Background

According to official information, Anton Stefanovich Barkhatkov was born on 17 January 1917, in the village of Shcheglovka, Mogilev Governorate, USSR (now Kostyukovichi district, Mogilev Region, Belarus), into a peasant family. However, the artist himself claimed that his year of birth was 1915.

Education

In 1931, after graduation from a seven-year school in Belynkovichi, Anton Barkhatkov decided to go to Moscow, where he found himself at a special detention centre for street children at first, later he studied at K. Liebknecht Workers' School, at the Architecture Workers' Faculty.

In 1940, Anton Barkhatkov graduated from one of the leading art institutions in Russia - Moscow Regional Pedagogical Art College in the Memory of the Uprising of 1905 (now Moscow State Academic Art College in the Memory of 1905). His teachers were famous artists P. I. Petrovichev, N. P. Krymov, who had a great influence on the making of the young painter.

In 1945, Barkhatkov went to Moscow again and entered Moscow V. I. Surikov Art Institute (now Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture). Although his teachers were S. V. Gerasimov, D. K. Mochalsky, P. D. Pokarzhevsky, V. V. Favorskaya, I. I. Chekmazov, Anton Barkhatkov always considered himself a pupil of V. K. Byalynitsky-Birulya.

Career

In 1940, Anton Barkhatkov was called up to the Red Army, where he continued to practice painting and participated in exhibitions. In the same year, his works were shown for the first time at the regional exhibition of the artists from the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in Kharkov. In 1941, the same paintings could be seen at the All-Union exhibition in the Red Army Center in Moscow.

Barkhatkov participated in the Great Patriotic War. He fought in the lines and in the partisan unit "For Soviet Belarus" in Mogilev area. And he still created portraits of his fellow soldiers and painted landscapes in that harsh time. In 1943, the artist was recalled to Moscow, to the Partisan Movement Headquarters. He was appointed a deputy director of the upcoming exhibition of Belarusian artists dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the BSSR, which opened in the State Tretyakov Gallery in 1944 and where he also got acquainted with an outstanding Belarusian artist, landscape master, Vitold Byalynitsky-Birulya. This exhibition was then continued in Minsk in 1945 and marked the beginning of a new collection of the Belarusian State Art Museum, which was ruined during the war, in the organization of which they both took part. Barkhatkov's paintings were also exhibited there: "Portrait of a Partisan", 1945; "Morning", 1941; "Portrait of V.K.Byalynitsky-Birulya", 1945; and landscape "A River Bank", 1944 and others.

After the end of the war, he came to Minsk, worked as the Head of the Art Department in the Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War and as a painter in the State Picture Gallery (now, the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus) for a short period of time. After a while, he went to Moscow again and entered Moscow V. I. Surikov Art Institute (now Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture).

Anton Barkhatkov spent the summer of 1947 in Minsk together with V. K. Byalynitsky-Birulya. They worked a lot and painted studies of Minsk outskirts. It was the time when landscapes "A Flowering Garden" and "May in Kurasovschina" were completed.

As many Soviet artists of the late 1940s-1950s, Barkhatkov often conveyed the sense of calmness and joy of peaceful life in his works. This lyrical and poetic mood is fully felt in one of his most celebrated painting of that time: "The First Song", 1957. In 1953, an expressive cityscape "I. V. Stalin Avenue" was completed. In the early 1960s, the artist turned to the genre of lyrical landscape depicting unparallel beauty of the native land: "Spring", 1955; "Flood", 1962; "Spring on the Nieman", 1960 and etc.

From 1954 to 1999, Anton Barkhatkov visited the Academic Summer Cottage, which is situated in Tver region. Now, it is called I. E. Repin Artists Guest House of the Union of Artists of the Russian Federation. The painting "Midday at the Hay Field", 1960 was painted there on the base of sketches made in Belarus.

