupied by a picturesque portrait. He painted portraits of mostly acquaintances - his wife and daughter, students and students of the art school, friends. Custom portraits in this period are rare, and always their customers were representatives of the intelligentsia and the artistic environment. A special focus of Feshin's creative work of the Kazan period was the portrait of Vary Adoratskaya [Note 3], written in 1914. Even at the first expositions, the portrait was compared with the "Girl with Peaches" by VA Serov. Feshin used a rather extravagant compositional technique, placing the girl in the area of ​​the still life depicted in the foreground. The figure of the girl is shifted from the central axis, the composition is asymmetric, but the face is placed in the optically active part of the canvas. Portrait of Vary Adoratskaya is one of the most harmonious creatures of Feshin.

Between 1910-1914, Feshin created many sketches of genre compositions, for example, "Unsuccessful joke", "Village", "Horovod" and others, but none of the stories got any development. In 1911, Feshin began to create a large canvas "Pouring." The work was conducted in the village of Nadezhdino, Laishevsky Uyezd - the estate of the former director of the school NN Belkovich, where artists constantly stayed. The plot was taken from the popular, yet semi-lingual, tradition in which the Christian cleansing from sins was combined with the rituals of rain. The artist has set himself the task of finding a plastic reception of a letter to convey a feeling of action. Lubrication and strangeness are explained by the fact that Feshin did not complete the picture, but incompleteness, according to GP Tuluzakova, is not entirely accidental. Feshin tried to convey the emotional state of the characters, when on a warm summer day they poured well water. Characteristically, the faces of the characters of the second plan are fashioned clearly, while the figure of the woman in the foreground is blurred, especially her face and hands.

A characteristic feature of modern art is artistic universalism. Feshin's interest in architecture and the projectivity of his thinking were laid down in childhood when he created drawings of iconostasis; In the Academy of Arts there was also an obligatory course of architecture. Love of wood and the skills of the carver have also been grafted into the father's workshop. However, Feshin was able to realize his aspirations in the 1910s, when he decorated his workshop with carved furniture in the Kazan Art School, and also created several items for the workshop of NM Sapozhnikova. For the most part, they are lost.

In 1914 Feshin became a member of the art commission of the provincial Zemstvo handicraft industry museum, and also took part in drawing up the charter of the artisan and craft workshops of the Kazan zemstvo.

After settling in Kazan, the artist did not break with the artistic world of the capital, taking part in the work of the All-Russian Congress of Artists in St. Petersburg, held in 1911-1912. Since 1912 Nikolay Feshin participated in exhibitions of TPHV, in 1916 he became a full member of TPHV. He exhibited in the "New Union of traveling exhibitions" (since 1910 - "Community of Artists"). October 24, 1916 in the Academy of Arts held a ballot Feshin for the title of academician of painting; 21 votes were cast for and 14 against.

Until 1923 Kazan Art School changed its names four times, which reflected changes in its structure and principles of teaching. Since 1918 the Kazan school began to focus on the program settings of Vkhutemas and Vhutein, at the head of this process was the architect F. P. Gavrilov. The young generation of teachers (K. Chebotarev, P. Mansurov) built his teaching method in direct opposition to the traditional methods of art education, which defended N. Feshin, P. Benkov and N. Sapozhnikova. In 1919 Feshin first systematized his views on artistic pedagogy in the program he compiled. In particular, he wrote that no "artificial benefits" are needed, since a novice artist must "draw form from himself and from nature". In 1920, Feshin was elected the head of the academic unit and chairman of the artistic council of the Kazan state free art workshops.

Since 1918 Feshin was forced to write portraits of political figures (within the framework of the Leninist plan for monumental propaganda), which are not very successful, since his portrait art was dependent on the natural impulse. Nevertheless, the photographs were created portraits of VI Lenin, K. Marx, L. Trotsky (lost) and A. V. Lunacharsky. In addition, in 1920, portraits of L. van Beethoven, F. Liszt, M. P. Mussorgsky, M. I. Glinka, N. Paganini, N. A. Rimsky- Korsakov and A. Rubinstein.

In search of earnings Feshin in the early 1920's refers to a portrait miniature. According to PM Dulsky, in 1920 Feshin received an order from the museum of the handicraft industry of Selkredpromsoyuz, 32 miniatures were created, of which 27 were preserved - all in Kazan (including 1 in a private collection). Five miniatures were stolen from the museum back in the 1940s.

In the revolutionary years, Feshin also turned to sculpture, primarily for utilitarian purposes - making volumetric figures for the calculation of the composition of the new painting "Slaughterhouse". Two portrait sculptures were also created: a portrait of the father in height (lost) and the head of the village fool Salavatulla, whom Feshin also wrote several times. The last work shows a sufficiently high professional level of Feshin in sculpture. Less known are Feshin's works in the theater, in particular, his sketches of scenery for J. Bizet's opera "Carmen", staged at the Soviet city theater of Kazan in the season of 1918-19. The scenery was performed in the gray-olive range, the artist actively used the techniques of easel painting. In Vasilievo Feshin created about 25 landscapes, which are stored in different provincial museums.

The last large-format multi-figured picture of Feshin was "Slaughterhouse", finished in 1919. The artist chose the plot of the act of slaughter cattle. According to PM Dulsky, the picture was conceived as far back as 1904 during Feshin's trip to the South Yenisei taiga, where he saw how the cattle were cut in the villages directly in the open. Since 1905 he wrote sketches and sketches, and to the very canvas began in 1912 and worked until 1919. Feshin was interested in the contrast of the subtlety of formal techniques and the antiestheticism of the subject, so the bright effect of the spilled blood was important for him. The painting shows cutting meat in a Jewish way - releasing blood from the throat. The last sketches of Feshin in 1921 ("The Famine", "The Rebellion in the Rear of Kolchak") are on the subject of "Boyne". Feshin did not return to genre painting any more.
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