MOSCOW, 13 October. /TASS/. The first exhibition in Moscow of paintings by early 20th-century impressionist painter Mikhail Shemyakin, which will be held from October 13 to January 17 at the Museum of Russian Impressionism, will include more than 50 works by the author. This was reported to TASS by the director of the museum, Yulia Petrova.

"We had to conduct a rigorous selection, which resulted in the first retrospective in our country of one of the few impressionist portrait painters in Russian art. At the exhibition" Mikhail Shemyakin. A completely different artist" presents more than 50 large-scale works from museums in Russia," said Petrova.

Despite the fact that the name of Mikhail Shemyakin is unknown to many, his works are kept in every museum in Russia. The director of the museum also clarified that the impressionist, who died in 1944, has nothing to do with the avant-garde artist of the same name, the author of the famous monument to Peter I, erected on the territory of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, has nothing to do with it.

Musicians artist

Viewing the exhibition starts from the third floor. There are paintings dedicated to music and the artist's family. The works that remained outside the scope of these topics ended up on the second floor. Shemyakin was connected by his fate with outstanding contemporaries: Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Valentin Serov, Fyodor Chaliapin.

"The restorer and art educator Igor Grabar called him the 'artist of musicians' - Mikhail Fedorovich's work was closely connected with music. His father-in-law was the well-known Czech violinist Ivan Grzhimali in Moscow. For a long time the family lived in the right wing of the Moscow Conservatory," Petrova explained.

One of the central paintings on the second floor is a portrait of a cab driver in a blue caftan. The artist wrote it from the Conservatory charioteer Vasily. The work, which distinguished itself at the exhibition of the Wanderers at the beginning of the 20th century, suffered in 1917 from a stray bullet.

monochrome style

A significant part of Shemyakin's works is monochrome. Consciously, he writes with a limited palette, using the so-called "tricolor": burnt bone (black), ocher and white. But, despite the meager, at first glance, the palette, the artist even from these colors manages to create subtle pearl overflows.

Unseen Apricots

The portrait of the confectioner Aleksey Abrikosov - the dominant of the exhibition - was Shemyakin's grandfather. Once, when the artist asked him to pose, the first thing he asked was how much time he would have to spend on it. Shemyakin answered: "twenty hours." During this time, Chemiakin painted a large full-figure portrait of his grandfather. Seeing the work, Abrikosov took a arshin from the table, went to the mirror, measured the distance from the top of his head to the tip of his gray beard, then compared it with what happened on the canvas and praised his grandson for the accuracy of the work performed.

The director of the museum told another family legend associated with this painting. “When the portrait was hung in Abrikosov’s office, one of his henchmen, entering the room and noticing the picture, said: “Sorry, I didn’t know that you were already awake.” The image made by Shemyakin was so accurate and realistic, - Petrova said.

The portrait has been in the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery for more than 70 years. This work is exhibited for the first time at an exhibition in the Museum of Impressionism.

hyacinths

Shemyakin's favorite flowers were hyacinths. He often painted them, honing his monochrome technique in these still lifes. At the beginning of the exposition, visitors can see "Hyacinths near the Christmas tree". Work filled with joy and anticipation of the New Year. At the end of the exhibition, a painting painted by the artist in the year of his death shows wilting flowers on canvas.

Museum staff promise that during the entire project, there will be live hyacinths in the halls.

Full immersion

Specially for the exhibition "Mikhail Shemyakin. A Completely Different Artist", the museum has prepared a documentary performance that helps to get to know the exposition better and immerse yourself in the world of the impressionist. To do this, at the entrance, visitors will be given headphones and instructions. The program is available through a special application that you need to install on your phone.

The director of the museum clarifies that this "sound promenade" should not be compared with an audio guide and a guide's story. "This is a performance prepared by the young playwright of the Moscow Art Theater Yulia Pospelova. The main text, collected on the basis of the unpublished memoirs of the artist's son and Mikhail Shemyakin himself, and also including musical sketches, is read by the actor Vasily Butkevich. "This sound promenade, unlike the usual guide, leaves a very special aftertaste from the exhibition. This is a work of art that immerses visitors in the fourth dimension," said the director of the museum.

