early demonstrated passion, and even more favorable circumstances helped teenagers from the county town to move to Tbilisi and to go to school for drawing "Caucasian Art Society.
In the first years of the new life of Tiflis young Kevork receives and first artistic impressions. In Tiflis still alive echoes sensational exhibition Ivan Aivazovsky 1868, especially as part of the painting by the celebrated marine painter leaves for observation in the Caucasus museum, a gift to the city. These landscapes - "View of St. Petersburg" and "Aul Gunib" - "became my first strong aesthetic experience" - remember Bashinjaghyan many years later in his "Autobiography. The flowering of creativity of the first Armenian portrait Akop Hovnatanian also occurs in Tiflis, in the middle of the century. His elegant and austere portraits Gevorg "could see some of the Tiflis homes, as well as pictures of urban life of another artist, portraitist and genre painter, Stepan-sa Nersisyan. Note that a careful, correct "could see" in the judgments of the modern art historian, author of a monograph on H. Bashindzhagyane: indeed, access to the rich at home Tiflis Armenians was not so simple for Signagi boys, and public art galleries or at least the exhibition halls and rooms then in Tbilisi did not exist. Success in drawing school and received a certificate testifying that he "gives undoubted hope to further improve and continue the course at the Academy, made it possible to take the risk, and in 1878 went to great lengths Bashinjaghyan Petersburg to try his luck. For examinations Kevork took with him several works.
Successfully passing the difficult entrance exams, Bashinjaghyan fall of 1879 enters into the walls of the Imperial Academy of Arts. Huge, grand building on the waterfront Cadet, in all its splendor, a certain young man by the St. Petersburg species postcards, three and a half years, becomes a house shtudiynoy daily work. However, this house is not always gave a fatherly warmth: in 1882, not being able to live in St. Petersburg "at 8 p. monthly stipend, and is barely enough for a piece of bread ", Bashindgaghyan into the position of auditor, hoping to sell his paintings to pay off with the Academy for the right classes. His teacher was MK Klodt. Artist - academic school and the people of democratic convictions, he was in the late 1860's was one of the organizers That varischestva Wanderers. Himself an excellent draftsman, Klodt demanded of students with accurate and thorough study of the figure, not forgiving negligence sight and hands. At the same time he encouraged etyudnuyu work, but it is work, considering that the sketch should be almost as significant fruit of labor of the artist, like the picture.
In the 1880's have clearly announced themselves and gaining momentum impact on the young minds of the democratic movement Peredvizhnik boldly go forward in their work to the problems of national life. During this period the Academy of Fine Arts still valid professional teaching center, where began the formation of young artistic forces of the peoples living in Russia. Before Bashindgaghyan are already studying such artists Armenians, as Agathon Hovnatanian, Stepanos Hep-sisyan, Hovhannes Katanyan; at one time with him - A. Shamshinyan, G. Gabrielian,
E. Magdesyan. In the same years in the Academy were engaged and had come from Ukraine Kyriakos Kostandi, and the future prominent Georgian painter Gigo Gabashvili, and Lett Jan Rosenthal.
