Robert Falk
Encyclopedia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n painter.
Biography
Falk was born in MoscowMoscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
in 1886. In 1903 to 1904 he studied art in the studios of Konstantin Yuon
Konstantin Yuon
Konstantin Fyodorovich Yuon or Juon was a noted Russian painter and theatre designer associated with the Mir Iskusstva. Later, he co-founded the Union of Russian Artists and the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia.-Biography:...
and Ilya Mashkov
Ilya Mashkov
Ilya Ivanovich Mashkov was a Russian artist, one of the most significant and at the same time most characteristic painters of the circle of "Jack of Diamonds" .He was born in the cossack village Mikhailovskaya-on-Don in a peasant family...
, in 1905 to 1909 he studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture
Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture
The Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture was one of the largest educational institutions in Russia. The school was formed by the 1865 merger of a private art college, established in Moscow in 1832, and the Palace School of Architecture, established in 1749 by Dmitry Ukhtomsky. By...
with Konstantin Korovin
Konstantin Korovin
Konstantin Alekseyevich Korovin was a leading Russian Impressionist painter.-Biography:Konstantin was born in Moscow to a merchant family officially registered as "peasants of Vladimir Gubernia". His father, Aleksey Mikhailovich Korovin, earned a university degree and was more interested in arts...
and Valentin Serov
Valentin Serov
Valentin Alexandrovich Serov was a Russian painter, and one of the premier portrait artists of his era.-Youth and education:...
.
In 1910 he was of the founders and the most active participants of artistic group Jack of Diamonds
Jack of Diamonds (artists)
Jack of Diamonds , also called Knave Of Diamonds, was a group of artists founded in 1909 in Moscow. The group included Robert Falk, Aristarkh Lentulov, Ilya Mashkov, Alexander V. Kuprin, Alexander Osmerkin, Wladimir Burliuk, and Pyotr Konchalovsky. The Knave of Diamonds was a scandalous exhibition...
. The group considered Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...
the only painter worth following, and the rest of visual art to be too trivial and bourgeois. The distinctive feature of Falk's paintings of the time was sculpturing of the form using many layers of different paints.
VKhUTEMAS
Vkhutemas ) was the Russian state art and technical school founded in 1920 in Moscow, replacing the Moscow Svomas. The workshops were established by a decree from Vladimir Lenin with the intentions, in the words of the Soviet government, "to prepare master artists of the highest qualifications for...
(State Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops). In 1928 Falk went on a supposedly short trip to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and refused to return; he worked in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
until 1938, when he returned to Moscow.
After 1938 until his death in 1958 he worked in Moscow, most of the time in isolation. His works of that time were in neo-impressionist
Neo-impressionism
Neo-impressionism was coined by French art critic Félix Fénéon in 1886 to describe an art movement founded by Georges Seurat. Seurat’s greatest masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, marked the beginning of this movement when it first made its appearance at an exhibition...
style with characteristic white-on-white colors (not unlike the later paintings of his teacher Valentin Serov
Valentin Serov
Valentin Alexandrovich Serov was a Russian painter, and one of the premier portrait artists of his era.-Youth and education:...
).
During the Khrushchev Thaw
Khrushchev Thaw
The Khrushchev Thaw refers to the period from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s, when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were partially reversed and millions of Soviet political prisoners were released from Gulag labor camps, due to Nikita Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinization and...
he became popular among young painters and many considered Falk to be the main bridge between the traditions of the Russian and French Moderne of the beginning of 20th century and Russian avant-garde and the Russian avant-garde of the 1960s.