The creative heritage of the artist Pavel Dmitrievich Korin is extremely diverse. He came from the icon-painting Palekh and at first developed as a master icon painter.
At the same time, Pavel Korin forever retained an interest in the inner world of a person and subsequently became one of the outstanding portrait painters of our time.
Perhaps the same purely icon-painting tradition of miniature landscapes on Palekh icons eventually led the artist to create a number of completely original panorama landscapes.
These bewitchingly beautiful picturesque "ribbons" give the viewer a feeling of boundless space and the beauty of Russian nature, and the artist himself is presented as the finest lyricist and deep philosopher.
Portrait of Pavel Korin. Artist Mikhail Nesterov
Pavel Korin. My motherland
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Korin Pavel Dmitrievich "Departing Russia"
In 1925, Patriarch Tikhon died in his Moscow residence (Donskoy Monastery). The death of the saint of the Russian Orthodox Church caused a mass pilgrimage of the people to the bed of the deceased. On all roads to Moscow, to the walls of the Donskoy Monastery, streams of people flowed. Silently, day and night, the whole of Orthodox Russia went on. Solemn funeral ceremony, clergy of all degrees and ranks, crowds of believers, among whom were fanatics and holy fools...
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Requiem. Russia is leaving. 1935-1959
Writers, and composers, and scientists, and artists have been there - everyone who could then realize the significance of what was happening. Among the artists was the sincere singer of "Holy Russia" Nesterov, and with him a student and by that time already his friend Pavel.
At the walls of the Donskoy Monastery, Pavel Korin saw how this Russia, wretched in Everyday life, in these last - tragic for her and at the same time stellar moments - she showed all the strength of her character. This Russia left in the Russian way, with its departure showing a sign of eternity.
Different characters - young and old, men and women, bishops and monks, abbesses and young nuns, cripples and beggars on the stone steps of churches and just lay people. All of them went into the past with an unshakable belief that this departure was temporary, with the hope of returning and with conviction in the rightness and sanctity of their cause. The artist wept when, following the attendants who left the temple, they began to destroy the beautiful monuments of architecture, decorated with frescoes by talented craftsmen.
Pavel Korin then made several pencil sketches for memory. And on one of the drawings he signed: "Two hermits met, as if they had come out of the earth ... An eye looks out from under a hanging gray eyebrow, looks wildly." And the young artistoriginatedidea to paint a large picture, which he gave the name "Requiem".
At first, these were just sketches, which he wrote selflessly, with inspiration reaching to despair. The plot and composition of the picture were not yet completely clear, and the characters of the characters were already born on the canvas. They were alive - with their passions, faith, confusion. Sometimes some colleagues threw seeds of doubt into the artist's soul, but did not cool his creative ardor, although they tormented him greatly.
In Palekh, and then in Moscow, in the icon-painting workshop, Pavel Dmitrievich often came into contact with the ministers of the Russian Orthodox Church. The impressionable artist with great acuteness felt the depth of the tragic situation of the church, which came into conflict with the young Soviet government. This struggle was fierce, and when the destruction of the clergy began in the country, Pavel Korin realized that a great force was leaving the stage of public life. It was in this departure that he saw a deep artistic canvas full of inner drama.
Korin,when he painted a large picture perpetuating the departing old Russia, he said: “I was worried about our entire Church, for Russia, for the Russian soul. I tried to see people enlightened and myself to be in an uplifted state ... For me, there is something incredibly Russian in the concept of “leaving.” When everything passes, then the best and most important - it will all remain".
Not considering himself a portrait painter, Pavel Dmitrievich decided to create a multi-figure composition with a pronounced plot basis: "The church goes to the last parade." Sketches for the conceived picture were made by him long before the final sketch of its composition. These were already completely independent, masterful portraits, the total number of which reached several dozen.
Father and son. (S. M. and St. S. Churakov). 1931
One of the earliest (some researchers consider it the best) was the study "Father and Son". This is a paired portrait of the self-taught sculptor S. M. Churakov and his son, later a well-known restorer. They are represented in almost full height. Depicted in the foreground is the figure of Churakov Sr. - a tall, strong build of an old man with the beard of a prophetMichelangelo- strikes the viewer with extraordinary power. He stands confidently on widely spaced legs, raising his right shoulder and laying his hands behind his back. His head bows down; a handsome face with a high open forehead, furrowed with sharp wrinkles, is overshadowed by a deep thought.
The son standing behind, as it were, complements this image, developing and varying the theme of deep meditation. Outwardly, the figure of a young man resembles his father, although it is much smaller and thinner. Here is the same deeply concentrated pose with a lowered head and clasped hands, but it is clear to the viewer that these are completely different, in many ways even contrasting figures.
The thin, nervous face of a young man framed by thick dark brown hair covering his forehead; thin youthful beard, convulsively intertwined fingers - everything speaks of a more complex, but also weaker internal organization.
"Three" in the center is Elagina Elagina, on the left Sofya Mikh. Golitsyna, 1933-35
A few years later, Pavel Korin wrote the study "Three". Three female figures, representing three different ages, reflected the master's three different approaches to solving the portrait. The central figure is a squat, hunched-over old nun, leaning heavily on a stick... Before the viewer appears one of the dominant church persons, perhaps in the past - the abbess of some monastery. A long black robe with a cape envelops this grim figure. From under a huge fur-trimmed cap pulled over his forehead and a black scarf covering his cheeks, the details of an old face, expertly sculpted in color, stand out in relief. At first glance, it is clear that before him is a powerful, resolute, courageous person.
Behind the old woman, on the right, is an elderly woman in semi-monastic clothes. Herfanned by spiritual warmth and quiet calmnessbeautifula face framed by a black scarf, with a high open forehead and kind, sad eyes, speaks of a difficult, long-suffering fate, wise patience and fortitude of a Russian woman.
The third figure - a young, big-eyed beauty, slender and tall - personifies the heroic-romantic trend in Korin's work. She islike her neighborin the same dark semi-monastic attirebut her proudly raised head is not covered.
Protodeacon M. K. Kholmogorov
In 1935, a portrait of Protodeacon Kholmogorov was painted. When the first studies for the "Requiem" appeared, many greeted them with hostility. Recognizing the indisputable talent of Pavel Korin, he was reproached for avoiding reality, poetizing the gloomy sides of the "legacy of the past", an apology for religiosity, howeverIt wasin these sketchesandreflection of the revolution, albeit indirectly so far. The essence of such a reflection was in the extreme intensity of human passions, in the mighty element of faith. "Requiem" in etudes gradually grew to a symbolic "requiem" to the outgoing old world.
Hieromonk Pimen and Bishop Anthony
Metropolitan Tryphon
In the late 1930s, Korin stopped writing sketches for his painting, explaining this by the attacks of ill-wishers. But there were more deep reasons worldview and creativity. Rapidly developed new life, which required the artist to update and expand the subject of creativity. Appeal to new heroes (portraits of remarkable figures of Soviet culture) noticeably slowed down the work on the conceived picture, but did not stop it.
Young hieromonk. Father Fedor. 1932
Gorky, who came to Korin, asked him in detail about the composition of the future canvas, and asked about the name. "Requiem," the artist answered not very confidently. - “I don’t see the address. The title should determine the content.” And then the writer said, looking at the sketches: “They are all those who are leaving. They are leaving life. Departing Russia. immediately after these words, everything fell into place, the idea and design of the picture acquired a clear and distinct harmony.
Schimnitsa mother of Seraphim from the Ivanovsky Monastery in Moscow
Schimnitsa from the Ivanovo Monastery. Study for the painting "Requiem". 1930s
For almost a quarter of a century (with interruptions) Korin wrote the final sketch of the painting, which he completed in 1959. This sketch was a reduced version of the planned canvas, it not only gives an idea of its composition and artistic structure, but also reveals the specific content of each image. This is a sketch of a multi-figure group portrait, modeled after the best examples of this genre.
Beggar. 1933
Pavel Korin unfolded the action of the picture in the depths of the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. The many-sided crowd, having filled the cathedral, is preparing for the solemn exit. This decision of the plot allowed the artist to turn all the characters in the picture to face the viewer, which contributes to the most multifaceted disclosure of portrait characteristics.
In the center of the picture is the higher clergy. In one temple, four patriarchs came together, successively heading the Russian Orthodox Church. This circumstance speaks in favor of the fact that the idea of the entire canvas is not limited to displaying
zheniya tragically departing Holy Russia. For a long time, some art historians (G. Vasiliev) considered the picture as "the last parade of those condemned by history to oblivion". The critic noted that "their alienation from life is mercilessly emphasized by the emptiness of the huge cathedral. The artist conceived the picture as "Requiem" - waste powerful social phenomenon, called Orthodoxy.
Shiigumenya mother Tamar. 1935
Yes, the thought of the ongoing tragedy is read both in the composition of the picture and in the faces of its characters. But the faces of most of them are clouded not only with grief, they are also marked by deep, concentrated thoughts. There is not even a hint in the picture that we have before us the victims of historical breakdown, humbly accepting the verdict of the era. Therefore, among the characters there are very few inclined figures and people with drooping eyes. To the left of the pulpit, the viewer sees a tall hieromonk proudly throwing back his head. Next to him are two folk types: an ancient, but still full of inextinguishable strength, an old man and a blind beggar. Rich in variety and types right part compositions. The general reddish-blue color of the canvas with abundant inclusions of gold, the strict majesty of the background filled with Russian painting wonderfully interpreted by the artist, the mysterious flickering of candles - all enhance the harsh, intense solemnity of this monumental scene.
Such are the images of Korin's Requiem. As you can see, in all these externally, and sometimes internally dissimilar people, there is one thing - a spiritual core, faith. They lived by it, they died with it, accepting death with dignity, in a Christian way. It was faith, the Christian view of man as a microcosm, the affirmation in man of the consciousness of his uniqueness and god-like significance (God's servant is no one's slave!) that imparted to them a high individuality. All of them are separate hypostases of one idea...
Young nun. 1935
Conceived by Pavel Korin, the "Departing Russia" is a canvas of a large historical and philosophical plan. But the artist never transferred the finished painting to the large canvas. Stretched on a giant stretcherthe canvas still stands in the workshop-museum of the artist. Why was it not touched by a brush or even coal?Some believed that the artist felt an insurmountable contradiction between the idea and the chosen path of implementation. So Kamensky wrote: “Korin conceived the picture as a solemn requiem, as a lofty tragedy. But tragedy only then acquires real vitality and greatness of passions when, in a collision, the perishing side possesses
human beauty
and
historical justice. The characters of "Outgoing Russia" do not have these qualities. Korin himself proved this best of all in sketches. He depicted with ... psychological strength a string of spiritual and physical cripples, stubborn fanatics, blind-born, dying without insight ... And when Korin began to compose a picture from his sketches, intending to create a tragic composition, the objective content of the individual images he created began to contradict the general intention. Korin had the spiritual vigilance to understand this, and the courage to refuse to create a canvas."
