Margarita Voloshin

Margarita Voloshin around 1950

Margarita Wassiljewna Woloschin-Sabaschnikow ( Russian Маргарита Васильевна Сабашникова / Margarita Wassiljewna Sabaschnikowa; born January 31, 1882 in Moscow ; † November 2, 1973 in Stuttgart ) was a Russian painter and writer. In her early years she made a name for herself mainly as a portrait painter of Russian intellectuals, while in the second half of her life she mainly developed religious motifs. As a writer, she became known for her autobiography The Green Snake .

Life

Childhood and youth

Margarita Voloshin-Sabashnikov was born on January 31, 1882 as the daughter of the Moscow merchant family Sabashnikov , who belonged to the educated, progressive bourgeoisie . She spent part of her childhood in her family's parents' house, part with her grandmother and part on a parental estate . However, her father was not very successful as a merchant, which is why the family house had to be sold. Then, at the age of ten, she went abroad with her mother, her siblings and two tutors , where she received a comprehensive education through her various stays in Paris , Lausanne , Belgium and Italy . Her interest in art and culture was aroused early on. After three years back in Russia , she received lessons in music and literature and soon afterwards her first professional lessons from the painter Abram Archipow .

After graduating from high school, Margarita Sabaschnikow went to St. Petersburg to work in the studio of the painter Ilya Repin . She questioned his naturalistic painting: “Does it make sense to repeat what is already there? A completely different art has to emerge that reveals an unprecedented world. ”With her questions, she turned to the then old Lev Tolstoy (his wife and mother were friends), from whom she hoped for advice. He recommended that she pursue art as a leisure activity and otherwise lead the life of a farmer's wife. Despite this shocking statement, Sabashnikov did not allow himself to be dissuaded from her chosen path. The once raised questions of the problems of art, the social order and the position of painting continued to occupy her and ultimately led her to deep questions about the meaning of life in general.

Early adulthood

M. Voloshin at a young age, self-portrait

Margarita Sabaschnikow dealt with the analogy of the color spectrum and the tone scale , with Goethe's theory of colors and again and again with the question of the meaning of culture and life, which for her during these years ran without reason or direction. Her serious engagement with the issues of existence and materialism led her to Darwin and Haeckel and from there to Du Bois-Reymond's Limits to the Knowledge of Nature . She couldn't find answers to her questions. Only in the objective absolute of mathematics did Sabashnikov find support.

The painter Mussatov encouraged her to submit two of her portraits to the Moscow Painters exhibition . It had her first resounding success. Participation in the World of Art exhibition in St. Petersburg and Paris followed. At an evening party in the house of the art collector Sergei Shchukin , she met the poet and painter Maximilian Voloshin . She got into the circles of the Russian symbolists around Andrei Bely , Valeri Brjussow , Konstantin Balmont and others. In 1903 she traveled to Paris again. There she had the opportunity to work in the studio of a painter friend who was friends. Maximilian Woloschin, also in Paris, introduced her to the Parisian artistic community, where she met Odilon Redon .

During her renewed stay abroad in Western Europe in 1904/05, the revolution broke out in Russia , which temporarily prevented Margarita Sabashnikov from returning. During this time she got to know Rudolf Steiner and his worldview. Here she found answers to her life questions, traveled to many of his lectures in various European cities and finally got to know him personally.

In 1906 she married Maximilian Woloschin. After a short stay in Koktebel , on the north coast of the Crimea , they intended to move to Munich . The encounter with the poet Vyacheslav Ivanov in St. Petersburg, who for years meant a world in which she found her spiritual home, ruined this project. “In Vyacheslav Ivanov's worldview, the Greek experience of spirituality in nature is united with Christianity. In this respect he was higher for me than Nietzsche , whose birth of the tragedy from the spirit of music had a decisive effect on me. [...] that I should get to know him soon meant a breathtaking prospect for me "

Her growing fame and her husband's many contacts quickly enabled her to join the St. Petersburg artistic community. They met the poet Alexei Remisow , the painter Konstantin Somow , whom they already knew from Paris, the philosopher Nikolai Berdjajew and the writer Alexander Blok . Portraits of Alexei Remisow and Michail Kuzmin , drawn by Voloshin in charcoal, were ordered from an art magazine . Ivanov strongly encouraged her literary attempts and encouraged them to perform them publicly. This collaboration developed an ambivalent love affair, which inevitably became a disruptive factor in their marriage. During a stay in Berlin in 1908, she decided to stay in Germany for the time being to get some clarity about her private life.

