It is not by chance that the exhibition “Adherents of Red. Malyavin & Arkhipov” opens in the halls of the State Tretyakov Gallery: the museum has large collections of works by Filipp Andreyevich Malyavin (1869-1940) and Abram Yefimovich Arkhipov (1862-1930) but has never before held solo exhibitions of these artists.

Both came from peasant families, so their work is dominated by rural subjects. They created all their most famous works in Ryazan Province: Arkhipov worked a lot in the village of Solotcha, Malyavin in an acquired estate near the village of Aksinyino.

The image of the Russian peasant woman, which in the early 20^th century was associated with the image of Russia, became central to the paintings of these masters. In the paintings by Arkhipov and Malyavin, the breadth and prowess of the Russian soul, joy, and even good-natured laughter were conveyed by imposing female characters dressed in bright red shawls, shirts, panevas [three-panelled skirts], and sarafans [sundresses] (in this connection, it can be argued that their paintings also have ethnographic significance, as they depict the Ryazan folk costume of the first quarter of the 20^th century). Genuine cheerfulness, uplifting mood, positive energy the paintings literally overflow with, were perceived in the late 19th and the first third of the 20th century as a kind of optimistic message of the coming changes.

Last but not least, the two artists are united by their obvious fondness for the red colour, which distinguished them from many painters of the time and gave reason to call the forthcoming exhibition “Adherents of Red”. A large space of the canvas filled with red is not only something festive (i.e. beautiful [red is a synonym of ‘beautiful’ in the Russian language), it is also a kind of challenge to the artist's professional skills. And then red is traditionally associated with the element of fire and with blood. That is why Valentin Serov expertly noted that “red is a special colour and it must be handled very delicately, otherwise you end up with coarseness, dissonance, cheapness. You want to be especially careful and moderate in the use of this paint”[1].

No doubt, there is a certain practice of using this colour. It is believed that red was the favourite colour of the ancient Slavs, it denoted vital energy and connection with the supreme deity, Rod. In Slavic pagan mythology, red was revered as the colour of the God Yarila, the god of spring, fertility and the rebirth of nature after a long winter. The expression ‘spring is red’ (beautiful) in Russian bylinas [traditional heroic poems] and fairy tales was used to denote the arrival of Yarila. In folk beliefs, red cloth, red threads were endowed with protective properties and used as charms. The red colour could also symbolise spirits of darkness and demons. For example, domovoy [house-sprite] and vodyanoy [water-sprite] were believed to wear clothes and a hat of this colour; witches and upyrs [similar to vampires] had red eyes, teeth and hair.

At the same time, red was revered as the colour of love, beauty (red maiden (beautiful maiden)), fertility, prolongation of life, which led to its rich representation in domestic life: in painted household utensils, embroidered clothes, accessories of the traditional costume. In painting, too, blush on the cheeks or crimson lips, and finally red calico clothes were traditionally symbols of health, prosperity, and a trouble-free life. Rudolf Arnheim, an expert in the psychology of art perception, cited Goethe, a great writer and inquisitive naturalist, the creator of the original theory of the emotional effect of colour, who saw pure red as conveying the impression of gravity and dignity because in his understanding the red colour combined in itself all the other colours. He wrote that the red glass exhibited a bright landscape in so dreadful a hue as to inspire sentiments of awe reminding him of the light that would spread on earth and heaven on Doomsday, and, as having a grave and magnificent effect, red was the colour of sovereign power [2].

FILIPP MALYAVIN
Whirlwind, 1906 (details)
© State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, 2024

However, since the French Revolution red began to be increasingly associated with public unrest, revolts, and change of the political order. So, feeling themselves revolutionaries in art, Malyavin and Arkhipov used the red colour as a sign of renewal and mastery of new artistic techniques and methods. Arkhipov and Malyavin made a lot of efforts to win over to their side as many adherents as possible, those who could ‘feel with colour’ the world around them and discern its origins.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Malyavin and Arkhipov went down in the history of art not only with their (predominantly) red palette, but above all with their talented rendering of the emotion of joy - Malyavin's “Laughter” (1900, International Gallery of Modern Art, Palazzo Ca' Pesaro, Venice) literally ‘exploded’ the usual perceptions of a picture as a reflection of the real world. The canvas was prepared as a competition work for a medal of the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, but the board rejected the painting as showing too innovative an approach to painting. Malyavin did not grieve over that for long as almost immediately, already in 1900, “Laughter” was awarded a gold medal at the World Exhibition in Paris, which made the artist famous not only all over Russia, but all over the world. At the same exhibition in Paris, Arkhipov was awarded a bronze medal for his painting “On the Volga” (1889, State Russian Museum). On the wave of success, Malyavin presented to the public a large canvas, ‘Whirlwind’ (1906). It was acquired by the Tretyakov Gallery Board during the author's lifetime (which in itself is an honour) and since then has occupied pride of place in the permanent exposition.

Malyavin and Arkhipov, each in his own way, managed to find their own secret of emotional impact on the viewer and create a gallery of fresh and memorable images. In contrast to Malyavin's loud and somewhat scandalous fame, Abram Arkhipov's fame did not spread so widely, but among artists and collectors he had an impeccable reputation as a talented master. If in the pre-revolutionary period his oeuvre was dominated by genre works and landscapes, in the 1920s, he created a gallery of expressive folk images, among which prevailed ruddy and smiling peasant women full of vital energy, in bright outfits of Ryazan Province. Mikhail Nesterov called Abram Arkhipov, even in the last decade of his life, “bright, radiant, young, if not youthful” [3]. In the Soviet era, art critics and viewers perceived Archipov’s wholesome peasant women as the embodiment of the new life of the Soviet village freed from the landlord's yoke.

