Isaak Ilyich Levitan

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Self-Portrait (1880)

Isaac Ilich Levitan ( Russian Исаак Ильич Левитан ., Scientific transliteration Isaak Levitan Il'ič ; born August 18 . Jul / the thirtieth August  1860 greg. Close Wirballen / Lithuania (then Russia ), † July 22 jul. / 4 August  1900 greg. In Moscow ) was one of the most important Russian painters of realism . Sometimes he is also known by his Yiddish name Jitzchak Levitan, in English spelling Yitzchak Levitan. Lewitan's very influential work consists of more than a thousand paintings.

Life

Levitan was born to impoverished Jewish parents. His father was a foreign language teacher and taught in private homes, but was occasionally forced to do other jobs. Despite the depressing material circumstances, there was no lack of an educated and intellectual atmosphere in the family that was conducive to Lewitan's spiritual development.

At the end of the 1960s the family moved to Moscow , where Levitan enrolled at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in September 1873, where his older brother Awel (Adolf) had been studying for two years. After spending a year in the copier class, he switched to the naturalism class and soon the landscape painting class . Levitan's teachers were Alexei Savrasov , who had the greatest influence on him, Vasily Perov and Vasily Polenov . In recognition of his rapid progress, Levitan received a box of paints and two dozen brushes.

Lewitan's mother died in 1875, and so did his father two years later. Already during his father's serious illness ( typhus ) it became apparent that the family would fall into even greater poverty. Lewitan received a scholarship due to his great talent and his advanced development and was able to stay at the school. This time, when he occasionally stayed with friends and had to spend some nights in the school classrooms, was probably the hardest of his life.

In 1877, Lewitan's works were exhibited for the first time and received very positively by the press. When mass deportations of Jews from the tsarist cities were carried out in May 1879, Levitan also had to leave Moscow. Thanks to the efforts of influential art experts, he was soon able to return to Moscow.

In 1880 the famous millionaire and art collector Pavel Tretyakov bought Levitan's painting Autumn Day. Sokolniki (1879). From 1884 Levitan took part in a traveling exhibition, the " Peredwischniki ". During his studies at the Moscow painting school, he made the acquaintance of the painter Mikhail Chekhov with his brother, the writer Anton Chekhov , who became his closest friend. Levitan was often a guest of Chekhov and apparently in love with his sister Maria Chekhova.

Isaak Levitan, Portrait by Serow (1893)

He worked with the Chekhov brothers for the illustrated Moskva , in the early 1880s he illustrated an edition of the Kremlin by M. Fabrizius. In 1885 and 1886 he worked with Konstantin Korowin on the scenery for performances at SM Mamontew's private opera.

With very few exceptions, Levitan only painted non-urban landscapes. A lost exception, mentioned by Nesterow, is a view of the Simonowkloster , like the already mentioned illustrations of the Kremlin. Gifted with a unique deep feeling for the quiet grandeur and lyrical charm of Russian nature, Levitan caught the mood of the landscape . This term, which was intended to express the partly spiritual effect of nature on the human psyche and which was very popular in Russia at the end of the 19th century, became decisive for Levitan's work.

In 1889, Sergei Timofejewitsch Morozov (1860–1944), a famous art collector and patron, provided Levitan with a studio in Moscow's Bolshoy Trechswjatitelskij Street (Russian: Большой Трехсвятитекльский переулокий переульский переульский переулокльский переулокиский

Birch grove (Берёзовая роща) from 1889. In 2012, the grove had to give way to the villa of Russian Prime Minister Medvedev .

He spent the summer of 1890 in Jurjewez and, in addition to making numerous pictures, wrote an essay The View of the Krivoski Monastery . This became the basis for one of his most influential pictures, The Silent Monastery . This painting, which expresses Levitan's deep reflections on the life of an artist, made a deep impression on Anton Chekhov.

In 1897, when he was already world-famous (his work was also exhibited in the Munich Secession ), a serious heart condition was diagnosed. In the same year he was admitted to the Academy of Arts and began to teach, in 1898 he was already the head of the landscape painting studio at his university.

In 1900, the year he died, he met Chekhov for the last time in the Crimea .

The poet of classical modernism Rainer Maria Rilke is one of his admirers in Germany . The personal meeting he wanted on his trip to Russia in 1900 did not take place because Levitan died unexpectedly.

Isaak Ilyich Levitan was first buried in the Jewish cemetery Dorogomilow, but in 1941 he was reburied in the Novodevichy cemetery , near the Chekhov necropolis.

The Russian writer Konstantin Paustowski dedicated the story Isaak Lewitan to him , which has also been available in German translation since 1969.

exhibition

  • 2010/2011: On the occasion of the painter's 150th birthday, an exhibition with the most famous paintings from Russian museums took place in the Tretyakov Gallery on Krimsky Wal in Moscow.

Eponyms

In 1991 the asteroid (3566) Levitan was named after him.

Works (selection)

Above Eternal Rest (1894)
  • 1879 autumn day. Sokolniki
  • 1892 Vladimirka (A road that leads to Siberia and was used by those exiled there.)
  • 1894 Over eternal rest
  • 1897 autumn - flood
  • 1898 sunny day
  • 1899 haystack. dusk

literature

  • Alfried Nehring: ISAAK LEWITAN evening bells on the Volga • Russian artist colonies around 1900 , [Bild-Biographie] 2017 (German), self-published, linen with colored dust jacket, 88 pages, 110 colored illustrations, A4 format, ISBN 978-3-941 -064-66-9 .
  • AA Fyodorow-Dawidow: Isaak Ilyich Lewitan. Schisn i twortschestwo [Life and Work], 2 volumes, Moscow 1966 (Russian).
  • WA Petrov: II Levitan , St. Petersburg 1992 (Russian).
  • Gertrud Pickhan : mood landscape . In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 5: Pr-Sy. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2014, ISBN 978-3-476-02505-0 , pp. 597-600.

Web links

Commons : Isaac Levitan  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Judaism in Moscow: Five Cultural and Historical Highlights" . In: "Russia beyond the headlines", September 13, 2015. Accessed October 12, 2015.
  2. Konstantin Paustowski : Am Kai von Neapel, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-596-25856-1 (it contains the story Isaak Lewitan )
  3. FAZ of February 3, 2011, page 34: Der Naturflüsterer: Isaak Lewitan.
  4. Minor Planet Circ. 24120