In the following time Margarita Voloshin traveled through Europe to hear Rudolf Steiner's lectures, which he gave in various cities. To be close to Vyacheslav Ivanov , she finally returned to St. Petersburg. To her disappointment, however, he married his stepdaughter Wera. Voloshin then withdrew from all social encounters, lived for himself in her studio, had little contact with the outside world. She began an apprenticeship with the famous icon painter Tjulin and met the composer Nikolai Medtner , of whom she painted a portrait. She expanded her literary activities by translating Meister Eckhart's works into Russian. At first she did not think about publication , but accepted Musaget's offer to publish. A small inheritance gave her greater independence, which revived her willingness to travel. She rented a studio in Paris, wanted to spend the winter in Rome, but then stayed in Munich. Another time she interrupted her return trip from Prague to Paris and stayed in Stuttgart to read a certain book about the mystics that she needed for the preface to her Eckhart translation. “My restless way of life was only a reflection of my inner state. I was already twenty-eight years old, was recognized as a poet and painter, and yet I didn't know my way. "

Middle age

In 1911 Margarita Woloschin chose Munich as her place of residence because she wanted to be close to Rudolf Steiner's surroundings. In these circles she met Count Otto von Lerchenfeld , Christian Morgenstern , Albert Steffen and others. She interrupted work on her triptych Three Victims in March 1911 due to a serious illness of her mother to go to Moscow. But she only stayed there for a few days. She did not want to miss Steiner's lecture series in Helsingfors . An adequate building was to be built in Munich for Steiner's Mystery Dramas and other cultural events of the anthroposophical movement. Voloshin was offered to set up her studio in it. But she refused. Overall, the plans for the construction were not approved. The project was to start soon after in Switzerland.

When construction of the first Goetheanum began in Dornach in 1914 , Margarita Woloschin initially worked as a carver with many other artists from different countries. It was up to them to carve the capitals of the many columns that supported the double dome of the building, which was made entirely of wood. Later she was involved in the ceiling paintings of the small dome. “Life in Dornach was such that we were always involved in joint work. The day passed with carving, painting, practicing and rehearsing for eurythmy and individual scenes from the Faust performance . ... "

The First World War broke out in the summer . Money transfers from Russia became increasingly scarce, which led her husband Maximilian to go to Paris as a journalist. It should be her last farewell. After finishing her work on the dome, Voloshin drove back to Russia in 1917 and fell into the chaos of the revolution . Together with Bely and Ivanov, she taught workers and peasants in art and literature. She became an employee in the People's Commissariat for Theater and Education . But she could not work productively because the constantly changing authorities lacked the responsibilities and the essentials for daily life. After suffering from severe typhoid fever in 1920, she gave painting lessons at a school that had just been founded for gifted orphans. This initiative also failed because of the lack of bureaucratic experience of a new administration that was emerging.

In St. Petersburg she was in the Commissariat of Foreign offered a job in the Library for Foreign Literature, which was soon canceled out due to the same regulatory shortcomings. Back in Moscow, Voloshin was able to produce a series of portrait drawings of well-known personalities, including Michael Chekhov , for a publisher . She later met him more often in Stuttgart, Berlin and on the Ammersee.

In August 1922 she received the long-requested permit to leave the Netherlands, from where she continued to Dornach. Shortly before her departure, she received the news of the burning Goetheanum. Because of political complications between Switzerland and Russia, she had to leave Switzerland again after six months. She was able to travel to Germany through an invitation from the Lory Maier-Smits family and in 1924 she moved to Einsingen near Ulm. Her lung disease flared up again, whereupon her host family made it possible for her to stay in a Stuttgart clinic. From then on, Stuttgart was to become her new home.