Arkhipov's life was linked to Moscow, where he developed the traditions of the Russian Realist school, taught for many years at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, and actively participated in the activities of the Association of Travelling Art Exhibitions and the Union of Russian Artists. In 1922, he was one of the first to join the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia, and five years later he received the title of People's Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Malyavin participated in exhibitions of “Mir Iskusstva” [World of Art], and “Union of Russian Artists” since the time of their foundation, and after the revolution his paintings were exhibited by the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia. In 1922, Malyavin emigrated to France, therefore many of his later works are abroad.

There have been numerous attempts to ‘fit’ both painters into one or another art movement. Both Arkhipov and Malyavin got the ‘jab’ of Academism during their years of study at the Academy of Arts, which determined their virtuoso compositional skills and adherence to traditional painting techniques. Their art was contrasted with what, according to many, was a more refined art, Art Nouveau. Of no less influence on both artists was the ideology of traveller artists aimed at finding humanistic foundations of art. But Malyavin's painting gift was so different from the stylistics of traveller artists that the artist and critic Sergei Makovsky exclaimed in surprise: “Which of them, in the happy days of travelling triumphs, could think that from Repin’s studio, just like that, peasant man Malyavin would spring out and present himself Russia-wide so that his red whirling fabrics would make dizzy even the never-to-be-surprised Paris?” [4]

Attempts have also been made to refer both authors to bright representatives of Russian Impressionism, a complex and heterogeneous phenomenon that incorporated features of Realism, Plein-Airism and Expressionism. However, Alexander Benois confidently declared that Malyavin (for one) was no impressionist, because “he had never set himself the task of studying colours in plein-air, had never tried to convey the subtle charm of relationships, the palpitation of life, the poetry of the unexpected”[5]. True, Malyavin's painting was alien to subtle colouristic nuances, and the sweeping and somewhat rough manner of painting was rather close to the methods of the expressionists, in particular, to the Die Brucke (The Bridge) group, which first showed their provocative canvases in Dresden in 1905. The expressionists based their compositions on pure colour and form, they deformed bodies and combined broad, flat brushstrokes with a hard-edge black contour.

In the same years in Paris, the paintings of the fauvists were exhibited, where colour played a dominant role. The name of the group of artists came from the French word ‘les fauves’ - ‘wild beasts’, and it reflected the peculiarity of their painting style, which was distinguished by ‘wild’ and even aggressive expressiveness of colour. As André Derain wrote, the colours on their canvases ‘literally exploded with light’. Fauve painters sought to maximise the use of colouristic possibilities of painting. Nature served them not so much as an object for depicting, but as a reason for creating intense colour symphonies, without breaking with reality, though. The approach as such of fauvists or expressionists to creating a painting was in no way either thematically, or substantively, or emotionally similar to the artistic style characteristic of Abram Arkhipov or Filipp Malyavin.

Art critics often compared Malyavin and Arkhipov to the late Impressionism master Anders Zorn, whose art became popular with the artistic community after the Scandinavian Exhibition (1897) in St Petersburg. His virtuoso, broad-brushstroke painting, which became his ‘trademark’, and the unprecedented swiftness of his work astounded his contemporaries. Zorn came to Russia for a fortnight and gave public sessions of brushwork, which gathered artists. Being of a high opinion of his virtuoso professionalism, Alexander Benois noted that in comparison with him Malyavin was a “real savage of an artist who rejoiced over red calico as a Negro; a true artistic temperament not using a cold calculation in his work”^[6]. Arkhipov did not escape comparison with the Swede either - Sergei Diaghilev called his painterly style “a chic technique `a la Zorn”[7].

In the early 20^thcentury, a “new type of world vision and world perception”[8] was being established, alien to rationalism and embodying the reality of life spontaneity governed by intuition, imagination and insight. Speaking about the origins of this kind of painting, Valery Turchin noted the influence of anarchism, which preached its own revolution, without bombs and terror, - a revolution in the minds[9]. Rapid advancement of the civilisation of technology and formation of a new mass industry were changing people’s idea of the picture of the world where everything natural, organic, spiritual, everything associated with the native soil was jeopardised. That is why the works of Malyavin and Arkhipov, which draw on folklore, were especially appreciated by both critics and the public for their careful preservation of the original Russian traditions expressed in colourful folk costumes, melodious singing, epic tales, cheerful folk ditties chastushki, and dances.

In keeping with the tradition of perceiving red as a beautiful and festive colour, inherent in people since their childhood, also noted by Vasily Kandinsky in his book “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”[10], Malyavin and Arkhipov used all hues of red in their works in a wide and varied way. Sometimes they were no more than modest brushstrokes (as in Arkhipov's landscapes), but often large planes covered with a tone of scarlet, crimson, pink, carmine, purple, or saturn red created a certain impression, raising the emotional mood of the work to the highest note. “Vermilion now rings like a great horn and is comparable to the thunder of drums” [11], - Kandinsky wrote, using a captivating analogy between the sound of colours in paintings and musical instruments. Red, he said, “has an inner, highly vivid, lively, restless appeal <...>. It glows in itself and does not radiate much vigour outwardly achieving a manly maturity”[12].

Author: Nadezhda Musyankova

      The article was written by order of "Alexander Garden" LLC