April 14, 2011 <Back to Index>
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Victor Elpidiforovich Borisov-Musatov (Russian: Виктор Эльпидифорович Борисов-Мусатов), (April 14 [O.S. April 2] 1870 - November 8 [O.S. October 26] 1905) was a Russian painter, prominent for his unique Post-Impressionistic style that mixed Symbolism, pure decorative style and realism. Together with Mikhail Vrubel he is often referred as the creator of Russian Symbolism style. Victor Musatov was born in Saratov, Russia (he added the last name Borisov later). His father was a minor railway official who had been born as a serf. In his childhood he suffered a spinal injury, which made him humpbacked for the rest of his life. In 1884 he entered the Saratov real school, where his talents as an artist were discovered by his teachers Fedor Vasiliev and Konovalov. He was
enrolled in the Moscow
School
of
Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1890, transferring the
next year to the Imperial
Academy
of Arts in Saint
Petersburg,
where
he was a pupil of Pavel
Chistyakov. The damp climate
of Saint Petersburg was not good for
Victor's health and in 1893 he was forced to return to Moscow and re-enroll to the Moscow
School of painting, sculpture and architecture. His earlier works like May
flowers,
1894, were
labelled
decadent by the school
administration, who sharply criticised him for making no distinction
between the girls and the apple trees in his quest for a decorative
effect. The same works however were praised by his peers, who
considered him to be the leader of the new art movement. In
1895
Victor once again left Moscow School of painting, sculpture and
architecture and enrolled in Fernand
Cormon's school in Paris.
He
studied there for three years, returning in the summer months to
Saratov. He was fascinated by the art of his French contemporaries, and
especially by the paintings of "the father of French Symbolism" Pierre
Puvis
de Chavannes and
by the work of Berthe
Morisot. In
1898
Borisov-Musatov returned to Russia and almost immediately fell into
what is called "fin de siècle nostalgia". He complained about
"the cruel, the truly iron age", "dirt and boredom", "devil's bog", and
he had acute money problems that were somewhat alleviated only in the
last years of his life when collectors started to buy his paintings.
Musatov's response was creating a half-illusory world of the 19th
century nobility, their parks and country-seats. This world was
partially based on the estate of princes Prozorvky-Galitzines Zubrilovka and partially just on
Musatov's imagination. Borisov-Musatov also abandoned oil-paintings for
the mixed tempera and watercolor and pastel techniques that he found
more suitable for the subtle visual effects he was trying to create. Borisov-Musatov
was
a
member of the Union
of
Russian Artists and
one
of the founders and the leader of the Moscow
Association
of Artists, a progressive artistic organization that
brought together Pavel
Kuznetsov, Peter
Utkin, Alexander
Matveyev, Martiros
Saryan, Nikolai
Sapunov, and Sergei
Sudeikin. The
most
famous painting of that time is The
Pool,
1902. The painting depicts two most important women in his
life: his sister, Yelena Musatova and his bride (later wife), artist
Yelena Alexandrova. The people are woven into the landscape of an old
park with a pond. Another
famous painting is The
Phantoms,
1903, depicting
ghosts on the steps of an old country manor. The painting was praised
by the contemporary Symbolist poets Valery
Bryusov and Andrey
Bely. In
1904
Borisov-Musatov had a very successful solo exhibition in a number of
cities in Germany,
and
in the spring of 1905 he exhibited with Salon de la
Société des Artistes Française and became a member of this
society. The
last
finished painting of Borisov-Musatov was Requiem.
Devoted
to the memory of Nadezhda Staniukovich, a close friend of the artist,
the painting may indicate Borisov-Musatov's evolution towards
the Neo-classical style. Borisov-Musatov
died
on October 26, O.S. 1905 of a heart
attack and is
buried on a bank of Oka
River near Tarusa.
On
his tomb there is a sculpture of a sleeping boy by Musatov's follower Alexander
Matveyev. |