During exercises Bashindgaghyan, at the beginning of 1880, far more was pending in the walls of the Academy of major reforms, creation of creative workshops. Only a decade later, led academic classes rose Repin and A. Kuindzhi. Studying the composition and drawing 1U M. Klodt, a young Armenian artist independently discovered for themselves and others authorities. One of them was Arkhip Kuinji. About temperamental Kuindzhp its effect on his contemporaries have survived numerous testimonies. What was Kuindzhn-landscape for the younger generation of painters who are just entering into an independent and creative life in the early 80's, wrote in his memoirs Nesterov, who studied in St. Petersburg at the Academy of Fine Arts, in the same years that Bashinjaghyan. "I was first at the exhibition," recalled Nesterov, and even at what, the leader in those days! I am completely confused, was delighted to languor, to a certain forgetfulness of living, the famous "Ukrainian night" Kuindzhi ". "The Wizard Brush" was this Russian artist and Bashindgaghyan. An echo effect Kuindzhi manifest itself later in the tread of some large landscapes Bashindgaghyan, when he freely throwing the foreground landscape shot, will leave the viewer willingly zone occurrences in it - in the clear light of a mountain in the morning ( "Sevan at sunrise, 1894 ) or behind a veil of silvery mist, as is done in the "gorge Darial night" in 1899. Another stood at the zenith of fame late Aivazovsky, a dazzling virtuoso ( "phenomenal" as to say about it Kramskoy) romantic landscape in which the excited Dostoevsky saw "rapture ... that eternal beauty which strikes in the storm, but in Moscow it true antipode, a modest, but sharp Savrasov already discovered the value of the landscape "ordinary", an intimate and lyrical. Now we are already hard to feel that the passions that have erupted around a seemingly neutral sphere of plastic arts, as is the landscape - to understand what the price of suffering opened the truth of space and time in the natural world - and not had time to speak out in its entirety the genius boy Fyodor Vasilyev, and sorrowful and bright Levitan, Valentin Serov and the young.
"What a grand beginning of an entire galaxy of creative, a wealth of works adorned in those years the Russian art" - wrote Bashinjaghyan much later, in 1913, in one of his journalistic performances in the Armenian newspaper "Mshak" ( "Worker"), in his article " blessed memory of P. Tretyakov, founder of the Moscow gallery ".
Perhaps the perception that wealth was a young Armenian painter somewhat different than that of his Russian contemporaries - can be particularly acute, and perhaps even somewhat detached, but the memory of his life he retained the artistic impression of those years as capacious and tenacious as preserved in his youth, the wealth of field experience. In the workshop in St. Petersburg Aivazovsky young academics Bashinjaghyan visited more than once. Attracted by the goodwill of the old maestro's, whom he called "Victor Hugo of painting, he especially cherished the value of professional criticism of his first works, though - how to write an artist after eighteen years - from her, from this criticism," and sometimes heart ached ... ". But the thirst for the secrets of comprehension skill was so great that the attraction of knowledge would take precedence over all other feelings.
And there was the Hermitage, the masterpieces of old masters, "the second Academy" young worshiper of art.
Even then, probably, Gevorg looked for internal justification and meaning of his chosen genre - the landscape, to make sense of nature as a deeply rooted, natural feeling of the human home. In their
diary notes (formed later in the book "From the artist's life") that's when he wrote: "The beauty of nature swallowed me absolutely, without a trace. This was the homeland.
Commitment expressive landscape motif opens already in the diploma "Birch grove" (1883). Edge of the Forest and the group of trees, shaded in the foreground, bright, with a transparent and light foliage - in the distance. The moment of a summer day at the edge of the selected lovingly, yet compositionally ordered: light and dark objects are balanced in the general scheme of a small canvas, its vertical axis, a large fuscous barrel echoes the vertical distance from the trunk of a thin, lighted by the sun. And their own roundness, their "leather" corporal smooth carefully transferred to the cut-off and volume. Lessons M. Klodt not been wasted. For "birch grove" Bashinjaghyan was awarded a silver medal. And yet the picturesque language of the paintings are dry, precise, but not relaxed. Baggage gained in years of study, allows the artist to start out, but the way that he had to go their own way.
The nature of the homeland should have been more open. In the spring of 1883 Kevork Bashinjaghyan, "sending a last farewell Petersburg, full of bright expectations and hopes", returns to Sighnaghi. But the return was bleak. "My parents were no longer alive, I was deprived of his home and his place in the sun I was not - he wrote. - And only love for the country remained in my ineradicable. In summer and early autumn of 1883 the artist goes to great long-planned trip to the Caucasus: Cemenivskiy pass through it passes by a dizzying and at that time inaccessible road through the gorge Dilijan - to Sevan, and then - towards Erivan, Ashtarak and Vagharshapat (present Echmiadzin ), and then - in the direction of south-western lands of Armenia.
