Surikov, Vasily

The work of the great historical painter Vasily Surikov (1848-1916) is comparable in scale to the heritage of such giants of Russian culture as Ivanov, Mussorgsky, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. He combined historical vision and psychological depth with an elemental power and beauty of pictorial embodiment.

Surikov's innate tense historicism is explained by the artist's life. A native of the Siberian town of Krasnoyarsk, he came from an old Cossack family and possessed the character of his "fiercely passionate" fellow-countrymen who kept alive many ancient traditions. Thus, when Surikov moved to St Petersburg, where he studied from 1869 to 1878 under P.P.Chistyakov at the Academy of Arts, the contrast and contradictions of the "two Russias", the Russia of the ordinary people and the "European" Russia of St Petersburg, became a personal problem for him as well. In 1877 the artist moved to Moscow where, questioning even the old walls about the past, as Surikov himself put it, he worked on his main pictures, which showed his unique talent as a symphonist-painter who embodies on his canvas not only the appearance, but the spirit, the underlying energies of events at different periods of his nation's life. The first of these polyphonic picture-tragedies was "The Morning of the Streltsys' Execution" (1881), which depicts the last few moments before the execution of the Streltsys, musketeers who rebelled against Peter the Great's reforms in 1698. In the picture "Menshikov in Berezovo" (1883) Surikov continues to reflect on the tragic dialectics of history, turning to the figure of the "half-sovereign lord", Alexander Menshikov, who was removed from high office after Peter's death and exiled together with his children to the depths of Siberia.

In 1884-1887 the artist produced a large number of sketches and studies for the canvas "Boyarynya Morozova", which portrays an episode from 17th-century Russian history when Fedosiya Prokopievna Morozova, a supporter of the "fiery" protopriest Avvakum, is driven round Moscow to be derided by the townsfolk before being sentenced to imprisonment and a slow death. Surikov treats the history of the schism not as a dis-pute over church ritual, but as the tragic contradictions in the fate of the nation's soul, the different facets of which are embodied in the numerous figures on the canvas. While conveying the "breath" of the crowd, the decorativeness of the old costumes and occasionally attaining an almost Impressionistic effect in his portrayal of a winter day, Surikov at the same time enables us to sense in this captured moment features and relations characteristic of Russian history in general. The beauty of this "rich mix" of mu|ticoloured painting by Surikov who had mastered the lessons of the great artists of the West (the age of the Renaissance and modern French art) is quite unique. Surikov's compassion and breadth of outlook are vividly expressed also in the fine works which he produced during his travels round Europe ("Scene from a Rornan Carnival", 1884).

"Tretyakov Gallery. Guidebook". Avant-Garde, 2000