However, the facts contradict such statements. Singer, for example, notes that there are simply wonderful characters in the sketch: the same old hero from the Father and Son pair, some female types are the flesh of the flesh of those eternal prototypes that at one time gave birth to the noblewoman Morozova and Surikov’s archers, Martha and Dositheus by Mussorgsky, Father Sergius by L. Tolstoy.
There were other circumstances in whichthe picture is unfinished. Party functionaries stood guard over the principle of socialist realism and zealously saw to it that "ideologically harmful, alien to the people" works did not see the light of day. Back in 1936, a letter was received from one of them, Angarov, addressed to Stalin: “Korin’s preparation for the main picture is expressed in hundreds of sketches, the models for which are terry fanatics, the surviving remnants of the clergy, aristocratic families, merchants. For example, among Korin’s sitters there is a person who graduated from two higher educational institutions and in 1932 he became a monk. Korin is posed by former princesses who have now become nuns, priests of all ranks, protodeacons, holy fools and other bastards ...
Our attempts to prove to him the falsity of the topic he has taken have not yet been successful ... I ask for your guidance on this issue.
Pavel Dmitrievich last years life passionately wanted to complete his picture. The only serious obstacle was age and a sharp deterioration in health. He was already about seventy years old, he suffered two heart attacks, and the work required a lot of strength. And yet the master did not want to give up. Korin was even going to order a special lifting chair and start work. But his strength waned, and shortly before his death, the artist said bitterly: "I didn't have time."
The northern ballad is the left part of the Alexander Nevsky triptych. 1943
Pavel Korin did not believe in the finalthe first departure of Holy Russia, into the disappearance of Orthodox spirituality. He passionately believed "Rus was, is and will be. All the false and distorting its true face can be, albeit protracted, albeit tragic, but only an episode in the history of a great people."
An old tale is the right side of the triptych Alexander Nevsky. 1943
Saved the Fiery Eye. 1932
The left part of the sketch of the unrealized triptych of Spolokha. 1966
The right part of the sketch of the unrealized triptych of Spolokha. 1966
The central part of the sketch of the unrealized triptych of Spolokha. 1966
Archimandrite Father Nikita.
Peresvet and Oslyabya - the right side of the sketch-variant of the unrealized triptych
Dmitry Donskoy. 1944
Dmitry Donskoy and Sergius of Radonezh - the central part of the sketch-variant of the unrealized triptych
Dmitry Donskoy. 1944
Dmitry Donskoy. Morning of the Kulikovo field. 1951
Village priest. Father Alexy. Fragment
Hieromonk Mitrofan. Fragment
Father Ivan, a priest from Palekh. 1931
Schiegumen Mitrofan and Hieromonk Hermogenes. 1933. On the back, on the upper bar of the stretcher, the author's inscription: Schiigumen O. Mitrofan (with a cross) from Zosima Desert
Cathedral of Saint Peter in Rome. 1932.
Portrait of N.A. Peshkova. 1940
Portrait of M.V. Nesterov. 1939
Portrait of K.N. Igumnova. 1941-1943
Portrait of Marshal G.K. Zhukov. 1945
After Gorky's death in 1936, the circumstances of the artist's life changed dramatically, he was actually forced to stop working on the painting. The already prepared huge canvas remained untouched.
You can see the full picture of Korin "Departing Russia"
During the Great Patriotic WarKorinrefers to a historical theme, which he continued to work on until his death.He is attractedimages of warriors - defenders of their native land, the spiritual ideals of Russia.
Such is Alexander Nevsky - the central figure of the famous triptych (1942), in which the features of both saints from ancient Russian icons and mighty heroes of the Italian Renaissance live.
Alexander Nevsky (1220-1263) has long been revered in Russia. Bcamp princebecame famous as the protector of the Russian land. All his lifededicated to serving the Fatherland. At the height of the war, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of July 29, 1942, the Order of Alexander Nevsky was established.
The force of the impact of the image created by Korin turned out to be such that reproductions of Alexander Nevsky adorned front-line dugouts and front-line newspapers. A huge copy of the painting, made by a group of soldiers who stormed Ancient Novgorod, was installed at the entrance to the city. Soldiers were going west, and the legendary Russian commander called them to fight for freedom. So, art, expressing the "spirit of the people", fought. The work of Pavel Korin, along with the anthem “Arise, huge country,” was at that time something more than a simple work of art.
In Alexander Nevsky, what Pavel Dmitrievich Korin said was fully expressed: “ Art should be heroic, educate and uplift the spirit of the people.”
Korin fought all his life. Like an artist. As a collector of works of ancient Russian art doomed to perish. As an outstanding restorer, to whom mankind owes the salvation of many great works, including the masterpieces of the Dresden Gallery. As a public figure - a defender of cultural monuments of Russia. But to win the main victory - to complete the work to which he realized he was called - Korin failed.
,
M. V. NESTEROV Portrait of the brothers P. D. and A. D. Korin. 1930. Moscow, Tretyakov Gallery
The portrait of the Korin brothers, complex in design, captivates with the internal unity found in the image of these two artists. The brothers admire the antique vase, which one of them holds in his outstretched hand. This vessel is the compositional center of the portrait.
Pavel Dmitrievich Korin is a famous Russian artist and icon painter, author of the heroic triptych "Alexander Nevsky", expressive portraits of his contemporaries: commander Georgy Zhukov, sculptor S.T. Konenkov, cartoonists M.V. Kupreyanov, P.N. Krylova, N.A. Sokolov (Kukryniksov), pianist K.N. Igumnov, Italian artist Renato Guttuso and others. By the power of painting and the energy of creation, Korin's portraits will remain unsurpassed masterpieces of world art. “Your heroes have posture,” high-ranking guests of his workshop told the artist. In terms of artistic style, the portraits of Pavel Korin are comparable to the portraits of his mentor, M.V. Nesterov. A special place in the artist's heritage is occupied by amazing images of the people of the Church, made in the process of preparation for, perhaps, the most important work of P.D. Korina - painting "Requiem".
Pavel Korin was born on July 8, 1892 into a family of hereditary Russian icon painters, in the village of Palekh, Vladimir province. When Pavel was five years old, his father, Dmitry Nikolaevich Korin, died. In 1903, Pavel was admitted to the icon-painting school of Palekh, from which he graduated in 1907. The family lived very poorly, and at the age of 16, Pavel left to work in Moscow. He gets a job in the icon-painting workshop of K.P. Stepanov at the Donskoy Monastery, here he gets the opportunity to improve his art.
An important milestone Korin's development as an artist was the work on the murals for the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent in Moscow in 1908–1917. The monastery was created at the expense of Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, the sister of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. In 1908–1912, according to the project of the architect A.V. Shchusev in the monastery on Ordynka, the main temple was erected - in honor of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos. On April 8, 1912, it was consecrated. The celebration was attended by Elizaveta Fedorovna, the authorities of Moscow, the architect A.V. Shchusev, artists Viktor Vasnetsov, Vasily Polenov, Mikhail Nesterov, Ilya Ostroukhov; Korina's brothers, Pavel and Alexander, were also here. In order to improve the skill of the icon painter, “in the summer of 1913, Pavel Korin, architect A.V. Shchusev was sent to the Pskov-Caves Monastery to copy two shrouds of the 16th century. Then Korin visited ancient Novgorod. Images similar to the faces of the saints of Novgorod will adorn the tomb in the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent.
In 1913, Elizaveta Fyodorovna asked the artist M.V. Nesterov. The temple-tomb in the name of the Forces of Heaven and All Saints was under the cathedral church of the Intercession of the Virgin. Korin was Nesterov's best assistant. Young icon painter M.V. Nesterova was personally introduced by the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna (this happened back in 1908).
In 1914, in the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent, work continued on the decoration of the Church of the Intercession of the Virgin. The artist Nesterov and his assistant Korin jointly painted the main dome of the cathedral with the fresco "Father Savoaf with the Infant Jesus Christ" (a sketch in the State Tretyakov Gallery), and then Pavel Korin alone decorated the dome space of the temple, the vaults of windows and doors. The faces of archangels and seraphim in floral ornaments decorated the temple. The samples of painting were accepted by the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna, as if participating in their embodiment. After graduating Finishing work, Korin, on the recommendation of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, to increase art education went on a trip to the ancient ancient Russian cities. He will visit Yaroslavl, Rostov the Great, Vladimir.
On August 26, 1917, the complete consecration of the built and painted church of the Most Holy Theotokos took place.
Pavel Korin received other professional skills at the Art School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow (MUZHVZ), where he entered, having earned the necessary funds, in 1912. Here his painting teachers were Konstantin Korovin, Sergey Malyutin, Leonid Pasternak.
In the summer, Korin made a trip to Kyiv, got acquainted with the painting of the Vladimir Cathedral, its ancient frescoes, mosaics created by V. Vasnetsov, M. Nesterov, V. Zamirailo. The young artist also visited the Hermitage in Petrograd.
After graduating from MUZHVZ in 1917, Korin was invited to teach drawing at the 2nd State Art Workshops (as MUZHVZ was now called), where the artist worked through the bitter and hungry years of 1918-1919. In order to physically survive in this time of devastation and war, Pavel Korin in 1919-1922 had to get a job in the anatomist of the 1st Moscow University; this work turned out to be useful for him as an artist: he got the opportunity to improve his knowledge in human anatomy.
In 1922, in Petrograd, in the Museum of Anti-Religious Propaganda (Kazan Cathedral), the artist makes sketches of the holy relics of St. Joasaph of Belgorod. In 1931, he copied the famous painting by A. Ivanov "The Appearance of Christ to the People", when it was transferred from the Rumyantsev Museum to the Tretyakov Gallery.
In Italy in 1932, he studied the best images of the Italian classics of the Renaissance. A trip to Italy was arranged for Korin by Maxim Gorky. The artist will paint his portrait at the same time, and later, already in the 1940s, and a portrait of Gorky's wife N.A. Peshkova.
The destruction of the foundations of the Orthodox state in Russia in the 1920s was an irreparable mistake of history. In Russian and Soviet painting of the 20th century, Pavel Korin will forever remain a religious painter, a pupil of Palekh. His work developed despite the February Revolution of 1917, which was treacherous for Russia, and the policy of the Soviet state. There were no jobs for icon painters during the years of persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church. The population of the USSR, under the leadership of the Communists, apostatized from the faith of their grandfathers and fathers, Orthodox churches were closed and destroyed everywhere, only monks and hermits in monasteries preserved faith in Orthodox Russia with holy prayers. During this period, the artist's grandiose idea was born to perpetuate the "leaving Russia" on the canvas - his "Requiem".
The plot action of the picture takes place in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, where church hierarchs, monastics and Russian Orthodox people pray for Orthodox Russia. The picture was technically difficult to execute, because a huge canvas measuring more than 5 x 9 meters was conceived.
