Artistic worlds of Arthur Fonvizin

The exhibition "Artistic Worlds of Arthur Fonvizin", organized by the State A.S. Pushkin Museum, the Association of Art Critics of Russia, the GROSart Gallery and collector Sergei Alexandrov, displays works by the famous master of watercolors Arthur Vladimirovich Fonvizin (1883-1973) from private collections and the museum’s funds. The exhibition, which presents about 70 works by the artist, is based on one of the best private collections of Fonvizin’s watercolors and drawings by Moscow collector Sergei Alexandrov. The exposition also includes rare archival materials and memorial items from the collection of the artist’s family. Most of the exhibits are being shown for the first time.

The exhibition provides an opportunity to form a comprehensive idea of the artist’s personality and work, to determine his aesthetic credo. Visitors will see portraits and self-portraits, still lifes and landscapes, plot compositions, and, of course, flowers, which form a separate programmatic theme in the work of the master - a virtuoso watercolorist. In this very complex technique of fine art, he achieved genuine aesthetic perfection. Fonvizin’s watercolors amaze with artistic freedom and the elusive transformation of arbitrary colorful elements into an expressive artistic image.

The artist’s signature style is associated with a romantic perception of the surrounding world and is based on a rich arsenal of formal techniques and means, including masterful mastery of watercolor filling and hatching. The cheerfulness of sonorous multicolor combined with the sophistication of color, the expression of a color spot and a linear outline, the poetic "unfinished" nature of a creative statement - all this gives his works an incomparable charm and sophistication.

The catalogue, specially published for the project, is the first to publish a chronicle of the master’s life and work, based on previously unknown materials from the collections of the manuscript department of the State Tretyakov Gallery.

Sergey Aleksandrov, collector, AIS expert consultant:

“The history of my collection of paintings and graphics by Russian artists of the 20th century began with Arthur Fonvizin’s watercolor “Portrait of a Girl in Red” (1955). Having never thought about serious collecting before, I literally fell in love with this work and its author at first sight. The feeling of freshness and freedom combined with the indescribable magic that Fonvizin’s watercolors are filled with, and in the future, largely determined the choice of works and artists in the gradually growing collection, which over time became the main thing in my life.”

Fonvizin’s cheerful and optimistic art is distinguished by a wide range of themes and genres, in which the portrait genre plays an important role. In the gallery of portraits he created, opera singers, ballet dancers, and drama theater actors are his favorite models. There are also memorable images of heroines in stage costumes ("Portrait of the Ballerina Lyutsiya Yumasheva", 1949; "Portrait of Galina Vishnevskaya as Natasha Rostova", 1960-1962), and portraits of stage luminaries painted in private ("Portrait of the Opera Singer Maria Maksakova", late 1940s). A special section in Fonvizin’s portrait gallery is made up of members of the artist’s family and self-portraits: by the way, "Portrait of Wife with Son", early 1940s, and "Self-Portrait", 1930s, are being exhibited for the first time.

In the typical and specific images of the master’s contemporaries, he is attracted by the natural beauty, charm and spontaneity in the behavior of his heroines ("Portrait of a Girl in Red", 1955; "Female Portrait", 1950s; "Portrait of Alla Belyakova", 1959). The models in his nude works are touching and defenseless ("In the Pool", 1933; "Nude", 1950).

Still lifes and landscapes are organically included in Arthur Fonvizin’s watercolors. The artist is fascinated by flowers. They are combined into bouquets, lush or modest, bright or discreet. In their depiction, he demonstrates mastery of the richest artistic tools, allowing him to create sparklingly diverse colorful compositions ("Bouquet", 1943; "Still Life with Roses", 1955).

Arthur Fonvizin is the author of numerous narrative compositions that form thematic series. His works dedicated to the circus are especially inspired and have a cheerful mood (Miss Adelphine, Horsewoman with a Whip, both 1930s; Curtain Call, 1945; In the Arena, 1950; Animal Trainer, 1950s). The Riders series stands out for its brilliant improvisational gift, executed by the master with a reference to the tradition of the "culture of ceremonial riding". In his inexhaustible colorful fantasies on this theme, his partly ephemeral, but proudly prancing amazons in purple and gray robes or with white plumes and in black suits appear.

The artist’s talent as a romantic, dreamer and visionary is also uniquely refracted in the field of book illustration, whether it be his appeal to Russian classical literature (“Eugene Onegin”, 1942) or to the works of German writers (“Romantic Tale”, 1934–1935).