From October 13 to January 16, the Museum of Russian Impressionism will present a retrospective of the works of the original Russian impressionist artist of the first half of the 20th century Mikhail Fedorovich Shemyakin - “Mikhail Shemyakin. A completely different artist." The exposition of the famous master will include more than fifty works from museums in Russia, neighboring countries and Moscow private collections. Among them are the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, the Nizhny Tagil Museum of Fine Arts, the art museums of Astrakhan, Penza, Tula, Ryazan and many others. Some of the works will be exhibited for the first time.

With this exhibition, the Museum of Russian Impressionism addresses its mission - to speak specifically about the Russian Impressionists. We will talk about the master, whom Korovin compared with Raphael, and Mayakovsky recognized as a "realist-impressionist-cubist" - about Mikhail Shemyakin. No, not about our contemporary, but about "a completely different artist."

RUSSIAN IMPRESSIONIST

Mikhail Shemyakin studied with Valentin Serov and Konstantin Korovin at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. From mentors, the young artist adopted a love for the portrait genre and a bold impressionistic style of painting. Shemyakin honed his skills as a draftsman in Munich, in the studio of Anton Azhbe. One of the last drawings "Monk", made by the artist at the Azhbe school, will be presented at the exhibition. This work was noticed and appreciated by Fyodor Chaliapin, who once came to visit Ivan Grzhimali's apartment. The artist’s son recalled: “Going up to the drawing, without turning around, he silently looked at it. Then he looked back, and the guests saw two "Monks": one in the picture, and the other perfectly, as soon as he could do it, Chaliapin "played". There was a friendly applause. "Great!" Chaliapin said and shook hands with my father.

Interestingly, at this time, Mikhail Shemyakin prefers a three-color monochrome palette, thereby filling the work with a special mother-of-pearl light. The artist managed with whitewash, light ocher and burnt ivory, giving a velvety warm black. Subsequently, Mikhail Shemyakin will devote several years of his life to the study of black and its shades.

"ARTIST OF MUSICIANS"

In 1901, the artist married his classmate Lyudmila Grzhimali, the daughter of the famous Czech violinist Ivan Voitekhovich Grzhimali in Moscow. For many years, Mikhail Shemyakin lived in his father-in-law's apartment, located right in the right wing of the Moscow Conservatory. In the living room, the master more than once painted his musician relatives and their friends, who often visited a hospitable family. Mikhail Shemyakin was called the "chronicler of musical Moscow" of the first half of the 20th century, and therefore the portraits of musicians are given a central place in the exhibition. Visitors will meet with a series of images of great performers, including the artist's father-in-law Ivan Grzhimali, composer Alexander Gedike, violinist Frantisek Ondrichek, cellist Hana Lyuboshits, singer, soloist of the Bolshoi Theater Nadezhda Salina.

Mikhail Shemyakin. Portrait of a violinist

DYNASTY: APRIKOSOV - CHEMYAKINS

A separate block presents a series of family portraits. Mikhail Shemyakin liked to paint his wife Lyudmila Grzhimali, sons Fyodor and Mikhail (also an artist in the future). Mikhail Fedorovich managed to vividly and poetically convey the joy of motherhood, the charm and significance of everyday household chores, the serene world of a child. The portrait of the famous grandfather of the artist, manufacturer Alexei Abrikosov, is especially colorful. The head of the confectionery company "Factory and Trade Association of A. I. Abrikosov's sons" (now the concern "Babaevsky"), the grandson of a quitrent peasant, Alexei Ivanovich was a boy in the service of a German who sold sugar, and later became the owner of one of the three largest confectionery factories in Russia. The portrait was so similar that the stoker with a bundle of firewood, who entered Abrikosov’s office in the morning, backed away in the first minute, saying: “Sorry, Alexei Ivanovich, I didn’t know that you got up.” After entering the museum collections, this work has never been exhibited. The Tretyakov Gallery, where the portrait is now kept, transferred to the Museum the right to present the painting to the general public for the first time.

