1878-1927 Russian Boris Kustodiev Galleries The Russian Revolution of 1905, which shook the foundations of society, evoked a vivid response in the artist's soul. He contributed to the satirical journals Zhupel (Bugbear) and Adskaya Pochta (Hell??s Mail). At that time, he first met the artists of Mir Iskusstva (World of Art), a group of innovative Russian artists. He joined their association in 1910 and subsequently took part in all their exhibitions. In 1905, Kustodiev first turned to book illustrating, a genre in which he worked throughout his entire life. He illustrated many works of classical Russian literature, including Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls, The Carriage, and The Overcoat; Mikhail Lermontov's The Lay of Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, His Young Oprichnik and the Stouthearted Merchant Kalashnikov; and Leo Tolstoy's How the Devil Stole the Peasants Hunk of Bread and The Candle. In 1909, he was elected into Imperial Academy of Arts. He continued to work intensively, but a grave illness??tuberculosis of the spine??required urgent attention. On the advice of his doctors he went to Switzerland, where he spent a year undergoing treatment in a private clinic. He pined for his distant homeland, and Russian themes continued to provide the basic material for the works he painted during that year. In 1918, he painted The Merchant's Wife, which became the most famous of his paintings. The Merchant's Wife, (1918).In 1916, he became paraplegic. "Now my whole world is my room", he wrote. His ability to remain joyful and lively despite his paralysis amazed others. His colourful paintings and joyful genre pieces do not reveal his physical suffering, and on the contrary give the impression of a carefree and cheerful life. His Pancake Tuesday/Maslenitsa (1916) and Fontanka (1916) are all painted from his memories. He meticulously restores his own childhood in the busy city on the Volga banks. In the first years after the Russian Revolution of 1917 the artist worked with great inspiration in various fields. Contemporary themes became the basis for his work, being embodied in drawings for calendars and book covers, and in illustrations and sketches of street decorations. His covers for the journals The Red Cornfield and Red Panorama attracted attention because of their vividness and the sharpness of their subject matter. Kustodiev also worked in lithography, illustrating works by Nekrasov. His illustrations for Leskov's stories The Darner and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District were landmarks in the history of Russian book designing, so well did they correspond to the literary images.  Related Paintings of Boris Kustodiev :. | Renee Notgaft | A Bolshevik | Country | Tsar Nicholas II | Merchant Chest Maker |
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Leopold Graf Von Kalckreuth
1855-1928,German painter and etcher. The son of the late Romantic landscape painter Eduard Stanislaus, Graf von Kalckreuth (1820-94), he studied from 1875 to 1878 under Ferdinand Schauss (1832-1916), Willem Linnig (1819-85) and Alexander Struys (1852-1941) at the Kunstschule in Weimar founded by his father. In 1879, after military service, he enrolled at the Akademie in Munich, where he attended Gyula Benczer's drawing classes and continued his study of painting under Karl Theodor von Piloty and Wilhelm von Diez (1839-1907). In 1883 he travelled to the Netherlands and then to Italy and France. In 1885 he accepted a teaching appointment at the Kunstschule in Weimar, but in 1890 he resigned and returned to Munich. During the next five years he worked at Heckricht in Silesia (now Jedrzychowice, Poland), perfecting his oil technique. In 1892 he was a founder-member of the Munich Secession. Kalckreuth's work from this period reflects the influence of several contemporaries; the portrait of the Artist's Wife of 1888 (Leipzig, Mus. Gesch.) recalls the portraits of Franz von Lenbach and Max Liebermann, while the visionary element brought to the genre scene Rainbow (1894-6; Munich, Neue Pin.) is close to the work of Fritz von Uhde.