The creative concept of "Requiem", of course, was influenced by the painting of M.V. Nesterov. In 1901-1905, Nesterov painted the painting "Holy Russia" (kept in the State Russian Museum) - about the meeting of pilgrims with the Lord Jesus Christ. In 1911, he created the painting “The Way to Christ” for the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent: “A fifteen-yard landscape, and good people wander through it - touching and no less impressive for the mind and heart,” wrote M.V. Nesterov in a letter on March 23, 1911. - I work furiously, I hope to finish on the Passion. The painting "The Way to Christ" was located in the refectory of the church of the monastery, on its eastern wall, right in the center, and, of course, was well known to Korin, who worked here together with Nesterov in those years, as well as to many Muscovites who came to the monastery. Pavel Dmitrievich's love for this place will remain with him for life, and when the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent is closed in 1926, he, together with his brother Alexander, will save its iconostasis and murals from destruction.
Russian believers became more and more convinced of the God-fighting essence of Soviet power. In the picture P.D. Korina "Requiem" Orthodox people in black sorrow and terrible grief stand in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin and pray - for Holy Russia, for the Orthodox Church. For a long time the artist could not start working on the Requiem canvas itself, and then he still could not finally complete the picture, so strong were the feelings of the tragic power of grief and universal sorrow that fell upon everyone. The artist worked on the epic canvas for thirty years and three years - until 1959. 29 large portraits were made for him (they are kept in the State Tretyakov Gallery). These portraits of hierarchs, hermits, monks, priests, nuns and hermits shock the audience with their harsh realism. Tragic and dramatic images of believers in Orthodox Russia today can be seen at an exhibition in the State Tretyakov Gallery (on Krymsky Val). Exhibition “Requiem”. Toward the History of the “Outgoing Russia”, which opened in November 2013, will continue until March 30 of the current year. Maxim Gorky recommended to Pavel Korin that the name of the painting "Departing Russia" after visiting the artist's studio on the Arbat in 1931. Gorky patronized Korin, and this gave the artist the opportunity to work in peace.
Simultaneously with the work on the “Requiem”, Korin painted portraits of his contemporaries: mourning for the “departing Russia”, the artist did not lose a lively connection with the present, with his time, striving forward. Korin makes portraits of strong and talented people: writer A.N. Tolstoy, scientist N.F. Gamaleya, actors V.I. Kachalova and L.M. Leonidov; visiting the island of Valaam, paints a portrait of M.V. Nesterov; later, in the 1940s, he created portraits of the sculptor S.T. Konenkov, pianist K.N. Igumnova; the 1950s include portraits by artists M.S. Saryan and Kukryniksov. These are monumental works with a perfect composition and an integral psychological image of those portrayed.
In 1942, Pavel Korin created the central part of his famous triptych "Alexander Nevsky" (kept in the State Tretyakov Gallery). The image of the heroic and majestic defender of the Fatherland was necessary for the Motherland in these mournful years for her. In the severe to the ascetic image of Prince Alexander Nevsky, heroism and unshakable stamina are expressed, personifying Russian beginning, consciously necessary for the Soviet people in a difficult wartime. Later, the artist wrote variants of sketches for the triptych "Dmitry Donskoy" and part of the triptych "Alexander Nevsky" - "Old Tale" and "Northern Ballad". The heroic image of the warrior-commander of the Holy Prince Alexander Nevsky, created by P.D. Korin, has no equal in terms of its impact on the viewer.
In the autumn-winter of 1945, after the end of the Great Patriotic War, Korin painted a no less famous portrait of the commander Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov (kept in the State Tretyakov Gallery). Four times Hero of the Soviet Union, holder of two Orders of Victory, G.K. Zhukov is depicted in a marshal's uniform, with numerous orders and awards.
On June 24, 1945, Marshal Zhukov hosted the Victory Parade on Red Square in Moscow. And on September 7, 1945, the Victory Parade of the Allied Forces took place in Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate. From the Soviet Union, it was Marshal Zhukov who received the parade of units of the allied armies: the USSR, France, Great Britain and the USA. When the legendary commander returned from Berlin, Pavel Korin was invited to visit him: work began on the portrait. From the canvas, a man calmly looks at us, who for many has become a symbol of the power of the Russian army. Zhukov is stately, majestic and handsome.
In 1931-1958, Korin headed the restoration workshop of the State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow (GMII), where from the second half of the 1940s the trophy masterpieces of the Dresden art gallery for which the artist is responsible.
Korin remained an unsurpassed specialist in ancient Russian painting, subtly feeling its style, the image of the worldview conveyed by it. The artist was involved in the creation of ancient Russian images in artistic mosaic panels for the assembly hall of the Moscow State University, mosaics and stained-glass windows for the Arbatskaya, Komsomolskaya-Koltsevaya, Smolenskaya and Novoslobodskaya stations of the Moscow Metro. For these works in 1954 he received the State Prize of the USSR.
In 1958, Pavel Dmitrievich Korin was awarded the title of People's Artist of the RSFSR, he was elected a full member of the USSR Academy of Arts.
In 1963, on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the artist's creative activity, his personal exhibition was opened in the halls of the Academy of Arts, he was awarded the title of People's Artist of the USSR.
World fame came to Korin, he visits Italy, France, the USA; in 1965 in New York, on the initiative of Armand Hammer, a large personal exhibition of the artist was organized.
From 1933 until the end of his life, Pavel Korin lived in Moscow on Malaya Pirogovskaya Street, where his working workshop was also located. In 1967, after the death of the artist, the house-museum of the artist (a branch of the State Tretyakov Gallery) was created in the house at Pirogovskaya, 16.
Life in art, the creative potential of the individual is one of the main topics that worried P.D. Korina, it is no coincidence that he created so many portraits of people of art. He himself, a brilliant painter, a deep connoisseur of ancient Russian art, subtly felt both literature and music, understanding the deep connections between different types of art. A note made by Korin after Rachmaninov's concert at the Moscow Conservatory is characteristic: “Last night I was at a Rachmaninov concert at the Conservatory. “Cliff” – fantasy for orchestra and Concerto No. 2 for piano and orchestra were performed. What strength, what breadth and what seriousness... Genius! You need such strength and such breadth in painting.
For twenty-seven years in the studio of the artist Pavel Dmitrievich Korin there was a huge canvas prepared for work. All this time, Korin hoped to start writing the main picture of his life - "Requiem". As a result, he did not make a single stroke on the canvas. Pavel Korin's blank canvas has organically acquired an independent status in contemporary art. It is exhibited at exhibitions along with the finished works of the artist, today's critics again and again try to comprehend the meaning of this unpainted picture: it is both an "icon of giant light" and the antithesis of Malevich's Black Square. For Korin himself, a blank canvas is a sore wound, an eternal reproach to himself: "I did not do what I could do."
Pavel Korin. Sketch "Requiem" for the painting "Departing Russia", 1935-1959.
The theme of the unpainted picture originated with Korin back in 1925, during the funeral of Patriarch Tikhon in the Donskoy Monastery. There were hundreds of thousands of people at the funeral. Farewell to the patriarch was open. Despite the danger of persecution, for five days the flow of people to the coffin did not stop for a minute. Everyone then, from the bishops to the poor old women and holy fools, asked himself the question: what will be the position of the Church now? It seemed that together with the patriarch, the former old era was irretrievably leaving. The time has come for the Blok Red Army soldiers with their historical mission: "Let's fire a bullet at Holy Russia" - the time of mass martyrdom for the faith.
Korin was at the funeral with his friend and mentor Mikhail Nesterov. There was a high probability that such a farewell in new Russia they will never see again. It was then that Korin felt that he had to capture the world of the Church, which was native to him, farewell not only to the patriarch, but also to the old, pre-revolutionary Russia. It was important for him not only to artistically reflect real events but also to understand what is behind them. Later, Nesterov would write about Korin's sketches for the painting: "Korin reflected the revolution."
Listening to Berlioz's Requiem in the hall of columns, Korin makes a note in his notebook: “What greatness! This is how you would paint a picture. "Day of Wrath", a day of judgment that will turn the world to ashes."
last parade
Pavel Korin comes from Palekh, from an old family of hereditary icon painters. He knew his roots, loved and kept memories associated with childhood: a hotly heated village hut, he and his brother watched on the stove as his father concentrated with the thinnest brush, draws a web of golden ornament over densely laid paints. In the dusk, the mysterious eyes of the saints on the icons darkened with time - they were painted by Pavel's grandfather and great-grandfather; they knew the faces of the saints as well as the faces of their loved ones. Korin was related to this world by blood. He himself graduated from an icon-painting school, worked in icon-painting workshops, helped Nesterov to paint the church of the Martha and Mary Convent. Later, having become a secular painter, he painfully overcame the traditions of icon painting in his works - "skinning my skin, I got out of the icon painter."
Shiigumenya Tamar. 1935., photo http://cultobzor.ru/
The first study for the conceived picture was written by Korin already in 1925. This is a portrait of an old man, Gervasy Ivanovich.
The wrinkled face of a man who lived a lot, saw a lot, fought as a soldier back in the Caucasian War. The dispossessed people look through the eyes of this old man. He may have been praying all his life in a forlorn wooden church, which they now burned in a drunken brawl as a symbol of the old world.
To persuade the church hierarchs, whom Korin saw at the funeral of Patriarch Tikhon, to pose for the picture seemed impossible. Mikhail Nesterov helped, he persuaded his confessor, Metropolitan Tryphon, to give Korin several posing sessions.
Metropolitan Tryphon, in the world the prince of Turkestans, was close to the circle of the Optina elders - the Monks Ambrose and Barsanuphius of Optina. He graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University. During the First World War, he served as a regimental priest at the front, lost sight in one eye. He was called the "Moscow Chrysostom" - he was a wonderful preacher, and also the "cook's bishop" - because he loved to serve the early liturgies for the working people.
Metropolitan Pavel Korin depicts in a flaming red Easter vestment. In his prayerful fervor, he seems to foresee what awaits Russia ahead, what awaits this new Soviet man who no longer needs Christian morality.
With the unspoken blessing of Bishop Tryphon, Orthodox Moscow begins to pose for Korina for a picture. After a long search, he leaves the original idea to write the funeral of the patriarch. “The Church enters the last parade” - this is the final intention of the artist. He begins to paint sketches of archimandrites and metropolitans, beggars, schemes, holy fools.
In 1929, Korin painted a sketch for Archpriest Sergius Uspensky, a hereditary Orthodox priest, dean of Moscow. In the portrait, a man with a humble, sad face holds a cross in front of him with both hands. With an inner eye, he sees his way of the cross ahead. He was repeatedly arrested, the last time in 1922 was sentenced to ten years in prison. He was released conditionally, "because of his declining years." The nephew of Father Sergius, Archpriest Sergei Mikhailovich Uspensky (junior), was shot at a training ground in Butovo in 1937. His Korin also captured for the picture - clenched hands, straight posture, readiness to face death with dignity. One of the distinguished visitors to Korin's workshop remarked: "Your heroes have the posture that was characteristic of people of the Renaissance, your metropolitan, and monks, and beggars, and the blind - everyone passes under fanfare." The portrait of Uspensky (younger) was painted in 1931. Korin had an amazing insight and felt the fate and inner appearance of this man - the portrait seemed to have been painted not six years before his death, but at the moment of execution.
