The exhibition of one painting "A. N. Benoit (1870 - 1960)." Mountain Landscape ". 1913

On February 18, an exhibition of one painting, “A.N. Benoit (1870 - 1960). "Mountain landscape". 1913, dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth

Alexander Nikolaevich Benois (1870 - 1960) - an outstanding Russian artist, art historian, art critic, founder and chief ideologist of the World of Art association. His name occupies one of the central places in the history of Russian art of the late XIX - early XX centuries.

A.N. Benoit was born on May 3, 1870 in St. Petersburg. His father, N.L. Benoit - professor of architecture, grandson of a Frenchman L. -J. Benoit, maternal grandfather - architect A. B. Kavos, builder of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. Although A.N. Benoit graduated from the St. Petersburg University Law School in 1894, he still connected his life with art. In many ways, this was facilitated by the family, his entourage, and friends in the gymnasium. In his memoirs, A. N. Benois calls himself “the product of an artistic family.” While studying at the gymnasium in 1887, the young man attended evening classes at the Academy of Arts. Later, he was engaged in watercolors under the guidance of his older brother Albert Benoit, an outstanding watercolorist of his time. Having not received a systematic professional art education, A.N. Benois, nevertheless, managed to achieve a high level of artistic skill in his works. He became a talented painter, an unsurpassed master of book graphics, an outstanding theater artist who received worldwide recognition. A.N. Benoit is the author of such remarkable graphic series as Versailles (1896 - 1922), Peterhof (1918 - 1922), Tsarskoye Selo (1910). A.N. Benoit was the chief art director of all the productions of S.P. Diaghilev - the famous Russian Ballet Seasons in Paris. He was not only an artist, but also a librettist, stage director. He created a huge number of illustrations for various publications on the history of art, articles, albums and books of Russian and French classics. Since 1924 he lived abroad, in Paris, where he worked mainly on sketches of theatrical scenery and costumes, played a significant role in the productions of S. P. Diaghilev’s ballet company “Ballets Russes”, as an artist and production designer in Milan. A.N. Benoit died on February 9, 1960 in Paris.

The collection of the Kaluga Museum of Fine Arts contains several graphic works by the artist, including the watercolor “Mountain Landscape”, which shows the Simplons Pass in the Alps. The landscape presents a desert plain in the foothills of the Alps, crossed by roads and rugged by ravines. In the distance, on the horizon, in the opening among the sloping mountains, snow-capped peaks can be seen. This watercolor belongs to the graphic works of the Italian-Swiss series, in which the artist achieved artistic maturity and improvisational ease in expressing his pictorial impressions. The landscape was painted in the summer of 1913

As follows from the inscriptions in the lower part of the work, the artist presented it to V.A. Makovsky in August 1916: “To dear Vladimir Alexandrovich Makovsky for good memory. Alexandre Benois. VIII - 1916. "

The exhibition runs through March 29th.