Mikhail Shemyakin. Portrait of A.I. Abrikosova (1902)

CAPTIVATING FEMALE LOOKINGS

Shemyakin's portraits of women deserve special attention. Among them are numerous images of the artist's wife, the luxurious "Lady in Light" - a portrait of Lyudmila Shemyakina's sister, Anna Egorova. But the images of models seem to be the most attractive. Shemyakin wrote to Valentin Serov's favorite model, Vera Kalashnikova, more than once. Her expressive gray-green eyes and mop of dark hair styled in a high hairstyle are instantly recognizable and attract the eye. The master was dissatisfied with his first sketch from Vera: in his hearts, he threw the cardboard into the corner of the workshop, where it lay for almost 20 years, until Apollinary Vasnetsov found it. The artist liked the sketch so much that he hung it over the bed. A year later, Mikhail Shemyakin made another attempt to portray Vera Ivanovna. The drawing turned out to be unusually thin, for which the painter earned approval from Valentin Serov, who was very stingy with praises, and Konstantin Korovin did not hide his delight: “Raphael!”

Mikhail Shemyakin. Model (1905)

HYACINTH

It is impossible to imagine Mikhail Shemyakin's exhibition without hyacinths. The artist had a special love for them: he painted these delicate flowers more than once, which always appeared in the Grzhimali-Shemyakins' house on New Year's Eve. According to the Czech tradition, it was customary to decorate houses for Christmas with spring flowers. The artist's son, Mikhail Mikhailovich Shemyakin, recalled: “The tree was big. She had a lot of jewelry on. Colored candles were burning. Multi-colored shiny glass balls and figurines shone with glare<…>There were many living plants and flowers in the living room: a large ficus, hydrangeas, cacti, hyacinths. We, the children - me and my older brother - were waiting at the door in a large adjacent room - the “hall”. Dad opened the high doors, and a Christmas tree appeared in front of us, in all its splendor and radiance! Her my father<…>wrote in the picture "Hyacinths at the Christmas tree." A wicker basket with hyacinths in pots, which the master depicted, was once presented to I. V. Grzhimali by Leo Tolstoy.

Mikhail Shemyakin. Hyacinths at Night (1912)

REALIST-IMPRESSIONIST-CUBIST

The life story of Mikhail Shemyakin is replete with similar details. Fate brought him together with many outstanding contemporaries, each of whom could not remain indifferent to the artist's work. Once, while picking mushrooms with children near Akulova Gora, where the Shemyakins rented a house, the artist met Vladimir Mayakovsky. Together with Lilya Brik, they often came to their yard for pink peonies. “Suddenly, a tall, broad-shouldered shirtless figure appeared in front of us, in pressed trousers, with a towel on his shoulder. Short cropped head. - recalled the artist's son Mikhail. - Ah, Shemyakin! the poet said. — I saw your work at the exhibition. You are a realist - an impressionist - a cubist." This paradoxical characterization is surprisingly insightful. As a realist, Shemyakin did not allow himself to simplify and distort nature for the sake of picturesque effect. Like the Cubists, each time he approached nature both analytically and with ardent curiosity - as if he had seen a person's face or a bouquet of hyacinths for the first time. But from the very beginning of his career and until the end of his life, the techniques of impressionism were his favorite.

Following the exhibition of works by Arnold Lakhovsky and Elena Kiseleva, the Museum of Russian Impressionism continues to acquaint the public with the work of undeservedly forgotten masters. Unformatted authors who do not fit the standards of Soviet ideology, their names did not find a place in the last century, but after more than half a century they regain their audience, because real art is timeless.

An illustrated catalog with previously unpublished archival materials will be published for the exhibition.

How to prepare for the exhibition?
1. Ageeva M.V. Mikhail Shemyakin. Series "Masters of Painting". Publishing house "White City". 2009
2. Shemyakin M. F. Memories. To the 100th anniversary of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. 1845-1945// Panorama of Arts, 12. Stories about artists and writers. M.: Soviet artist, 1989. S. 264
3. Ageeva M.V. Mikhail Fedorovich Shemyakin. 1875-1944: catalog album - Nizhny Tagil: "Nizhny Tagil Museum of Fine Arts", 2006.
4. Mikhail Shemyakin. A completely different artist: exhibition catalog - M .: "Museum of Russian Impressionism", 2017.