Returning from a trip to Armenia, he said, without stopping in Tiflis, begins to march on the areas of Georgia, which until then had been less familiar to him. The majestic nature of the Caucasus was called to him in many of their faces. Collected in situ experience of those years are enormous. Working artist albums are full of sketches of Armenia, Georgia, North Caucasus. Soon, they tread on his canvases huge "windows in nature. In the free air term, subtle, gently nuanced range of colors vplyvut Alazani shape spaces, the green contours of Tskhinvali and Kakheti, the hills of the first-riyskogo plateau Abastumanskoy roads, with its sun glare, and Dilijan-tion - with its freshness and coniferous raw mists, and white and pink hat Elbrus, and once, in the happiest day of a two-headed Ararat seen snow ... They approved and a multiplicity favorite theme: the different faces and angles of the Sevan Lake with the amazing, the lonely island, a hermit in the continual light variability - from transparent opal to deep-cobalt.
Autumn of 1883 a young artist at your own risk, without any public support, opens in Tiflis his first exhibition and shows her sixteen landscapes of the Caucasus. It was a rather rare event in the cultural life of the then Tiflis. While in Tbilisi late 1870 - early 1880's have already started their independent creative activities and young Gigo Gabashvili, the founder of Georgia's realistic painting, and Romanoz Gvelesiani, although work of Armenian artists of the older generation - brothers Ovnatayyany, Stepanos Nersisyan, strong tradition of exhibitions of contemporary painting and, most importantly, it is equally sustained public interest in them did not exist. Yielding beliefs of friends about the huge "educational" role of his paintings, Bashinjaghyan opens exhibit on the top floor of the Tiflis collector Saradzhev on Palace Street, in downtown. But what public? The modest little scenery attracted the attention of wealthy amateurs representative portrait and still-life salon. "How often, stopping at this beautiful exhibition, I was painfully revealed the absence of anyone was a respectable and even" advanced "sectors of our society - wrote a correspondent of the Tiflis Armenian newspaper Ardza-Hanka (Echo) - pictures mother nature did not interest them.
The social position of an artist, artist easel in those years was in the Caucasus still uncertain and difficult moral statute of professional creativity is far from prestige. Even Stepanos Nersessian, who had his workshop and standing orders, there was sometimes humiliating dependence on the merchants and employers. The old artist came to this first exhibition Gevorg. "Relying on a simple, stout stick, he walked across the room, with interest and a careful inspection of the picture, said in his soft voice," there is a spark of God "and walk away, but he reassured me ..." - later recalled of that day artist.
Autumn of 1901 the artist returned to his homeland, and from this time forever, until the end of his life, grounded in Tiflis. He leads an active, creative and social activities. In 1902 - 1910-ies, together with F. Terlemezyanom, M. Toidze, Al. Mrevlishvili, E. Tatev Mr. participate in large exhibitions in Baku and Tiflis, and in 1910 in London, from 1895 to 1916 in St. Petersburg. Versatility of creative interests manifested in the enthusiasm for literature: in Peternburge go two collections of his short stories and travel essays "From the artist's life. Memoirs "(1903) and" Sketches "(1913). The album will be found not only the best-known works by the artist, but also previously unpublished works: rare in his work portraits, still lifes, some sketches and drawings. Studies rarely served him Studies preparatory to a particular planned picture, he wrote, they were not "over", and passing the time, all my life, and many of them self-worth, almost every-shaped completed. These "Haystacks
[in the forest "," lone haystack ", and one of the last works -" Crimson sketch "in 1925. The two "species from the workshop of" give an idea of how accurate the artist in the transfer of the local atmosphere and color, even a small piece of nature: in Paris (1900) - all evenly toned bluish-lilac tone in Tiflis prevails over all the hot scorching sun oranzhevokrasny emphasis roof. His best canvases, marked already established concept of creative concept of a holistic landscape-painting, Bashiydzhagyan created during 1890 - 1915 period, in the twenty-five years of formation, flowering, maturity. In this period, and a small masterpiece "Early Spring" ( "Thaw in the Caucasus") (1890), "Sevan in summer's day" (1903), and "Night Sevan" ( "Clouds") in 1894, and the monumental "Ararat with plowed field "(1912), crowning the extensive series of landscape paintings by favorite topics. Fabrics these years represent a suite of large landscaped grounds. They express a lot of fleeting states of its kind "flicker" of nature, but there is already clear that the subjective experience, dedication "etyudnogo moments" moved to higher property, settled down in a deep aesthetic experience, the concentration of poetic reflection. The image synthesis, synthesizing the image of the total - one of the features of a landscape vision for this period in art Bashindgaghyan. It seeks to develop the fine tonal colors to the volatile "opalizi-al" the play of light and shadow, rising in the overall picture of emotional Strohe to equilibrium. This balance includes all the space paintings, all its components: air masses and cloud zones the surface of water meadow space.
