Boris Ermolayev. 120th Anniversary of the Artist’s Birth

The exhibition is held in the hall # 80 of the seconf floor of the Benois Wing.

Boris Nikolayevich Ermolayev (1903–1982) was a graphic artist, lithographer, painter, and illustrator of books, newspapers and magazines. He studied at the Petrograd School of Painting and Industrial Design (1921–1925), where he took classes taught by Vladimir Fedorovich and Mikhail Avilov. From 1925–1926 he served in the Army, and afterwards, beginning in 1927, he was constantly drawing on the streets of Leningrad. Ermolayev also became a contributor to the local newspapers Leninskie iskry and Bytovaya gazeta and to the magazines Krasnaya panorama, Yunyi proletariy and Rezets. He also illustrated children’s books for the publishers Raduga and Detgiz. In 1930 he took up painting, and in 1940 joined the Experimental Lithographic Studio of the Leningrad branch of the Artists’ Union, resuming drawing only in the 1970s. Ermolayev fought in the Great Patriotic War from 1941 to 1943.

The Russian Museum holds over a thousand works by Boris Ermolayev, including 62 of his paintings. The exhibition celebrating 120 years since Ermolayev’s birth features his 1930s works, in which he immortalized the streets of his native Volodarsky (now Nevsky) district and the daily life and recreational activities of the people of Leningrad’s outskirts.  

As a painter, Ermolayev was chiefly inspired by Alexei Venetsianov and the “Small” Dutch Masters. The Niko Pirosmani exhibition, hosted by the Russian Museum in 1930, helped the young artist discover his own unique method, based in part on naïve art as exemplified by Pirosmani. He envelops his landscapes and genre scenes in a greenish, opaque veil of shades of colour, causing the figures to appear like actors in a silent film.

In the 1930s, the outskirts of Leningrad were being built up with multi-storey housing, erasing the neighbourhoods “between the city and the countryside” that Boris Ermolayev was so fond of painting. Ermolayev travelled to the south for the first time in 1936–1937, visiting Berdichev in the Zhitomir Region and Aksaiskaya near Rostov-on-Don. From that time on, the penumbral quasi-urban motifs disappeared from his painting forever, replaced by tranquil, vibrant southern scenes. His palette would never be the same again.

Boris Ermolayev changed the manner of his painting and drawing more than once over the course of his long career, trying his hand at different techniques. This exhibition showcases but a small part of his multifaceted oeuvre.

Age limit: 6+