Igor Grabar
Encyclopedia
Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar (Russian: Игорь Эммануилович Грабарь, March 25, 1871, Budapest
– May 16, 1960, Moscow
) was a Russian post-impressionist
painter, publisher, restorer and historian of art. Grabar, descendant of a wealthy Rusyn
family, was trained as a painter by Ilya Repin in Saint Petersburg
and by Anton Ažbe
in Munich
. He reached his peak in painting in 1903–1907 and was notable for a peculiar divisionist
painting technique bordering on pointillism
and his rendition of snow
.
By the end of 1890s Grabar had established himself as an art critic. In 1902 he joined Mir Iskusstva
, although his relations with its leaders Sergei Diaghilev
and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky
were far from friendly. In 1910–1915 Grabar edited and published his opus magnum
, the History of Russian Art. The History employed the finest artists and critics of the period; Grabar personally wrote the issues on architecture
that set an unsurpassed standard of understanding and presenting the subject. Concurrently he wrote and published a series of books on contemporary and historic Russian painters. In 1913 he was appointed executive director of the Tretyakov Gallery
and launched an ambitious reform program that continued until 1926. Grabar diversified the Tretyakov collection into modern art and in 1917 published its first comprehensive catalogue. In 1921 Grabar became the first professor of Art restoration at the Moscow State University
.
An experienced politician, Grabar stayed at the top of the Soviet art
establishment until his death, excluding a brief voluntary retirement in 1933–1937. He managed art-restoration workshops (present-day Grabar Institute) during 1918–1930 and from 1944 to 1960. Grabar took active part in redistribution of former church art nationalized by the Bolsheviks and established new museums for the looted treasures. In 1943 he formulated the Soviet doctrine of compensating World War II
losses with art looted in Germany. After the war, he personally advised Joseph Stalin
on the preservation of architectural heritage.
lawyer and a polician of pro-Russian orientation. A strong critic of magyarization
of Rusyns
in Subcarpathian Rus
, he was elected to the Hungarian Parliament in 1869, at the same time maintaining ties with slavophiles in Moscow and the Russian Embassy. Olga Hrabar (1843–1930), mother of Igor and Vladimir, was a daughter of Rusyn pro-Russian, anti-Catholic politician Adolph Dobryansky (1817–1901). According to Igor Grabar's memoirs, Dobryansky ran an underground network of obedient followers; the 1869 election was merely a means of shielding his son-in-law from prosecution. Dobryansky and his group, unaware of the realities of living in the Russian Empire
, leaned to its official doctrine of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality; Dobryansky, a man of wealth and pedigree, even imitated the lifestyle of a Russian landlord in minute details; two of his sons joined Imperial Russian service. Dobryansky praised the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848
by Russian troops, dreaded by his own Rusyn peasants.
In the early 1870s the Hungarian government forced Emmanuil Hrabar to leave the country. Olga with children stayed under police surveillance at the Dobryansky manor in Čertižné
(now in Slovakia
). In 1880 the Hrabars temporarily reunited in Russia. Emmanuil passed qualification test to teach German and French and settled with Igor and Vladimir in Yegoryevsk
. Olga returned to Hungary to continue pro-Russian propaganda; in 1882 she and her father were, at last, arrested for treason
and brought to a trial that aroused public suspicion of a police provocation. She was acquitted for lack of evidence and emigrated to Russia for the rest of her life. In Russia the Hrabars lived under nom de guerre Hrabrov; Igor Grabar restored his real surname (transliterated from Russian
with a G, unlike his brother Vladimir Hrabar) in the early 1890s.
gave him the first impetus to draw. In 1882 the Hrabars (Hrabrovs) relocated to Kiev
, closer to the continuing trial of their mother and grandfather; later in the same year, Emmanuil Hrabar accepted an appointment to Izmail
. He sent Igor to Mikhail Katkov
's boarding school in Moscow; the schoolmaster waived tuition fee to a fellow slavophile
. Igor Grabar, interested in drawing, soon made contacts with the students of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture
and already established artists - Abram Arkhipov
, Vasily Polenov
and the Schukins, wealthy patrons of art. Strapped for cash, he painted portraits of fellow students for a fee.
In 1889 Grabar was admitted to the Law Department of the Saint Petersburg University; he made living by selling short stories to magazines and soon became the editor of Shut, "the weakest of humour magazines" that nevertheless paid well. His illustrations to books by Nikolay Gogol, signed Igor Hrabrov, inspired the young Alexander Gerasimov
(born 1881), but Grabar generally stayed aside from drawing. He later complained that tabloid bohemianism
completely overwhelmed him. In his second year at the university, Grabar moved up to the respectable Niva magazine. He selected graphics for Niva and wrote essays on contemporary painters but did not yet have enough influence to change its policies. Law-department classes were uninspiring and Grabar spent more time attending history lectures and Pavel Chistyakov
's school of painting, but he still managed to graduate in law, without delay, in April 1893.
In the end of 1894 he enrolled in Ilya Repin's class at the Imperial Academy of Arts
that has just been radically reformed. His classmates, the first "spendid" post-reform group, included Alexej von Jawlensky
and Marianne von Werefkin
who introduced him to French Impressionism
, Konstantin Bogaevsky
, Oleksandr Murashko
, Nicholas Roerich
and Arkady Rylov
. Filipp Malyavin
, Konstantin Somov
, Dmitry Kardovsky
also studied alongside Grabar but were admitted earlier. Grabar remained "a fervent admirer" of Repin for life but became quicky dissatisfied with academic studies and in July 1895 left for a brief study tour of Western Europe financed by Niva magazine.
via Berlin
and Paris
; Jawlensky and Werefkin joined them later in summer. They enrolled at a private school of painting run by Anton Ažbe
. Grabar, who soon became assistant to Ažbe, rated him as "a poorly gifted painter, a superb draftsman and an outstanding teacher". Two years later, when Grabar was ready to leave Ažbe, he was offered an opportunity to open his own, competing, school; Ažbe made a counter-offer, making Grabar his equal partner. The partnership existed for less than a year, from June 1899 until spring of 1900, when Grabar accepted a lucrative offer from Prince Shcherbatov and left Munich.
