Mikhail Vrubel at the State Russian Museum

Tuesday, 05 December 2006 17:02

St Petersburg, Russia - The State Russian Museum opens the “Mikhail Vrubel” exhibition in the Benois Wing of the Mikhailovsky Palace.  The exhibition comprises more than 200 works by the world-famous artist from the collection of the State Russian Museum: oil painting, graphic art, sculpture, ceramics etc.  The exhibition will be on display till March 10, 2007.  March 5, 2006 was Mikhail Vrubel’s 150^th birth anniversary.  This exhibition is held to pay tribute to the genius master, whose works have never left anyone indifferent, either his contemporaries, or posterior.

Mikhail Vrubel’s oeuvre ranks among the highest achievements of the Silver Age of the Russian culture of the early 20^th century and the history of Russian culture in general. His talent equally revealed itself in easel, oil and monumental painting, drawing and watercolor painting, sculpture and applied art, architecture and theatre.  The exposition based on the Russian Museum’s rich collection of Vrubel’s works, embraces all genres of his oeuvre and traces all periods of his life.

Mikhail Vrubel was born in Omsk (Siberia), into a military lawyer’s family, and traveled widely across the country moving from one garrison to another.  His fate is connected with St Petersburg by the years of study at the grammar school, at the Drawing school of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, at the Law Faculty of the St Petersburg University and at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1880-84).  Later, at the period of flowering of his artistic talent, Mikhail Vrubel used to visit St Petersburg as a stage director of Savva Mamontov’s Opera and as a contributor to the famous exhibitions of the World of Art magazine.

At the very beginning of his carrier Mikhail Vrubel succeeded in studying at the Imperial Academy of Arts under Pavel Tchistyakov, a progressive and intelligent teacher, who developed high professional skills his students.  Ilya Repin, Valentin Serov, and other outstanding painters influenced much the development of Vrubel's style.  He learned on the masterpieces of the State Hermitage collection.

In May 1884 Vrubel graduated from the Imperial Academy of Arts and moved to Kiev.  The painter’s contribution to the restoration of the old Russian churches, his study of the Byzantine mosaics in Venice and Ravenna and the masterpieces of the Renaissance stimulated Mikhail Vrubel’s development as an artist.  The “Kiev period” of his oeuvre (about five years) was marked by the beginning of Vrubel’s work on the image of “Demon” by Mikhail Lermontov, creation of the Portrait of a Girl Against a Persian Carpet Background.  The Kiev period is represented at the exhibition with a number of remarkable watercolors of Venice, drawings and sketches of church decorations.

In the autumn of 1889 Vrubel came to Moscow and met a famous industrialist and patron of arts Savva Mamontov.  The artist joined the Abramcevo art circle and started his quests in the Russian Art Nouveau Style.  In Moscow he kept on working at the image of “Demon” in oil painting, graphic art and sculpture, painted portraits, immaculate in their execution, experimented with monumental painting, ceramics, architecture and theatre.  The strong-willed images, created by the artist and inspired by the world literature, the antique mythology and the Russian folklore, belong to the highest achievements of Symbolism and Art Nouveau in the Russian Art.  The paintings by Vrubel with their unusual forms proved to be too complicated for his contemporaries.  Sometimes the commissioners rejected his panels, the critics ridiculed his paintings, especially the Demon, the well-known classics now.

The exhausting rhythm of work, criticism, problems with commissioners and the death of his beloved newly born son had unbalanced his delicate state of mind.  From the spring of 1902 Vrubel had to spend much time in the psychiatric clinics, continuing to paint at periods of the recovery.  These periods are marked by the best paintings of Vrubel’s heritage: Six-winged Seraph and Portrait of Nadezhda Zabella-Vrubel Against the Birches, the masterfully painted still-lifes and drawings from the dramatic Insomnia series. In February 1906 Vrubel created the last painting The Vision of the Prophet Ezekiel and lost his sight.

The 1903-10s are the years of gradual recognition of his talent.  His paintings were successfully exhibited by the “World of Art” magazine and the Union of Russian Artists and by Sergey Diagilev in Paris, Berlin and Venice.  The Moscow collectors competed for buying Vrubel’s works.  The Imperial Academy of Arts awarded the artist the title of an academician and the Salon D’Automne in Paris declared him its life member. 

The State Russian Museum today is a unique depository of artistic treasures, a leading restoration center, an authoritative institute of academic research, a major educational center and the nucleus of a network of national museums of art.

The Russian Museum collection contains circa 400.000 exhibits.  The main complex of museum buildings - the Mikhailovsky Palace and Benois Wing - houses the permanent exhibition of the Russian Museum, tracing the entire history of Russian art from the tenth to the twentieth centuries.  The museum collection embraces all forms, genres, schools and movements of art.

Visit The State Russian Museum at : http://www.rusmuseum.ru/eng/museum/