Where did Repin's best student disappear, whose works Maxim Gorky admired: Artist Elena Kiseleva

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

She was the first woman to receive an Academy of Arts pension to study abroad and one of the most celebrated artists of her time. Combining academicism and rebelliousness, Elena Kiseleva created magnificent portraits - and one day she simply disappeared from the horizon of Russian art. Today her name is practically forgotten …

Kiseleva was born in Voronezh in 1878. Throughout her youth, she rushed between her two passions - mathematics and painting. Elena grew up in a progressive family, where education was given great attention. The girl's father was a mathematician and teacher, her mother, in addition to raising children, was actively involved in charity work. Elena brilliantly studied at school, from childhood she was engaged in drawing, and began to study at the mathematical department of the Bestuzhev courses in St. Petersburg, but … caught typhoid, and that changed everything. After suffering an illness, Elena decided that it was necessary to follow the dictates of the heart, not the mind. She became a student at the Higher Art School at the Academy of Arts, and two years later successfully passed the exam at the Academy and entered the workshop of Ilya Repin.

I must say that Repin nurtured many talented artists, but Kiseleva was a real diamond. She perfectly mastered the laws of academic painting and to some extent adopted the manner of her teacher. In 1903, Repin commissioned Elena Kiseleva and Evgenia Malechevskaya to work on a series of urban views for the 200th anniversary of St. Petersburg.

But, like many of Repin's students, Kiseleva quickly rejected his academicism. Once in the capital of modernist art - in Paris - the artist became interested in innovative trends. The closest to her was the Fauvist palette and the complex, refined language of symbolism. Elena was eager to start experimenting herself, it seemed that she would bring the art of the future to Russia. But the sketch of her thesis "Parisian Cafe" caused a storm of indignation and criticism from the academicians. She, the star of the Academy, an excellent student, was literally torn to pieces by these conservatives!

After this unpleasant incident, Kiseleva took an academic leave and returned to Paris, where she studied with Eugene Carriere, a symbolist known for his ghostly female images.

Women's images were also Kiseleva's favorite theme. She had no particular interest in landscapes or still lifes, her passion - in an artistic sense - was bright, beautiful, strong women. She knew how to sing about feminine beauty and reflect a multifaceted personality.

Combining her favorite topic with academic technique, symbolist innuendo and - so be it - national flavor, Kiseleva in 1907 presented her thesis “Brides. Trinity Day . The work was highly appreciated by academicians, and Kiseleva received financial support for traveling abroad - of course, she chose Paris.

She also divorced her husband. While studying at the Academy, Kiseleva married Nikolai Cherny-Inverted, the son of the chairman of the Voronezh city court. He was a real handsome man with thoroughbred features, a slender figure and a hot look. However, an inner emptiness was hidden behind an attractive appearance.

He loved - if this apathetic, boring person was capable of such a feeling - Nikolai only himself, his car and his bulldogs. He did not strive for education, or art, or even money, and lived on Elena's funds, while she studied, created, made acquaintances … To her, an active and active woman, her husband began to seem like a stone on her neck. The couple parted peacefully. Nikolai was rather indifferent to parting with his wife.

In the first decade of the 20th century, she participated in art exhibitions throughout Western Europe, showed her works in Munich and Rome. Her self-portrait received the AI Kuindzhi Prize … And in the homeland in the 1910s, real fame awaited Kiselev. Symbolism was in vogue. Critics showered Kiseleva with their enthusiasm, famous people - for example, the writer Maxim Gorky - bought her paintings. Repin actively supported his beloved student, she often visited his dacha, where a very bohemian society gathered. Kiseleva was also friends with Korney Chukovsky, who left quite detailed memories of her. Thanks to the Chukovsky, she became friends with the textile artist Lyubov Brodskaya, the wife of the artist Isaak Brodsky - the very one who would soon become a "conveyor" for the production of Lenin's portraits …

In 1917, Kiseleva moved to Odessa, where she accidentally met a longtime acquaintance, professor of mechanics Anton Bilimovich, and very soon became his wife. In the same year, their son Arseny was born …

And although Kiseleva was destined for a very long life, in 1920 her star in the sky of Russian art went out. Almost immediately after the birth of her son, she and her family emigrated to Yugoslavia, where she practically stopped painting. She did not need anything in emigration, except for … free time. The husband disappeared at work all day - he taught and studied science, and Elena was busy with her son and home, received numerous guests who did not even know that in her homeland she was an outstanding artist. But Kiseleva's talent was ruined not by everyday life, but by the war. In 1942, the focus of her life, Arseny, ended up in a concentration camp. After his release, he did not live long. In those painful days, Kiseleva made the decision never to return to art. Her last work was a portrait of her son on his deathbed, which she kept in her room until the last days of her life.

In the late sixties, Margarita Luneva, an employee of the Voronezh Museum of Fine Arts, found out that the artist Elena Kiseleva was still alive. The women corresponded for several years, and Kiseleva decided to transfer most of her works to her homeland. In the last years of her life, the artist adhered to a vow of silence. She lived for 95 years. According to her will, the last portrait of Arseny was destroyed.