In painting, the tone of the picture plays a huge role, it is part of the content, part of the action itself. The burning of red color is alarming against the background of the dominant dark tone of the study of the schemnik of Father Agathon. In the mournful combination of red and black, there is a premonition of tragedy: Father Agathon was arrested in the mid-1930s along with other monks of the Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery, and in 1938 he died in the prison infirmary.
Pavel Korin. Bishop. Russia leaving
Pavel Dmitrievich himself determined the mood of the conceived picture: “Bells. Dark, hopeless."
Many representatives of the clergy from those whom Korin painted in the thirties will soon be shot. In the year 2000 the Church will classify them as new martyrs.
Despite the conceived tragic pathos of the picture, Korin did not strive for idealization. One of the visitors to his studio, after looking at the sketches of the "Requiem", said: "Pavel Dmitrievich, you are painting a picture into the hands of the Bolsheviks."
“I, my brother,” answered the artist, “I haven’t painted nice, clean, with rolling eyes, and I won’t write. I write the truth."
There were those who saw in Korin's characters religious fanatics who had fallen out of a new life. But Korin himself knew another truth: "I wrote people of great faith and conviction, not fanatics." In fact, what he did did not fit into the framework of that era. Soviet art created the image of a victorious man, an inspired builder of a new life.
In 1931, Korin wrote the sketch "Father and Son". In his portrait there are strong, heroic Russian people, but their faces are mournful, thoughtful, their eyes are downcast. With the beginning of the revolution, the life of the people turned in a different direction, this turn was difficult for many.
Beggar. 1933, photo http://cultobzor.ru/
Church Moscow of that time was overcrowded different kind holy fools, wanderers in rags. Among all this "Christ brethren" Korin was looking for the image needed for the picture. He found a beggar on the porch of Dorogomilovsky Epiphany Cathedral. Dirty, with paralyzed legs, matted hair infested with lice. Korin dragged him to the workshop and wrote for three days. In the picture, a beggar cripple, like a clumsy, mossy stump, spread out exorbitantly large arms. With these hands he will hold on to life, no matter how bitter it may be. A man physically crippled, he does not give up. He, like the rest of the characters in the picture, has an internal posture.
Among the characters of Korin's Requiem, Soviet art critics highlighted the image of a blind man. The study "Blind" was written in 1931. Indeed, this is one of the most powerful images of the conceived picture. “It symbolically expresses the moral impasse in which the Church found itself. Blindness. Hands outstretched, seeking salvation. Hopelessness, off-road. Hopelessness, ”the writer Sergei Razgonov wrote about the blind man of Korin.
Meanwhile, Korin was a man of deep faith. There was no question of the moral impasse of the Church for him and could not be. Rather, “Blind” is an image of the lostness of ordinary Russian people who renounced the landmarks that the Church has pointed to for centuries. A helpless blind man in the darkness stretches out his hands into the void.
According to the Gorky ticket
There were rumors about Korin's sketches in Moscow, people started talking about them. Nesterov was very supportive of the overall idea of the picture. But a real ticket to life was given to the picture by Maxim Gorky. September 3, 1931 - Korin noted this date in his diary. On this day, Gorky unexpectedly visited his workshop with a large company. After his visit, Korin wrote: “He came up to me, shook my hand warmly and said: “You are a great artist, you have something to say.” And he began to help me widely and powerfully. Gorky gave me the opportunity to visit Germany, France, England and Italy.
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Gorky really organized trips abroad for Korin, gave him the opportunity to learn from the masterpieces of European painting, and secured a large workshop for the artist on Pirogovskaya. Again, Gorky suggested changing the original title of the planned painting "Requiem" to "Departing Russia", thereby protecting Korin from possible complications. After all, in those years it seemed to many that Korin in his studies preached love for the old Russia and a misunderstanding of the new Russia. Why did the proletarian writer take Korin under his protection? Korin himself, after Gorky's death, will give his own version of the answer when he writes about the heroes of his picture: “These people are people of great conscience and great spirit, you can disagree with them, but they cannot be denied respect. Gorky agreed with me.
Maybe you are right. However, it cannot be ruled out that Gorky saw in the picture, first of all, the doom of pre-revolutionary Russia. It is no coincidence that the name he gave to Korin's work outlined the path that later Soviet art criticism would take - praising the painting as anti-religious propaganda: convulsions, desperately resisting the new ... They leave history. Forever and ever. Shadows! - S. Razgonov wrote about Korin's heroes in 1982.
After visiting Gorky, Korin became known in government circles. The former People's Commissar for Education Lunacharsky and the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs Yagoda visited his workshop. The latter even commissioned his portrait from Korin.
Bag in case of arrest
By 1936, most of the sketches for the painting were ready. By this time, Korin is working on sketches for "The Departing Russia". For the painting, a huge canvas was prepared in the workshop (551 by 941 centimeters in size, larger than the Ivanovo canvas “The Appearance of Christ to the People”). Against the background of the canvas, Pavel Dmitrievich sometimes arranged his sketches, estimating the composition of "Russia Departing". Gradually, the internal structure of the picture took shape. Korin decided to place all his people of God - monks, beggars and schemes in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, where, in his own words, "they lined up in military and solemn order against the backdrop of majestic architecture." The choice of the cathedral is not accidental - it is a national shrine, here for centuries Russian tsars were crowned, Moscow saints were buried. But… On June 8, 1936, Maxim Gorky died. Korin was left without patronage. You could start bullying.
Already on December 8, 1936, Stalin received a denunciation concerning Pavel Korin. Its author, Alexei Angarov (Zykov), deputy head of the cultural and educational department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, wrote in his message: “Korin claims, but very uncertainly, that this entire collection of obscurantists was collected by him to show their doom. Meanwhile, judging by the sketches, he does not create any impression of doom. On the contrary, it conveys the hatred of these people, according to his plan, strong, strong-willed, full of readiness to die for their ideas.
The persecution was supported by the press, the artist was accused that he "made the priests martyr heroes." In those years, he kept a bag of things at home in case of arrest. Fortunately, there was no arrest, the artist was even kept a beautiful house - a workshop on Pirogovskaya. Shortly before Gorky's death, the sketches of "Rus" were bought from Korin by the "All-Russian Artist" - the All-Russian Union of Cooperative Associations of Workers visual arts. Now, fearing for the fate of her works, Korin decides to buy them. The money for the paintings had to be paid for twenty years. “The sale of sketches has become the torment and horror of my life,” Pavel Dmitrievich writes in his book. - In the future, when he painted portraits, sketches, landscapes - they all went for debts. I turned back into a restorer and art teacher. I'm 45 years old".
In the new environment, working on the picture became more and more difficult.
“You need complete calm of the nerves, but there is none. I found the plot in 1925. I have been with him since then and have to write, ”Pavel Dmitrievich bitterly admitted in a conversation with V. M. Golitsyn.
Over time, other concerns appeared, urgent orders arose. In 1942, Korin received an order and created the triptych "Alexander Nevsky", glorifying the power and steadfastness of Russian soldiers. AT postwar period draws portraits of prominent Soviet cultural figures and military leaders - writer Alexei Tolstoy, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, actor Vasily Kachalov. Korin fits into Soviet art, receives recognition. He was elected a full member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR, awarded the title of People's Artist of the USSR. In the early 1950s, Pavel Korin worked extensively in monumental painting, creating a number of stained-glass windows and mosaics for Moscow, in particular, stained-glass windows at the Novoslobodskaya station and mosaic plafonds for the Moscow metro station Komsomolskaya on the Circle Line.
The path of Pavel Korin, a recognized Soviet artist, leaves room for reflection. There is a temptation to fit this path into a flat black-and-white picture in which a talented artist disposes of his gift to please the Soviet regime. Among Korin's portraits of the Soviet era, there are successful and not very successful ones, but in general his work received a Soviet inoculation. Korin, the author of "Requiem", now creates works that have become emblems of Soviet art for many generations - the panel "Peace in the World" (1951) at the Novoslobodskaya metro station, which depicts a happy mother with a child in her arms, a mosaic "Red Army men with the Red Banner" on "Komsomolskaya". In the 1940s, the artist worked on sketches for the mosaic frieze "March to the Future" for the Palace of Soviets, an unrealized project of the tallest building in the world, which was supposed to house the Soviet government. Under it, the place of the destroyed Cathedral of Christ the Savior was allotted.
Korin decides the mosaic frieze as a solemn procession of colossal eight-meter figures. Before us is the canonical "bright path" to the shining heights of communism. But how stilted are the images of athletic giants, confidently striding into a bright future, how theatrically exalted are their poses and faces! There is a certain repulsive hypertrophy in the depiction of their naked athletic bodies. In "Requiem" each portrait conveys something deeply personal, each line shows the character of a person, in "March", on the contrary, there is something completely impersonal, mass ...Did Korin consider this his work forced, done for the sake of earning?
Pavel Dmitrievich felt himself the heir of Alexander Ivanov in art, dreamed of painting a large historical canvas, believed that art should uplift the spirit.
“The spirit in man is the main thing,” he wrote. - And I, to the best of my ability, want to sing the human spirit. Therefore, I look for people in their lives who have a strong spiritual content, and I write them. That in which I do not see the greatness of the spirit cannot captivate me.
Perhaps Korin was sincerely looking for his heroes in Soviet reality. However, one can hardly agree that the author of the "Requiem" and the author of the mosaic frieze "March to the Future" are one and the same artist.
All this time, Korin wanted to start working on his big picture. The last sketch of Requiem is dated 1959. “It is difficult for me to explain to you why I wrote this, but still I will say that the tragedy of my characters was my misfortune. I did not look at them from the outside, I lived with them, and my heart bled, ”Korin writes in a letter to V. M. Cherkassky.
The white canvas in the workshop remained untouched.
Pavel Dmitrievich Korin
Born in 1892 in the village of Palekh. His father and grandfather were icon painters, and in his youth Korin also painted icons, at the age of 16 he was admitted to the icon painting chamber of the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow. Maxim Gorky took a great part in his fate, convincing the Soviet government to send the young artist to Italy to study painting. After the end of the Great Patriotic War, Korin led the restoration of paintings in the Dresden Gallery, restored frescoes in the Vladimir Cathedral in Kyiv and personally restored the painting.
V. M. Vasnetsov and M. V. Nesterov. In 1952 he won the Stalin Prize of the second degree for mosaic panels for the Komsomolskaya metro station on the Koltsevaya Line, and in 1963 he won the Lenin Prize. People's Artist of the USSR, full member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR. He died in 1967.
On the announcement is a fragment of a sketch for the painting "Requiem" ("Departing Russia"). 1935–1959 source http://www.afisha.ru/
Exactly 100 years ago, Russia found a Patriarch. Artist Pavel Korin saw in the new Russian Church a sign of the approach of the Kingdom of Heaven
Once in 1931, the writer Maxim Gorky sat down with the artist Pavel Korin and said:
- You know what, write a portrait of me.