From October 13 to January 17, the Museum of Russian Impressionism hosts an exhibition of works by the Russian impressionist artist of the first half of the 20th century Mikhail Fedorovich Shemyakin - “Mikhail Shemyakin. A completely different artist." The exposition includes more than fifty works from museums in Russia, the Near Abroad and Moscow private collections. Among them: the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, the Nizhny Tagil Museum of Fine Arts, the art museums of Astrakhan, Penza, Tula, Ryazan and many others. Some of the works will be presented to the public for the first time.

The name of the artist represented in the Museum of Russian Impressionism should not be confused with our contemporary, the avant-garde sculptor Mikhail Mikhailovich Shemyakin. Mikhail Fedorovich Shemyakin is a completely different artist - an impressionist-portrait painter, a student of Valentin Serov and Konstantin Korovin, at the same time, a master practically unknown to the general public. The exhibition turned out to be very emotional, on the one hand, there are a lot of colors, emotions, impressions in the presented works, on the other hand, it is cozy in a homely way. Especially for the exhibition, the museum, together with the playwright Yulia Pospelova and the actors of the Dmitry Brusnikin Workshop, created an audio performance based on unpublished documents - archives, memoirs of the artist's son, the artist himself and his contemporaries - the Shemyakin sound promenade.

Yulia Pospelova, playwright:“When I was asked to create a play for a new exhibition, this idea seemed very interesting to me - the museum is so bravely entering a new territory - the territory of the theater. It seems to me that for the museum, on the one hand, this is an alien world, on the other hand, there is much in common between the museum and the theater. For example, both the museum and the theater work with the category of time - with the past. When a viewer goes to a museum or theater, he wants to get new emotions and impressions - this is also the connection between the museum and the theater. Our task was to connect these two different worlds - the world of the museum and the theater. And the child born in this marriage was the audio performance “Shemyakin”. We wanted to tell in an interesting, unusual, exciting way about the artist and his time. I thought for a long time about the form that can be chosen for this text and came to the conclusion that it would be logical to talk about the impressionist artist Mikhail Shemyakin in his language. And it seems to me that the play turned out to be impressionistic. We wanted to get away from direct narration and follow the path of impression, to imagine what a person feels when he stands in front of Shemyakin's painting and examines it: what he thinks about, what he experiences, what associations and sensations arise from the paintings. To achieve this, we had to use the tools of immersive theater, i.e. direct impact on a person, when a person does not passively observe what is happening on the stage, but is a direct participant or even the main character of the performance. So that the participant of the soundpromenade also becomes the main character of this action.”

Director of the Museum of Russian Impressionism Yulia Petrova shared her impressions of the exhibition with Kulturomania.

How did the idea for the audio performance come about?

We have a young team, very creative, which I am incredibly happy and proud of. And the idea was born within the team - this is the merit of our employees.

- Why did this bright and interesting artist remain in the shadows?

This is not an isolated story. Last year, we opened an exhibition of Elena Andreevna Kiseleva - this name was practically unknown at that time, and thanks to our exhibition, they started talking about Kiseleva. And I was also asked the question - why such a brilliant master as Elena Kiseleva is not reflected at all in the history of art. Why did some well-known artists during their lifetime disappear into oblivion after their death? I think that this happens due to historical circumstances. This also happens in European painting. And there are many such names, very worthy of drawing attention to them, in Russian art. A number of such artists can be seen in our permanent exhibition. Everyone knows Serov or Kustodiev, and the names of Zhukovsky and Turzhansky are already less known, Vinogradov, Yesayan - even less. But all these painters are worthy of our art history, exhibition and research work. And just the discovery of these names to the public seems to me the field of work of our museum. It is clear that due to our format, our museum youth, such exhibitions organized by the Tretyakov Gallery - 200 works by Serov under one roof - are beyond our power. We do not have such a space for this, nor such a storehouse from which we can draw non-stop. This is their format, they are the main museum of national art and big names are, of course, their task, but our task is different. We manage to work in our own field - to show something that large museums will never get their hands on. And what is very valuable for me is that the public trusts us in this. When we opened Kiselyov, there were fears - whether we in Moscow, satiated with events, would be able to attract people to a completely unknown name that evokes absolutely no associations. But in our short history it was the most successful, most visited exhibition. We emphasize everywhere that the name we reveal is unknown. Come and we'll show you an artist you didn't know anything about before. And I hope that Muscovites will again trust us, again believe that this is interesting.

