State Russian Museum Exhibits Nikolai Ionin
St. Petersburg, Russia - On February 21 the State Russian Museum opens the “Nikolai Ionin” exhibition in the Stroganov Palace. The exposition comprises more than 100 works of painterly and graphic art from the collections of the State Russian Museum and of the artist’s family Emotional stability, adherence to reality, spirituality, and ability to see the great in the small are the main features of Nikolai Ionin’s oeuvre. Ionin was born in the Novgorod Province and moved to Petersburg in 1908. Ionin studied at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists, then in the Academy of Arts with a break for the military service (at first in the Russian, then in the Red Army).
After demobilization he resumed classes in the studio of Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, prominent Russian artist, in the Higher Art and Technical Studios (former Academy of Arts) and graduated in 1922. Ionin confidently joined the art of Petrograd-Leningrad of that epoch. Being a student of Dmitry Kardovsky and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, he asserted himself by skilful paintings and graphic works, rich in active perception from the very beginning. In the 1920s he created the most prominent works in his heritage. Plastically monumental, figuratively meaningful, and symbolic works Woman in Red, Portrait of Ekaterina Ionina (nee Samokhvalova) – Nikolai Ionin’s wife, Portrait of a Woman Wearing Headscarf expressed the spirit of the epoch and the style of a new art. Obvious influence of Petrov-Vodkin combined in them with programmed author’s references to the most important phenomena of the world art: plastics of Ancient Egypt, Russian icon and Suprematism.
Nikolai Ionin was a member of such artistic unions as the Community of Artists and the Society of Painters; he was also close to the Circle of Artists with its concept of “pictorial realism”. Being a master of colors, Ionin developed symbolism and emotional order of the red color that was, undoubtedly, dominant in his oeuvre. The temperamental color solution was the main constituent of his “industrial” works of the 1930s: At Dockyard, the Sevkabel series, Pig-Tender with Piglets. At that time he was also commissioned to create several canvases on the historic-revolutionary subject. Only one of them has remained - Golden Staircase (Study for the Mikhail Kalinin’s Speech before the Workers) – a small pictorial masterpiece. Evidently, the artist developed aversion to such works made to order. Always standing aback from publicity, not seeking after momentary glory, Ionin delved into the world of native nature, created still-lives, portraits of peasants and his dear people. Those works became more chamber, reserved, and intense.
The artist faced the War in Leningrad. After the horrible blockade winter Nikolai Ionin and his family were evacuated to Kirghizia in spring 1942. There, in a village near Frunze, a new period of the artist’s creativeness started. The new, sunny, bright, colorful, green and blooming world violently contrasted with the miserable, half-starved life with personal tragedies (Ionin lost his elder son during the War). His works of that period, pictorial and graphic, are very documental and full of incredible, almost confessionary, sincerity. This is, actually, the artist’s diary, in which he recorded his family everyday life, Kirghiz colorful national costumes, works in the experimental field with the contribution of the author himself.
Plenair character and spatial structure of Kirghiz landscapes influenced Nikolai Ionin’s paintings of the post-war period. He resumed the Leningrad and its Suburbs pre-war series and supplemented it by works of a new, more monumental format with more solid colors. Among the best works of that period there is the Klimovichi series of landscapes (named after a village in the Novgorod Region). Reserved, pronouncedly reminding of studies, they are rich in peculiar lyricism, understanding of the genuine – not superficial – value of life.
Comparing the early and the late periods of Nikolai Ionin’s oeuvre today, one cannot deny that in the beginning his art was more powerful and he did not manage to develop his talent in full measure. Who is to blame: the artist or the epoch he had to live in? There is no answer. A series of self-portraits, which Ionin created in the closing stages of his life, proves that he was aware of this tragic inconsistency. Deliberately democratic, purely sincere, devoid of any presentability, they impress first and foremost by their spiritual power, courageous perception of his high predestination of the artist who mastered the time.
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.
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