Pavel Nikolayevich Filonov
Pavel Filonov ( Russian Павел Николаевич Филонов , scientific. Transliteration Pavel Nikolaevich Filonov * Dec. 27, 1882 . Jul / 8. January 1883 greg. In Moscow , † 3. December 1941 in Leningrad ) was a Russian painter , art historian and poet , which can be assigned to the Russian avant-garde . Filonov is considered a unique figure within the Russian avant-garde due to his very individual work. Since almost his entire oeuvre is in the possession of the Russian museum and the latter was unable to exhibit it for decades due to the political situation, his work was only recognized in art history from the late 1970s to the early 1980s.
Life
Youth and education
Pavel Filonov was born in Moscow in 1883 into a working class family. His father died in December 1887. His childhood was marked by poverty.
Pavel Filonov attended a municipal school in Moscow from 1894 to 1896, from which he graduated with honors. In the summer of 1896, after the death of his mother, Filonov moved with his three sisters and his grandmother to the family of his sister Alexander Nikolaevna in Saint Petersburg . From 1896 he attended the workshop for painting and painting at the school of the Society for the Promotion of the Arts , where he completed his training in 1901 with a diploma as a painter and decorator. During his training, he worked as a painter from 1897 to 1902. He worked on the painting of apartments and the restoration of historical wall and ceiling paintings. In 1898 Filonov attended evening courses in drawing at the Society for the Promotion of the Arts school.
After a first failed attempt to be admitted to the Academy of Arts , he studied from 1903 to 1908 in the private studio of the artist Lew Dmitrijew-Kawkasski and then attended the Academy of as a guest auditor (with Hugo Salemann , Wassili Sawinski , Grigori Mjassojedow and Jan Ciągliński ) Arts, which he left without a degree in autumn 1910. Filonov later said that apart from Ciągliński, all professors "boycotted" him. On February 16, 1910, he and other artists founded the Youth League in Saint Petersburg. In March 1910 he exhibited together with other members of the Bund der Jugend , Michail Larionow , Natalija Goncharova , Ilya Maschkow , Evsejew , Hans Matvejs , Eduard Spandikow , Iosif Schkolnik and Valentin Bystrenin at the painting exhibition of the artists' association "Bund der Jugend" . At the end of November 1910 Filonow traveled to Helsinki with Eduard Spandikow, Iosif Schkolnik and Saweli Schleifer and visited Finnish avant-garde artists.
First Filonov was still looking for further suggestions that he collected on various trips - on the Volga as far as Astrakhan , on the Sea to Baku and Batumi , on a pilgrimage through Konstantin Opel to Palestine (there seems to be evidence that he in 1908 Jerusalem was ), and finally in 1912 on a six-month round trip through Germany to Italy and France, visited Rome and many other Italian cities as well as Lyon and Paris - here on long stretches on foot where he painted some pictures without feeling inspired by the modernism there .
Filonov joined the "Bund der Jugend" ( Общество художников "Союз молодёжи" ) as a founding member from 1910 to 1914 , a Petersburg artists' association initiated and led by Jelena Guro and Mikhail Matjuschin , in whose exhibitions some of the Art Nouveau artists participated and. He himself took part in three exhibitions organized by the group, published manifestos and wrote alogical verses. During this time he has already created a number of important works (see below). "Every piece of the painting is a part of life rushing past, which changes its content every moment, and therefore it cannot bear the yoke of naming."
An examination of the points of contact between Filonov's art and the symbolists, above all the clear guidance of a line by Wrubel , but also the influences of James Ensor , Odilon Redon or Jan Toorop, in which a subjective impulse preceded each act of painting, is still pending . However, he probably derived from symbolism the need to change proportions in order to get to the core of the external world of appearances.
On March 11, 1912, his work was shown in Moscow at an exhibition of the same name with the artist group Eselsschwanz . Already towards the end of this year Filonow wrote the essay "Canon and Law", in which the principles of the analytical art were presented for the first time. “Through our teaching we have included life as such in painting, and it is clear that all further conclusions and discoveries will only proceed from it, because everything starts from life and outside of life there is not even emptiness; from now on the people in the paintings will live, grow, speak and think, and they will transform themselves into all the secrets of the great and poor human life, present and future, whose roots are in us and the eternal source as well. "1913 he designed the quite large stage sets for the tragedy "Vladimir Mayakovsky", in which the important poet Mayakovsky himself continued to play the leading role.