The next personal exhibition of the artist took place in Minsk in 1967. The search for new means of colouristic expressivity and painterliness is notable in Barkhatkov's works of the second half of the 1960s-1970s. Canvases created in that period vary in mood, show nature in different seasons: "First Snow", 1978; "The Cold Has Come", 1978; "On New Year Eve", 1976; "Hoarfrost", 1968; "A Grey day in December", 1976; "Before the Storm", 1969; "The Last Ray", 1970; "On Senezh Lake", 1964; "After the Rain", 1976 and etc.

In later days, Barkhatkov turned to memorial landscape continuing the traditions of his teachers P. I. Petrovichev and V. K. Byalynitsky-Birulya. In 1982, there appeared the painting "Favourite Oaks of Yakub Kolas in Mykolaevschina". Areas connected with Kolas are also depicted on the canvas "A High Bank", 1984. Areas connected with another famous Belarusian poet Janka Kupala are shown in the works "The Road to Viazynka", 1972; "A Stream Vyazynka", 1974.

The artist continued creative search for colours and more expressive manner of execution in the 1980s-1990s. New paint combinations appeared in his colour schemes: still-life "Wild Flowers", 1983.

Anton Barkhatkov died on March 24, 2001, in Minsk, Belarus.

Achievements

• 

  A well-known Belarusian artist, Honored Artist of Belarus, Anton Stefanovich Barkhatkov in his work turned to various genres of painting - thematic picture, portrait, still life, but most of all became famous as a master of landscape, making a significant contribution to the development of Belarusian landscape painting. He continued traditions of Russian realistic landscape of the second half of the XIX-early XX cc.
  
  In 1991, Anton Barkhatkov was awarded the title of Honored Artist of the BSSR. By that time, he was a participant of numerous exhibitions in Belarusian cities, in Moscow, in Romania, Italy, and Holland. Personal exhibitions of Barkhatkov also took place in Minsk, in Mogilev, and Kostyukovichi.
  
  On December 17, 2012, on the day of the official 95th birthday of the artist, in the Local History Museum of the city of Kostyukovichi, an anniversary exhibition dedicated to this event was held.
  
  Currently, Anton Barkhatkov's paintings are presented in various collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Minsk, in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, and in a number of other collections, including private collections in our country and abroad. The National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus also keeps 17 paintings by Anton Barkhatkov.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Last Leaves

    1985

  • Stalin Avenue

    1952

  • Blue Shadows

    1968

  • Cold November

    1973

  • By the spring

    1991
  • Autumn Evening 1977
  • The Last Ray 1970
  • The Portrait of Byalynitsky-Birylya 1946
  • The Frozen Leaf Fall 1973
  • The First Young Crops 1963
  • The Road to Vyazinka 1972
  • Lyrical Landscape 1967
  • The First Song 1957
  • Spring 1962

Views

In most works of Anton Barkhatkov, there is a lyrical and poetic mood, as, for example, in “The Portrait of the Wife” (1955) or in one of his most popular paintings, “The First Song” (1957). In his landscape works, Barkhatkov largely continued the traditions of the lyrical “mood landscape” to which Vitold Kaetanovich Byalynitsky-Birulya addressed in his work.

Membership

In 1957, Anton Barkhatkov became a member of the BSSR Union of Artists.

Connections

In 1947, Anton Barkhatkov married singer Sofia Kuzminichna Kavaliov (1919 - 1983). The couple gave birth to 3 children: Vitold, Irina, and Igor. His sons became artists. The eldest, Vitold, currently lives and works in the USA, the younger one, Igor, with his wife Elena, writes wonderful landscapes and still lifes in a village near Minsk.

Wife:

Sofia Kuzminichna Kavaliov-Barkhatkov

Son:

Vitold Barkhatkov

Daughter:

Irina Barkhatkov

Son:

Igor Barkhatkov

mentor:

Vitold Byalynitsky-Birulya

Anton Barkhatkov considered himself a pupil of V. K. Byalynitsky-Birulya despite the fact that he was not engaged in teaching. Barkhatkov once said: "But most of all I learned from Byalynitsky-Birulya. I came to his studio almost every day. And in the summer months, we travelled around Belarus together to make studies."