Painter seeking to deploy on canvas set of plans, he nevertheless likes to explore particularly bright foreground of the landscape, where everything is close to the viewer - the land, shrub, flower or stone - there is an optically-convex, in a clear, material and tangible texture smear and the succession of long, one after another drop-down plans - is becoming weightless, intangible, and melts in the end in the long term picture. Otherwise, "Zangezur mountains" (1904). For a transparent, almost idyllic, in the minutest detail spelled out the first plan, rising second plan - an array of mountains, on a large and generally, large sections of lighting and shading of the masses.
The principle of a broad, panoramic "detour" Space is one of the leading in the mature artist's work, reaching the "Sevan on a moonlit night" (1914) the effect is almost spherical.
To master the secrets of spatial constructions artist looking for the most composite-intensive solutions, and then the outer, the canonical equilibrium parts of the painting recedes - for the sake of meaningful time-motion boundaries visible. In "Night Sevan" ( "Clouds"), the sky so it bulks-water surface and the silhouette of the island, which seems to incorporates them into itself without a trace. Maximize the sky creates the illusion of infinite space, free growing upward to the zenith, and our audience for a sonorous symphony of clouds. In a small canvas "Blue Sevan", by contrast, achieved the illusion of infinity of the lake itself. His mass of blue, bearing the "boat" of the island, rises up, almost to the border of the canvas, the pink horizon, and, leading the viewer's eye, underlines the impression of special high-van Coehoorn afford scope.
The effect of engaging the viewer in the space of the picture differently designed by the artist. Perhaps here is so beloved motif of the road, the path of man on earth, its eternal motion. Take us into the distance and the rocky mountain path in the Aragats "in 1911, and a modest country road in the" Rainbow "(1896), and unobtrusive track, built on a grassy freshness" of Ararat and field daisies "(1914). Critics have rightly drawn attention to the prevalence of mild (often contrasting) color accents in the overall scheme of paintings Bashindgaghyan, the transfer of glare-ing water lake stones or internal svetonapolnennosti clouds - the pearl of the atmosphere above the masses of light and fresh earth or the space of the lake, which have been registered "Alazani Valley "1902 and" Sevan in summer day. Yet you can, apparently, to talk about the complexity of the harmony inherent in landscapes Bashindgaghyan. In "Rural form" (1898) clear squares walls, bleached by bright light, like a large linen cloth, which dries the day in the sun farmer. Stability, stockiness being a small Caucasian village - not idyllic, it is almost pathetic stingy with paint, it is not nice. But it grows out of the ground and it is based, so the painter's brush in this painting is moving in different ways: a cozy tree crowns accuracy is secondary here, and the fore a wide and "sticky" smear prescribed pieces of land, dramatically sprawled on the patches of light and the shadow - the earth, hard, stiff, "hunchback". Among the many, even the most sophisticated on the letter landscapes Bashinjaghyan one drew special magic of painting. This "Summer Night on the Tiflis (1902). Of all the works landscape "Summer Night" is perhaps the most autobiographical, she was born out of emotional fusion, a person with the city, with its pulse, respiration, with its vague, but exciting visual "speech".