- Tell us about the presented works, there are probably many interesting stories connected with them.

Of course, the largest number of stories is associated with the portrait of the famous confectioner and philanthropist Abrikosov, who was the grandfather of Mikhail Vasilievich Shemyakin. Grandfather was very skeptical about the proposal to paint his portrait - how much time will he have to spend on it? And he said, "20 hours, not a minute more." And then, when the portrait was already ready, he measured his head size with a beard with a arshin and compared it with the picture - everything coincided, the grandfather was pleased.

And a wonderful story about how Shemyakin painted a portrait of the model Vera Kalashnikova, Serov's favorite model, and complained to him that he couldn't do it. Serov's reaction to these tests is very clear and close to me. When the work was corrected once, twice, a third time, Serov said - good, but still not what it was. And this is the return of the artist to the beginning. Serov says - you did well, but not what it was - fix it, make it better, look for it. And the artist again in his search is forced to return to the original. Perhaps this is the fate of the master - to search all the time, to be dissatisfied with himself all the time. Shemyakin is a very demanding artist and one can see how much attention he pays to each work, sometimes rewriting it, sometimes leaving some fragments unfinished, because he has not yet matured for them and it takes time.

- Shemyakin has a great legacy. What were you guided by when selecting works for the exhibition?

In very many, both regional and central museums of our country, paintings by Mikhail Fedorovich Shemyakin are kept. And the problem was not to find this heritage, but to choose what we want to show. Exhibition space allowed to place a little more than 50 works. All works are formatted, large and it was hard to choose exactly these 50. But in the end we found a compromise - the catalog published for the exhibition contains much more works by Shemyakin himself and his teachers, contemporaries and friends. This choice was carried out over several months, it was necessary to show the key works, the portrait of Abrikosov, about which there is a memory of both Shemyakin himself and his son, and with which entertaining stories are connected about how this portrait was painted. This work has been kept in the Tretyakov Gallery for more than 70 years and has never been exhibited, which is generally understandable - the Tretyakov Gallery has completely different tasks and they gave us the opportunity to show this work to the public first. A number of other works of the first row also got to this exhibition a priori - a series of hyacinths, a series of family portraits, portraits of musicians - all this was carefully selected. 13 regions participate in the exhibition, and the work that got on the cover of the catalog and became the front came from Belarus - from the Minsk State Art Museum. This is a portrait of the model Vera Kalashnikova, a work for my taste - surprisingly thin, pearly, graceful, incredibly attractive and not letting go. I wanted to show Shemyakin from the best side and make him an artist who will now be remembered, and for this, of course, it was necessary to choose the very best.

From October 13 to January 17, the Museum of Russian Impressionism will present a retrospective of the works of the original Russian impressionist artist of the first half of the 20th century Mikhail Fedorovich Shemyakin - “Mikhail Shemyakin. A completely different artist." The exposition of the famous master will include more than fifty works from museums in Russia, neighboring countries and Moscow private collections. Among them are the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, the Nizhny Tagil Museum of Fine Arts, the art museums of Astrakhan, Penza, Tula, Ryazan and many others. Some of the works will be exhibited for the first time.

With this exhibition, the Museum of Russian Impressionism addresses its mission - to speak specifically about the Russian Impressionists. We will talk about the master, whom Korovin compared with Raphael, and Mayakovsky recognized as a "realist-impressionist-cubist", - about Mikhail Shemyakin. No, not about our contemporary, but about "a completely different artist."

