Nikolai Kasatkin - "Nekrasov of Russian Painting" and the last Itinerant, who became the first People's Artist of Soviet Russia

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

In the creative constellation of Russian realist artists who worked under the auspices of the Wanderers, a special step is occupied by Nikolay Alekseevich Kasatkin - the last representative of the Itinerant group, who carried his ideas to the end of his days. All his creative activities have become a mirror image of the life and aspirations of ordinary people. "Nekrasov in Russian painting" - that is how his contemporaries often called him.

A split in the ranks of the Wanderers

The death of Ivan Kramskoy, who headed the association of free artists from its very foundation, was a heavy loss for the Itinerant Partnership, and later Nikolai Yaroshenko, who was called the “conscience” of the partnership, passed away. However, the most powerful blow that occurred at the turn of two centuries and split TPVH was the withdrawal from its membership of talented young artists Valentin Serov, Mikhail Nesterov, Apollinarius Vasnetsov and some other talented painters.

Read also: How the 14 best graduates of the Imperial Academy of Arts gave up the gold medal and founded the Association of Traveling Exhibitions.

Well, the complete disintegration of itinerant movement fell on 1923, when the country, having gone through difficult revolutionary years, began to build a new life. In those stormy years, some of the Itinerants who did not accept the revolution emigrated abroad; others, having remained, could not find their place in the new state and lived out their days in poverty and obscurity; and there were those who found themselves on the crest of a wave of new events and continued to create in the spirit of the times, gaining glory for themselves and their fatherland.

Among them was Nikolai Kasatkin - one of the most significant Russian masters, "the last standard-bearer of itinerant movement, who became the creator of the new history of Russian art." In his paintings, as if in the frames of a photographer, the life story of the ordinary Russian population, who survived the First World War and a series of revolutions, was reflected.

The artist became a pioneer among the galaxy of the Itinerants at the end of the 19th century, who created a whole gallery of types of ordinary workers, peasants, revolutionaries. For which he earned the authority and respect of the new government and was elevated to the patriarchs of socialist realism in painting. He became the first artist to be awarded the title "People's Artist of the Republic" in 1923 and received membership in the newly created "Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia".

The creative path of the artist

Nikolai inherited his artistic gift from his father, the famous engraver Alexei Kasatkin. And from the age of fourteen he honed his skills at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where his teachers were Vasily Perov, Alexei Savrasov, Illarion Pryanishnikov. For his thesis "Beggars on the church porch" at the final exam in 1883 he was awarded the highest award of the educational institution - a large silver medal and the title of a high-class artist.

Unfortunately, Nikolai was not lucky enough to continue his education at the Academy of Arts due to his father's illness and financial problems in the family. Although, years later, in 1903 he will become a full member of it and will be awarded the title of academician.

The acute theme of the hard life and life of the long-suffering common people was very deeply developed in the artist's work long before the revolutionary upheaval in Russia, because from childhood Nikolai, who lived with his parents in the working-class district of Moscow, had to observe all the hardships of the life of ordinary hard workers, their wives and children … It was they who became the main characters of his canvases, which the artist will write one after the other after graduating from college.

And thanks to which in 1891 Nikolai Alekseevich will be admitted to the ranks of the Itinerants. And the Partnership in the person of a young artist will acquire an active and loyal figure until the end of its existence.

Until the 1917 revolution, Kasatkin would teach painting within the walls of his own school. And along with this, having worked in the largest Russian publishing house for thirty years, he will take an active part in the creation of "Russian history in pictures."

In 1924, under the direction of the Central Committee, he was sent abroad as an artist-correspondent to capture the life of the proletariat in bourgeois countries. However, he did not stay there for long. Did not work out…

In 1930, Nikolai Kasatkin died unexpectedly right at his workplace, presenting his painting "Sigida" ("Carian tragedy") at the Museum of the Revolution.

Continuing the theme from the Itinerant artists, a story about how Nikolai Yaroshenko combined the incompatible - he rose to the rank of general and became a world famous painter..