The artist replied that he had never painted a portrait, so he was afraid of wasting time. But in the end he agreed. This was the beginning of an amazing collaboration and friendship between the venerable writer and the then little-known artist, who would soon become famous as the best portrait painter of the Soviet Union. The portrait of Prince Alexander Nevsky, familiar from school textbooks, the portrait of the “demon of war” Marshal Zhukov, the portraits of the artists Mikhail Nesterov and the Kukryniksy, the writer Alexei Tolstoy, academician Zelinsky, Sergei Konenkov and Vasily Kachalov are all Korin. But it all started with Gorky. However, this is not about that.
Pavel Korin
So, once Maxim Gorky, after another posing session, saw sketches piled up in a corner of the workshop - sketches of some grandiose canvas: a solemn religious procession of priests under the gloomy bulk of the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin - the domes sparkled furiously in the sun, and below the radiance from the embroidered gold of archbishop's robes.
- What is it? the writer asked.
“Requiem,” the artist answered not very confidently.
- No, my friend, the title should determine the content, but in this title I do not see this ...
The writer once again carefully looked at the sketches, thoughtfully shook his head: no, you can’t be so careless during the years of the Second Godless Five-Year Plan.
Pavel Korin. Fragment of a portrait of A.M. Gorky
“You see, it’s all gone from our lives. Departing nature - leaving people ... By the way, remember, Sergei Yesenin has such a wonderful poem "Russia is Departing"?
And then he began to recite:
“I don’t blame those who leave in sadness,
Well, where are the old people
Chasing young men?
They are uncompressed rye in the vine
Left to rot and crumble…”
“Yes,” the writer summed up his reflections sharply. - I would call it: "Russia is leaving."
- Thank you, Alexey Maksimovich, - Korin exclaimed with fervor, - I will certainly take your advice.
The support and patronage of the almighty "engineer of human souls" was then very necessary for him.
Pavel Korin in the studio next to the painting "Portrait of the artists Kukryniksy" (1958)
Each artist has his main canvas - his business card, his soul, crucified on a stretcher, his dream come true. For Korin, an imaginary picture became such a main canvas - the conceived “Requiem”, or “Leaving Russia”, was never written, despite the fact that Pavel Dmitrievich worked on the composition of the picture for several decades, painted, made sketches of the interiors of the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. According to his plan, it was supposed to be an epic canvas - 40 square meters, almost as many as the "Appearance of Christ to the People" by Alexander Ivanov.
Pavel Korin. Russia leaving
But when the picture suddenly appeared before his mind's eye in all its details, when he suddenly understood with all clarity what exactly he wanted to draw, or rather, WHAT seemed to appear by itself from hundreds of sketches and drawings, his hands seemed paralyzed with fear.
And he never touched the huge primed canvas, which was made especially for Korin. For many years this gigantic canvas stood silently reproachfully in his studio.
But in art, many things do not depend at all on the will of the creator, or rather, those people whom the Creator instructs to create something for His needs. Since the Creator needs something, it will appear in any case, you don't even have to worry. And so Korin's unpainted canvas somehow still came to light - albeit in the form of sketches and many scattered sketches.
The Creator needed to send the Sign to His children.
Pavel Korin from the very early childhood promised to serve God, because he was born in July 1892 in the world-famous village of Palekh, Vladimir province, in a family of hereditary Russian icon painters. At the age of ten, Pavel, like his older brothers, was admitted to the Palekh icon-painting school, then he and his brother Alexander went to work in Moscow, went to study at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (MUZHVZ).
At the same time, he and his brother contracted to work in the artel of "bogomazov" K.P. Stepanov at the Donskoy Monastery, where Palekhians were willingly taken. So the Korin brothers got to the construction of churches for the Martha and Mary Convent in Moscow, which was created at the expense of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, the sister of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. The best church painters of that time worked in the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent then: Viktor Vasnetsov, Vasily Polenov, Mikhail Nesterov. It was Mikhail who became Pavel Korin's friend and mentor for many years. Together with Nesterov, they painted the main dome of the Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent, and then Pavel Korin alone designed the under-dome space of the temple, the vaults of windows and doors.
Fresco by Mikhail Vasilievich Nesterov "Christ in the house of Martha and Mary" of the Intercession Church of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent
By the way, in the monastery Pavel Korin also found his future wife, Praskovya Tikhonovna, a pupil of the monastery.
Then came the difficult and hungry revolutionary years. The Marfo-Mariinsky Convent was closed, Princess Elizaveta Feodorovna was arrested and executed. In order to somehow feed his family, Pavel Korin had to get a job at the anatomist of the 1st Moscow University: he sketched various organs of corpses, he also taught drawing techniques at the MUZHVZ (or rather, after the revolution, the school changed its name to the 2nd State Art Workshops).
Princess Elisveta Feodorovna
But, despite all the persecution, the artist remained faithful to Orthodoxy and deeply sympathized with all the events of the Russian Church of this period. Korin also deeply experienced the arrest of Patriarch Tikhon in May 1922 and the trial of the primate of the church. Like many hundreds of Muscovites, he considered it his duty to take the transfer to the patriarch, imprisoned in the former treasury chambers of the Donskoy Monastery. Korin also went to Donskoy, handed over a parcel with food and warm clothes sewn by former nuns of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent, and in gratitude he received a photograph of the patriarch and an answer on a piece of paper: “I received it and thank you. Patr. Tikhon. Pavel Dmitrievich always kept this note, pasted to the back of the photograph, as a blessing.
Patriarch Tikhon
An even greater shock to the artist was made by the death of the patriarch in April 1925. Despite the unspoken prohibitions, crowds of people went to say goodbye to the patriarch at the Donskoy Monastery, where the coffin stood for several days. Korin was there all those days, and what he saw was the mass standing of the people at the tomb of the patriarch made an unusually strong impression on him. I also remember the words of the sermon of Metropolitan Tryphon (Turkestanov):
– We must bear the cross, and I noticed that, as if in a reminder of this, sorrows befall us, sometimes expected, sometimes mostly catastrophic, as now ...
In his diary, Pavel Korin wrote: “Donskoy Monastery. Funeral service for Patriarch Tikhon. There were a great many people. It was the evening before dusk, quiet and clear. The people stood with lit candles, crying, singing for the dead. An old scammer passed by. Rows of beggars stood around the fence. To one side sat a blind man and with him a boy of about thirteen, they sang some old verse. I remember the words: "We will raise our hearts to spears." It's a picture from Dante! This is the Last Judgment by Michelangelo, Signorelli! Write it all down, don't let go. This is a requiem!”
The artist associated his idea with Berlioz's Requiem: “Remember the Day of Wrath, what greatness! This is how you would paint a picture. "The day of wrath, the day of judgment, which will turn the whole world to ashes." What music! This pathos and groan should be in my picture. Thunder, brass pipes and bass. This handwriting must be!”.
Thus arose the idea of a picture perpetuating the images of the Russian clergy and believers, who, it seemed, would soon completely disappear in the new godless Russia.
Korin began to go with a notebook to services in Moscow churches, sketching the faces that especially interested him.
Soon he also met Metropolitan Tryphon, a former nobleman and former rector of the Moscow Epiphany Monastery, who voluntarily went as a regimental priest to the First world war, earning several combat wounds. In Moscow, he led a completely beggarly life. Agreeing to pose for a future painting, Vladyka Tryphon gave Korin a letter of recommendation in which he asked other bishops to help the artist. Moreover, many prominent priests agreed to pose for the painter only because Bishop Tryphon himself had posed for him before! Thanks to Vladyka's help, Korin was able to get acquainted with the secret monks from the dispersed Smolensk Zosima Hermitage of the Vladimir diocese, and with the nuns of the closed Ascension Monastery in the Moscow Kremlin, who were hiding from persecution.
Pavel Korin. Trifon (Turkestanov). (Fragment of the picture)
Maxim Gorky, who, on the advice of Mikhail Nesterov, ordered a huge portrait from a poor artist, two human heights, became an instrument of God's plan. He contributed to the fact that Pavel Dmitrievich was hired by the restoration workshops of the Pushkin Museum, he also arranged a trip for the Korin brothers to Europe and Italy to get acquainted with the masterpieces of world art.
But, most importantly, Gorky created all the conditions for the implementation of the large-scale plan of "Requiem".
First of all, he agreed that Korin could freely draw sketches in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, because in those years all the Kremlin churches were closed to the public.
Pavel Korin. Drawing in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin
He also knocked out a new spacious workshop for the artist on Malaya Pirogovskaya Street, where a huge canvas for a painting could fit (the canvas itself was made on special order in Leningrad at Gorky's personal request).
But in 1936 Gorky died, and dark days came for Korin. A stream of accusations literally fell upon him that he "broke away from reality, did not participate in the development of proletarian art, went into depicting the reactionary environment."
Yesterday's friends denounced him to the NKVD: “P. Korin's preparation for the main picture is expressed in hundreds of sketches, the models for which are terry fanatics preserved in Moscow, fragments of the clergy, aristocratic families, former merchants, etc. He claims, but very uncertainly that this whole collection of obscurantists was collected by him in order to show their doom. Meanwhile, judging by the sketches, he does not create any impression of doom. Masterfully drawn out fanatics and dark personalities clearly turn into heroes, Christian martyrs, persecuted but not surrendering champions of religion.
In the newspaper Izvestia in April 1937, two accusatory articles were published, where Korin was called a "reactionary": "in his workshop, the Trotskyist-fascist evil spirits created a laboratory of obscurantism."
It would seem that after such denunciations the fate of the artist was a foregone conclusion, but the Lord kept Korin. As a result, all the repressions were limited only to the fact that the Tretyakov Gallery removed from the permanent exhibition all of his paintings, which were declared “formalist daubs”.
He had to almost completely hide his inner world from others. Lighting a lamp at home in front of the icons he collected with great love and understanding of their spiritual and artistic value, acquaintances who knew that he was a believer, Orthodox, church person, he said: “Light it, sit opposite, and it will somehow become pleasant and easy on soul. The light will sparkle with a kind of firefly, quietly and beautifully ... "
The attitude towards the artist changed only during the war, when in 1942 Pavel Dmitrievich, commissioned by the USSR Committee for Arts, created the triptych "Alexander Nevsky", where the holy Russian prince, clad from head to toe in steel armor, stood against the background of a banner with the face of Christ . Stalin was delighted - it was such an iron Russian giant without any "Vasnetsov" caftans and morocco boots that could break the back of the fascist beast.
Pavel Korin. Triptych "Alexander Nevsky"
Korin also led the restoration of paintings in the Dresden Gallery. In the destroyed Vladimir Cathedral in Kyiv, he restored the frescoes of Viktor Vasnetsov and Mikhail Nesterov, for which he was awarded the title of People's Artist of the USSR, he became a laureate of the Lenin and Stalin Prizes.
At the same time, he continued to work on his main idea. In 1948, he told about his plan to Patriarch Alexy (Simansky), who readily agreed to pose for the artist. Several sessions were held, but the patriarch was constantly distracted by vain business: someone called on the phone, it was necessary to solve some of the most urgent and urgent matters that had an important political connotation.
