Refined avant-garde artist Robert Falk: 4 muses, unnecessary Paris and later recognition at home

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Robert Rafailovich Falk - Russian avant-garde artist with Jewish roots, who went through a difficult creative path through the windbreaking revolutionary years, which broke the lives of many painters. Some of whom emigrated, others adapted to the new regime, and still others, among whom was Falk, who did not reconcile with the Soviet regime, went into artistic opposition. For this, the artist was severely punished by the existing regime.

Private bussiness

Robert Falk was born in 1886 in Moscow to the Jewish family of Raphael Falk, a famous lawyer and an avid chess fan. Intelligent and educated parents strove to instill in their three sons an interest in equally respectable pursuits. Their family spoke only in German and all children were assigned to a prestigious Lutheran school, which was famous for its strict rules. And at home the boys were brought up in a Spartan spirit.

Robert's extraordinary musical talent was welcomed by his parents in every possible way. But his talent for drawing was practically not noticed, as he was considered frivolous. In 1903, Robert first tried to paint in oils and decided to become a painter. In his autobiography, Falk wrote:

This statement upset the parents very much. After all, they dreamed of not such a future for their son. Much more prestigious was the career of a lawyer or doctor, at worst a musician, but certainly not an artist! Always hungry, without a definite future and earnings. However, it was impossible to dissuade his son from such a choice. And if you really understand, then it really was a strange choice of a Jewish youth.

But be that as it may, Robert entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where Valentin Serov and Konstantin Korovin became his favorite teachers, who laid the foundation for his work. From his student years, Falk's painting was filled with the play of light and color, where form dissolves into color.

After graduating from college, Falk entered the "Jack of Diamonds" association, and at the very first exhibition he received not much money for the painting sold, but they were enough for the artist to visit the famous cities of Italy.

Falk had fame and recognition, misunderstanding and fear of repression, poverty and hunger in Falk's life, but he never deviated from his principles, either creative or moral. In his creative quests, the artist did not go beyond the first - "analytical" - stage of cubism, and was critical of the subsequent, more radical avant-garde directions in painting. On his canvases, images are expressed by the volumetric form and angular spots of saturated color. And all this is laconic, realistic and tangible in every object depicted on his canvas.

Robert Falk has never been an adherent of only one genre. Portraits, still lifes, and interiors came out from under his brush. One of the artist's best paintings is Red Furniture (1920), where the expression of red is mesmerizing.

The revolution of 17 made its own adjustments to the lives of many artists of that time. It brought recognition and fame to Robert Falk: in 1918-1921 he served in the Moscow College for Arts and Art Industry, was one of the organizers of the State Free Art Studios, where he was engaged in teaching. Then he was appointed dean of these workshops and gained fame as a theater artist.

Personal life of the artist

The artist's personal life in those years, like his creative one, was very stormy. He broke up with his first wife Elizaveta Potekhina and married the daughter of Konstantin Stanislavsky, Kira Alekseeva. But soon this marriage also fell apart.

Falk's third wife was his student, future poet and artist, Raisa Idelson, who will go with him to Paris and return to Russia soon after the divorce.

Returning from Paris, Robert, in 1939, marries for the fourth time. This time, Angelina Shchekin-Krotova became his chosen one, who until the last days of the artist will be his faithful companion.

From the first two marriages, Robert had a son, Valery, who died during the Patriotic War, and a daughter, Cyril. And throughout his life, the artist will take care of them and his ex-wives, each of whom was a muse for him.

Paris in the fate of an artist

In 1928, Robert Falk was sent to Paris to study the classical heritage. There he lived almost nine years instead of the planned six months. The "Paris Decade" (1928-1937) was one of the most fruitful periods in Falk's work, bringing him new impressions, a new state of mind, a new style and technique. The master discovered the aerial technique of watercolor, which requires extraordinary precision. Many art historians believe that the time spent in Paris was the pinnacle of Robert's work:

However, he could not become a representative of bohemia there, the entertaining spirit of noisy companies was completely alien to him. Therefore, most of Falk's Parisian paintings are filled with a sense of longing and loneliness.

Back to USSR

Returning from Paris to Moscow at the beginning of 1938, Falk found himself in a completely different environment from which he left almost a decade ago. Traces of the struggle against artists undesirable for the Soviet regime were clearly traced. And it was quite clear that Falk's refined painting did not fit at all into the modern world of regime art, subordinated to socialist realism.

When the artist was asked if he really did not know what was happening in Russia, he answered: It happened, but much later … after his death. However, there were no repressions against the artist either. Perhaps friendship with influential people played a role.

The painter ceased to be popular, his works were criticized for "formalism", which practically meant complete isolation from the creative environment. Falk did not even have a meager income, since there was an unspoken taboo on any work for an artist. Only private lessons were saved, for which they paid mere pennies. Life from hand to mouth, a serious illness affected the general condition, but the artist worked tirelessly.

Falk spent the years of the war with his wife in evacuation in Samarkand, and returning to Moscow did not leave her until his death. In the postwar years, the painter became a representative of "unofficial art" and the inspirer of the underground artistic opposition. And only the "Khrushchev thaw" defused the tension between the opposing camps in the artistic environment. But Falk did not live to see his triumph; the artist died in complete isolation in 1958.

For all the years, not a single museum of the union acquired a single picture of Falk, "alien" for the Soviet viewer, this was closely watched by the president of the Academy of Arts, Alexander Gerasimov. It was only after the death of Robert Rafailovich that the director of the Russian Museum decided to purchase several works of the artist, and furtively at the lowest prices smuggled them through the commission.

The authorities also remembered the artist posthumously, on the eve of his 80th birthday. In 1966, a large-scale retrospective of the work of Robert Falk opened in Moscow, to which his wife said:

Today, the painter's canvases are kept in museums in Moscow and many cities of Russia, being an invaluable property of the country. Those works that could not be sold 50-70 years ago are now scattering to private collections from world auction sales for big money.

Among the artists of that era was Ivan Alekseevich Vladimirov, revealing newsreels which has not been shown to the world for 100 years.