Yury Vasnetsov. 125th Anniversary of the Artist’s Birth

The exhibition is held in Room 80 on the second floor in the Benois Wing.

Leningrad artist Yury Vasnetsov (1900–1973) was a painter, graphic artist, set designer, illustrator, Honoured Artist of the RSFSR (1959), People’s Artist of the RSFSR (1973), and a winner of the USSR State Prize (1971). Born in Vyatka, he was the son of a priest and a distant relative of Viktor Vasnetsov. He is best known as a children’s book illustrator and a master of printmaking. His paintings, which are featured in the exhibition, are less familiar to a wide audience. The artist’s works were first shown at a solo exhibition in the Russian Museum in 1979.

Vasnetsov’s interest in a pictorial and plastic representation of the world was already evident in his works from the period of his studying at the Petrograd Free Art Studios. It was then that Vasnetsov absorbed Mikhail Matiushin’s system of colour perception, which is noticeable in his early painting Blue Landscape (between 1923 and 1926). Another work, Still Life with Chess Board (between 1927 and 1928), is executed in collage technique and is related to his studies at the State Institute of Artistic Culture under the guidance of Kazimir Malevich: during those years, Vasnetsov aimed to master the Cubist construction of a painting. In 1931, together with the artist Nikolai Kostrov, Yury Vasnetsov travelled to the village of Soroki (now Belomorsk) in Karelia where he created an expressive image of a fisherman (Fisherman with a Salmon, 1931).

In 1932, Vasnetsov enrolled in the postgraduate programme at the All-Russian Academy of Arts, where he studied under Vladimir Lebedev. His graduation work explored the theme of a provincial feast, though the painting was never completed. One of the studies for this work, entitled Lady with a Mouse, is housed in the Russian Museum’s collection. During this period, the artist’s painting style became increasingly refined and delicate.

The most significant period of Yury Vasnetsov’s career is associated with his work under Vladimir Lebedev at the Detgiz publishing house, established in the late 1920s. This institution brought together a remarkable group of talented artists, including Vasnetsov’s close friends Valentin Kurdov, Nikolai Kostrov, and Evgeny Charushin. In their early works, these artists tended to imitate children’s drawings, but they eventually developed their own distinctive artistic language, incorporating many of the formal techniques pioneered by Avant-Garde masters. These methods, difficult to reproduce in easel painting, found a natural and organic expression in book illustration.

The humour in Vasnetsov’s illustrations, which art critic Vsevolod Petrov described as “specifically childish”, is rooted in the apparent absurdity of the actions depicted or the whimsical choice of attributes for a fairy-tale character. For example, animals in Vasnetsov’s illustrations often hold flowers or other “human” objects in their paws. This unique approach to interpreting fairy tales in Vasnetsov’s illustrations is comparable to the artistic methods used in poetry and prose of the OBERIU artists (the Russian abbreviation for the “Union of Real Art”), who were also pioneers of children’s literature. Among others, Vasnetsov created illustrations for Daniil Kharms’s books.

In one of his interviews, Yury Vasnetsov explained: “In a fairy tale, everything should be different. Even a matchbox should be fabulous [...], you can’t make everything terribly detailed and overdrawn.” The artist strove to convey his folklore worldview in his paintings, often resorting to the language of folk art. He greatly admired the oeuvre of the Georgian primitivist artist Niko Pirosmani. Vasnetsov’s family preserved a collection of folk art objects including 17th-century trays gifted by Vladimir Lebedev, 19th-century Nizhny Novgorod painted distaffs and carved shutters from village windows.

At the beginning of the siege of Leningrad, Yury Vasnetsov lived in the city, but in late 1941 he was evacuated to Perm. By 1943, he had relocated to Zagorsk (now Sergiyev Posad), where he created a series of winter landscapes in a sophisticated silvery palette.

In the 1960s, Vasnetsov worked intensively on paintings, though the works he created during this period remained within the walls of his studio throughout his lifetime. The atmosphere in his studio, filled with objects of folk art, was also featured in his canvases. At the same time, Vasnetsov continued to depict fairy-tale characters, as well as flowers, interiors, and views of the village of Roshchino, where his dacha was located. In the master’s later paintings, the influence of his work on fairy-tale illustrations is evident: Vasnetsov showed a profound understanding of folk creativity. For example, his painting Cockerel with a Walking Stick (1967, State Russian Museum) is based on the design of a painted tray.

Vasnetsov’s late painting style is characterised by pastose brushstrokes. He often revised his paintings, repeatedly reworking individual details. During that period, he created relatively few work. In some cases, Vasnetsov would return to nearly completed canvases after a significant period of time, making substantial alterations to the composition and applying numerous glazes to achieve a “painterly haze” effect.

The Russian Museum owns a comprehensive and valuable collection of Yury Vasnetsov’s works, representing the key periods and aspects of his artistic career. The exhibition marks the 125th anniversary of the artist’s birth, whose work is deeply entwined with such a significant phenomenon as the Russian Avant-Garde.

Age restriction: 0+