In the end, he and Alexy agreed that Korin and his wife would come to Odessa, where the patriarch would rest, and there it would be possible to continue work, combining it with a vacation at sea. But a sudden heart attack prevented Korin from carrying out his plan.
Alexy Simansky
In recent years, neither recognition nor solo exhibitions have pleased Pavel Dmitrievich: his relatives have repeatedly noted that Korin often bitterly repeated that he had not fulfilled his destiny, had not completed his most important painting.
But the unexpected happened: the picture began to exist on its own. And not at all what the artist himself intended it to be.
Look closely at the sketch.
Pavel Korin. Russia leaving
The red color of the liturgical vestments of Metropolitan Tryphon and the patriarchs standing behind him clearly tells us that this is a festive Easter service. You can even set the date with accuracy: it is May 5, 1918. It was on this day that Bishop Trifon Turkestanov of Dmitrov, vicar of the Moscow diocese, led the last Easter service in the Assumption Cathedral, which turned out to be the last service in the cathedral in general - after that, the Bolsheviks closed access to the temple for believers.
But the date here is very conditional. This Easter service is already taking place in a mystical and metaphysical space, because both the living and the resurrected patriarchs have gathered to glorify the risen Christ: St. Tikhon (Bellavin) and Sergius (Stragorodsky), metropolitans and bishops, priests and monks, who perished in the millstones of Stalin's Moloch.
Dormition Cathedral of the Kremlin
“Do not marvel at this: for the time is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who have done good will come out to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.”
It seems that people standing with their backs to the altar of the Assumption Cathedral are only waiting for the sign of the deacon to leave the church forever after the service is over. Huge chandeliers have been extinguished, scaffolding has already been installed in the cathedral, the Royal Doors have already been closed ...
But in fact, the artist depicted the very beginning of the Easter service - incense. Right now, Archdeacon Father Michael, raising his right hand with the censer, bows low and proclaims in a deep bass:
- Bless, lord, censer!
But at the same time, he does not address Metropolitan Tryphon, and his hand is extended not to the east, as usual, not to the altar and not to the serving Metropolitan Tryphon, but to the west.
Metropolitan Tryphon himself is also looking there, his only sighted eye wide open in surprise, and all the patriarchs, and all those standing in the temple. And it is impossible not to wonder, what did the metropolitan see SUCH?
If you imagine yourself in the place of Metropolitan Tryphon and look in the same direction, then it is obvious that his eyes are turned to the image of the Savior on the fresco "The Last Judgment", which, according to tradition, is always placed on the western wall of every Orthodox church.
But there is no longer a fresco: both the walls of the temple and the Heavens themselves opened up in anticipation of the Second Coming.
It is from the Risen and Coming Christ that the protodeacon asks for blessings to judge the living and the dead, it is the Savior - the Living and Incarnate God - who is now the primate at this liturgy, anticipating the Last Judgment.
No, the Russian Church is not going anywhere. It is gathered here by Christ himself in anticipation of the imminent judgment, which he is preparing to accept calmly and with love for the Lord.
“And he said to me, These are they who came out of the great tribulation; they washed their clothes and made their clothes white with the blood of the Lamb. For this they are now before the throne of God and serve Him day and night in His temple, and He who sits on the throne will dwell in them ”(Revelation of St. John the Theologian).
The Last Judgment has already begun.
Pavel Dmitrievich Korin. Requiem. Russia is leaving. Sketch. 1935-1959
Dining room in P.D. Korina on M. Pirogovskaya.
"Russia is leaving". Part 1 . November 7, 2007
The name of Pavel Korin is not very well known now. But the artist is really outstanding, a student of Nesterov, a worthy successor to the school of Russian psychological portraiture. And most of all today he is famous for the picture that was never written ...
House Museum of Pavel Korin.
This autumn I had a chance to visit the German Cemetery. The impression was very strong, I wanted to know more. And see. So, it turned out to be natural to go to the Pavel Korin Museum - at one time he created a series of sketch portraits of many of those who now rest on the German.
The goal was narrow, but we got, of course, much more.
Museum-apartment of the artist P.D. Korin
At first, the system of getting to the exhibition “scared me away”: only Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, only with a tour, only by agreement with the guide ... But it was impossible not to go, and the guide was unexpectedly easily and quickly agreed. The next day after the call, we were already standing at the door of the museum. Museum - on Sportivnaya, Malaya Pirogovskaya, 16, wing 2. The house is a former bathhouse (it was a bathhouse even before it became the artist's workshop), completely "authentic", as if not from our time. We did not wait long: a guide appeared, accompanied by several people.
- Are you waiting for me?
- We wait. You.
- What, it's already three o'clock? Well, in Russia only revolutions happen in time. And only the proletarian ones.
And in this spirit it was further ... However, they talked not so much about revolutions as about art and history, and God forbid every guide and art critic to know his subject so deeply. Vadim Valentinovich is on fire, but this does not happen so often ...
It is cold and gloomy inside the museum, people are asked to put intricate felt slippers on their shoes, and put things on a chest. And here they are “responsible” for the property: they assure that nothing has ever been lost. And that's a rarity these days too.
Here we are in the workshop. And she's a gallery. They stand looking at us. We sit and look at them. One of the strongest impressions is these moments of silence while waiting for the guide.
Workshop P.D. Korina on M. Pirogovskaya.
The last liturgy in Russia
A sketch-portrait of Metropolitan Tryphon (Turkestanov) is the color (and not only color) center of the exhibition. Although the canvas itself is one of the smallest. "Fiery Metropolitan" in red Easter vestments. As conceived by the artist, this figure was supposed to be the center of the Requiem composition (this is the author's title, "The Departing Russia" was proposed by Gorky).
Then, together with the guide, we consider a sketch, where many, many are finally assembled into a single composition. Symbols. Three patriarchs - Tikhon, Sergius, Alexy - are nearby, as on an icon (and they lived and were patriarchs, of course, in different time). However, "Requiem" is not a realistic picture by design. Allegory? Deacon (written from the same deacon, the famous Kholmogorov) - hyperbolically enlarged. Metropolitan Tryphon standing next to him is reduced, almost a dwarf. But this is the center.
And then we are offered an interpretation of the picture: everyone is standing with their backs to the altar - an outcome, a "requiem". The deacon raised his hand, asking to bless the censer. But everyone from whom he can ask for this blessing (priests, bishops) is behind him. So he asks for blessings from God Himself. Because the picture shows the last Orthodox service in Russia.
People who would rather leave than change...
1925 Funeral of Patriarch Tikhon. A gathering of people that no one expected. Everyone goes. Including Korin with her older friend and mentor Nesterov. It is clear that SUCH is the last time. These were people who preferred to leave rather than change. And Korin lights up with the idea - "to stop the moment", to capture "images of the spiritual nature of the ancestors."
But practical problems arose: posing. Most of the potential models had never heard of this, they did not agree to go anywhere. Korin turned to Nesterov, who, in turn, brought him together with Metropolitan Trifon (Turkestanov). Trifon was the confessor of both Nesterov himself and many of the then creative intelligentsia. Yermolova, for example ... He also had high lineage, and a brilliant education, career prospects ... He knew art professionally and with creative people talked about culture on an equal footing. But in Moscow at the beginning of the 20th century, he was also called the "cook's bishop", because he served liturgies for the servants, that is, those that began at 3-4 in the morning, so that the servants had time to return by the time the owners woke up. And he was also considered the most outstanding speaker of his time (and after all, this was the time of Koni and Plevako, and in general, almost all of the then intelligentsia knew how to “speak redly”).
So, Metropolitan Trifon Nesterov did not refuse, he agreed to 4 sessions of 2 hours each. (Note that Serov's "Girl with Peaches" - the embodiment of naturalness - seventy sessions, and Yermolova's portrait - about three hundred.) Korin manages to paint from life only a face, he paints a figure from a mannequin, hence some disproportion. The rest are more difficult. The artist is looking for characters in Moscow churches, but people do not want to go to the studio ... Then - a "trump card": "I had Tryphon himself. Come and see. See, stand up." It works. And when a package of millet or a bottle of oil is added to the words... Time is hungry. But still, there is a problem: the “models” are not used to posing, they quickly “fade out” - the spirituality that Korin is trying to convey disappears. And this is how it works: in 20-30 minutes you need to capture the main thing ...
But all this was told by the guide.
From myself: at the end of the tour we stopped at the photograph of the artist. Vadim Valentinovich speculated about how handsome the man was (I agree, perhaps) and that this is a rare case when, with all this, he is also “normal”. And then I came across photographs of Korin from the 1930s, the time when he was working on The Departing Russia. Well, let's say, a pretty boy, in a standard suit like that ... And how is he, with these "breath-bearing" ones, one on one? After all, you can’t look fearlessly at his sketches, just as, you know, not every icon can be looked into the eyes.
P.D. and P.T. Korina. 1930 * ~ * Pavel Korin in 1933
P.S.
From myself, I note that my visit to the museum-apartment and the workshop of Pavel Korin was similar to the one given here, and the impression was just as strong.
And I recommend that you all find a group of like-minded people or friends who are close to your interests, go there, watch and listen ...
I'm sure you won't regret it! (c) allerleiten :)
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"Russia is leaving". The history of the unwritten picture. Part 2 . November 12, 2007
The unpainted canvas paradoxically exists in the human mind. It turns out that one of the most famous paintings of Korin is one that, in fact, does not exist. "Not writing" with a greater or lesser degree of persuasiveness can be explained by various reasons, external and internal. But, perhaps, the unrealized plan is not a defeat, but a victory?
Why?
An untouched wall-to-wall canvas is also a full-fledged object of exposition, a symbol that allows for many interpretations. But the impact is amazing. Can you imagine what it was like for the artist for many years to look at the canvas, which he passionately wanted, but could not touch?
Korin had talent, inspiration, desire to work. But the picture "did not develop", the overall composition was not clear. In addition, the artist, who came from a family of hereditary Palekh icon painters, who went through the “school” of communication with Nesterov, who perceived art as a service, made enormous demands on himself. He could not help but complete everything, as he saw it, necessary preparatory work. Perhaps this was one of the reasons that "The Departing Russia" was not written. Or maybe there were other reasons?
Version two
Time. The twenties and thirties of the last century were not the most peaceful time, and Korin's theme was also ambiguous ... But an unexpected "guardian angel" appeared - "the first Soviet writer" Maxim Gorky.
On September 3, 1931, Alexei Maksimovich came to the artist's studio, which was then located on the Arbat. Korin lived in solitude, wrote sketches for the picture he had conceived, but the rumor about his outstanding talent reached the writer. And the meeting turned out to be fateful ... About Gorky - both during his life and after his death - they wrote and spoke in different ways: now more and more often - "Nietzschean", "tragic figure of the era", in Soviet years- "petrel of the revolution." In what form did he go to the workshop? Judging by how the further history of the relationship between Gorky and Korin developed, that day not only a writer and an artist met, but also a person with a person ...
