Leonid Ossipowitsch Pasternak

Self-portrait with his wife

Portrait, 1923 ( Lovis Corinth )

Leonid Pasternak ( Russian Леонид Осипович Пастернак ; born March 22 ^{. Jul} / 3. April  1862 ^greg. In Odessa , †  31 May 1945 in Oxford ) was a Russian painter .

Life

Pasternak was born in the family of a Jewish innkeeper. He was the sixth and youngest child in the family. He started drawing very early, but his family discouraged him, fearing that his drawing would hinder his studies. His first sponsor was the local street cleaning company, who started buying Pasternak's art when Leonid was seven years old.

From 1881 to 1885 Leonid studied at Moscow University , first medicine , then law . Eventually he decided to devote himself to the arts and enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich , where he graduated in 1887. He returned to Russia, served the mandatory two years in the army (artillery regiment), and in 1889 began a career as a professional painter.

The beginning of his career was very successful. The first picture he exhibited was bought by Pavel Tretyakov , the most important art patron in Russia at the time. He soon became a popular painter, a member of the so-called Polenov Circle , which included Valentin Serow , Isaak Lewitan , Michail Nesterow and Konstantin Korowin . In 1889 he married an outstanding pianist of the time, Rosalinda Kaufman .

Leonid Pasternak was one of the first Russian painters to call himself a Post-Impressionist . In Russia of the 1880s and 1890s this was new and attracted attention. Leonid was also a member of the Peredwischniki and the Russian artists' association Mir Iskusstva . He was a friend of Lev Tolstoy , spent several months in Yasnaya Polyana and painted various portraits of the great writer, also illustrated his novels War and Peace and Resurrection . For his illustrations of Tolstoy's novels he was awarded a medal at the World Exhibition in Paris (1900) .

Pasternak was elected a member of the Imperial Art Academy (1905) and also taught at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture .

When Pasternak had to undergo an eye operation in 1921, it was carried out in Berlin. He traveled there with his wife and two daughters and left his sons Boris and Alexander in Russia. After the operation, he decided not to return to Russia and stayed in Berlin until 1938. From there he fled to Great Britain from the Nazis. He died on May 31, 1945 in Oxford.

Web links

Commons : Leonid Pasternak  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Biography , Krugosvet