Petr Petrovich Konchalovsky
(1876-1956)

In the Russian art of XX century. Pyotr Konchalovsky place - one of the central ones. It was created for the painting, he felt the world beautifully - like a feast of colors - and perhaps personified itself is an art.

He studied at the Kharkov School of Drawing and then at evening classes SHPU, R. Julian Academy in Paris (1897-98), and finally, at the Higher Art School in St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (1898-1905).

But his artistic world discovered only in the new century, the days of violent break-up of artistic traditions. Society of Artists, with a mischievous name "Jack of Diamonds" in 1910 brought together young innovators who are dissatisfied with the passive, purely visual map of the world on canvas. Supersede this illusory, not enough on their sensation, perception of other material - plastic three-dimensional, tangible, tactile concrete and energetic - they sought, learning, on the one hand, the creative legacy of P. Cezanne (and partly V. Van Gogh ), and on the other - referring to the art of non-professional. They are attracted coarse, they do not know the school rules perspective, the composite balance and a color harmony, but strong and concise painting provincial vyvesochnikov and bright murals tavern trays.

Aggregated by coarsen, but do every thing dense and strong - that is the task of the young Konchalovsky in his many still lifes, where by chance appears often market the same tray as a kind of tuning fork, painting sets the desired voltage level of color ("red tray", 1913). The color here is not so much the surface passes coloring as the very form and weight, material flesh of things. In the still life "paint dry" (1912) heavy colored powders in transparent banks make it a particularly striking color quality. And the young man saw almost Konchalovsky's vyvesochnomu Coarse-grain, whole and powerfully: "Portrait of the Artist GB Yakulov" (1910), "Family Portrait" (1912), "Portrait of the Matador" (1913). However, over time, weakens the influence of primitive, yielding the free energy of the letter, the mobility of the brush. In "Portrait of violinist Romashkova" (1918) solved the problem purely pictorial means of expression in a still picture of a complex, nervous movements of the rhythm of the music played by the violinist.

In the works of the 1920s. disappears "bubnovova-letsky" schematic form and color, painting Konchalovsky, remaining sonorous and vibrant, finds coloristic subtlety, richness of complex transitions and internal contrasts cold and hot colors. It shines festively naked body whiten the ancient walls of Novgorod cathedrals, shimmering gold-plated sugar bowl shaped deep green shaded dark glass ("Green glass", 1933). Quiet domestic scene in a self-portrait with his family ("Misha, go out for a beer," 1926) is set in a two-meter canvas, sparkling decorative richness of patterned fabrics. Konchalovsky writes full of vitality portraits of the composer Sergei Prokofiev (1934), writer Alexei Tolstoy, for richly laden with victuals shiny table (1940-41), the critic Troynitsky S. (1943). Only a huge portrait of Vsevolod Meyerhold (1938), an unusually smart, because the director was written in patterned background of the Central Asian embroidery, sharp dissonance sounds dramatic note - a suffering person's face, backed into a dead end, waiting death. His mighty picturesque temperament, joyful acceptance of life Konchalovsky informed, through all the difficulties of life, until the last of his canvases.