My love for Boris Kustodiev began in childhood. I remember a two-volume book of a small, almost pocket–sized, deep blue color, with covers rough to the touch and with glossy inserts in the center -paintings – “Madonna Litta” by Leonardo da Vinci and “Merchant at Tea” by Boris Kustodiev. These were fascinating “Stories about artists” by the Honored Artist of the RSFSR Igor Dolgopolov.
Years later, I eagerly read stories about the life and work of world classics, Russian and masters of Soviet fine art. And when my mother, the Intourist translation guide, took me on an excursion to the Tretyakov Gallery, I was sincerely glad to have the opportunity to “talk” with my favorites, of whom I had many – from the mysterious and mystical Mikhail Vrubel to the romantic Arkhip Kuindzhi, from the sentimental Vladimir Borovikovsky to the classicist Karl Bryullov, from the amateur from the historical subjects of Vasily Surikov to the storyteller Viktor Vasnetsov, from the great portrait painter Valentin Serov to the neoclassicist Zinaida Serebryakova.
“Merchant’s wife at tea” captivated with its colorfulness and combination of colors. In one of his statements, Kustodiev noted that a real colorist knows in advance which tone causes the other; one colorful spot is supported by the other; one follows “logically” from the other. This painting, like the “Beauty”, is considered a kind of programmatic work of the artist. But what does all this mean for the child? Words and ideas are not so important, there is a picture in front of your eyes that you want to look at, study the details, memorize, repeat.
And I took up markers, there were a lot of them at that time – thirty-six as opposed to the standard twelve or twenty-six, and diligently sketched a portly merchant sitting at a rich table and decorously sipping tea, then an affectionate cat with its face resembling the mistress (this is typical for pets, and, of course, the artist could not leave it out), then – a merchant’s family on the background, finely, outlining silhouettes.
For me, it was one of the ways to own something new that attracted attention, made me think, or maybe dream. I made up my stories about a merchant in a turban, about a cat who, as befits a fairy-tale character, talked to the hostess, knew the secrets and secrets of the city. I was not bothered by the tops of churches, signs of a certain way of life that did not combine with mysticism and fantasy in any way. On the contrary, the background, so artfully and in detail, seemed to create a space, a country that you believe in, as if you were seeing it in reality.
The portrait of the merchant’s wife was beautifully played in Konstantin Voinov’s film “The Marriage of Balzaminov” based on the play by Alexander Ostrovsky. The role was played by actress Nonna Mordyukova, who told her sister on the phone: “They made such makeup.… I feel like I’m sitting in a chair in a Kustodiev painting.… I look at myself in the dressing room in the mirror: why am I not that merchant?”
For a while, I forgot about Kustodiev, his Rubens beauties in size, not in execution, were not to my taste, I switched to the pre-Raphaelites, Impressionists and Art Nouveau artists. But one day a friend invited me to the Museum of Russian Impressionism to attend a lecture by the writer Anna Matveeva about the love of Boris Kustodiev and his wife and muse Yulia Proshinskaya. A chapter of Matveeva’s now-published book “Picture Girls” is dedicated to this couple. Then the image of the artist came to life again in my imagination and began to play with new colors. Here Kustodiev meets Fyodor Chaliapin in a fur coat, here the “Russian Venus” is folded into grains, assembled into a single image, and here is a wife who does not have magnificent forms, does not inspire her husband, but is madly loved by him.
– The exhibition “Boris Kustodiev. Painting. Graphics. The theater,” the nurse says on the phone. “Can we go?”
“Why not?” Curious, and we arrange a meeting.
The exhibition features about 180 works by the artist from the largest museums in Russia and Belarus and private collections. The most striking paintings are also presented here. Russian Russian artists include “Beauty” and “Maslenitsa” from the State Tretyakov Gallery, “Merchant’s Wife at Tea” from the State Russian Museum, “Portrait of F.I. Chaliapin” from the St. Petersburg State Museum of Theatrical and Musical Art, “Russian Venus” from the Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum, created on the back of his earlier work.”On the terrace.” Usually the painting was shown from the side of Venus, but a structure was built in the Tretyakov Gallery, thanks to which you can admire both the beauty and the artist’s family. However, most of all, I was attracted by the promised sketches for the play “Flea” and the graphics that I had not seen live.
Kustodiev’s friendship with the writer Evgeny Zamyatin is a well-known fact. Two talented people met while working on a series of watercolors “Russian types”. Kustodiev painted portraits, and Zamyatin painted the preface. However, the writer was so immersed in the Kustodian world that he got a whole story. As a result, the album “Rus. Russian types by B.M. Kustodiev. The word of Evg. Zamyatin.” The first part is an artistic word by the writer about the life of the fictional city of Kustodiev, where the main character, the beautiful Marfa Ivanovna, lives in the country of Kustodia. And the second part of the album contains 23 illustrations by Kustodiev. That’s how the creative tandem emerged.
In 1924, after Zamyatin’s urgent recommendation, Kustodiev was invited to make decorations for the production of “Flea” at the Moscow Art Theater. Director Alexey Dikiy recalled the excitement of the theater staff: “The lid cracked, the drawer was opened, and everyone gasped. It was so vivid, so accurate, that my role as the director who accepted the sketches was reduced to zero – I had nothing to correct or reject. It was as if he, Kustodiev, had been in my heart, had overheard my thoughts, had read Leskov’s story with the same eyes as mine, and had seen it in stage form in the same way. He had foreseen everything, had not forgotten anything, right down to the painted casket where the “English nymphosoria” is kept – the flea, to the Tula harmonica-the livery, which curls like snakes, like a cartridge belt, over the shoulder of the Russian craftsman Lefty.” At the exhibition, the hall with sketches for “The Flea”, dedicated, in fact, to one of the peaks of Kustodiev’s theatrical activity, is small but very atmospheric, and gives a visual representation not even of one production of Zamyatin’s play, but of two (the second took place at the Bolshoi Drama Theater in Leningrad and was less successful than in Moscow).
“Why are you walking so slowly?” My sister interrupted my thoughts. – These are popular paintings, I saw fairs, Chaliapin, Russian Venus, family portraits and went. There’s a floor below, we need to get there in time.
“Look at how many illustrations he had,” I tried to get her attention by flipping through the scanned pages of books on the screen.
My sister waved her hand, saying that it could be found on the Internet, and we went to look at the hall with graphics. And there are often portraits of all kinds of creative personalities: writers, poets, collectors, publishers, theater figures. Of course, Kustodiev was friends with many of them. He preferred to depict his characters at the moment of their highest intellectual rise, to capture on their faces the torments of creativity – reflection, anxiety, sadness, sometimes bitterness, and sometimes to express success and recognition. His paintings are made in different techniques and different materials – oil, pastel and tempera. From afar, portraits painted in pastels create an illusory effect, as if it were oil.
In the last room, we were also impressed by the group portrait of the artists of the Mir Iskusstvo society with its execution and rich color palette. By the way, it was commissioned to Kustodiev specifically for the Tretyakov Gallery by Igor Grabar in memory of the meeting held on October 6, 1910, at which it was decided to form a new society, The World of Art. This is such a “ceremonial” portrait modeled on Dutch workshop portraits, depicting participants talking animatedly at a table in an interior decorated with paintings – evidence of their professional activities.
The world of the artist, whom he had known since childhood, expanded and brought back pleasant memories, so that he wanted to return to his fairy-tale country of Custudia, full of optimism and love of life.