Valentin Serov: short biography, creativity, facts

😉 Greetings to art lovers! In the article “Valentin Serov: a short biography, creativity, facts” – about the life of a Russian painter, graphic artist, portrait master. Lived 1865-1911. At the end of the article, a video about the life and works of the artist.

In December 1888, several works of a hitherto unknown painter appeared at an art exhibition in Moscow. Their author was 23-year-old Valentin Serov, the son of composers Alexander Nikolaevich and Valentina Semyonovna Serov.

When Valentin was eight years old, he began to study drawing with a German engraver. A year later, Ilya Efimovich Repin became his teacher, and Pavel Petrovich Chistyakov at the Academy of Arts.

Paintings by Valentin Serov

Among the works of Valentin Aleksandrovich were two small canvases. These are “Girl with Peaches” and “Girl in the Sunshine”. Now these canvases delight all visitors to the Tretyakov Gallery, where most of the artist’s best works are collected.

“Girl with Peaches” was written from the daughter of Savva Ivanovich Mamontov, a famous art connoisseur and philanthropist, in his famous Abramtsevo. There young Serov lived like in his own family.

The artist painted “The girl illuminated by the sun” from his cousin Masha Simonovich, when he lived with Derviz in Domotkanovo. There he created many wonderful paintings.

Stopping for a few minutes in front of these canvases, we understand that we are not just portraits, but, in fact, magnificently executed paintings. Indeed, no matter how dear both girls were to Serov, their personalities were not so significant as to immortalize them in portraits.

Their “value” was in youth, in a bright and clear perception of the world. This determined Serov’s task – to convey in the images of girls what has always been, is and will be – the beauty and joy of life.

Serov’s portraits

In the future, Serov, the portrait painter, captured with a brush and pencil many outstanding contemporaries and his friends.

He will paint portraits of the artists Isaac Ilyich Levitan and Konstantin Alekseevich Korovin. Composers Nikolai Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov. Singers Angelo Mazini and Francesco Tamagno. Theater directors Stanislavsky, Moskvin and many, many others.

Naturally, Valentin Alexandrovich wrote not only people who were close or kindred to him in spirit. He had to paint a lot of custom-made portraits of “different” people – and just rich, and noble, and titled, and even “the highest personages”.

But it is remarkable that in none of these portraits we find not a word of flattery, not a single obsequious gesture towards the customer, whoever he may be. The master was always honest, truthful to the end, to complete frankness.

Rebellious spirit

One can be endlessly amazed: how could he present the customer with such a bold and unceremonious disclosure of his essence? Was this not a peculiar form of the artist’s protest against the “powerful of this world”, against the “masters of life”?

After all, there was a time when Serov openly expressed this protest – both in word and deed. In 1905, he sent an angry statement to the Imperial Academy of Arts. In his message, he protested against the bloody terror of the tsarist government. Then he defiantly broke with the academy.

At the same time, he also acted as an artist, creating bold satirical drawings that mercilessly denounce the autocracy.

The more decisively the artist tore off the masks and disguises from the representatives of the modern bourgeois-landlord society, the more the thirst grew in him to see a real person worthy of this title, and to praise him in art.

It is no coincidence that in 1905, in the year of the outbreak of the revolutionary storm, he painted a portrait of Alexei Maksimovich Gorky. The artist portrayed him as a courageous, convinced herald, calling for struggle, for the transformation of life.

He creates a brilliant full-length drawing on canvas – a portrait of the singer Fyodor Ivanovich Chaliapin. He admired him as a great Russian talent that emerged from the people, as a “man-artist” who gave people “immeasurable joy”.

In the same 1905 he created a portrait of Maria Nikolaevna Ermolova. Exalted in image and strict beauty of execution, this portrait is not only a monument to the great actress of the Russian theater, but also a monument to the strength, courage and nobility of the human spirit.

Valentin Alexandrovich did not finish his song about a worthy and wonderful person. Relentless death (heart attack) cut her short when he was only forty-six years old. But the legacy he left is enormous.

Everything Serov created has become our national pride and a pure source of artistic joy. This is a whole portrait gallery of his contemporaries. Its wonderful landscapes, a number of historical paintings and countless amazing drawings.

Video

Here is information about the biography and the best paintings of the artist → “Valentin Serov: a short biography, creativity”

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