Page 30 - Studio International - October1968

on my mind and produced an unusual animation in me; the icons coloured' paints, containing fifty-four colours, as mentioned by some
had absolutely no effect on me. This 'why' was explained to me later. professor. All the way back I admired these paints. They pleasantly
In live nature, with which I was organically linked, there was nothing excited my nervous system, in the same way as nature did. Emerald
comparable, and it is possible that the icons of the classical masters green, cobalt, cinnabar, ochre—all this called forth in my mind the
would have produced the same effect on me, but I would have been hues I saw in nature.
unable nonetheless to understand what art was, where its essence Thus in order to remain in Kiev, where as I found out later such
was to be found. One can see from this that the painting of the girl `great' artists as Timonenko and Murashko resided, I moved to no
with potatoes, pots and pans was so vividly portrayed that to me less a town than Konotop, in the Chernigov province. There with
she seemed to be a part of nature, I could see her double and felt that great zeal and application I began painting landscapes with a stork
she was portrayed by human hand. But at the same time it did not and cows in the distance.
enter my head to try and find that man, to learn from him how to Only then did my family realize that every family had its black
portray; there was no one to direct me. I did not even think of getting sheep. From morning till night I worked with paints never using a
some paints in Kiev. I did not even say anything to my father; I pencil. Days, months, a year, another year passed. My family moved
simply left Kiev and continued growing and taking delight in live to the town of Kursk. But when I was still in Konotop, I had learnt
nature until I was 11 years old. I did not suspect that there were that there was a school in Moscow, where they taught you to portray
paints with which one could portray nature. Indeed it seems that I nature, as it is; but all the applications that I wrote to the school
lived in a backwater, where nothing was ever painted; nonetheless asking them to enrol me were hidden by my father and exactly a
all the means of doing this escaped my attention. month later he would announce to me that there were no vacancies.
But there came a day, just as staggering as that when I had seen the Kursk was the town where I began my artistic activities in the
girl peeling potatoes. For some reason I noticed a painter who was morning; in the evening I sat in the fields and forests and painted
painting a roof; the roof was turning green, like the trees and the sky. nature at various times, in different lightings. It was then that I learnt
This gave me the idea that one could portray the trees and the sky that people whose work is the portrayal of nature are called artists,
with this paint. During the lunch-break I climbed on to the roof and and that the work itself is called art. But what art really was remained
tried to reproduce a tree in colour with paint—but nothing came of unknown not only to me, but even to other artists, who painted, as
it. Yet this did not annoy me, for I got satisfaction from doing one used to say, in order to relax from office work. For them this
actual painting. I experienced a very pleasant feeling from the paint kind of art was indeed a relaxation; consequently the purpose of art
and brush. was to enable one to relax after work. But I did not experience this. I
In this case, too, I did not ask the painter anything, versed in his resembled some sensitive instrument, something like a barometer,
trade as he was. I just went away full of the impression of brush and which reacted to all the changes in the light the sun throws on nature;
paint. For me this proved extremely successful, but a loss for the and I did react: I simply received everything I saw and transferred
painter, who was looking for his unbidden apprentice in order to it onto my canvas and the question as to whether this was art did
give him a sound telling-off. Some time later I began to draw a not arise; the question was whether this bore any resemblance and
mountain in ink on paper, but all the shapes merged and the result was it exact.
was a blot that represented nothing. I was an incredible blockhead, I was not alone in Kursk. There were civil servants who had studied
yet at the same time the negatives were lit in my brain, the sunrays in the Academy of Arts, but did not finish their course and found
in the puddle burnt brightly, lighting up the trees, the cows were themselves jobs either in Customs and Excise, in the Treasury or on
walking as though they were alive; they in particular were moving the railways. They all had one and the same task: to portray nature
in my negative, they were not frozen, as in an epidiascope. Yet when- without any thoughts, any discussions, any changes. This was
ever I tried to portray them, see them on paper, I only managed to between 1898 and 1901. By then I had already had a certain amount
reproduce the most incredible blobs. of practical experience and was by no means inferior to my colleagues.
At this point I stopped running around and I spent more and more The year 1898 can be described as the beginning of my public exhibi-
time each day doing pencil-drawings, but I became irritated by the tions. By now I had already painted old men in melon fields, women
pencil, and in the end I gave it up and started with a brush. Admit- weeding fields, markets, stalls, the human figure. I already knew that
tedly these brushes came from a chemist's shop where they were used some very famous artists existed, i.e. Repin, Shishkin ; we discussed
to paint the throats of children suffering from diphtheria. Yet I found Vasiliyev. I knew that in Moscow there was the famous Tretyakov
that it was better to paint with this brush than draw with a pencil: Gallery, with models of how to depict nature, but the idea of going to
the brush covered a larger area. For some reason I sat at home, un- Moscow belonged to the realm of fairy-tales. For this I would have
able to realize that I ought to go out into nature, to look and paint. needed the little hunch-backed horse. The thought of going to
This idea did not arise in me, just as it never does in small children. Moscow became a kind of obsession, but I had no money. The
They paint from memory and represent only what has remained in mystery was in Moscow; nature was everywhere, but the means of
their memory; but I was no longer little, yet acted like a child. What portraying it were in Moscow, where famous artists lived. I too, had
did I want ? To me this was obvious and clear. I wanted to draw to become a civil servant, not to earn money just for a trip to Moscow,
what I had seen—cows going through puddles after a shower, and but to go and live there and study.
being reflected in the water. Oh, how marvellous this was, and how Now the infernal period of office work began. I did not understand
dreadful it all came out on paper! Cows—one could not make out just as a wild bird does not understand why it is kept in a cage.
what they were ! There were occasions when during office hours I would set up my
And so I reached the age of twelve, thirteen, fifteen and even then drawing-board and would paint the view from the window; I did
I understood nothing, although I was already filled with great happi- this quite seriously. Everybody smiled, well-meaning people said
ness. My mother bought me a complete set of paints. I will never that this was not allowed, my superiors were embarrassed, but some-
forget this great day. times were impressed by a finished study, and out of veneration for
It was in Kiev that for the first time I entered a shop in which there art acted leniently, yet they did not suggest that I should paint all day
were many pictures which excited me. My mother and I did not know long and advised me to do this after 4 o'clock. Months, whole years
what to buy and the salesman, seeing our dilemma, hurriedly came to passed in this way until I had saved up a little money and decided to
our assistance. He showed us a box of paints, which even painters go and live in Moscow.
would not have dared to consider, with a full set with all the 'flesh-