... The house painter was standing on Izmailovskaya, one of the turns in whirling streets, unfolding from the center of Mount David, to the outskirts. Went up from here up, it was possible to reach the top point, and then the whole city opens from the foot of the mountain to the zenith, in an open, free run. The artist liked to Tiflis in every pore, at any time of day and night, but especially - in the late poslezakat-tion and in the early predawn hours. Hushed city made it possible without the hassle to look into themselves: at the bottom, for the Kura River in the fog looked like a Arsenal, crowded around the old house, the lowlands of the city. Constantine Paustovsky, writer felt the surprising face of the landscape, visiting Tbilisi in 1925, left in his book on artists' description of the "magic of the moonlit night of Tiflis Arsenal at the" striking the hour when for a few minutes everything suddenly loses its paint - and the sky and the mountain ash, and smoke rose gardens in the almonds are mysterious and gray. Above the ground covered with fine dust, which lost shadows, slowly floats dawn, before ringing in the ears, the silence ... "31" Summer Night on the Tiflis "is written precisely in this" amazing hour. Special smoky lights softened by the evening I noon sharp black and white effects of the urban landscape. Slightly bagroveyuschaya moon hovers in the air, but the light source is fixed it is not clear, diffused everywhere, and freely opened, bottomless run show through obscure tracts of mountains and flowing river gleams, at home, seemed to have dissolved fading light, streets, bridges, sleeping city, "lost shadows" .
Attachment to some of the landscaped grounds (most often the artist wrote "faces" of Ararat, Sevan lakes and islands, mountain ridge and peak Aragats, nocturnal species Kura Darial Valley, Ala-zanskuyu valley Abastumani) is born from a desire to reveal the many facets of the picturesque theme inexhaustible in its sense as inexhaustible world of nature itself. But even in seemingly already familiar motif of the artist each time puts a task - and meaningful, and the purely pictorial. "Educational" nature of the early landscapes, followed by a mature period of more capacious understanding of the opportunities humanization of nature, the plot basis subject to specific challenges picturesqueness, the desire for the refined perfection picturesque whole. In the face of a holistic reflection of the world laid the key to understanding the art program, which amounted to the meaning of the artist's life. And also the key to understanding the cyclical nature of some of his works. Thus, a surprising variety of solutions offers an artist in "Sevan cycle" paintings, written over more than twenty years.
Calm and majestic harmony "Sevan in summer's day" (1903) are the compositional balance with all its scenic plans: a dense mass of shaded spots - "body" of the island, as if sailing into the track and opening the viewer a broad expanse of clear water with a narrow edge of the dazzling light coastal rocks in the foreground. Above all - great, but the light weight of white cumulus clouds, accumulating a reflection of the sun and the light from the water surface - this jubilant light dominant pattern. On the contrary, "Reflection" opens us Sevan twilight, immersed in the green element of deceptive moonlight, when erased the "top" and "bottom", when the distant sky overturned in the mirror and water indefinitely, but the phantom they affect one another.
Night and evening, "sunset" landscapes Bashindgaghyan bear the distinct features of the romantic perception prirody32. Dramatic sense, saturating "Night in Darial Gorge. In our days have lost the art of night landscape, but remember that for romantic night the world was the focus of many mysteries of the universe. Here Bashindgaghyan visual aids become harder, deeper colors and darker. In memory comes dazzlingly bold Lermontov's image - "... cherneya on the black rock". But in the very depths of the night sky there is a silent confrontation between two forces: a failure of the horizon and the blackness of darkness, rebelling against the still hazy light.
