Ilya Ivanovich Mashkov (1881-1944)

The exposed at the first exhibition "Jack of Diamonds" (1910), a huge canvas Mashkov "Self-portrait and a portrait of Petr Konchalovsky" stunned many. In the semi-nude figures of athletes playing music with roughly daubed bodies and globular biceps present that dose of shocking, to which the Russian public at that time still not used to it. The picture was conceived as a manifesto of the new approach, the proposed new exhibition community.

Notoriety generally accompanied by a young Mashkov - Gambling and adventurous nuggets, who collected life experience "in people" (working in the shops from the merchants) who has passed "universities" in European museums, but expelled in 1909 from the Moscow School of Painting walls. However, once trained, Mashkov with great success taught himself - his studio (1904-17, in 1925 converted to a central studio AHRR) was the most expensive and also the most visited in Moscow.

Impressed the audience and critics of "barbaric" the pressure of his paintings at the exhibition "Golden Fleece" and "Salon Izdebsky" (1909-10), Mashkov has found its place among the artists who formed the company "Jack of Diamonds" ( Pyotr Konchalovsky , A. . Lentulov , etc.). "Jacks" asserted the materiality of the world and "low" subject; generosity and major Mashkovskaya palette abundantly his productions still life was in tune with the program of the association.

In an effort to bring back the art of "down to earth" this circle of artists focused on the "craft" - a street sign, a tray, a splint. Mashkov is a native craft was a child, and the primitivism of his still lifes and portraits - the most simple and authentic ("berries on red tray", "Still Life with Pineapple," both 1908, "Portrait of a boy in a shirt painted" 1909 "Self-Portrait" , "Portrait of a Lady with pheasants," both in 1911, and others).

Bright start was both "high point" of the artist - the mid 1910s. his painting loses its audacious spontaneity, but there is a taste of things to the invoice, and do these things are done "elected" precious. Hyperbolism manifests itself not only in scale paintings, not only in the "heroism" of fruits and heaviness of women's bodies, but also the richness of antique still life and interior scenes ("Still Life with brocade", 1914, "Still life with porcelain figurines", 1922, and etc.).

The addiction to the material world, of course, leads to the classic Mashkov camp: in the 1920s., In a situation of confrontation, "left" and the traditionalists, he finds himself among the latter and, unlike fellow "jacks", included in the 1928 Society of Moscow artists who link their fate with AHRR. In the thematic program AHRR there odic setting for this wonderful celebration, which fit into edible "the apotheosis of the" artist ("bread", "eatables Moscow. Meat, poultry", both 1924). Academic ideal of Soviet painting looks like a self-fulfilling in his still lifes of the 1930s. ("Pineapples and bananas", 1938, "Strawberry and white pitcher," 1943). But too many of them created in the later period - below its potential, and apparently feeling it since the mid 1930s, he lived for long periods in his native village, shying away from participating in social and artistic life of the capital. New, triumphant discovery of painting Mashkov will happen later in connection with a general interest in the art of the 1910s. And in the minds of posterity, he will remain one of the most prominent artists of the time.