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Many an artist, although highly esteemed in his home country, remains virtually unknown abroad beyond the professional world. In the case of Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev, this is not so much due to his relatively short life - Kustodiev was just 49 years old - but rather to the confused course of events in his native Russia, which was rather sidelined internationally under both the tsar and the communists.
Kustodijew, born in 1878 in Astrakhan, actually studied theology and initially took painting lessons rather on the side. But this so successfully that he was allowed to study for seven years from 1896 to 1903 at the art academy of the capital Saint Petersburg, where Ilya Repin became his teacher. His collaboration on the latter's colossal painting "The Banqueting Session of the State Council" became Kustodiev's journeyman's piece, so to speak. Otherwise, in the period until 1917, he mainly made portraits, of his family as well as of famous people of Russian contemporary history.
Trips abroad to Germany, Italy, Spain and Austria followed before his failing health threatened to end Kustodiev's career. Tuberculosis forced him into a year-long forced break in 1912 and even into a wheelchair from 1916. But neither this nor the Red Revolution could stop Kustodiev. He became a member of the renowned artists' association "Mir Iskusstva" (World of Art) and taught at the "New Artists' College" in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad, respectively.
Like so many terminally ill artists (Friedrich Schiller comes to mind), Kustodiev developed a high productivity. He was not only a painter and known for his lush colorful paintings - works such as "Promenade along the Volga" or "The Market" remind with their bright tones of August Macke -, he was also a draftsman and illustrator, who made theater sets as well as motifs for notebooks, posters, magazines (this especially for the Communist Party, which ruled Russia since 1917) and books: Many editions of famous Russian authors such as Tolstoy or Gogol feature illustrations by Kustodiev.
Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev died in 1927 in Leningrad. After the turn of the millennium, his name haunted the international headlines when a painting attributed to him ("Odaliske") was auctioned off for 1.5 million pounds sterling at Christie's in London - and subsequently proved to be a forgery.
Many an artist, although highly esteemed in his home country, remains virtually unknown abroad beyond the professional world. In the case of Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev, this is not so much due to his relatively short life - Kustodiev was just 49 years old - but rather to the confused course of events in his native Russia, which was rather sidelined internationally under both the tsar and the communists.
Kustodijew, born in 1878 in Astrakhan, actually studied theology and initially took painting lessons rather on the side. But this so successfully that he was allowed to study for seven years from 1896 to 1903 at the art academy of the capital Saint Petersburg, where Ilya Repin became his teacher. His collaboration on the latter's colossal painting "The Banqueting Session of the State Council" became Kustodiev's journeyman's piece, so to speak. Otherwise, in the period until 1917, he mainly made portraits, of his family as well as of famous people of Russian contemporary history.
Trips abroad to Germany, Italy, Spain and Austria followed before his failing health threatened to end Kustodiev's career. Tuberculosis forced him into a year-long forced break in 1912 and even into a wheelchair from 1916. But neither this nor the Red Revolution could stop Kustodiev. He became a member of the renowned artists' association "Mir Iskusstva" (World of Art) and taught at the "New Artists' College" in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad, respectively.
Like so many terminally ill artists (Friedrich Schiller comes to mind), Kustodiev developed a high productivity. He was not only a painter and known for his lush colorful paintings - works such as "Promenade along the Volga" or "The Market" remind with their bright tones of August Macke -, he was also a draftsman and illustrator, who made theater sets as well as motifs for notebooks, posters, magazines (this especially for the Communist Party, which ruled Russia since 1917) and books: Many editions of famous Russian authors such as Tolstoy or Gogol feature illustrations by Kustodiev.
Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev died in 1927 in Leningrad. After the turn of the millennium, his name haunted the international headlines when a painting attributed to him ("Odaliske") was auctioned off for 1.5 million pounds sterling at Christie's in London - and subsequently proved to be a forgery.