RUSSIAN IMPRESSIONIST

"ARTIST OF MUSICIANS"

DYNASTY: APRICOSOV - SHEMYAKINS

A separate block presents a series of family portraits. Mikhail Shemyakin liked to paint his wife Lyudmila Grzhimali, sons Fyodor and Mikhail (also an artist in the future). Mikhail Fedorovich managed to vividly and poetically convey the joy of motherhood, the charm and significance of everyday household chores, the serene world of a child. Especially colorful is the portrait of the famous grandfather of the artist - manufacturer Alexei Abrikosov. The head of the confectionery company "Factory and Trade Association of A. I. Abrikosov's sons" (now the concern "Babaevsky"), the grandson of a quitrent peasant, Alexei Ivanovich was a boy in the service of a German who sold sugar, and later became the owner of one of the three largest confectionery factories in Russia. The portrait was so similar that the stoker with a bundle of firewood, who entered Abrikosov’s office in the morning, backed away in the first minute, saying: “Sorry, Alexei Ivanovich, I didn’t know that you got up.” After entering the museum collections, this work has never been exhibited. The Tretyakov Gallery, where the portrait is now kept, transferred to the Museum the right to present the painting to the general public for the first time.

CAPTIVATING FEMALE LOOKINGS

Shemyakin's portraits of women deserve special attention. Among them are numerous images of the artist's wife, the luxurious "Lady in Light" - a portrait of Lyudmila Shemyakina's sister, Anna Egorova. But the images of models seem to be the most attractive. Shemyakin wrote to Valentin Serov's favorite model, Vera Kalashnikov, more than once. Her expressive gray-green eyes and mop of dark hair styled in a high hairstyle are instantly recognizable and attract the eye. The master was dissatisfied with his first sketch from Vera: in his hearts, he threw the cardboard into the corner of the workshop, where it lay for almost 20 years, until Apollinary Vasnetsov found it. The artist liked the sketch so much that he hung it over the bed. A year later, Mikhail Shemyakin made another attempt to portray Vera Ivanovna. The drawing turned out to be unusually thin, for which the painter earned approval from Valentin Serov, who was very stingy with praises, and Konstantin Korovin did not hide his delight: "Raphael!"

HYACINTH

It is impossible to imagine Mikhail Shemyakin's exhibition without hyacinths. The artist had a special love for them: he painted these delicate flowers more than once, which always appeared in the Grzhimali-Shemyakins' house on New Year's Eve. According to the Czech tradition, it was customary to decorate houses for Christmas with spring flowers. The artist's son, Mikhail Mikhailovich Shemyakin, recalled: “The tree was big. She had a lot of jewelry on. Colored candles were burning. Multi-colored shiny glass balls and figurines shone with glare. There were many living plants and flowers in the living room: a large ficus, hydrangeas, cacti, hyacinths. We, the children - me and my older brother - were waiting at the door in a large adjacent room - the “hall”. Dad opened the high doors, and a Christmas tree appeared in front of us, in all its splendor and radiance! My father painted it in the painting "Hyacinths at the Christmas Tree". A wicker basket with hyacinths in pots, which the master depicted, was once presented to I. V. Grzhimali by Leo Tolstoy.

REALIST-IMPRESSIONIST-CUBIST

The life story of Mikhail Shemyakin is replete with similar details. Fate brought him together with many outstanding contemporaries, each of whom could not remain indifferent to the artist's work. Once, while picking mushrooms with children near Akulova Gora, where the Shemyakins rented a house, the artist met Vladimir Mayakovsky. Together with Lilya Brik, they often came to their yard for pink peonies. “Suddenly, a tall, broad-shouldered shirtless figure appeared in front of us, in pressed trousers, with a towel on his shoulder. Short cropped head. - recalled the artist's son Mikhail. - Ah, Shemyakin! - said the poet. - I saw your work at the exhibition. You are a realist - an impressionist - a cubist." This paradoxical characterization is surprisingly insightful. As a realist, Shemyakin did not allow himself to simplify and distort nature for the sake of picturesque effect. Like the Cubists, each time he approached nature both analytically and with ardent curiosity - as if he had seen a person's face or a bouquet of hyacinths for the first time. But from the very beginning of his career and until the end of his life, the techniques of impressionism were his favorite.