Grabar kept close ties with Saint Petersburg artists and publishers. In January–February 1897 Grabar, obliged to write for Niva, published an article defending avant-garde
art against Vladimir Stasov, making a bombshell effect and inadvertently provoking Stasov's campaign against Repin as the dean of the Academy. Another article published in 1899 caused a conflict between Ilya Repin and Mir iskusstva
.
Life in Munich also aroused Grabar's interest in architecture, and its history, that soon became his second profession. By 1901 Grabar completed architect's training at the Munich Polytechnicum
but did not take the final exams.
; these were the first "truly French" impressionist works displayed in Russia by a Russian painter. One painting went straight to Tretyakov Gallery
, others were auctioned to private collections.
1903–1907 became Grabar's highest point in painting; according to Grabar's Autobiography, the summit (February–April 1904) coincided with the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War
. In this season he practiced moderate divisionism
with elements of pointillist technique
. Three paintings of this period that Grabar himself considered seminal (February Glaze, March Snow and Piles of Snow) garnered wide and generally positive critical response. Kazimir Malevich
wrote that, had it not been for linear perspective that Grabar preserved in his March Snow "as a remnant of narrative from the nineteenth century", the whole picture would blend in "a uniform painterly texture" without clearly defined front and middle planes. In 1905 Grabar travelled to Paris to study the new works of French postimpressionists and changed his technique in favor of complete separation of colours. Incidentally, although Grabar appreciated and studied Cézanne
, Gauguin
and Van Gogh
, he himself ranked "the king of painters" Diego Velázquez
above them all.
At the end of 1905 and the beginning of 1906, when Moscow was burning from riots and shellfire, Grabar tackled another challenging subject, frost
, at the same time investing more and more time into writing and editing. Snow, and winter in general, remained his favorite subjects for life.
Relations between Grabar and the founders of Mir Iskusstva were strained. Sergei Diaghilev
tolerated Grabar as a business asset but feared and distrusted him as a potential new leader of the movement; Grabar' financial backing provided by Shcherbatov seemed especially menacing. Diaghilev's sycophant
s Nurok and Nouvelle led the opposition, Eugene Lansere and Konstantin Somov
followed suit; Valentin Serov
was perhaps the only member who treated Grabar with sympathy. Grabar, indeed, used funds of Shcherbatov and Nadezhda von Meck
to launch his own short-lived art society that failed to shake Mir Iskusstva and soon fell apart. Memoirs of the period, although biased, indicate that Grabar himself was a difficult person. According to Alexander Benois, Grabar practiced an unacceptably patronizing tone and at the same time, had absolutely no sense of humour. No one questioned his talent and encyclopedic knowledge, but Grabar was unable to persuade people or barely coexist with them in small communities like Mir Iskusstva. As a result, in 1908 Grabar broke with the movement completely and tried, in vain, to launch his own art magazine.
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In the same 1908, Grabar abandoned painting in favor of writing; he became chief editor and writer for Joseph Knebel's series of books on Russian artists and Russian towns. He quickly amassed a wealth of historic evidence and settled on publishing a comprehensive History of Russian Art. Grabar initially concentrated on project management alone, leaving principal writing to Alexander Benois, but when the latter stepped aside in May, Grabar was compelled to pick up the writing task. He now concentrated on architecture; only then did he realize that Russian architecture
of the 18th century and earlier periods had never been properly studied. Grabar locked him in the archives to study the subject for a year; in July 1909 he took a short leave from writing and designed the Palladian
Zakharyin Hospital in present-day Khimki
, which was completed by the onset of World War I
and operates to date.
The first issue of History was printed in 1910; publication ceased with the 23rd issue in the beginning of 1915 when Knebel's printshop and Grabar's archive stored there were burnt in an anti-German pogrom
. Of 2,630 pages in History, 650—the issues on architecture
—were written by Grabar. History amalgamated works by the leading architects, artists and critics of the period. Ivan Bilibin
, who contributed photography of vernacular architecture
, used to say that "we started appreciating old architecture only after Grabar's book." Grabar's own memoirs, however, focus on the failures of his co-authors: of all contributors only Fyodor Gornostayev was commended for doing his part.
Grabar's predecessors did not elaborate how art, and especially architecture fitted "into the grand historical scheme"; his History became the first comprehensive work that attempted to solve the task. Grabar, accepting now-standard periodization of Russian history, applied the same scheme to history of architecture and emphasized the role of individual monarchs in it. His view of the transition from Naryshkin Baroque
, the summit of Muscovite architecture, into loaned European Petrine Baroque
as an organic process, however, was contentious from the start, and, according to James Cracraft, could not account for an abrupt demise of national architecture under Peter I
and his successors. His own concept of "Moscow Baroque", probably influenced by Heinrich Wölfflin
, is "not entirely consistent or clear". Soviet historians retained Grabar's overall scheme, sealing the "persistent lack of a clear and consistent, architecturally configured periodization of Russian architectural history.". Grabar's concept of Moscow Baroque was challenged, his Ukrainian Baroque
was trashed, yet Belarussian Baroque became "a fixture of Soviet scholarship."
Grabar's understanding of lesser phenomena has been, at times, erroneous and his attributions were later dismissed. For example, he based the description of the 1591 Ambassadors' Prikaz
building on a "fanciful and grossly distorted" sketch by a Swede who visited Moscow after the building was torn down and replaced with a new one. His attribution and periodization of Menshikov Tower
is also challenged. Nevertheless, James Cracraft ranked Grabar the first "in the whole field of Russian art history", Dmitry Shvidkovsky
wrote that Grabar's History in whole "remains unsurpassed", and William Craft Brumfield
noted its "immense importance" for the preservation of medieval heritage.
elected Grabar its trustee and executive director. He accepted the appointment on condition that the trustees give him unlimited authority in reforming the gallery. Later, he wrote that had he known the weight of this burden beforehand he would step back, but, inexperienced in public politics, he grabbed the opportunity of "being there", among the subject of his History. Grabar planned to expand the former private collection into a comprehensive showcase of national art, including the controversial Russian and French modernist
paintings. He laid out a program of artistic, scientific, educational-enlightening and social changes and eventually converted the gallery into a European museum.
