Background
Filipp Malyavin was born on October 22, 1869 in Kazanka village, Russian Empire (present-day Totsk District, Orenburg Region, Russia).
Filipp Malyavin was born on October 22, 1869 in Kazanka village, Russian Empire (present-day Totsk District, Orenburg Region, Russia).
In 1892, Malyavin began his studies at the Imperial Academy of Arts under Pavel Chistyakov, Vasily Vereschagin and Ilya Repin. In 1894, Filipp started to attend the workshop of Ilya Repin.
Malyavin reached his peak between 1905 and 1907, during Russia's revolutionary crisis. Unlike other painters, at this time he focused on his "peasant" canvases. These paintings are unusual in terms of their use of bright colors and their large scales, which mark them more than their usually generic titles.
In 1906, Malyavin painted Whirlwind, his greatest painting.
Between 1908 and 1910, Malyavin did not display any work, and the official art critics began attacking him more and more frequently. He traveled to Paris, and on his return, painted a large family portrait, which he exhibited in January 1911 at the salon of the Union of Russian Artists. The painting was a failure, and between 1911 and 1915, Malyavin exhibited only the works of the earlier period.
In 1918, the painter left for Ryazan, where he participated in the Ryazan Commissariat for Education's propaganda of art and taught.
Malyavin moved to Moscow in 1920, where he created portrait drawings of Lenin, Trotsky and Lunacharsky.
In 1922, while traveling to Berlin and Paris to hold his solo exhibitions, he decided to emigrate. Filipp lived in Paris and Nice throughout the 1930s and painted many portraits, including King Gustav V, Prince Eugen and Princess Ingrid of Sweden. In 1933, Malyavin organized one of his largest personal exhibitions, that took place in Prague.
In 1940, he was arrested by the Gestapo in Brussels and was accused of espionage. The painter was released a few months later and, at the age of seventy-one, he was forced to return to Nice on foot.
A Peasant Women
Portrait of artist's family
Peasant with red headscarf
Singing peasants
Portrait of a boy in a white suit
Portrait of Alexandra Balashova
Turks
A girl
The artist Igor Grabar
Self-portrait
Danae
Three women
Self-portrait with wife and daughter
Portrait of a man with book
Portrait of Daria Ivanovna Tatarintseva
Peasant girl
Nude
Whirlwind
Mother Russia
Verka
Peasant Girl Knitting a Stocking
Two girls
Laughting
Demonstration of a newborn
A rich peasant
Rural life
A Peasant Woman
Portrait of K. A. Somov
Portrait of sculptor Vladimir Beklemishev
Dancing woman
A peasant woman with a patterned headscarf
A monk
Portrait of a rich peasant
Farandole
Two young peasant women in colorful shawls
A peasant covering up her mouth by coat
A girl
Nude
Lenin
Filipp was a member of "Mir iskusstva" movement and the Union of Russian Artists.
Malyavin was married to Natalia Novaak-Savich, the daughter of a rich industrialist from Odessa. The couple gave birth to two daughters, one of which died early of typhus.