In the years 1914 to 1915 he created illustrations for futuristic books, including for the anthology "Roaring Parnass" for the publication of Iwan Puni and Mikhail Matjuschin as well as the volume of poetry by Velimir Khlebnikow with Filonov, many approaches with regard to the Latvian developments in painting with real text images, on which words are graphically isolated and converted into independent symbols.
At this time an original but short-lived style of Cubo-Futurism arose in the Russian avant-garde based on the western art movements of Futurism from Italy with the welcome of urbanism "machine civilization" and Cubism from France with the beginnings in the Parisian "Salon of the Independents". This style can be seen in the drawing Three Figures . But with him the surface does not dominate, the construction is based on the line. This creates a certain dynamic in the composition, which is supported by the posture of the figures.
Filonov's analytical painting, however, strove towards the “plant-like-organic” as well as “mystical-cosmic”. The color and shape of the object are subordinate to the ›seeing eye‹. The 'knowing eye' discovers hidden processes on the basis of its intuition, and the artist paints them abstractly as 'form to be invented', which the painter projects into the picture at the same time in 'series of transformation processes'.
Analytical art
His first thoughts on the ongoing field of analytical art, from atomic analysis to the synthesis of macrostructures, began at this time. With the establishment of a so-called “Intimate Workshop of Painters and Draftsmen“ Made Pictures ”” as an association of like-minded people who published a manifest of the same name as a printed leaflet in March 1914, the painter took the first steps in his very own art direction. One of his few friends was the futuristic poet and musician Alexej Krutschonych , who much later called Filonov a “witness to the invisible” in his nightly reputation. In March 1915 his own volume "Song of the Worldwide Bloom" with transrational poems or as rhythmic prose and his own illustrations were published by the publishing house "Schurawl" in St. Petersburg as "Hymn book from the world plant". In the same year Filonow wrote the theoretical manifesto "Made Pictures".
From autumn 1916 to the beginning of 1918 (February Revolution) he had to do military service on the Romanian front. In 1918 he returned to Petrograd and in May-June 1919 took part in the “First State Free Exhibition of Artistic Works” in the Winter Palace , where he showed the 22 paintings cycle “Introduction to World Heritage”.
In 1922 Filonov took part in the exhibition “Unification of New Directions in Art” in the Museum of Artistic Culture - “Filonov, together with other artists, showed all of his work, starting with his academic studies. Later he didn’t exhibit it . ”The First Russian Art Exhibition in Berlin in 1922 showed his“ Composition ”, while other works could be seen at the Fifth Exhibition of the“ Artists' Community ”in Petrograd .
From 1923 he was a member of the GINChUK , which was under the direction of Kazimir Malevich . Filonov temporarily headed the Department of General Ideology there. The artist's research program was retained: “The basis of teaching fine arts according to the principle of pure analysis, as the highest level of creativity. System> World Heritage ". During this time he also maintained contacts with scientists and the like. a. the physicist Jakow Frenkel and a well-known Russian geneticist R. Berg.
In 1925 he founded the artist group “Masters of Analytical Art” ( мастера аналитического искусства ), which was very popular but was not officially recognized until 1927. In the fall of 1925, a three-day exhibition of the group's work took place in the Academy of Arts. Then on April 17, 1927 in the Leningrad House of the Press an “Exhibition of the Masters of Analytical Art. The Folonow School ”. On November 1st, Filonov is represented in an exhibition of the latest art movements in the Russian Museum. According to Filonov's basic concept: "The representation of the object not through its external, visible form, but rather through the visualization of the internal functions and processes that take place in the object." (To be shown). He recommended "not large but small brushes" to "literally 'make' 'every atom". In the 'living heads' with their exposed cell structure, organic components of humans are represented - a procedure that is used in bionics a few decades later . Or “So, for example, if you only see the trunk, the branches, leaves and flowers, let's say of an apple tree, you can still know at the same time [...] how the root threads take up the sap from the soil and soak it up, how these sap through the Cells of the wood rise up, as they are distributed in constant reaction to light and heat, are reworked and transformed into the atomistic structure of the trunk and branches, into green leaves, into white-red flowers […] ”The group of followers functioned officially the analytical art then still active until 1932, meeting in Filonov's studio there but was still up to his death in the 1941st
Late years of life
From autumn 1929 to December 1930, his planned solo exhibition was set up in the State Russian Museum, but ultimately not opened to the public. After that, he was prevented from working and his works could only be seen in a very limited way in a few exhibitions that reflected the complexity of the relationship between abstraction and figuration. His multi-layered and transitory images, even in their abstraction, are only accessible to a narrow circle of followers.