Grabar started with rearranging the paintings in public display; when the gallery reopened in December 1913, the main enfilade
of its second floor was prominently terminated with Vasily Surikov
's epic Feodosia Morozova
. The first floor was now filled with completely new material - contemporary French painters and young Russians like Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin
and Martiros Saryan
. In the beginning of 1915 Grabar's purchasing decisions stirred a public scandal that involved practically all publicly known artists; Victor Vasnetsov, Mikhail Nesterov
, Vladimir Makovsky
and Grabar's former sponsor Shcherbatov called for immediate termination of his tenure. Debates continued until January 1916, when Moscow City Hall approved Grabar's reform in full. Grabar summarized his achievements in the 1917 catalogue of the Gallery, the first of its kind.
The Russian Revolution of 1917
had dual effect on the gallery. Collapse of the monetary system and city utilities brought the gallery to a "really catastrophic condition" that was barely improved by nationalization
in June 1918. At the same time the gallery collection rapidly grew, absorbing nationalized private and church collections and formerly independent small museums. One by one its own exhibition halls were converted into art warehouses and closed to the public. By 1924 the gallery operated four affiliate halls, in 1925 it disposed with foreign masters, but these measures could not offset the inflow of new stock. Physical expansion of the building became a first priority, and in 1926 Grabar was replaced with architect Aleksey Shchusev.
and war many nationalized landmarks were actually restored. Grabar's group, like the contemporary Gorky Commission
, was torn by a conflict of preservationists (Grabar, Alexander Benois, Alexander Chayanov
, Pyotr Baranovsky) and "destroyers" (David Shterenberg
, Vladimir Tatlin
) and Grabar later complained that he had to offset two extremes, destruction of heritage and obstruction of avant-garde
artists (he was himself the "main exponent of conservation"). Grabar successfully exploited whatever allies he could recruit amongst the ambivalent Soviet bureaucracy, starting with the Commissar for Education Anatoly Lunacharsky, and even managed to retain his affluent lifestyle of the past.
Since 1919 Grabar directed his commission into documenting and preserving Orthodox church murals and icons. The first 1919 expedition to Yaroslavl
located and restored previously unknown works of the 12th and 13th centuries. Restorers Fyodor Modorov, Grigory Chirikov and photographer A. V. Lyadov continued studies of northern church art throughout the 1920s and by 1926 produced the first comprehensive study of icons and an assessment of wooden churches that housed them. Grabar's icon restoration workshop became internationally known; Alfred H. Barr, Jr. who visited Moscow in 1927–1928, wrote of Grabar's technology "with great enthusiasm." "It is to Grabar', more than to any other single scholar, that Russia owes the rediscovery of his icons."
These appointments inevitably placed Grabar near the top of the Soviet machine of looting church and, to a lesser extent, privately held art treasures. Benois, who left the country, scorned Grabar for "ripping Princess Mescherskaya of her Botticelli." Grabar accepted the fact of Bolshevik expropriation and concentrated on preservation of the treasures and setting up local museums to display them in public. His and Roman Klein
's proposal to convert the whole Moscow Kremlin
into a public museum failed, and the Kremlin was quickly taken over by the sprawling Red government. Among the masterpieces found during these campaigns was The Madonna of Tagil
(Madonna del Popolo) taken from the Demidov
house and attributed by Grabar to Raphael
. Most, however, ended up at overseas auctions. Less formal attempts of individual artists to raise money in the United States failed: the 1924 show in New York City
attracted 17 thousand visitors but raised only $30,000 and Grabar admitted "We do not know what to do".
In 1930 Grabar left all his administrative, academic and editorial jobs, even that of an editor of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia
, and concentrated on painting. Grabar himself wrote: "I had to choose between the daily mounting administrative burden and creating ... I had no choice. A personal pension granted by Sovnarkom fastened my retirement." According to Baranovsky and Khlebnikova, the decision was influenced by his mother's death; Grabar the artist shifted his attention to problems of age, aging and death. According to Colton, the change followed a campaign of demolition inside the Kremlin (Chudov Monastery
) and all over Moscow. The preservationist Old Moscow Society, unable to influence the authorities any longer, voted itself out of existence, and Grabar's heritage commission was disbanded a few months later. Grabar's influence over impending demolitions was now reduced to writing pleas to Stalin, as was the case of the Sukharev Tower
in 1933–1934.
Grabar supervised another New York exhibition, this time of icon
art, in 1931 and painted a string of official "socialist realism
epics" but it was the 1933 Portrait of Svetlana that gave him an enormous and unwanted exposure at home and abroad. Grabar himself rated this portrait, painted in one day, among its best. The public identified its title subject as none other than Stalin's daughter
(born in 1926, she could not have been Grabar's subject; the legend persisted into 1960s). Either this dangerous publicity, or his earlier association with Natalia Sedova
and other trotskyists
compelled Grabar to retire to relative obscurity. He kept on painting and wrote his Autobiography that was ready for print in June 1935 but was barred from publication until March 1937. Contrary to the communist policy, Autobiography appreciated the "formalist" art of Mir Iskusstva and dismissed "some critics applying Marxist analysis
" as utterly incompetent. In the same 1937 Grabar published Ilya Repin that earned him the State Prize
four years later and began writing Serov. By 1940 he was firmly back into the Soviet establishment and was featured in propagandist newsreels produced for distribution in Nazi Germany
.
with art to be taken from Germany. Compiling the target list of German treasures was easy, but estimating own losses was not: by March 1946 only nine out of forty major museums could provide an inventory of their losses. The government used Grabar's proposal as a smoke screen: while Grabar's deputy Victor Lazarev was discussing the legality of equitable reparations
with the Allies, Soviet "trophy brigades" had practically completed a wholesale campaign of organized looting.
Grabar consulted Joseph Stalin
in preparation to Moscow's 800-years jubilee celebrated in 1947. He persuaded Stalin to return the former St. Andronik Monastery
, once converted to a prison, if not to the church but to the artistic community. The remains of the monastery, restored by Pyotr Baranovsky, became the Andrey Rublyov Museum of Old Russian Art (Grabar upheld Baranovsky's dubious "discovery" of the alleged tomb of Andrey Rublyov). Grabar, as the senior in artistic community, retained some independence from the ideological pressure, as indicated by his 1945 obituary for the emigre
Leonid Pasternak
printed in Soviet Art.