"Guardian angel"
Korin showed Gorky numerous portraits, sketches for the "Requiem" conceived back in 1920 (among them - "The Holy Fool", "Blind", "Father and Son"). Gorky did not like the name "Requiem", he suggested not to use borrowed words in the name. He also was born new version: "Leaving Russia".
And also - he offered to go abroad: "In a month I'm going to Italy, let's go together, I'll take care of it." So Korin visited Italy and France.
During the trip, the artist carefully studies the works of the great masters of the past, constantly returning to his painting in thought, trying to find ways to translate the idea. "My God! Is the path to Great Art closed to me too? Understanding all the vulgarity and meanness of the fall, should I really fall down there? God! How, then, how to rise to the heights of pure art?<...>Do you hear me Great Ones? I shout to you, I call you, help, help, help!!!” (June 11, 1935). Another entry was made a little later:<...>Great ones, please help. How keenly I feel Genius in others and bow before it. God, don't I have this flame? Then it’s not worth living ... ”(June 28, 1935).
As a guest at Gorky's in Sorrento, Korin in 1932 painted a famous portrait that says more about Gorky than other books, letters and diaries.
Upon his return in February 1934, with the assistance of the same Gorky, Korin moved to a new, well-equipped workshop (it is now a house-museum). Already ordered and brought a huge canvas - 50 square meters. Everything is ready for writing "Outgoing Russia". But in 1936 Gorky dies. With him goes both material support and patronage, which protected the artist from the "spite of the day." Korin is forced to write to order, work on sketches of metro stations and portraits of great Soviet people. He remained true to himself, he really painted only the great ones (among the many he depicted - not a single mediocrity), but he never touched the huge canvas.
Unspeakable
Being in a museum, it is difficult to resist the temptation to “try on” a sketch on canvas. Sometimes it works out. The unpainted canvas paradoxically exists in the human mind. It turns out that one of Korin's most famous paintings is one that doesn't exist.
"Not writing" with a greater or lesser degree of persuasiveness can be explained by various reasons, external and internal. But, perhaps, the unrealized plan is not a defeat, but a victory?
Requiem, according to the definition - a funeral service. In fact, Korin tried to portray the "funeral" of the Russian Church. But she survived. The same and not the same, but still the “United Apostolic Cathedral”, which the gates of hell will not overcome.
P.S. Historical note
On the canvas, Korin, apparently, tried to depict the last service in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin, May 5, 1918. For many years then the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin was a museum. However, after more than seventy years, the royal doors opened here again: in 1989, a solemn service was held dedicated to the four hundredth anniversary of the Patriarchate in Russia. The service was headed by the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Pimen.
And here's what's interesting: among the three dozen sketches written as a preparation for the Requiem, there is a portrait of a young twenty-five-year-old hieromonk. In the general sketch of the Requiem, the monk stands on the right, closest to the viewer of all the others, as if protruding from the picture. This is the future Patriarch Pimen...
REQUIEM
The creative heritage of the remarkable artist and citizen of Russia P.D. Korina is unusually diverse. Coming from the icon-painting Palekh and initially formed as a master icon painter, Korin forever retained an interest in the inner world of a person and subsequently became one of the outstanding portrait painters of our time. Perhaps the same purely icon-painting tradition of miniature landscapes on Palekh icons eventually led the artist to create a number of completely original panorama landscapes. These bewitchingly beautiful picturesque "ribbons" give the viewer a feeling of boundless space and the beauty of Russian nature, and the artist himself is presented as the subtlest lyricist and at the same time a deep philosopher.
Participation together with M.V. Nesterov in the painting of the Pokrovsky Cathedral of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent forever addicted the young Korin to monumentalism. Subsequently, he worked on the triptychs "Alexander Nevsky", "Dmitry Donskoy", "Splashes", on the giant frieze "March to the Future" for the Palace of Soviets, on a sketch of the Victory Monument in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. Working on the design of the Moscow Metro stations, Korin created grandiose mosaic panels for the Komsomolskaya-Koltsevaya, Novoslobodskaya-Koltsevaya, Arbatskaya stations, as well as sketches for stained-glass windows for the Novoslobodskaya-Koltsevaya station.
And yet, the spirit-bearing images of the famous Korin's "Requiem", or "Departing Russia" arouse the greatest and ever-growing interest among our contemporary. The idea of creating a huge historical and artistic epic was born by the artist in the spring of 1925, when believing Moscow, and indeed all of Orthodox Russia, was burying their archpastor-patriarch Tikhon.
He died on the day Orthodox holiday The Annunciation of the Mother of God on March 25 (April 7), 1925 in his Moscow residence - the Donskoy Monastery.
Considering that Tikhon was the first patriarch after a 200-year break (in 1718 Peter I abolished the patriarchate in Russia) and that the years of his patriarchate fell on a testing time for Russian Orthodoxy - between November 1917 and April 1925, then is it any wonder that the death of the patriarch caused in those days a pilgrimage to his deathbed.
On all roads to Moscow, to the walls of the Donskoy Monastery, full-flowing human rivers flowed. The unexpected and tragic vision of thousands and thousands of silently and mournfully walking people led in those days to the Donskoy Monastery and many representatives of the Moscow creative intelligentsia. There were writers, and composers, and artists. Among the artists one could see the sincere singer of Holy Russia Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov, and with him his constant companion and friend Pavel Korin. Both, both the student and the mentor, looked at what was happening through the eyes of historians, reflecting on the mind of the philosophers they saw. Fully aware that they were present at the last such massive and serious demonstration of the Russian spirit, Korin decided to capture such a majestic and tragic outcome without fail, not to let it pass without a trace. It was necessary to show the roots of their character in images to future generations of Russian people.
Needless to say, what doomed himself to, having set himself such a goal, the artist who worked in Moscow in the mid-30s of the twentieth century. Only the understanding and support of friends - Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov, and eventually Alexei Maksimovich Gorky - gave him the opportunity to work on the epic over the next 12 years (the last image of "Rus", "Metropolitan Sergius", was marked in 1937). However, Korin pondered over the sketch of the overall composition of the "Requiem" for almost his entire subsequent life.
Even to the uninitiated, who simply stopped in front of the Requiem sketch, it becomes obvious to the viewer at first glance that he is contemplating a genuine epic, moreover, of a truly universal scale. The seriousness of the artist's intention is also convinced by the small numbers of significant dates under the sketch: 1935-1959 - indisputable evidence that in this case we are facing not just a stage in the master's work, but the fruit of the reflections of his entire conscious life. Obviously, for a complete understanding of the composition, we, the audience, require specific knowledge, and just in the area in which the artist's current compatriots feel a certain lack. We will not be surprised either by the ignorance of the modern resident of Russia, who does not always even recognize the interior of the main temple of his Fatherland - the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, where the action unfolds, or by the fact that the artist himself, only returning the composition to its original name "Requiem" (instead of Gorky " Russia is leaving”), he did not leave any explanatory lines to his work. There is only one reason for this: almost the entire ascetic life of Pavel Korin, as well as the life of his compatriots, lay in decades of not just oblivion, but deliberate trampling of the Christian spirit in Russia.
"Requiem" (high resolution)
Bearing in mind what has been said, we will try, to the best of our competence, to penetrate into the depth of what is depicted and understand the true intention of the artist, focusing only on the obvious and resorting to formulations that are not offensive to Pavel Korin, a man of the deepest and most enlightened Orthodox faith...
As if emphasizing the brilliance of the prominent pillars of Russian confessionalism of the 20th century, in the gallery of Korin’s Requiem there also appear the “poor in spirit”, modest and inconspicuous prayer books of Orthodox Russia, on whose innumerable multitude and steadfastness the Russian Church withstood unprecedented persecution and still exists. Among them is the village priest, Father Aleksey, a fellow countryman of Pavel Korin, once the rector of the church of St. John Chrysostom in the village of Krasnovo, neighboring Palekh. The good shepherd with the beard of King Lear and, like his Shakespearean prototype, who survived in this life the collapse of all earthly ideals: the suicide of his son, “confounded” for his relationship with his father-priest, the betrayal of his own flock, yesterday still smashing his forehead on the floor of a rural church, and the next day, “with revolutionary enthusiasm,” she went to destroy churches and knock down crosses from the graves of her parents ...
And here he is standing in front of us, the rural "priest" father Alexei with a smoky gray mustache, in the guise of King Lear - herself majestic in her modesty, obvious and inexhaustible Russian kindness and gentleness. His gaze is a mute reproach and a sentence to any evil and violence, sacrilegious corruption of a person - in whatever guises it appears in the world! ..
Here is a paired portrait "Father and Son" (Sergei Mikhailovich and Stepan Sergeevich Churakov), depicting the images of Russian artisans, who once formed the basis and pride of the great people-creator. How beautiful are the hands of the son in this portrait of generations! And with what skill they are written! But these are not only human hands. For Pavel Korin, the artist-philosopher, this is a symbol of almost global, all-human dimensions. Father - thick-set, but already "slipped" into Tolstoyanism. Such a person will show stubbornness and delusion. And a son who inherited from his father the same purposefulness, the same persistence in experiencing the accepted idea. Only this nature is even more nervous, almost feverish. Both seem to be at a crossroads. What will they choose, still so good-natured, still professing conscientiousness in work, in life, in family relationships? After all, they live in the last years of the existence of the Russian family with its eternal and seemingly unshakable moral foundations, with a hierarchy of relationships between generations. Soon, all this will be blurred and defeated ... And the whole knot of human experiences with amazing power is revealed by the artist not in the faces, not even in the eyes of the characters (the eyes of both the father and the son are downcast, and this already sounds the tragic leitmotif of the picture) , and in the intertwined fingers of the son's hands ...
“Three” is not just an image of three pious women, but a display of three degrees of spiritual ascent or, as Father Alexander Men once said about these images, “a whole layer of Russian female spirituality.”
The old abbess, a strong-willed and unshakable force, attracting and enticing; behind her is a middle-aged woman in reverent humility, led by the abbess. And the third - a tall and beautiful aristocrat (what hands!) with a burning gaze of huge blue eyes - all awe, confusion! But here, too, there is depth and seriousness when it comes to choosing the spiritual path, and recklessness and steadfastness when the path has already been chosen.
An illustration of such a state of mind can serve as another beautiful female character of the epic - "The Young Nun". How much chaste purity in this image! In addition to high spirituality, there is also true nobility, aristocracy of spirit and thought. And amazing naturalness. Here it is, genuine Russian intelligence ... to the point of simplicity! Nothing puffy, catchy, for show; everything is internal, secret, and for that reason it is beautiful! Michelangelo involuntarily comes to mind: a chaste person inevitably bears on his face that reflection of spiritual light, genuine god-likeness, which delays aging, prolongs youth - the spring of human life! Everything converges: before us is the daughter of the Olonets governor Nikolai Vasilyevich Protasyev, who lived piously, raised the same children and was honored with a Christian death in 1915 ... "World of the Valley" knew his daughter Tatyana Nikolaevna Protasyev as a remarkable historian, a brilliant connoisseur of ancient Russian literature. "World on high" - a secret nun with a holy name in the history of Russian spirituality of the twentieth century - Tamar ...
