divergence from the group date from 1911, the year of his initial
rapprochement with the World of Art. In 1916 both Mashkov and Konchalovsky
simultaneously went over to this latter association.
By the beginning of the First World War Mashkov was already an
acknowledged artist. This was the time of his greatest popularity.
During the years of the Revolution Mashkov was engaged in strenuous
social, organizational and pedagogic activity. There was scarcely any time
for his own creative work. He was a professor at the Free Studios (the name
of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture since the
autumn of 1918). Attached to his studio were A. Goncharov, A. Deyneka and
other subsequently famous Soviet artists. It was only in 1922, when art
exhibitions began again, that the painter's creative activity regained its
former scope. He took part in the exhibitions organized by the revived
World of Art group and the Society of Moscow Artists (the former Jack of
Diamonds).
On his own admission, the years 1923 and 1924 mark a perceptible
turning-point in his views on the aims and purposes of art. This coincided
with the general impetus of Soviet artists towards realism. In 1922 a new
artistic group, the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (the
AARR), had already made its appearance, and this society was to play a
positive role in the formation of realistic art. At the end of 1924
Mashkov, along with his pupils, went over to this organization where he set
up art classes. Although he continued to participate in exhibitions held by
the Society of Moscow Artists, his creative output in the second half of
the twenties is mainly associated with the AARR. He took part in
exhibitions of the AARR and was a member of its Board. He left the
association in the spring of 1930, when its historical role had already
been accomplished. In 1928, for his services in the realm of
representational art, the Soviet government awarded Mashkov the title of
Merited Artist of the RSFSR. In 1930 he left for his home in the village of
Mikhaylovskaya where he lived almost continuously until 1938. He completed
his last works in 1943, one year before his death.
Despite the vividness of his style, it is no easy task to define the
individual quality of Mashkov's art in so far as it was the product of a
whole movement, many features of which were characteristic of their age and
common to a fairly wide circle of Russian painters.
Mashkov differed from those close to him in creative disposition by the
extreme spontaneity of his artistic talent and by his fervent attachment to
the world of objects. These are not, however, the only factors which
determined the painter's style. Reflecting the personal element in his
creative work. his style is clearly perceived through the plastic features
of his pictures. Yet while emphasizing the strong side' of his talent, it
is essential not to neglect the painter's weaker aspects, which are-of no
small importance where Mashkov is concerned.
In the works completed before 1909, there is as yet no evidence of
completely independent talent. Nevertheless, his Model (end of
1907—beginning of 1908), painted! in Serov's class, is well above the
average for an apprentice's work.
The still life Apples and Pears on a White Background (1908) was the
first won I to be completed after his journey abroad and is close to the
principles of late Impressionism. Indeed, it suggests some knowledge of
Cezanne's artistic conception. A work dating from the same time, Two
Models against a Drapery (1908, Leningrad, private collection), seems to be
a compromise between the principles of Impressionism and an impulse towards
two-dimensionality and generalized decorativeness.
Mashkov first achieves an individual style in the works of 1909 and
1910. These were portraits, still lifes and landscapes, some of which were
shown in Moscow during 1910 and 1911 at an exhibition of the Jack of
Diamonds group, while other-were displayed in Paris at the Autumn Salon in
1910. In the paintings of this time-he proclaims a new and unusual
conception of beauty. The exaggerated quality of their expression, the
careless sweep of their contours, often painted in black, their
polychromatic intensity—all this testifies to his denial of the artistic
principles of an older generation. The striking starkness of method, the
deliberate simplification of technique, reveal an attempt to invest the art
of painting with pristine energy, to overcome the refined aestheticism of
the fin-de-siecle, with its wavering forms and its faded colours, in short,
to restore art to both youth and health. Inspired in his work by the
products of folk art, Mashkov was guided largely by the formal
expressiveness of the lubok
The Portrait of a Boy in a Patterned Shirt was painted in March, 1909.
It is one. of the works which mark the beginning of Mashkov's creative
career. As well as demonstrating Mashkov's habit of heaping his early
canvases with contrasting colours. this painting already displays a
disregard of psychological realism very close to the polemical spirit which
would later characterize the works of the Jack of Diamonds group. The
artist makes no use of local colour. The pinkish hue of the boy's face is
reinforced by the gold of the forehead and the greenish tint of the eye-
socket. The hands are painted in contrasting reds, pinks and greens, while
a cold shade of pink is also introduced into the dark-green leaves which
form a pattern in the background.
Refusing to treat the problem of perspective in a traditional manner,
Mashkov reduces the elements of modelling to a bare minimum, as if
stretching the image out over the canvas and thereby achieving some intense
combinations of colour, largely independent of the representation of light
and shade.
In other portraits of this early period—for example, those of V.
Vinogradova (1909). E. Kirkaldi (1910), Rubanovich (Portrait of a Lady with
Pheasants, about 1910), Mashkov is not only searching for expressiveness of
colour, but is also concerned to organize his canvas on two-dimensional
lines. In these portraits perspective is almost ousted by surface design.
In his Model Seated executed in 1909, for example, the two-dimensional
effect disappears under the accumulation of contrasting colours, the artist
deliberately avoids exaggerated ornamentality, the picture's thematic and
spatial elements remain dominant, the vital connection between model and
still life is preserved.
Inspired by the principles of folk art, Mashkov sought to express the
immutable essence of thing's through form, dimension and colour. The medium
he most consistently used for these endeavours, as well as for his attempts
to discover new principles of composition, was the still life. He did not
aim at thematic variety; portrayals of fruit and berries on a round dish or
plate are frequently encountered in his work. In some instances the artist
would strictly adhere to such motifs, as in Still Life with a Pineapple or
Still Life. Fruit on a Dish (both about 1910). Sometimes the motif becomes
a detail in the total composition, as in Still Life. Berries with a Red
Tray in the Background (about 1910), Still Life with Begonias (before
1911), Still Life with Grapes (early 1910s), etc.
The emphatically naive, "primitive" method of portrayal revealed in
Still Life with a Pineapple, the bright intensity of its colours, and their
use in simplified combinations, bear witness to Mashkov's attempt to view
the world through the eyes of the masters of folk art. In his yearning to
penetrate the essence of things, to reveal their fixed, "eternal"
qualities, he acted decisively, sacrificing subtlety of design and colour
and achieving considerable decorative expressiveness. He moved on to
various experimental techniques, combining the representative functions of
painting with certain qualities inherent in the applied arts. The
"fortuitousness" of impressionistic composition was opposed by a blunt
emphasis on "structuring". Everything was subordinated to the principles of
symmetry and rhythmic alternation. The oval shape of the frame is often
repeated both in the disposition of objects and in the outlines of some of
them. A plate with a pineapple surrounded by apples, is placed in the
centre of the canvas and enclosed by a number of large, multicoloured
fruits. The point of view chosen by the painter looking down on his subject
from above, allows him to gain an effect of "spatial compression", while
the individual objects are portrayed three-dimensionally. The black
outlines emphasize the depth of objects and create an impression of
stability, subduing the illusion of perspective.
Mashkov came gradually to renounce the effects of light and shade, so
fundamental to the Impressionists. In his Still Life with a Pineapple,
where the decisive importance of colour is obvious, light plays only a
secondary role in the creation of form. In the still-life painting, Fruit
on a Dish, the material qualities of the object are conveyed by a single
splash of colour. Form is determined by clear-cut outlines; along with
others, the black colour becomes obligatory.
For all Mashkov's desire to assert the sensuous materiality of things,
one detects in his early works a certain indifference towards the real
nature of his chosen subject; the material world appears there in a