Things weren't always smooth: in 1948 Grabar was caught in another campaign against random targets in art and science. He retained his administrative and university jobs and in 1954 co-authored Russian architecture of the first half of the 18th century, a revisionist study of the period that dismissed the knowledge collected by fellow historians before 1917. He made an exception, though, for his own works that allegedly "correctly understood" the subject. Contrary to Grabar's own understanding of East-West cultural relationship presented in History but in line with the rules of Soviet historiography
, the new book claimed that Russians of the 18th century "yield nothing in their work to foreign contemporaries" and overstated the influence of folk tradition on polite architecture
. These falsified theories, easily dismissed today, established the "provincial outlook" that governed the post-war generation of Soviet art historians.
After Stalin's death Grabar was the first to publicly denounce run-off-the-mill socialist realism
and pay the dues to once banished Aristarkh Lentulov
and Pyotr Konchalovsky
. The "unsinkable" Grabar earned derogatory nicknames Ugor Obmanuilovich ("cheating eel
") and Irod Graber ("Herod
the Robber"). Baranovsky and Khlebnikova noted that the reaction against Grabar was frequently provoked by his work at the helm of museum purchasing committees: mediocre artists inevitably had a grudge against his buying and pricing decisions.
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
– May 16, 1960, Moscow
Moscow
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...
) was a Russian post-impressionist
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
painter, publisher, restorer and historian of art. Grabar, descendant of a wealthy Rusyn
Rusyns
Carpatho-Rusyns are a primarily diasporic ethnic group who speak an Eastern Slavic language, or Ukrainian dialect, known as Rusyn. Carpatho-Rusyns descend from a minority of Ruthenians who did not adopt the use of the ethnonym "Ukrainian" in the early twentieth century...
family, was trained as a painter by Ilya Repin in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
and by Anton Ažbe
Anton Ažbe
Anton Ažbe was a Slovene realist painter and teacher of painting.Ažbe, crippled since birth and orphaned at the age of 8, learned painting as an apprentice to Janez Wolf and at the Academies in Vienna and Munich. At the age of 30 Ažbe founded his own school of painting in Munich that became a...
in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
. He reached his peak in painting in 1903–1907 and was notable for a peculiar divisionist
Divisionism
Divisionism was the characteristic style in Neo-Impressionist painting defined by the separation of colors into individual dots or patches which interacted optically....
painting technique bordering on pointillism
Pointillism
Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term Pointillism was first coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works...
and his rendition of snow
Snow
Snow is a form of precipitation within the Earth's atmosphere in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of a multitude of snowflakes that fall from clouds. Since snow is composed of small ice particles, it is a granular material. It has an open and therefore soft structure, unless packed by...
.
By the end of 1890s Grabar had established himself as an art critic. In 1902 he joined Mir Iskusstva
Mir iskusstva
Mir iskusstva was a Russian magazine and the artistic movement it inspired and embodied, which was a major influence on the Russians who helped revolutionize European art during the first decade of the 20th century. From 1909, many of the miriskusniki also contributed to the Ballets Russes...
, although his relations with its leaders Sergei Diaghilev
Sergei Diaghilev
Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev , usually referred to outside of Russia as Serge, was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, from which many famous dancers and choreographers would arise.-Early life and career:...
and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky
Mstislav Dobuzhinsky
Mstislav Valerianovich Dobuzhinsky or Dobujinsky was a Russian-Lithuanian artist noted for his cityscapes conveying the explosive growth and decay of the early twentieth-century city....
were far from friendly. In 1910–1915 Grabar edited and published his opus magnum
Opus Magnum
Opus Magnum is the third album by Austrian melodic death metal band Hollenthon, released by Napalm Records in 2008. Limited edition digipack contains bonus track, "The Bazaar" and video clip for "Son of Perdition"....
, the History of Russian Art. The History employed the finest artists and critics of the period; Grabar personally wrote the issues on architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
that set an unsurpassed standard of understanding and presenting the subject. Concurrently he wrote and published a series of books on contemporary and historic Russian painters. In 1913 he was appointed executive director of the Tretyakov Gallery
Tretyakov Gallery
The State Tretyakov Gallery is an art gallery in Moscow, Russia, the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world.The gallery's history starts in 1856 when the Moscow merchant Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov acquired works by Russian artists of his day with the aim of creating a collection,...
and launched an ambitious reform program that continued until 1926. Grabar diversified the Tretyakov collection into modern art and in 1917 published its first comprehensive catalogue. In 1921 Grabar became the first professor of Art restoration at the Moscow State University
Moscow State University
Lomonosov Moscow State University , previously known as Lomonosov University or MSU , is the largest university in Russia. Founded in 1755, it also claims to be one of the oldest university in Russia and to have the tallest educational building in the world. Its current rector is Viktor Sadovnichiy...
.
An experienced politician, Grabar stayed at the top of the Soviet art
Soviet art
Soviet art was the visual art produced in the Soviet Union.-Early years:During the Russian Revolution a movement was initiated to put all arts to service of the dictatorship of the proletariat...
establishment until his death, excluding a brief voluntary retirement in 1933–1937. He managed art-restoration workshops (present-day Grabar Institute) during 1918–1930 and from 1944 to 1960. Grabar took active part in redistribution of former church art nationalized by the Bolsheviks and established new museums for the looted treasures. In 1943 he formulated the Soviet doctrine of compensating World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
losses with art looted in Germany. After the war, he personally advised Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
on the preservation of architectural heritage.