The rich artistic worlds of Arthur Fonvizin – no matter what genre he turned to – always remained bright, joyful, often even festive, radiating the inexhaustible vitality and energy of this outstanding artist.

Curators:

Sergey Alexandrov, Elena Gribonosova-Grebneva, Elena Osotina

Consultants:

Valery Silaev, Tatyana Nikolaevskaya

REFERENCE

Artur Vladimirovich Fonvizin (1883–1973) belonged to the generation of artists who defined the main lines of development of Russian fine art at the beginning of the 20th century. Like many of his fellow students at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, in his youth the artist paid tribute to his passion for decadence and symbolism. Under the influence of his close friend and associate Mikhail Larionov, one of the future leaders of the Russian avant-garde, he developed the problem of renewing artistic form.

During his subsequent studies in Munich, he became an exhibitor at the Blue Rose exhibition (1907), a programmatic event for the young symbolists, and at two salons of the Golden Fleece magazine (1908, 1909) in Moscow. Upon returning to Russia, he participated in the first exhibitions of avant-garde artists (1910–1912), organized by Larionov. Having subsequently experienced deep doubts about his choice of path in art, he publicly distanced himself from the radical manifestos and outrageous performances of his former associates, preferring the silence and solitude of the Russian provinces to the stormy flow of artistic life in both capitals.

In the artist’s creative development, the years of his stay in Mologa (1912–1916) and Tambov region (1917–1922) were marked by a reassessment of the traditions of the Russian realistic school. But despite the fact that Fonvizin was a notable participant in the Makovets association that formed in the first half of the 1920s, his works in oil painting, executed in a realistic manner, did not make a bright impression at the exhibition of the Union of Artists and Poets “Art – Life” (1922).

A breakthrough in the renewal of the figurative-plastic and pictorial language occurred in Fonvizin in the late 1920s, when the artist turned to watercolor painting. Artur Fonvizin’s watercolors almost immediately became a noticeable phenomenon not only in the artistic practice of the USSR, but also abroad. Despite the fact that the creative individuality of the master did not fit into the framework of the new method - socialist realism, in the conditions of total ideologization of art, classified by Soviet art criticism as a "formalist" and "patchwork", he remained true to himself and his favorite technique until the end of his life.

State Museum of A.S. Pushkin. Exhibition halls in Denezhny Lane.

Currently, the museum has a significant space for temporary exhibitions. These are three rooms on Prechistenka, 12 (in the basement, in the mezzanine and in the Manor Yard) and exhibition halls in Denezhny Lane. In recent years, the variety of works exhibited at these sites has significantly expanded. At the art shows held in the Exhibition Halls in Denezhny Lane, you can see not only the works of contemporary authors, but also photographs, sketches of theatrical scenery, installations of fashion designers.

All-Russian public organization "Association of Art Critics"

The Association of Art Critics (AIC) was established in October 1990 as a professional public association. Currently, the Chairman of the AIC is Doctor of Art History A.K. Yakimovich, and the General Director is Candidate of Art History E.V. Gribonosova-Grebneva. AIC members may be teachers of higher and secondary specialized educational institutions; research associates of research institutes and art museums; critics; curators of art galleries; experts; collectors; employees of art publishing houses. In recent years, the AIC has actively established itself as an organizer and co-organizer of scientific conferences, exhibition and publishing projects, information and practical coordinator of various professional initiatives of its members.

Gallery GROSart

The Moscow gallery "GROSart" was reorganized by art historians Elena Osotina (director) and Elena Gribonosova-Grebneva in November 2013 from the gallery "G.O.S.T.", which at that time for almost ten years (since December 2003) had been actively performing on the capital’s art scene, mainly with graphic exhibitions (including a display of drawings by A. Drevin, N. Krymov, A. Deineka, L. Soyfertis, masters of the circle of V. Favorsky, P. Dik, B. Kocheishvili, Yu. Perevezentsev, V. Salnikov, N. Kotel and others), and also fruitfully collaborated at various times with the country’s leading museums.

Continuing and developing this tradition in every possible way, the GROSart gallery strives to expand the horizons of its interests within the line of domestic modernism of the 20th – 21st centuries thanks to an active appeal, in addition to graphics, to painting and sculpture and the inclusion of new names in the list of authors relevant to the gallery (K. Sogomonian, N. Vatagin, N. Nasedkin, D. Tugarikov, S. Milchenko, A. Remnev, etc.), but invariably from among artists who are staunch adherents of high plastic culture.