Pavel Filonov died in December 1941 at Karpovka 19, where he had lived and worked since 1919, starved and with pneumonia during the siege of Leningrad in World War II. When he was found shortly before at the attic window above his studio in the house of the writers, where he was on night watch for his pictures, he said that this was not a waste of time. “In the meantime I am creating a new work. It will survive all of us. "
After the artist's death, practically all of his work was in his sister's house for a long time. Later she donated a few pictures in 1977 to the State Russian Museum , where this collection is now concentrated. A major exhibition in Leningrad was not rescheduled until 1988, and after a stopover in Moscow also at the Center Pompidou in Paris and at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf .
Exhibitions (selection)
- 1910–1012 Participation in three exhibitions of the artist group “Bund der Jugend” ( Общество художников “Союз молодёжи” ) in St. Petersburg
- April – June 1919 First state free exhibition of works of art (painters of all kinds) in the Winter Palace, Petrograd
- 1922 Exhibition of the Association of New Directions in Art at the Museum of Artistic Culture in Petrograd
- October – December 1922 First Russian art exhibition Первая выставка русского искусства (in the rooms of the Van Diemen Gallery), Berlin
- August – September 1967 Pavel Finolow 1883–1941 in Novosibirsk
- April 1977 Russian and Soviet Painting , The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
- October – November 1977 Works from the Costakis Collection , Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf
- May – November 1979 Paris - Moscou 1900–1930 , Center Pompidou , Paris
- July 1980 The Avant-Garde in Russia 1910–1939. New Perspectives , Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden , Washington
- October – December 1982 Art and Revolution , Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo
- December 1984 - May 1985 Russian and Soviet art in Düsseldorf
- March 1989 Avanguardia russa , Palazzo Reale (Milan)
- September – November 1990 Pawel Filonow and his school , Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (before February – April 1990 in the Center Pompidou - Musée National d'Art Moderne)
- September 28 to November 13, 2006 Filonov: The splitting of the soul atom in the head , St. Petersburg (in the corpus Benois of the Russian Museum)
- June 10 to September 18, 2011 Pavel Filonov. Vene avangard ja järgnenu (Pavel Filonov. The Russian Avant-Garde and Afterwards), Kumu , Tallinn
Exhibition catalogs
- Russian Павел Филонов Pawel Filonow (painting, graphics) from the collection of the City Russian Museum, “Aurora” publishing house, Leningrad, 1988 ISBN 5-7300-0123-1 .
- Jürgen Harten and Jewgenija Petrowa: Pawel Filonow and his school, Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf September 15 - November 11, 1990, DuMont Buchverlag Cologne, 1990, ISBN 3-7701-2634-3 .
Works (selection)
Since Filonov did not want to sell his work, but collected it for a comprehensive exhibition of analytical art , the largest collection of his approx. 400 works is now in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg and in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Only a selection of works that relate to the text above is listed here (see also web links).