Family roots
Emmanuil Hrabar (1830–1910), father of Igor Grabar and his older brothers Bela and Vladimir (the future law scholar, 1865–1956), was an ethnic RusynRusyns
Carpatho-Rusyns are a primarily diasporic ethnic group who speak an Eastern Slavic language, or Ukrainian dialect, known as Rusyn. Carpatho-Rusyns descend from a minority of Ruthenians who did not adopt the use of the ethnonym "Ukrainian" in the early twentieth century...
lawyer and a polician of pro-Russian orientation. A strong critic of magyarization
Magyarization
Magyarization is a kind of assimilation or acculturation, a process by which non-Magyar elements came to adopt Magyar culture and language due to social pressure .Defiance or appeals to the Nationalities Law, met...
of Rusyns
Rusyns
Carpatho-Rusyns are a primarily diasporic ethnic group who speak an Eastern Slavic language, or Ukrainian dialect, known as Rusyn. Carpatho-Rusyns descend from a minority of Ruthenians who did not adopt the use of the ethnonym "Ukrainian" in the early twentieth century...
in Subcarpathian Rus
Carpathian Ruthenia
Carpathian Ruthenia is a region in Eastern Europe, mostly located in western Ukraine's Zakarpattia Oblast , with smaller parts in easternmost Slovakia , Poland's Lemkovyna and Romanian Maramureş.It is...
, he was elected to the Hungarian Parliament in 1869, at the same time maintaining ties with slavophiles in Moscow and the Russian Embassy. Olga Hrabar (1843–1930), mother of Igor and Vladimir, was a daughter of Rusyn pro-Russian, anti-Catholic politician Adolph Dobryansky (1817–1901). According to Igor Grabar's memoirs, Dobryansky ran an underground network of obedient followers; the 1869 election was merely a means of shielding his son-in-law from prosecution. Dobryansky and his group, unaware of the realities of living in the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
, leaned to its official doctrine of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality; Dobryansky, a man of wealth and pedigree, even imitated the lifestyle of a Russian landlord in minute details; two of his sons joined Imperial Russian service. Dobryansky praised the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848
Hungarian Revolution of 1848
The Hungarian Revolution of 1848 was one of many of the European Revolutions of 1848 and closely linked to other revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas...
by Russian troops, dreaded by his own Rusyn peasants.
In the early 1870s the Hungarian government forced Emmanuil Hrabar to leave the country. Olga with children stayed under police surveillance at the Dobryansky manor in Čertižné
Certižné
Čertižné is a village and municipality in the Medzilaborce District in the Prešov Region of far north-eastern Slovakia.-Geography:The municipality lies at an altitude of 452 metres and covers an area of 23.729 km²...
(now in Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
). In 1880 the Hrabars temporarily reunited in Russia. Emmanuil passed qualification test to teach German and French and settled with Igor and Vladimir in Yegoryevsk
Yegoryevsk
Yegoryevsk is a town and the administrative center of Yegoryevsky District of Moscow Oblast, Russia, located on the right bank of the Guslitsa River southeast of Moscow. Population: 68,000 ; 56,000 ; 29,700 . It is known since 1462 as the village of Vysokoye...
. Olga returned to Hungary to continue pro-Russian propaganda; in 1882 she and her father were, at last, arrested for treason
High treason
High treason is criminal disloyalty to one's government. Participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplomats, or its secret services for a hostile and foreign power, or attempting to kill its head of state are perhaps...
and brought to a trial that aroused public suspicion of a police provocation. She was acquitted for lack of evidence and emigrated to Russia for the rest of her life. In Russia the Hrabars lived under nom de guerre Hrabrov; Igor Grabar restored his real surname (transliterated from Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
with a G, unlike his brother Vladimir Hrabar) in the early 1890s.
Education
Grabar (then Hrabrov) attended high school in Yegoryevsk, where his father taught foreign languages. The stream of magazine publications that followed the 1881 murder of Alexander II of RussiaAlexander II of Russia
Alexander II , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the Emperor of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881...
gave him the first impetus to draw. In 1882 the Hrabars (Hrabrovs) relocated to Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
, closer to the continuing trial of their mother and grandfather; later in the same year, Emmanuil Hrabar accepted an appointment to Izmail
Izmail
Izmail is a historic town near the Danube river in the Odessa Oblast of south-western Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of the Izmail Raion , the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast....
. He sent Igor to Mikhail Katkov
Mikhail Katkov
Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov was a conservative Russian journalist influential during the reign of Alexander III.Katkov was born of a Russian government official and a Georgian noblewoman...
's boarding school in Moscow; the schoolmaster waived tuition fee to a fellow slavophile
Slavophile
Slavophilia was an intellectual movement originating from 19th century that wanted the Russian Empire to be developed upon values and institutions derived from its early history. Slavophiles were especially opposed to the influences of Western Europe in Russia. There were also similar movements in...
. Igor Grabar, interested in drawing, soon made contacts with the students of 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...
and already established artists - Abram Arkhipov
Abram Arkhipov
Abram Efimovich Arkhipov was a Russian realist artist, who was a member of the art collective The Wanderers as well as the Union of Russian Artists....
, Vasily Polenov
Vasily Polenov
Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov was a Russian landscape painter associated with the Peredvizhniki movement of realist artists.-Biography:...
and the Schukins, wealthy patrons of art. Strapped for cash, he painted portraits of fellow students for a fee.
In 1889 Grabar was admitted to the Law Department of the Saint Petersburg University; he made living by selling short stories to magazines and soon became the editor of Shut, "the weakest of humour magazines" that nevertheless paid well. His illustrations to books by Nikolay Gogol, signed Igor Hrabrov, inspired the young Alexander Gerasimov
Alexander Gerasimov
Alexander Mikhaylovich Gerasimov was a leading proponent of Socialist Realism in the visual arts, and painted Joseph Stalin and other Soviet leaders....
(born 1881), but Grabar generally stayed aside from drawing. He later complained that tabloid bohemianism
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
completely overwhelmed him. In his second year at the university, Grabar moved up to the respectable Niva magazine. He selected graphics for Niva and wrote essays on contemporary painters but did not yet have enough influence to change its policies. Law-department classes were uninspiring and Grabar spent more time attending history lectures and Pavel Chistyakov
Pavel Chistyakov
Pavel Petrovich Chistiakov was a Russian painter and teacher of art.He studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts under Petr Basin. He was a pensioner of the Academy of Arts in Paris and in Rome...
's school of painting, but he still managed to graduate in law, without delay, in April 1893.
