Boris Dmitrievich Grigoriev
(1886-1939)

Most of his life Boris Grigoriev was famous, dozens of his works eagerly bought by collectors and museums in Russia, France, America, Chile, the Czech Republic and other countries. He had a reputation abroad, "the artist line," "the great Russian artist," because of its tremendous hard work and efficiency. In 1926, in exile Grigoriev wrote of himself: "Now I am the first master of the world. <...> I do not apologize for these phrases. Need to know yourself, who you are, otherwise you will not know what to do. And life My holy of labor over and above the senses, and my 40 years to prove it. I'm not afraid of any competition, any order, any theme, any size and any speed "(from a letter to the poet Vasily Kamensky).

He studied at the SHPU in Moscow (1900-07) and the Higher Art School at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg (1907-13). His teachers were A. Arkhipov , DA Shcherbinovsky, A. Kiselev and D. Kardovsky . It Shcherbinovsky Kardovskiy and caught the imagination of a young man and a brilliant command line, in fact, brought it to the relevant drawings and lines as the basis of any work, as the genre of self-worth. In all other respects the desire of the young Grigorieva at odds with the academic school. Already in 1909 he was a member of NI led Kulbin Studio Impressionists - the association of young artists creatively close to the Futurists.

Known in Russia came to Grigorieva after participation (since 1913) in exhibitions of the "World of Art", in which he exhibited drawings made during brief trips to Paris in 1911 and 1913. Creative and festive spirit of the city inspired him to create several thousand drawings for daily frenzied work when the time is marked only washable crayons, and every step brings a new story. Concierge, clown, Garson inhabitants - a string of typecasting undress Paris creates these sheets finished-a-kind image of the city, seen from a certain angle. "Intimite" ("intimacy", France.) - The so-called Parisian painter great series of drawings. Started as if in the same breath, they taught the hand of the artist unquestioningly obey his sensuous feeling that obtained from nature.

The skill with which these drawings were made, no one was left untouched. Critics in the years responded to items on the emergence of a new talent. So, NN Puning called graphics Grigorieva "paradoxes in space and on the planes, tender, ironic and brilliant," but even then he noted weaknesses personality of the artist: "... to the idea, to thought, to present a sense of never rises. "

In 1917-18. Grigoriev creates a cycle of "race" where the very theme of the Russian countryside in post-revolutionary Russia Grigoriev found in the thinking of the artist, but thinking "deep and destructive" (Blok). All drawings and oil paintings in this series are made in the vicinity of Petrograd and Olonetskaya province. As in the Paris series, the images of people - peasants, children and elderly - are virtuosic lines, which give the compositions of beauty and attractiveness, but they're being truthful in a grotesque extreme ruthlessness, report forms almost cynical deconstructive.