April 15, 1943
A 61-year-old artist has died in Moscow. Aristarchus Lentulov. "The solar master of the Russian avant-garde."
The object that serves as my model ceases to be one for that moment. I love it, this object, in every inch of its being.
Born in 1882 under Penza, Born into a rural priest's family, he lost his father early and studied at a theological seminary.
At 16, he entered the Penza Art School, but dropped out after two years due to a ban on free-themed paintings. He then enrolled in the Kiev School, but was also expelled after arguing with his teacher and attempting to "correct" his painting after class. He returned to Penza, where he eventually graduated from the school.
He was not accepted to the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts because the examiner inquired about the source of the green color on the model's nose (that's how Lentulov saw the shadow). The answer was:
Can't you see it? In that case, I feel sorry for you.
Having married the daughter of a wealthy merchant, he lived abroad and continued his painting studies. He was close to the "World of Art" and avant-garde artists. He experimented with color—"color dynamics." Critics dubbed him "the artist of the sun" for his vibrant colors and bold experiments with light and shadow.
In the landscape I allowed contrasts of light and shadow, from black in the shadow to pure chrome in the light.
In 1911, he became one of the leaders of the avant-garde artists group "Jack of Diamonds" (at that time, convicts were called aces of diamonds, and swindlers were called jacks).
As a protest, we decided: the worse, the better, and really, what could be more absurd than the “Jack of Diamonds”?
The Diamond-Letterers (around 70 artists) rejected the traditions of realism, experimenting with composition, form, and color. Some of the paintings on religious themes were removed from the very first exhibition, deemed offensive by censors.
In 1913 he painted his first large paintings in the Cubist style: Moscow and St. Basil’s Cathedral.
He tried to convey the noise of the city in color. He called his style "orneism"—his paintings resembled collages or ornaments. He often composed them from various materials: he glued beads, pieces of fabric, birch bark, and gold leaf onto canvas.
Art critic Abram Efros called Lentulov an “abracadabrist” and called for “if not accepting, then understanding his works.”
[He was] a newcomer from Penza, a stocky Russian, large and broad-shouldered, with a booming voice and broad gestures, with the upbringing of a seminarian and the manners of a Volga ushkuiniku
(Abram Efros)
In 1917, after the revolution, he joined the Moscow Artists' Union, which included many members of the "Jack of Diamonds" group. He became one of the first teachers at the State Free Art Workshops and a "proper" proletarian artist. In the spirit of "socialist realism," he depicted young women reading newspapers, sturdy factory workers, resort women playing volleyball, and other scenes of Soviet life.
New art, if it appears, must, with its very first cry, tell the people something
In 1918, by order of the Bolshevik government, he decorated the streets of Moscow for the anniversary of the revolution.
Who, on the October anniversary, painted the trees and lawns of the Theatre Square squares a furious violet with tempera, the same color used for theater set design? Lentulov!
(Abram Efros)
He headed the Society of Moscow Artists, which was declared formalist in the 1930s.
In 1935, he participated in the persecution of the artist Nikolai Mikhailov - in his painting "At the Coffin," which depicts Kirov's funeral, Stalin imagined a skeleton grabbing him by the throat from behind (the artist was sentenced to five years in a labor camp and died of a stroke shortly after his release).
I'm now filled with fear. I'm ready to sacrifice my entire life for the fate of our country and every step we take. We must monitor what everyone says, our every mood, and only these comrades can have a place in our midst.
(at a meeting of the Moscow Regional Union of Artists, 1935)
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, he was evacuated with his family to Ulyanovsk.
In 1942 he underwent a serious operation in Moscow and died soon after.