1907: landscape. Wind ( Russian Пейзаж. Ветер ), oil on cardboard (20.5 × 30.5 cm)
1910: Heads ( Russian Головы ), oil on cardboard (28.5 × 47.5 cm)
1912: Ships ( Russian Корабли ), watercolor on paper (58.6 × 65.5 cm)
1912-1913
- Man and woman ( Russian Мужчина и Женщина ), watercolor, brown ink, Indian ink, pen, brush on paper (31 × 23.3 cm)
- East and West ( Russian Восток и Запад ), oil, tempera, gouache on paper (38.5 × 42 cm)
- West and East ( Russian Запад и Восток ), oil, tempera, gouache on paper (39.5 × 46 cm)
1913
- Children in Grenoble ( Russian Мальчики в Гренобле ), graphite drawing with watercolors on paper (18.2 × 10.5 cm)
- Italian fishermen ( Russian Итальянские рыбаки ), graphite drawing with watercolors on paper (20.2 × 15.3 cm)
- French worker ( Russian Французский рабочий ), graphite drawing with watercolors on paper (16.5 × 16.4 cm)
- The Feast of the Kings (( Russian Пир королей )), oil on canvas (175 × 215 cm)
- Conversion of the intellectual ( Russian Перерождение интеллигента ), brown ink, brush, watercolored graphite drawing on paper (23.5 × 37.6 cm)
1914: Peasant family (The Holy Family) ( Russian Крестьянская семья ), oil on canvas (159 × 128 cm)
1914-1915
- Three figures ( Russian Трое за столом ), oil on canvas (98 × 101 cm)
- Conversion of Man ( Russian Перерождение человека ), oil on canvas (116.5 × 154 cm)
1915: Flowers of the World Heritage Blossom ( Russian Цветы мирового расцвета ), oil on canvas (154.5 × 117 cm)
1918: The Flight into Egypt ( Russian Бегство в Египет ), oil on canvas (71.1 × 88.9 cm) (in the collection of Thomas P. Whitney)
1920–1922: Formula of the universe ( Russian Формула вселенной ), watercolor on paper (35.6 × 22.2 cm)
1925
- Man in the Universe ( Russian Человек в мире ), oil on paper and canvas (107 × 71.5 cm)
- Formula of Imperialism ( Russian Формула империализма ), oil on canvas (69.2 × 38.2 cm)
1926: Living head ( Russian Живая голова ), oil on paper and canvas (105 × 72.5 cm)
1930
- Animals ( Russian Животные ), oil on paper, (67.5 × 91 cm)
- People ( Russian Люди ), oil on canvas, (97 × 72.5 cm)
1940: Antlitze ( Russian Лики ), oil on paper (64 × 56 cm) (labeled on the back "started on May 17, 1040" # 333).
literature
- Pavel Filonov: "A Hero and His Fate" collected writings on art and revolution 1914-1940, translated, edited and annotated by Nicoletta Misler and John E. Bowlt, Silvergirl, Inc., Austin, Texas, 1983 ISBN 0-941432-05 -X .
- John E. Bowlt, Nicoletta Misler: "Filonov: Analytical Art" ( Russian Филонов: Аналитическое искусство ) Translation from English into Russian 1990 ISBN 5-269-00078-4 .
Web links
- Short biography of Pavel Filonov
- Pavel Filonov at Olga's Gallery
- Brief biography in Russian and reproduction of pictures with description in Russian and English
- Information about the artist and his works (Russian)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Pawel Filonow and his school . DuMont, Cologne 1990, p. 96 .
- ^ Pavel Filonov and his school . DuMont, Cologne 1990, p. 97 .
- ↑ a b c Pawel Filonow and his school . DuMont, Cologne 1990, p. 98 .
- ↑ MW Matjuschin: The work of Pavel Filonov ( Творчество Павла Филонова ) first published in Ежегодник Рукописного отдела Пушкинского 1977 Пушкинского дома 1979.
- ↑ Manuscript in the manuscript department of the Russian Literature Institute ( Институт русской литературы ) f. 656 in the Pushkin House , St. Petersburg.
- ↑ Selected Poems with Postscript, 1907–1914 . 1914. Retrieved September 28, 2013.
- ↑ Hans-Peter Riese: Witness of the Invisible in From the Avantgarde into the Underground , p. 25.
- ↑ a b Painting: Knowing Eye . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1990, pp. 234 f . ( online - February 26, 1990 ).
- ↑ Yevgeny Kovtun The Eyewitness of the Invisible On the work of Pavel Filonow.
- ↑ http://www.aktuell.ru/russland/kultur/filowow_die_spaltung_des_seelen_atoms_im_kopf_566.html
- ^ Yevgeny Kovtun: The Witness of the Invisible On the Work of Pawel Filonow.
- ^ PA Mansurow: Letter to JF Kowtun dated November 4, 1970. In safekeeping with the recipient.
- ↑ P. Filonov: The basic principles of analytical art around 1923. f. 2348 Manuscript in the Central State Archives for Art and Literature, Moscow.
- ↑ Brief explanation of the exhibition of the works 1927–1928. Manuscript in the Central State Archives for Literature and Art in Moscow, f. 2348. 0p. 1, ed. Chr. 20, sheet 1 v.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Filonov, Pavel Nikolaevich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Филонов, Павел Николаевич (Russian); Filonov, Pavel Nikolaevič (scientific transliteration) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Russian painter, art historian and poet |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 8, 1883 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Moscow |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 3, 1941 |
| Place of death | Leningrad |