Second half of life

Voloshin's autobiography The Green Snake extends to her move to Stuttgart. A sequel did not seem planned at first. Notes and records from her estate suggest, however, that as she got older she did tend to have a second volume. The fact that it did not come to this is ascribed to her reduced powers, which she only wanted to use for painting, her actual task.

Growing up with the Russian Orthodox rites and the closeness to religion at home and upbringing that was already experienced as a child, these experiences are now reflected in a new creative phase. With great determination she devoted herself to Christian subjects. In the second half of the 1920s, a series of pictures with biblical motifs were created. She got to know the Christian community founded in 1922 and painted altarpieces for the new congregations.

During a stay in Freiburg , the unforeseen opportunity arose to go on a trip to Dornach. Here she was able to meet many friends who had not been seen for a long time. In the years that followed she had several opportunities to go to Dornach and in the 1930s she even had her own studio near the Goetheanum. In Stuttgart she gave painting courses, including one for teachers at the newly founded Waldorf School . From this activity the idea arose to found a painting school with a proper curriculum . Premises were offered, teachers for the lessons were available. After a long struggle, however, Voloshin decided on her artistic path.

A few years later, some of her pictures were destroyed as degenerate . The political situation became more and more oppressive and they saw the takeover of power by the National Socialists as the beginning of a "dark age". The reports from Russia were no less dire. Her friends in St. Petersburg and Moscow were either dead or arrested and interned in camps. In 1932 she received news of the death of her husband Maximilian Voloshin, who had meanwhile been married to Maria Stepanovna Sabolotskaya and whom she had not seen since 1914. Her mother died a year later.

Margarita Voloshin was not of a sedentary nature even in her later years. She still enjoyed traveling a lot and according to her possibilities. She did it to give courses, to give lectures or to attend conferences. At the age of 56 she made a trip to the places of her childhood and youth and drove via Rome to Sicily. It was their last big venture.

At the end of the 1930s, Voloshin was given the choice of either returning to Russia or being sent to an internment camp. At the last minute, friends obtained legalization of their further stay for them under the condition of regular reporting to the Gestapo . At the beginning of the air raids on Stuttgart she found shelter with others in a village in the northern Black Forest, where she began to work on her autobiography. Towards the end of the war, she had to fear arrest again because of her Russian passport. Friends took her in and gave her shelter. The painter spent the winter of 1945/46 in Stuttgart again.

In the post-war years, Margarita Woloschin gave courses at the anthroposophical teachers' seminar, gave lectures at the eurythmy school, took part in professional orientation courses and told the children at school. In addition, she coped with the daily flow of visitors. They sought her advice and sympathy, wanted to know about her past events and asked her to take part in various committees and meetings in an advisory capacity.

Two years after her seventieth birthday, her autobiography was published by the Deutsche Verlagsanstalt . Her other writing activities flowed into biographical accounts of Michael Chekhov, Mikhail Lomonossow , Lev Tolstoy, Georg von Albrecht and many others. Nevertheless, her actual field of activity was painting. Even in old age she painted daily, provided that the many obligations, visitors and phases of illness allowed it. “I feel that with the gradual disappearance of the sense of touch from both hands, which have always been such good servants to me, like two helping beings who had a direct connection to the heart and who knew better than I what had to happen [...] my career to come to an end as a painter. ”This statement by the artist from her late 80s is indicative of the beginning decline in her physical strength. There was also a decrease in her hearing and eyesight. Moving to an old people's home had become inevitable. Your fear "... now my muse will run away from me for good" did not come true. Here, too, an easel dominated her room. She could no longer complete her last great work, Orpheus .

In November 1972 the exhibition Russian Realism 1850–1900 was opened in Baden-Baden . She encountered many pictures by artists that Voloshin knew from her early days as a young painter. Margarita Vasilyevna Voloshin-Sabashnikov died a year later on November 2, 1973.

plant

painting

Margarita Woloschin was a portrait painter above all and especially in the first half of her work. In addition to people around her, she portrayed herself and many personalities from cultural life such as Lev Tolstoy , Michael Chekhov , Michael Bauer and Rudolf Steiner. She did a lot of commissioned work and her pictures have been acquired by numerous museums. They can still be seen here and there in Moscow, Astrakhan and Koktebel . Most of her works from this period are lost due to the turmoil of the revolution and the world wars.