An illustrated catalog with previously unpublished archival materials will be published for the exhibition.

How to prepare for the exhibition?

1. Ageeva M.V. Mikhail Shemyakin. Series "Masters of Painting". Publishing house "White City". 2009

2. Shemyakin M.F. Memories. To the 100th anniversary of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. 1845-1945// Panorama of Arts, 12. Stories about artists and writers. M.: Soviet artist, 1989. S. 264

3. Ageeva M.V. Mikhail Fedorovich Shemyakin. 1875-1944: catalog album - Nizhny Tagil: "Nizhny Tagil Museum of Fine Arts", 2006.

4. Mikhail Shemyakin. A completely different artist: exhibition catalog - M .: "Museum of Russian Impressionism", 2017.

“Mikhail Shemyakin. A completely different artist” - an exhibition with such an intriguing title opened at the Museum of Russian Impressionism. Mikhail Fedorovich Shemyakin, the namesake and namesake of a famous contemporary, “lived quietly, but created passionately,” as Ilya Repin said about him. Shemyakin's canvases are an inflorescence of catchy colors, the grace of precise lines and waves of warm human feelings. The exhibition was visited by a Vesti FM correspondent Anna Vladimirova.

Korovin called him the Russian Raphael, and Mayakovsky declared him a "realist-impressionist-cubist." In the paintings of Mikhail Shemyakin, a sharp stroke turns into a smooth bend, and violent colors give rise to delicate shades. Whether it is the orange-blue “Hyacinths at Night”, the marble “Model”, the “Violin” full of musicality or the quivering portraits of his wife - the painted equally reflects reality and broadcasts the author's personal impressions. Yulia Petrova, director of the Museum of Russian Impressionism, tells.

PETROVA: With any acquisition of a painting by a museum, a visual assessment is carried out - whether it suits us stylistically or not, whether it is worthy of the level of the museum or not. And when we saw “Girl in a sailor suit” by Shemyakin, it became clear that we needed it. Then we got a few more works by Shemyakin, because we already knew that this is a very, very worthy master. And when various information began to be collected, it became clear that an exhibition was “looming”.

Mikhail Shemyakin lived calmly and evenly - without unnecessary dramas, revolutions and rebellions. He grew up in a family of wealthy manufacturers, graduated from the Moscow School of Painting, studied with Valentin Serov and Konstantin Korovin. The wife of the young artist was the daughter of the famous Czech violinist Ivan Voitekhovich - Lyudmila Grzhimali. The house was visited by eminent musicians who often posed for the painter. During his lifetime, Mikhail Shemyakin was popular, arranged solo exhibitions, and had students. And after his death he was undeservedly forgotten. And this is not an isolated case, Yulia Petrova continues.

PETROVA: There are a lot of such artists in the Russian history of art, and in European, and in the world. Fashion changes, idols change, idols change. Someone remains in the history of art, others are forgotten ...

To remind, and to tell someone for the first time about Mikhail Shemyakin, the organizers of the exhibition recorded an audio guide - in the format of a performance in 4 acts. Playwright Yulia Pospelova composed a play based on the artist's diaries and memoirs, and young actors acted out her roles. Actor Vasily Butkevich - the voice of Mikhail Shemyakin in the production - admits that before the work he knew nothing about his hero, but now he treats him with great warmth.

BUTKEVICH: I experienced some unusually touching feelings just in relation to him. And it so happened that I spoke only for Mikhail Shemyakin, that is, I worked with him for a long time. And the story turned out to be very touching, even sentimental in places.

The actor says: when he first learned that he would be voicing the artist Mikhail Shemyakin, he rushed to study the dossier of the famous contemporary - friend Vladimir Vysotsky, who has long been living in France. However, this painter has no relation to the hero of the exhibition.

“Why does Russia owe everyone?”

SOLOVYOV: “I want to say right away that I am sincerely glad that Tina Givievna, having heard my criticism and analysis of one of the posts dedicated to Georgia in the Telegram channel, immediately wrote to me, asked for the opportunity to come in order to express her opinion directly, so that it would not turned into nothing more than a telephone interview.”