Gerasimov, Sergei Vasilyevich (1885-1964)

A gifted painter and graphic artist, a master of book illustration, a born teacher, SV Gerasimov successfully realized his talent in all these areas of creativity.

Art education he received in SHPU (1901-07), then at Moscow School of Painting (1907-12), where he studied with K. Korovin and C. Ivanov . In his youth, Gerasimov favored watercolors and it is in this fine technique worked out the characteristic of his works fine range of colors with a silver-pearl iridescent free, light strokes.

Along with portraits and landscapes often turned to the motives of people's life, but not a narrative and ethnographic details here attracted by the artist, and the very elements of rural and provincial urban life ("I carts", 1906, "Mozhayskiye ranks," 1908 "Wedding at the inn , "1909).

In the drawings, lithographs, engravings of the early 1920's. (A series of "Guys"), the artist was looking for a sharp, intense dramatic expression of peasant characters. These searches are partly continued in the painting: "The war veteran" (1926), "The collective farm watchman" (1933). Gerasimov - lyric poet by nature, exquisite landscape.

His greatest achievements - in small full-scale sketches of Russian nature. They are remarkable because of their poetic, subtle sense of life, harmony and freshness of color ("Winter", 1939, "The ice was" 1945, "Spring Morning" 1953 series "Mozhayskiye landscapes", 1950, etc.). Meanwhile, according to him adopted in the official hierarchy of genres was considered a full-fledged work of art with a detailed picture and ideologically plot. But such pictures to a certain extent did manage Gerasimov only when he and they could pass the lyrical state that combines the poetry of the natural environment, "On the Volkhov. Fishermen" (1928-30), "Collective Farm Holiday" (1937).
Attempts to convey the dramatic the situation is not very convincing ("Oath of Siberian Partisans", 1933, "Partisan's Mother", 1947). Among the graphic works of the artist is best known purchased illustrations Nekrasov's poem "Who Lives good" (1933-36), and the novel Gorky "Artamonovs" (1939-54, for them Gerasimov awarded the gold medal of the World Expo 1958 in Brussels).

From a young age and throughout his creative life Gerasimov enthusiastically involved in teaching: the art school at the printing house of the Association Sytin (1912-14), at the State School of Graphic Arts at the Commissariat (1918-23), in the Higher Art - Vhuteine ​​(1920 -29), the Moscow Polygraphic Institute (1930-36), Moscow State Art Institute (1937-50), MVHPU (1950-64). In 1956 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Arts.