On October 17, an exhibition from the series “Opening Funds” “Graphics by Vladimir Milashevsky”, dedicated to the 130th anniversary of the artist’s birth, will begin work in the hall of Russian Art of the XX–XXI centuries.

Milashevsky Vladimir Alekseevich (1893-1976) – painter, graphic artist, author of landscapes, portraits, works of everyday genre, illustrator. Milashevsky ‘s memoirs belong to the pen: “Yesterday, the day before yesterday. Memoirs of the artist” and “My work in the publishing house “Academia””.

Vladimir Alekseevich was born in Tbilisi in 1893. He studied in Saratov and Kharkiv. From 1913 to 1915 he studied at the Higher Art School of the Academy of Arts. He was a member of the creative associations “World of Art”, “4 arts” and was one of the organizers of the group of artists “13”. Alexander Benois, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Konstantin Somov had a special influence on the artist’s creative views.

As a Saratov gymnasium student, Vladimir Alekseevich read Alexander Benois’s feuilletons in the St. Petersburg newspaper “Speech”, admired Somov’s paintings and argued with his lawyer father, who considered miriskussnikov decadents. From an early age, the artist was deeply alien to “official” academism, static form. Later, as one of the leaders of the group “13”, which united mainly graphic artists, Milashevsky advocated free, lively drawing from nature, correlated with the rhythms of life itself.

Portraits, landscapes, everyday scenes executed by the artist in the 1920s and 1930s are distinguished by the accuracy of characteristics, the sharpness of details, and a sense of time. Milashevsky developed a special “tempo method” – instantly executed, sometimes not even with a pen, but with a match, dynamic and emotional drawing.

As noted by the writer Konstantin Fedin:  “Milashevsky has this special guessing of the whole in his landscapes, along with hunting for details.”

The portrait of the writer Isaac Babel presented in the exhibition is made by the “tempo method” – ink using a match. “I will keep this match with baked black ink,” Babel said when the drawing was finished.

Interest in graphics led Milashevsky to book illustration. It is to this area that his most famous works belong: drawings for the “Posthumous Notes of the Pickwick Club” by Charles Dickens, “Father Goriot” by Honore de Balzac, “Madame Bovary”  Gustave Flaubert, excellent illustrations for Pushkin’s fairy tales, for Pyotr Ershov’s The Humpbacked Horse, and Pavel Bazhov’s Ural fairy tales.

With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Milashevsky gave his strength to military graphics: from October 1941 to May 1945, he was an artist of “Windows TASS”.

The work of Vladimir Alekseevich Milashevsky is closely intertwined with the contradictory and complex history of the twentieth century: it combines the search for new forms characteristic of modernity and a deep genuine interest in man, characteristic of realistic art.

In the collection of the I. N. Kramskoy VOHM there are more than a hundred paintings and graphic works of the artist. This exhibition will present about 10 works of the master.

The exhibition will run from October 17 to November 26 and will be located on the second floor of the permanent exhibition of the museum in the hall of Russian art of the XX–XXI centuries.

Entrance to the exhibition is carried out by a ticket to the permanent exhibition of the museum.