In the end of 1894 he enrolled in Ilya Repin's class at the Imperial Academy of Arts
Imperial Academy of Arts
The Russian Academy of Arts, informally known as the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, was founded in 1757 by Ivan Shuvalov under the name Academy of the Three Noblest Arts. Catherine the Great renamed it the Imperial Academy of Arts and commissioned a new building, completed 25 years later in 1789...
that has just been radically reformed. His classmates, the first "spendid" post-reform group, included Alexej von Jawlensky
Alexej von Jawlensky
Alexej Georgewitsch von Jawlensky was a Russian expressionist painter active in Germany. He was a key member of the New Munich Artist's Association , Der Blaue Reiter group and later the Die Blaue Vier .-Life and work:Alexej von Jawlensky was born in Torzhok, a town in Tver...
and Marianne von Werefkin
Marianne von Werefkin
Marianne von Werefkin , born Marianna Wladimirowna Werewkina , was a Russian-Swiss Expressionist painter.-Life and career:...
who introduced him to French Impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
, Konstantin Bogaevsky
Konstantin Bogaevsky
Konstantin Fyodorovich Bogaevsky was a Russian painter notable for his Symbolist landscapes.-Biography:Konstantin Bogaevsky was born in the Eastern Crimean city of Theodosia to an old Italian-German family of the Genoese extraction on...
, Oleksandr Murashko
Oleksandr Murashko
Oleksandr Murashko was a Ukrainian painter.-External links:*...
, Nicholas Roerich
Nicholas Roerich
Nicholas Roerich, also known as Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh , was a Russian mystic, painter, philosopher, scientist, writer, traveler, and public figure. A prolific artist, he created thousands of paintings and about 30 literary works...
and Arkady Rylov
Arkady Rylov
Arkady Alexandrovich Rylov was a Russian and Soviet Symbolist painter.-Biography:Rylov was born in the village Istobenskoye, Vyatka gubernia. He was brought in the family of his stepfather, a notary...
. Filipp Malyavin
Filipp Malyavin
Filipp Andreevich Malyavin was a Russian painter and draftsman. Trained in icon-painting as well as having studied under the great Russian realist painter Ilya Repin, Malyavin is unusual among the Russian artists of the time for having a peasant background...
, Konstantin Somov
Konstantin Somov
Konstantin Andreyevich Somov was a Russian artist associated with the Mir iskusstva. Born into a family of a major art historian and Hermitage Museum curator, he became interested in the 18th century art and music at an early age.Somov studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts under Ilya Repin from...
, Dmitry Kardovsky
Dmitry Kardovsky
Dmitry Kardovsky was a Russian artist, illustrator and stage designer.-Biography:He was born near Pereslavl-Zalessky in the Yaroslavl province. After studying law at Moscow University, he then studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg from 1892, under Pavel Chistyakov and Ilya Repin...
also studied alongside Grabar but were admitted earlier. Grabar remained "a fervent admirer" of Repin for life but became quicky dissatisfied with academic studies and in July 1895 left for a brief study tour of Western Europe financed by Niva magazine.
Munich
His return to Saint Petersburg finally persuaded him to drop out of the Academy; in May 1896 he and Kardovsky left for MunichMunich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
via Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and 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...
; Jawlensky and Werefkin joined them later in summer. They enrolled at a private school of painting run by Anton Ažbe
Anton Ažbe
Anton Ažbe was a Slovene realist painter and teacher of painting.Ažbe, crippled since birth and orphaned at the age of 8, learned painting as an apprentice to Janez Wolf and at the Academies in Vienna and Munich. At the age of 30 Ažbe founded his own school of painting in Munich that became a...
. Grabar, who soon became assistant to Ažbe, rated him as "a poorly gifted painter, a superb draftsman and an outstanding teacher". Two years later, when Grabar was ready to leave Ažbe, he was offered an opportunity to open his own, competing, school; Ažbe made a counter-offer, making Grabar his equal partner. The partnership existed for less than a year, from June 1899 until spring of 1900, when Grabar accepted a lucrative offer from Prince Shcherbatov and left Munich.
Grabar kept close ties with Saint Petersburg artists and publishers. In January–February 1897 Grabar, obliged to write for Niva, published an article defending avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
art against Vladimir Stasov, making a bombshell effect and inadvertently provoking Stasov's campaign against Repin as the dean of the Academy. Another article published in 1899 caused a conflict between Ilya Repin and Mir iskusstva
Mir iskusstva
Mir iskusstva was a Russian magazine and the artistic movement it inspired and embodied, which was a major influence on the Russians who helped revolutionize European art during the first decade of the 20th century. From 1909, many of the miriskusniki also contributed to the Ballets Russes...
.
Life in Munich also aroused Grabar's interest in architecture, and its history, that soon became his second profession. By 1901 Grabar completed architect's training at the Munich Polytechnicum
Technical University of Munich
The Technische Universität München is a research university with campuses in Munich, Garching, and Weihenstephan...
but did not take the final exams.
Mir Iskusstva
In 1901–1902 Grabar presented twelve of his paintings at an exhibition hosted by Mir IskusstvaMir iskusstva
Mir iskusstva was a Russian magazine and the artistic movement it inspired and embodied, which was a major influence on the Russians who helped revolutionize European art during the first decade of the 20th century. From 1909, many of the miriskusniki also contributed to the Ballets Russes...
; these were the first "truly French" impressionist works displayed in Russia by a Russian painter. One painting went straight to Tretyakov Gallery
Tretyakov Gallery
The State Tretyakov Gallery is an art gallery in Moscow, Russia, the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world.The gallery's history starts in 1856 when the Moscow merchant Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov acquired works by Russian artists of his day with the aim of creating a collection,...
, others were auctioned to private collections.
1903–1907 became Grabar's highest point in painting; according to Grabar's Autobiography, the summit (February–April 1904) coincided with the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War
Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War was "the first great war of the 20th century." It grew out of rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea...
. In this season he practiced moderate divisionism
Divisionism
Divisionism was the characteristic style in Neo-Impressionist painting defined by the separation of colors into individual dots or patches which interacted optically....
with elements of pointillist technique
Pointillism
Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term Pointillism was first coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works...
