Lancer Evgeny
(1875-1946)

A family tradition (his father - the sculptor E. Lancer, uncle - Alexandre Benois ) predetermined artistic career EELansere.

Educated (Drawing School at OPH, 1892-96, and in Paris with F. Colarossi and R. Julian, 1896-99), it is as natural because with relatives and friends, was a member of the association "World of Art" and the employee his journal. But, in many sections of a collective program of Europeanization of art, Lancer remained untouched by its characteristic circle nostalgic retrospectivism.

His work in magazines ("World of Art", "The Golden Fleece", "Apollo"), a book drawing ("Crown Wrangel," "The Royal Hunt in Russia," both 1902, "Tsarskoye Selo during the reign of Empress Elizabeth", 1910 ) and set design (Ancient theater performances in St. Petersburg) assert the principles of the "new style", but in the historical stylizations ("St. Petersburg. The old Nicholas Market," 1901 "St. Petersburg beginning of the XVIII century," 1906 "Boat of Peter I", 1906; "Ships of the time of Peter I", 1911), no sorrow of the deceased, but there is a joyful, romantic and troubled story, admiring the architecture and ship texture, decorative beauty of St. Petersburg marina.

Satirical drawings in the magazines "spectator", "bogey" and "Hell-mail" (after the close of "bogey" Lancer took over the publication of "Hell's e-mail"), as well as participation in the creation of "Calendar of the Russian Revolution" (1907, banned immediately after output) is also somewhat isolated from the artist's "miriskusnicheskogo" circle: satire Lancer too concrete, and the political orientation is obvious.

Best pre-revolutionary work Lancer - illustrations to "Hadji Murad" Tolstoy (in full view of the book was published in 1918) - as it marks the continuity of his creative life in spite of the "miriskusnicheskoe 'understanding of the book of the ensemble and fine graphic quality" of the Petersburg "reversals, general arts and picturesque illustrations operational cycle to anticipate Tolstoyan" Cossacks "(1917-36).

Caucasian theme became important for the artist and the human condition: three years (1917-20) he spent in Dagestan, then long lived in Tbilisi - worked as a draftsman at the Museum of Ethnography in the Caucasian Archaeological Institute (leaving in ethnographic expedition), was a professor at the Tbilisi Academy of Arts .

With the move to Moscow (1933), a new phase of its operations, in part associated with the theater ("Woe from Wit" at the Maly Theatre, 1938), but most of all with the monumental painting (painted ceilings restaurant Kazan Railway Station, the hotel "Moscow", the hall of the Bolshoi Theater ). The main motive of painting - a festive rejoicing young people of the country under construction. Dar perspektivista and dekorativista and organic, without rhetoric, major attitude of the artist found a solution in this area.

It is characteristic that, working on the canopy restaurant Kazan station, Lancer does not remember his own pre-revolutionary designs of the same painting - then the union of Europe and Asia depicted allegorically (Europe on the bull, Asia, the dragon), now replaced by an allegory specific scenes of friendship of peoples. One of the last works Lancer - a series of gouaches "Trophies Russian Arms" (1942) As a response to the current military events, this series has always expresses an important subject for the artist of historical continuity.