Part of the painterly work from the second half of her life, above all religious motifs, altarpieces, fairy tale depictions, landscapes and portraits have been partially preserved. They are scattered privately, in various churches of the Christian Community and in the artist's estate. These pictures, often painted with vegetable colors, were seen as a new religious painting at that time, the stylization in the representation compared with the strict world of icon painting.

Voloshin always saw her work as an examination of three-dimensional space and color as the fourth dimension. She wanted to feel the viewer not only in front of the picture, but also in it. He should be both an observer and a participant in the creative process. Her unsteady restlessness, which took her to many different places in the course of her life, was also reflected in her painting. “She had an ingenious compositional talent that would have made a 19th century painter famous. She didn't use this chance. […] The sensation that her first pictures […] caused gave her every opportunity to advance on the road to fame. But [...] a fate unrest drove them on. […] Voloshin […] sometimes felt a slight reproach in her soul that she had not seized an opportunity to create a completely new art. But she did not let herself be distracted from a path that she wanted to go "

Her notes underline this path: “Always paint out of the mood; do not make a line without deciding it from the whole, deeply experienced. The thought content - or better: the experience - must become mood. Transforming the experience of feeling into color, into the movement of color, which becomes rhythm and finally form. The picture should appear as something unexpected. But the idea [...] must always be sensed as something essential, a whole. The composition should not be mathematically-architecturally determined in advance, as with the old masters, but should arise "

literature

Her memoirs of The Green Snake appeared in several editions. They not only represent a personal development story, but also describe in detail the panorama of an entire cultural epoch in Russia at the beginning of the last century. Above all, the elite of Russian intellectual life at the turn of the century (Tolstoy, Ivanov , Solovyov , Chaliapin and others) are brought closer to the reader. But also the anthroposophy around Rudolf Steiner, in which Voloshin found a spiritual home, is characterized in detail and shows the strangely ambiguous impression that Steiner made on many contemporaries of that time with his talent for vision and ingenuity. The green snake has been translated into many languages ​​and an expanded edition has been available since 2009.

In addition to her many stories and poems, the green snake was the highlight of her literary work. Voloshin saw the novel The Rain Bridge , which was completed in the 1930s, as a kind of forerunner of her memories. It had strong autobiographical traits and in the opinion of the author had become superfluous after the publication of her autobiography.

reception

Ilja Eefimowitsch Repin - Margarita Voloshin's teacher (self-portrait, 1878)

In 1955, Die Zeit paid tribute to Margarita Voloshin's literary work:

“… [This reading] not only means literary enjoyment, but also a remarkable increase in world knowledge. One such book is: Margarita Voloshin: The Green Snake. Life memories. But what makes her book so captivating, apart from the full content, is the mental agility with which this unusual woman has seen and described the events and figures of her life. And there are no insignificant figures [...] who have crossed their path. Above all the elite of Russian cultural life before and around the turn of the century: the painter Ilya Repin (the author's teacher), Leo Tolstoy , Ivanov , Solovyov , Berdjajew , Chalyapin , Stanislavsky , Diaghilew - representatives of that Russian spirituality, whose existence and importance in the bourgeois Germany was all too inadequately known and, conversely, in whose circles the certain provincial German academic pride was so gladly mocked. All these striking phenomena come close to the reader in a strikingly immediate way. The reports on the conditions in Russia shortly after the revolution are also very exciting: how much magnificent human substance was still squandered, devastated and suffocated. At that time, Margarita Woloschin traveled home from Switzerland on one of the trains in which Ludendorff took Lenin and his comrades across Germany to Russia, in order to finally plunge the country into discord, turmoil and misery. "

Every room in which Voloshin lived soon took on its distinctive peculiarities. Central European residential ideals and bourgeoisie could not thrive in their vicinity. The painter lived a Spartan life. Their existence depended on the few portraits and occasional painting courses. About this Kurt Wistinghausen:

“Her room was at the same time a studio and mostly also a kitchen. The obligatory tea was lovingly brewed and served in the midst of painting paper, palettes, pictures and books that were lying around in an ingenious mess. [...] The hostess herself joked about her 'chaos' and said that for the first time in the West, when she returned home, her coat always fell to the ground because there was no one left to take it from her shoulders and take care of it - like that In her youth and the affluent circumstances in her parents' home she had been very used to having a servant jump over at once. […] Now in the emigration, the artist had neither a servant spirit nor money. However: it was not for a moment that seriously preoccupied her. "

Publications

• Margarita Voloshin: The Green Snake . Free Spiritual Life Publishing House , Stuttgart 1954, 1982, 2009
• Margarita Woloschin: Green Snake , Floris Books, Edinburgh 2010

literature

• Ruth Moering, Dorothea Rapp, Rosemarie Wermbter: Margarita Woloschin-Leben und Werk , Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart 1982

Web links

• Literature by and about Margarita Woloschin in the catalog of the German National Library
• Thoughtful Review - Margarita Voloshin's Memoirs , Die Zeit , March 17, 1955
• Biography of the Kulturimpuls Foundation
• Motives v. M. Voloshin

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Margarita Voloshin: The green snake . Stuttgart 1982, p. 11
2. ↑ M. Voloshin: The green snake . P. 101
3. ↑ M. Voloshin: The green snake . P. 106
4. ↑ M. Voloshin, The Green Snake . P. 111
5. ↑ M. Voloshin: The green snake . P. 120
6. ↑ M. Voloshin: The green snake . P. 142
7. ↑ M. Voloshin: The green snake . P. 166
8. ↑ M. Voloshin: The green snake . P. 171.
9. ↑ M. Voloshin: The green snake . P. 172.
10. ↑ M. Voloshin: The green snake . P. 199
11. ↑ M. Voloshin: The green snake . P. 223
12. ↑ M. Voloshin: The green snake . P. 230
13. ↑ M. Voloshin: The green snake . P. 270
14. ↑ M. Voloshin: The green snake . P. 294
15. ↑ M. Voloshin: The green snake . P. 300
16. ↑ M. Voloshin: The green snake . P. 338
17. ↑ M. Voloshin: The green snake . Pp. 361/362
18. ↑ Wermbter / Möhring / Rapp, Margarita Woloschin-Leben und Werk , p. 29
19. ↑ ^{a b} Wermbter / Möhring / Rapp, Margarita Woloschin-Leben und Werk , p. 36
20. ↑ Wermbter / Möhring / Rapp, Margarita Woloschin-Leben und Werk , p. 40
21. ↑ ^{a b} biography of the Kulturimpuls Foundation
22. ↑ Wermbter / Möhring / Rapp, Margarita Woloschin-Leben und Werk , p. 41
23. ↑ Wermbter / Möhring / Rapp, Margarita Woloschin-Leben und Werk , p. 45
24. ↑ Wermbter / Möhring / Rapp, Margarita Woloschin-Leben und Werk , p. 46
25. ↑ ^{a b} Wermbter / Möhring / Rapp, Margarita Woloschin-Leben und Werk , p. 52
26. ↑ Wermbter / Möhring / Rapp, Margarita Woloschin-Leben und Werk , p. 54
27. ↑ ^{a b} Evelies Schmidt: Margarita Woloschin - Portätkunst - Gemalt und Geschritten In: a tempo , Stuttgart 11/2009 (pdf.)  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )
28. ↑ Wermbter / Möhring / Rapp: Margarita Voloshin-life and work . Catalog raisonné, p. 172
29. ↑ Wermbter / Möhring / Rapp, Margarita Woloschin-Leben und Werk , p. 159
30. ↑ Dorothea Rapp in: Wermbter / Möhring / Rapp Margarita Voloshin-life and work . P. 164
31. ^ From the notes of Margarita Woloschins, in: Wermbter / Möhring / Rapp, Margarita Woloschin-Leben und Werk . P.56
32. ↑ ^{a b} Thoughtful retrospect - Margarita Voloshin's memories Die Zeit , March 17, 1955
33. ↑ Wermbter / Möhring / Rapp, Margarita Woloschin-Leben und Werk , p. 49
34. ↑ Kurt v. Wistinghausen, Margarita Sabaschnikow-Woloschin † . In: Die Christengemeinschaft 12/1973