. Three paintings of this period that Grabar himself considered seminal (February Glaze, March Snow and Piles of Snow) garnered wide and generally positive critical response. Kazimir Malevich
Kazimir Malevich
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was a Russian painter and art theoretician, born of ethnic Polish parents. He was a pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the Avant-garde Suprematist movement.-Early life:...
wrote that, had it not been for linear perspective that Grabar preserved in his March Snow "as a remnant of narrative from the nineteenth century", the whole picture would blend in "a uniform painterly texture" without clearly defined front and middle planes. In 1905 Grabar travelled to Paris to study the new works of French postimpressionists and changed his technique in favor of complete separation of colours. Incidentally, although Grabar appreciated and studied 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...
, Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
and Van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
, he himself ranked "the king of painters" Diego Velázquez
Diego Velázquez
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist...
above them all.
At the end of 1905 and the beginning of 1906, when Moscow was burning from riots and shellfire, Grabar tackled another challenging subject, frost
Frost
Frost is the solid deposition of water vapor from saturated air. It is formed when solid surfaces are cooled to below the dew point of the adjacent air as well as below the freezing point of water. Frost crystals' size differ depending on time and water vapour available. Frost is also usually...
, at the same time investing more and more time into writing and editing. Snow, and winter in general, remained his favorite subjects for life.
Relations between Grabar and the founders of Mir Iskusstva were strained. Sergei Diaghilev
Sergei Diaghilev
Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev , usually referred to outside of Russia as Serge, was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, from which many famous dancers and choreographers would arise.-Early life and career:...
tolerated Grabar as a business asset but feared and distrusted him as a potential new leader of the movement; Grabar' financial backing provided by Shcherbatov seemed especially menacing. Diaghilev's sycophant
Sycophant
Sycophancy means:# Obsequious flattery; servility.# The character or characteristic of a sycophant.Alternative phrases are often used such as:-Etymology:...
s Nurok and Nouvelle led the opposition, Eugene Lansere and Konstantin Somov
Konstantin Somov
Konstantin Andreyevich Somov was a Russian artist associated with the Mir iskusstva. Born into a family of a major art historian and Hermitage Museum curator, he became interested in the 18th century art and music at an early age.Somov studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts under Ilya Repin from...
followed suit; Valentin Serov
Valentin Serov
Valentin Alexandrovich Serov was a Russian painter, and one of the premier portrait artists of his era.-Youth and education:...
was perhaps the only member who treated Grabar with sympathy. Grabar, indeed, used funds of Shcherbatov and Nadezhda von Meck
Nadezhda von Meck
Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck was a Russian businesswoman, who is best known today for her artistic relationship with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. She supported him financially for 13 years, enabling him to devote himself full-time to composition, but she stipulated that they were never to meet. ...
to launch his own short-lived art society that failed to shake Mir Iskusstva and soon fell apart. Memoirs of the period, although biased, indicate that Grabar himself was a difficult person. According to Alexander Benois, Grabar practiced an unacceptably patronizing tone and at the same time, had absolutely no sense of humour. No one questioned his talent and encyclopedic knowledge, but Grabar was unable to persuade people or barely coexist with them in small communities like Mir Iskusstva. As a result, in 1908 Grabar broke with the movement completely and tried, in vain, to launch his own art magazine.
Grabar's History
Russian architecture
Russian architecture follows a tradition whose roots were established in the Eastern Slavic state of Kievan Rus'. After the fall of Kiev, Russian architectural history continued in the principalities of Vladimir-Suzdal, Novgorod, the succeeding states of the Tsardom of Russia, the Russian Empire,...
of the 18th century and earlier periods had never been properly studied. Grabar locked him in the archives to study the subject for a year; in July 1909 he took a short leave from writing and designed the Palladian
Palladian architecture
Palladian architecture is a European style of architecture derived from the designs of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio . The term "Palladian" normally refers to buildings in a style inspired by Palladio's own work; that which is recognised as Palladian architecture today is an evolution of...
Zakharyin Hospital in present-day Khimki
Khimki
Khimki is a city in Moscow Oblast, Russia, situated just northwest of Moscow, at the west bank of the Moscow Canal. Population: 207,125 ; 141,000 ; 106,000 ; 23,000 .-History:...
, which was completed by the onset of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and operates to date.
The first issue of History was printed in 1910; publication ceased with the 23rd issue in the beginning of 1915 when Knebel's printshop and Grabar's archive stored there were burnt in an anti-German pogrom
Pogrom
A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...
. Of 2,630 pages in History, 650—the issues on architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
—were written by Grabar. History amalgamated works by the leading architects, artists and critics of the period. Ivan Bilibin
Ivan Bilibin
Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin was a 20th-century illustrator and stage designer who took part in the Mir iskusstva and contributed to the Ballets Russes. Throughout his career, he was inspired by Slavic folklore....
, who contributed photography of vernacular architecture
Vernacular architecture
Vernacular architecture is a term used to categorize methods of construction which use locally available resources and traditions to address local needs and circumstances. Vernacular architecture tends to evolve over time to reflect the environmental, cultural and historical context in which it...
, used to say that "we started appreciating old architecture only after Grabar's book." Grabar's own memoirs, however, focus on the failures of his co-authors: of all contributors only Fyodor Gornostayev was commended for doing his part.
Grabar's predecessors did not elaborate how art, and especially architecture fitted "into the grand historical scheme"; his History became the first comprehensive work that attempted to solve the task. Grabar, accepting now-standard periodization of Russian history, applied the same scheme to history of architecture and emphasized the role of individual monarchs in it. His view of the transition from Naryshkin Baroque
Naryshkin Baroque
Naryshkin Baroque, also called Moscow Baroque, or Muscovite Baroque, is the name given to a particular style of Baroque architecture and decoration which was fashionable in Moscow from the turn of the 17th into the early 18th centuries.-Style:...
, the summit of Muscovite architecture, into loaned European Petrine Baroque
Petrine Baroque
Petrine Baroque is a name applied by art historians to a style of Baroque architecture and decoration favoured by Peter the Great and employed to design buildings in the newly-founded Russian capital, Saint Petersburg, under this monarch and his immediate successors.Unlike contemporaneous Naryshkin...
as an organic process, however, was contentious from the start, and, according to James Cracraft, could not account for an abrupt demise of national architecture under Peter I
Peter I of Russia
Peter the Great, Peter I or Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov Dates indicated by the letters "O.S." are Old Style. All other dates in this article are New Style. ruled the Tsardom of Russia and later the Russian Empire from until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his half-brother, Ivan V...
and his successors. His own concept of "Moscow Baroque", probably influenced by Heinrich Wölfflin
Heinrich Wölfflin
Heinrich Wölfflin was a famous Swiss art critic, whose objective classifying principles were influential in the development of formal analysis in the history of art during the 20th century. He taught at Basel, Berlin and Munich in the generation that raised German art history to pre-eminence...
