Why did a Russian artist, whose paintings were estimated at millions, regretted moving to the USA

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

A native of the Kazan Art School, one of the best students of Ilya Repin, a world-renowned portrait painter and a successful American impressionist. All this is about one artist - Nikolai Feshin. At some point, he decided to live and work in the United States, having achieved high levels there both in creativity and in life improvement. But, remaining lonely in old age, he came to the conclusion that it was impossible to leave his homeland. Because in a foreign land, every person does not live, but only physically exists.

Miraculous healing

Nikolai Feshin was brought up in the family of a rather famous iconostasis carver in Kazan. At the age of four, the boy was overcome by meningitis, which led to a coma. Doctors considered medicine powerless, and advised parents to prepare for any outcome. But Nikolai miraculously survived, while remaining a weak child for a long time. Being forced to be at home, he began to paint. At the age of 9, he already worked in his father's workshop, preparing sketches and fulfilling his own ideas.

Despite the fact that Feshin Sr. was a talented master, repeatedly awarded medals and diplomas for his work, he gradually went bankrupt and went into debt. The future artist had a hard time, but he graduated from public school, somehow providing himself with one-time earnings. In 1895, an artist opened in Kazan, and Nikolai entered the first student body. Soon the parents parted and parted, leaving the 14-year-old boy alone in the city. Without despair, Feshin passed this test too. In 1900, a talented graduate of an art school went to conquer the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg.

Overseas popularity while living in Russia

At the entrance exams Feshin showed the second result. Here Ilya Repin became his leading teacher. Even before graduating from the Academy, Nikolai was offered to teach at the Kazan Artists, where he was given a personal workshop to work on his graduation painting. Until his marriage, Feshin not only worked, but lived in a school workshop. During this period, he became interested in portraiture. A wealthy student Nadezhda Sapozhnikova posed for him. After sending work to Pittsburgh, Feshin overtook an unprecedented success. The local press called his portrait one of the best at the exhibition, despite the fact that eminent French impressionists were present among the participants. Feshin's work was sold immediately. By the way, today this portrait is in the California collection of the Art Museum.

Soon, Feshin's works began to be exhibited in Munich, Amsterdam, Rome, Venice. Especially his handwriting fell in love with connoisseurs of the fine arts of the United States. Regular participation in American exhibitions, in addition to recognition, brought him stable financial support. Feshin was also appreciated at home. He, the only recognized artist from the periphery, was awarded the title of full member of the Imperial Academy of Arts. This title in pre-revolutionary Russia was the highest recognition of the talents and merits of artists. True, with the arrival of the First World War, the situation changed, and regular contacts with abroad ceased.

Volga famine as an excuse

In 1921, the Volga region was hit by a catastrophic famine, cruel in scale and consequences. At this time, Feshin was in charge of the educational part of the art school in Kazan.

At the same time, he collaborated with the Kazan Department of Public Education, as an artist, developing standard sets for performances of the workers 'and peasants' theater, was the chief designer of the production of the acclaimed opera Carmen at the local opera house. In addition, Feshin received orders for portraits of Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx, People's Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky.

The accents in creative activity, shifted in the spirit of the post-revolutionary time, systematically led the artist to a loss of interest in work. He did not tolerate all kinds of creative restrictions and the subordination of art to new propaganda goals. In a narrow circle, Feshin increasingly complained about the ineffectual waste of time and creative lack of freedom. This is how thoughts about emigration appeared. Having contacted influential Americans, Feshin left Russia in 1923. The Volga region's famine was just a pretext. In fact, a non-poverty-stricken artist strove for maximum creative relevance and realization.

Longing for Russia

Feshin, thanks to high-ranking patrons and patrons, quickly and successfully adapted to American life. Immediately after the move, he was introduced to the director of the Art Institute of Chicago, the artist Harsch, who helped with the organization of the first solo exhibition and the release of a catalog of works. The foreword to the collection was written by the renowned American critic Christian Brinton. The brightest and most creatively fruitful were the years of Feshin's life in Taos. Here, in addition to painting, his bored talent was fully revealed in sculpture, architecture and woodcarving. In the center of ancient Indian culture, the artist found new images for paintings. The Indians warmly accepted the Russian painter, even allowing him to attend closed religious ceremonies, sacredly guarded from prying eyes.

Connoisseurs of art are inclined to believe that it was Feshin who presented the Taoist Indians in the most romantic and sublime way. The artist built an unusual house, later bought a second one in Hollywood. And everything seemed to be going great, but in the last years of his life loneliness overtook him. After a divorce from his wife, only his daughter remained in a foreign land, with whom he occasionally met. All the accumulated savings were coming to an end, and Feshin even had to return to teaching. But this income was barely enough for food. In 1955, the artist died in his sleep, leaving a will with a request to bury his ashes on the Russian land. Reflecting in his declining years about the meaning of life, Nikolai Feshin wrote that a person should live where he was born. Through his life, he came to the conviction that the spiritual foundation laid from childhood grows stronger and develops only in his native land. And on a foreign land, a person only exists, doomed to loneliness.

By the way, some American artists used Russian pseudonyms. For example, Arshile Gorky, with the tragic history of the artist under the pseudonym Maxim Gorky