In the series of Korin's "Requiem" there are two wonderful etudes with images of schema girls. The artist himself clarifies in his titles of the sketches: “Scheme from the Ascension Monastery” and “Scheme from the Ivanovo Monastery”. Completely different in appearance, both women are a single hypostasis of the highest monastic asceticism, both performed by Korin with high inspiration and professional excellence.
The schema girl from the Ascension (Kremlin) monastery with a beautiful, stern face half turned around and froze with her hands folded at her chest. Those Corinthian entwined fingers! Without the image itself, they alone clearly convey the inner state of nature, the intense struggle of feelings, a real storm of emotions in human soul and at the same time a purely monastic overcoming of ethical emotions, cutting off self-will! .. Schimnitsa is amazed, perhaps even outraged by the plaster casts of classical sculptures seen in the artist’s studio, most of them naked human nature. And the spiritual ascetic does not know that, captured at that moment by the artist’s immortal brush, she herself looks like a kind of spiritual monument, representing in Russian an organic image of the strictest chastity and at the same time the utmost naturalness. The arrival in the artist's studio, which is a huge "temptation" for the schema, became possible with the blessing of the spiritual mentor - Metropolitan Tryphon. Her whole being does not accept such sacrilege, but she is a scheming woman, and obedience for her is the first commandment in behavior. In her senile body there is a huge spiritual energy and at the moment there is a terrible tension. This is convinced not only by intertwined fingers. The eyes of the schema woman are striking, the stern look of which immediately attracts the attention of the viewer. Not a single reproduction is able to convey their color: black and blue, even with direct contemplation of the study, they are not distinguishable every day and hour! The image of the schema woman from the Resurrection Monastery gives us an image of humility, but this humility itself is regal, majestic.
The schema girl from the Ivanovsky Monastery in Moscow is a special image, incomparable with other, even the most expressive characters of the Requiem. This is the image of a man-prayer, frenzied, fiery, immeasurable power, but again, internal, hidden. The look of the schema woman, although directed outside, does not see anything external, it is turned inward. Ultimate concentration and ultimate humility, as befits a schemist, cutting off any self-will, complete detachment from the world, from reality: everything is higher, above-worldly. Her prayer is no longer for herself - for the world, the sinful and fallen human race, which once again violated the commandments of goodness and love, did not justify its high destiny, madly and boldly erased its godlikeness and therefore doomed ...
Such are the images of Korin's Requiem. As you can see, in all these externally, and sometimes internally dissimilar people, there is one thing - a spiritual core, faith. They lived by it, they died with it, accepting death with dignity, in a Christian way. It was faith, the Christian view of man as a microcosm, the affirmation in man of the consciousness of his uniqueness and god-like significance (God's servant is no one's slave!) that imparted to them a high individuality. All of them are separate hypostases of one idea...
(c) V.V. Narcissists.
Dates of life and work of P.D. Korina
1892
July 8 (June 25, old style) was born in the village of Palekh, Vladimir province, in the family of a hereditary icon painter Dmitry Nikolaevich Korin.
1897
Death of his father, Dmitry Nikolaevich Korin.
1903-1907
He studied at the icon-painting school in Palekh under the guidance of E.I. Styagov. He graduated with the title of master icon painter.
1908
Moved to Moscow.
1908-1911
He worked in the icon-painting chamber at the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow.
1911
Helped M.V. Nesterov in the painting of the Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent on Bolshaya Ordynka.
1912-1916
He studied at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture under K.A. Korovina, S.V. Malyutina, L.O. Pasternak.
1916
He worked on the painting of the tomb. book. Elizabeth Feodorovna under the Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent. In this regard, at the request of Elizabeth Feodorovna, he made a special trip to Rostov the Great and Yaroslavl to get acquainted with the frescoes of cathedrals and churches.
1917
In February, he began working in a workshop on the Arbat, house 23, where he lived until 1934. April - a trip to Kyiv, acquaintance with ancient mosaics and frescoes. August - a trip to Petrograd, to the Hermitage; first noted in a notebook about the desire to "paint the Big Picture". August 26 - consecration of the Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent.
1918-1919
He taught drawing and painting at the 2nd State Art Museum in Moscow.
1919-1922
He worked in the anatomical theater of the 1st Moscow University to study human anatomy. He made drawings from classical samples at the Museum of Fine Arts, and also measured casts of sculpture from Ancient Greece, Rome and the Renaissance.
1920
The first mention in the notebook of the conceived painting "Bless, my soul, the Lord" (not implemented).
1920-1925
He copied fragments of A. Ivanov's painting "The Appearance of Christ to the People" in the size of the original.
1922
Visited the Museum of anti-religious propaganda. He made sketches of the relics of St. Joasaph of Belogorodsky.
1923
With brother A.D. Korin traveled across the North, visiting Vologda, Old Ladoga, Ferapontov Monastery, Novgorod. He studied murals in cathedrals and churches, made sketches of church utensils, frescoes by old masters.
Death of mother, Nadezhda Ivanovna Korina.
1925
He made sketches during the funeral of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Tikhon in the Donskoy Monastery - the spiritual center of Russian Orthodox Church. These sketches became the beginning of work on the painting “Requiem. Russia is leaving.
1926
He began to work on etudes-portraits for the painting “Requiem. Russia is leaving. He taught drawing for emerging artists at the Museum of Fine Arts (until 1931). In February, together with A.D. Korin saved the iconostasis and murals of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent from destruction in connection with its closure.
On March 7, he married Praskovya Tikhonovna Petrova, a pupil of the Martha and Mary Convent.
1927
Watercolor "Workshop" was purchased in the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery.
1928
In July he visited Palekh, made pencil sketches in a notebook, as well as oil studies; wrote the landscape "My Motherland" (TG) and the essay of the same name.
1931
Trip to Valaam.
In autumn, A.M. visited the artist’s studio on the Arbat. Bitter. The beginning of their friendship and patronage of Gorky. With the support of Gorky, together with A.D. Korin traveled through Germany to Italy and France (returned in June 1932). He kept a travel diary, created a large number of sketches of famous paintings, interiors and sculptures of antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Made a portrait of A.M. Gorky in Sorrento, at the writer's dacha (TG).
Participated in the transfer of A. Ivanov's painting "The Appearance of Christ to the People" from the Rumyantsev Museum to the State Tretyakov Gallery and in the restoration washing of the painting.
He headed the restoration workshop of the Pushkin Museum, where he worked until 1959.
1933
He moved to a workshop on Malaya Pirogovskaya Street, where he lived and worked until the end of his life; now - the House-Museum of P.D. Korina (branch of the State Tretyakov Gallery).
1935
Visited France and England. In Paris, met with F.I. Chaliapin.
1939-1943
By order of the Committee for Arts, he created portraits of prominent figures of Soviet culture: A.M. Leonidov (1939, State Tretyakov Gallery), M.V. Nesterov (1939, State Tretyakov Gallery), A.N. Tolstoy (1940, Russian Museum), V.I. Kachalova (1940, State Tretyakov Gallery), N.F. Gamalei (1941, State Tretyakov Gallery), K.N. Igumnov (1941-1943, State Tretyakov Gallery), as well as a portrait of N.A. Peshkova (1940, State Tretyakov Gallery).
Portrait of L.M. Leonidov. 1939 ~ Portrait of M.V. Nesterov. 1939 ~ Portrait of N.A. Peshkova. 1940
1941-1947
Worked on the sketches of the "March to the Future" frieze for the Great Hall of the Palace of Soviets.
1942-1945
Executed the triptych "Alexander Nevsky" (TG) and variants of sketches of the triptych "Dmitry Donskoy".
1945
In October-December, he performed a portrait of Marshal G.K. Zhukov (TG). The beginning of work on the restoration of paintings from the collection of the Dresden Gallery, which was led by P.D. Korin. The work lasted until 1955.
1948
Made a portrait of S.T. Konenkov (TG). Visited Kyiv in connection with the organization of restoration work in the Vladimir Cathedral.
1949-1950
He taught at the Moscow State Art Institute. IN AND. Surikov.
1951-1952
He worked on the creation of mosaic panels for the Komsomolskaya-Koltsevaya and Arbatskaya metro stations, the assembly hall of the Moscow state university, sketches of stained-glass windows and mosaics for the Novoslobodskaya metro station.
One of the stained-glass windows in the central hall of Novoslobodskaya station
1954
The State Prize was awarded for mosaic panels for the Komsomolskaya-Koltsevaya station.
Elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR.
Mosaic panels of the station "Komsomolskaya": "Alexander Nevsky" and "Dmitry Donskoy"
Metro station "Komsomolskaya-Koltsevaya"
The design of the station is dedicated to the theme of the struggle of the Russian people for independence. The ceiling of the station is decorated with eight mosaic panels of smalt and precious stones. Six of them depict Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Kuzma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky, Alexander Suvorov, Mikhail Kutuzov, Soviet soldiers and officers at the walls of the Reichstag. Their author is the artist P. D. Korin. Two more panels depicting I. V. Stalin (“Victory Parade” and “Presenting the Guards Banner”) were replaced after Stalin's personality cult was exposed in 1963. New panels depict V. I. Lenin's speech to the Red Guards and the Motherland against the backdrop of the Kremlin's Spasskaya Tower.
The yellow ceiling is also decorated with mosaic inserts and stucco. The hall is illuminated by massive multi-track chandeliers hanging between the panels, the platforms are illuminated by smaller chandeliers. The columns are decorated with marble capitals and finished with light marble, like the walls of the station. The floor is paved with pink granite. A bust of V. I. Lenin is installed in the dead end of the hall. At the opposite end, near the large escalator, there is a Florentine mosaic based on sketches by P. D. Korin depicting the Order of Victory against the background of red banners.
1955
He made a trip to the German Democratic Republic in connection with the transfer of restored paintings to the Dresden Gallery.
1956
Painted a portrait of S.S. Saryan (TG), for which he was awarded a gold medal at the World Exhibition in Brussels (1958).
1957
Performed a group portrait of artists Kukryniksy (TG).
1958
Awarded the title of People's Artist of the RSFSR.
Elected a full member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR.
1960
Artistic director of the GTsKhRM (until 1964).
1961
Visited Italy. Made a portrait of the artist Renate Guttuso (RM).
1962
By the 150th anniversary of the battle of Borodino, they were completed under the leadership of P.D. Korina restoration work of the panorama by F.A. Tubo "Battle of Borodino" (beginning of work - 1957).
Awarded the title of People's Artist of the USSR.
1963
Awarded the Lenin Prize for portraits of M.S. Sarayan, R.N. Simonov, Kukryniksov, R. Guttuso.
A personal exhibition was opened in the halls of the Academy of Arts of the USSR on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of his birth and the 45th anniversary of his creative activity.
1964
Made a trip to Italy.
1965
He traveled to the USA in connection with the opening of a solo exhibition organized by Armand Hammer in New York. He also visited Italy and France.
1966
He painted the central part of the triptych "Flashes".
1967
Awarded the Order of Lenin.
On November 22 he died in Moscow. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.
