Background
Pavel Nikolayevich Filonov was born on January 8, 1883, in Moscow, Russian Federation. Filonov's parents were peasants, but at the time of his birth, they lived in Moscow. His mother worked as a laundress, his father was a cab driver.
1939
Pavel Nikolayevich Filonov
Velimir Khlebnikov
The Russian Academy of Arts
draftsman painter watercolorist book illustrator art theorist
Pavel Nikolayevich Filonov was born on January 8, 1883, in Moscow, Russian Federation. Filonov's parents were peasants, but at the time of his birth, they lived in Moscow. His mother worked as a laundress, his father was a cab driver.
In 1897 Pavel Nikolayevich moved to Saint Petersburg where he took art lessons. In 1908 he entered Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (the Russian Academy of Arts), from which, he was expelled in 1910.
In 1910-1914, Pavel Nikolayevich took part in the arts group Soyuz Molodyozhi created by artists Elena Guro and Mikhail Matyushin. In 1912, he wrote the article The Canon and the Law, in which, he formulated the principles of analytical realism, or "anti-Cubism".
During the years 1913 to 1915, Pavel Nikolayevich was close to Vladimir Mayakovsky, Velimir Khlebnikov, and other futurists. He co-illustrated Khlebnikov's Selected Poems with Postscript, 1907-1914 alongside Kazimir Malevich during this time.
In the autumn of 1916, Pavel Nikolayevich enlisted for service in World War I and served on the Romanian front. He participated actively in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and served as the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Committee of Dunay region.
In 1919, Pavel Nikolayevich exhibited in the First Free Exhibit of Artists of All Trends at the Hermitage. In 1923, he became a professor of Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts and a member of the Institute for Artistic Culture (INKhUK). He organized a large art school of Masters of Analytical Realism (over seventy artists, including an American sculptor and portrait painter Helen Hooker). Their work influenced suprematism and expressionism.
In 1929, a large retrospective exhibition of Pavel Nikolayevich art was planned at the Russian Museum; however, the Soviet government forbade the exhibition. From 1932 onward, he literally starved but still refused to sell his works to private collectors. He wanted to give all his works to the Russian Museum as a gift so as to start a Museum of Analytical Realism.
Pavel Nikolayevich died of starvation on December 3, 1941, during the Siege of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg).
(English and Russian Edition)
1984Chant about the sprouts of the world
1915Heads
(Filonov considered this painting to be his first real work.)
1910A Peasant Family (The Holy Family)
(oil on canvas, 159x128 cm, Russian Museum)
1914Portrait of E.N. Glebova
(Portrait of E.N. Glebova (the artist's sister), 1915, oil...)
1915Man and Woman (Adam and Eve)
1913The Banquet of Kings
1913universal flowering
1915The Formula of Contemporary Pedagogy of IZO
1923Horses (1924-1925)
Two Heads. Rabbles
1925Animals
1930Countenances (Faces on an Icon)
1940Self portrait
Pavel Nikolayevich put forth a manner of working that proceeded from the particular to the general. He believed that objects and fields should be built up from small details and bits and stated that doing it the other-way-round was nothing short of "charlatanism". To this end, he worked, and required his students to work, with very small brushes in painting and the finest of points when drawing.
Quotations:
"Our goal is to create paintings and drawings made with all the charm of hard work because we know that the most valuable thing in a picture and drawing is the powerful work of a person on a thing in which he reveals himself and his immortal soul. With regard to painting, we say that we worship it, introduced and embedded in the picture, and we are the first to open a new era of art-the age of made paintings and made drawings, and to our homeland, we transfer the center of gravity of art, to our homeland, which created unforgettable wonderful temples, artisan art, and icons."
"I have been saving all my works that are my property for years, rejecting many offers to sell them, in order to give them to the party and the government, in order to make them and the works of my students a separate Museum or a special Department in the Russian Museum, if the party and the government do me the honor to accept them."
Physical Characteristics: Pavel Nikolayevich was a tall thin person with a cherry color of eyes. He could look at the sun for a long time without blinking.
Quotes from others about the person
Velimir Khlebnikov: "...I met an artist and asked if he would go to war? He replied: "I am also fighting a war, not for space, but for time. I sit in the trench and take a piece of time away from the past. My duty is as heavy as that of the troops for space." He always painted people with one eye. I looked into his cherry eyes and pale cheekbones. Ka walked beside him. It was raining. The artist painted a feast of corpses, a feast of revenge... The dead men ate their vegetables with stately dignity, illuminated by a frenzy of grief like a ray of the moon."
In 1921 Pavel Nikolayevich married a divorced woman, Ekaterina Alexandrovna Serebryakova, who was 20 years older than Filobnov and raised two sons. She died during the siege, outliving her husband by several months.