The special properties of nature - the objective of continuous volatility and at the same time, permanence, constancy of the fundamental, underlying and eternal laws: implicit in it and just waiting for the disclosure (by the artist - the viewer) the ability of consonance human state of mind ~ Bashindgaghyan to remain a source of artistic exploration and learning throughout life. Different interpretations of favorite motifs, complementing and ranging, and may compete with each other. And then towards the poetic, intimate perception of the summer in the Ararat and the field of daisies, with its light and pale green meadow, with the tranquility of the morning sky, almost dissolve in a top of the mountain, stands a mighty swing and monumental generality of "Ararat", 1912. This powerful biceps peak, aggravation billowing over an array of plowed fields, prescribed large, "ryhlyaschimi" canvas painting strokes, grows into a generalized symbol of his native land. At the turn of the century, when the Armenian culture is an important process of consolidation of the spiritual forces of nations tied close personal and social ties Gevorg Bashiidzhagyana with major representatives of the Armenian intellectual and artistic - a poet Hovhannes Tumanyan composer Komitas, playwright and prose writer Aleksandr Shirvan-Zadeh, writers Alexander Tsaturyanom, Joannes Ioannisiani, with painters Eghishe Tadevosyan and Fanosom Terlemez-nom. His work commands respect and in the circles of the Georgian intelligentsia. Hot-linked bonds of affection all his life and illustrious Petros Adamyan, and with a modest, now-forgotten painter Tiflis Ghigo Tatishvili-li, - "wholehearted enthusiast, deeply loyal to his people, without which the city is a part of Playbill and no book cover "- and the fate of a lonely artist whose devoted full bitter memories. And the young creative generation is his moral support for: his house there were beginners in the years poets Avetik Isahakyan and Joseph Grishashvili as "strange" Niko Pirosmani he had long hoped to persuade to learn, first discovered his extraordinary talent. Bashindzhagyanu was inherent in organic, absorbed in childhood and youth a sense of internationalism. His literary works, the little stories and novellas, short stories, which give accurate sketches of the paintings of everyday life and manners of old Tiflis or mountain villages, lyrical descriptions of nature - not shared by people on "your" and "alien", they are equally devoted to the Armenian and Georgian life. He knew and deeply admired Russian art and literature (and dedicated to the memory of Leo Tolstoy's own unique "landscape portrait" - Leo Tolstoy in Yasnaya, 1916). Excellent knowledge of Georgian literary classics, translated into Armenian poetry Akaki Tsereteli. Possessing three Caucasian languages, was fond of poetry ashigs and at one time gave much effort to perpetuate the glory of the great poet of the three peoples of the Caucasus - Sayat Nova, which the memorial plaque placed in Tbilisi on draft Gevorg Bashindgaghyan. For the sake of the noble cause of mutual understanding of peoples of the artist more than once raised his voice and as a writer and as a writer and public deyatel34. Principles of realistic art artist remained faithful to his life, defending them, not only with a brush, and pen, from the early "Letters from Italy" 1884 - 1890 period. Later in the essay "Painting" (1904) he wrote: "The main purpose of painting is the same as the other arts, literature and sculpture, that is to tell the truth, in other words - follow the laws of nature 35.
Active creative life Gevorg Bashindgaghyan, artist-Democrat, a social activist, writer and publicist, took place in close connection with the general cultural and artistic processes of his time.
With the establishment of Soviet power in Armenia Bashinjaghyan taking figure-ing participation in the arts section of the House of Armenian Art (Ayari tun ") in Tbilisi, participates in exhibitions of the Union of Armenian artists, held in 1921 in Tbilisi and Yerevan. Participates in the first spring exhibition Fraternal Order of Fine Arts of Armenia, organized in 1924 in Yerevan. In February 1925 he was elected an honorary member of the Union of Artists of the Georgian SSR. Artist-Democrat, he was open towards a new life. His older sons, he was sent to Petrograd, then their participation in the revolutionary-1 with these events in the Caucasus, and in the future contribution of Soviet science were very significant.
Artist died Oct. 4, 1925 and was buried according to his will, in Tbilisi, near the tomb of Sayat-Nova.
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