, is "not entirely consistent or clear". Soviet historians retained Grabar's overall scheme, sealing the "persistent lack of a clear and consistent, architecturally configured periodization of Russian architectural history.". Grabar's concept of Moscow Baroque was challenged, his Ukrainian Baroque
Ukrainian Baroque
Ukrainian Baroque or Cossack Baroque is an architectural style that emerged in Ukraine during the Hetmanate era, in the 17th and 18th centuries....
was trashed, yet Belarussian Baroque became "a fixture of Soviet scholarship."
Grabar's understanding of lesser phenomena has been, at times, erroneous and his attributions were later dismissed. For example, he based the description of the 1591 Ambassadors' Prikaz
Prikaz
Prikaz was an administrative or judicial office in Muscovy and Russia of 15th-18th centuries. The term is usually translated as "ministry", "office" or "department". In modern Russian "prikaz" means administrative or military order...
building on a "fanciful and grossly distorted" sketch by a Swede who visited Moscow after the building was torn down and replaced with a new one. His attribution and periodization of Menshikov Tower
Menshikov Tower
Menshikov Tower , the Church of Archangel Gabriel is a Baroque Russian Orthodox Church in Basmanny District of Moscow, within the Boulevard Ring. The church was initially built in 1707 to order of Alexander Menshikov by Ivan Zarudny assisted by Domenico Trezzini, a team of Italian-Swiss craftsmen...
is also challenged. Nevertheless, James Cracraft ranked Grabar the first "in the whole field of Russian art history", Dmitry Shvidkovsky
Dmitry Shvidkovsky
Dmitry Shvidkovsky is a Russian educator and historian of architecture of Russia and the United Kingdom during the Age of Enlightenment. A 1982 alumnus and long-term professor of Moscow Architectural Institute, Shvidkovsky was appointed its rector in 2007....
wrote that Grabar's History in whole "remains unsurpassed", and William Craft Brumfield
William Craft Brumfield
William Craft Brumfield is a contemporary American historian of Russian architecture, a preservationist and an architectural photographer. Brumfield is currently Professor of Slavic studies at Tulane University....
noted its "immense importance" for the preservation of medieval heritage.
Tretyakov Gallery
April 2, 1913 the Board of the Tretyakov GalleryTretyakov Gallery
The State Tretyakov Gallery is an art gallery in Moscow, Russia, the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world.The gallery's history starts in 1856 when the Moscow merchant Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov acquired works by Russian artists of his day with the aim of creating a collection,...
elected Grabar its trustee and executive director. He accepted the appointment on condition that the trustees give him unlimited authority in reforming the gallery. Later, he wrote that had he known the weight of this burden beforehand he would step back, but, inexperienced in public politics, he grabbed the opportunity of "being there", among the subject of his History. Grabar planned to expand the former private collection into a comprehensive showcase of national art, including the controversial Russian and French modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
paintings. He laid out a program of artistic, scientific, educational-enlightening and social changes and eventually converted the gallery into a European museum.
Grabar started with rearranging the paintings in public display; when the gallery reopened in December 1913, the main enfilade
Enfilade (architecture)
In architecture, an enfilade is a suite of rooms formally aligned with each other. This was a common feature in grand European architecture from the Baroque period onwards, although there are earlier examples, such as the Vatican stanze...
of its second floor was prominently terminated with Vasily Surikov
Vasily Surikov
Vasily Ivanovich Surikov was the foremost Russian painter of large-scale historical subjects...
's epic Feodosia Morozova
Feodosia Morozova
Feodosia Prokopiyevna Morozova was one of the best-known partisans of the Old Believer movement.She was born on May 21, 1632 into a family of the okolnichi Prokopy Feodorovich Sokovnin. At the age of 17, she was married to the boyar Gleb Morozov, brother to the tsar's tutor Boris Morozov...
. The first floor was now filled with completely new material - contemporary French painters and young Russians like Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin
Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin, was an important Russian and Soviet painter and writer.-Early years:...
and Martiros Saryan
Martiros Saryan
Martiros Saryan was an Armenian painter.He was born into an Armenian family in Nor Nakhijevan . In 1895, aged 15, he completed the Nakhichevan school and from 1897 to 1904 studied at the Moscow School of Arts, including in the workshops of Valentin Serov and Konstantin Korovin...
. In the beginning of 1915 Grabar's purchasing decisions stirred a public scandal that involved practically all publicly known artists; Victor Vasnetsov, Mikhail Nesterov
Mikhail Nesterov
Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov was a major representative of religious Symbolism in Russian art. He was a pupil of Pavel Tchistyakov at the Imperial Academy of Arts, but later allied himself with the group of artists known as the Peredvizhniki...
, Vladimir Makovsky
Vladimir Makovsky
Vladimir Yegorovich Makovsky 1846, Moscow - 21 February 1920, Petrograd) was a Russian painter, art collector, and teacher.Makovsky was the son of collector, Yegor Ivanovich Makovsky, who was one of the founders of the Moscow Art School. Vladimir had two brothers, Nikolai Makovsky and Konstantin...
and Grabar's former sponsor Shcherbatov called for immediate termination of his tenure. Debates continued until January 1916, when Moscow City Hall approved Grabar's reform in full. Grabar summarized his achievements in the 1917 catalogue of the Gallery, the first of its kind.
The Russian Revolution of 1917
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
had dual effect on the gallery. Collapse of the monetary system and city utilities brought the gallery to a "really catastrophic condition" that was barely improved by nationalization
Nationalization
Nationalisation, also spelled nationalization, is the process of taking an industry or assets into government ownership by a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets, but may also mean assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being...
in June 1918. At the same time the gallery collection rapidly grew, absorbing nationalized private and church collections and formerly independent small museums. One by one its own exhibition halls were converted into art warehouses and closed to the public. By 1924 the gallery operated four affiliate halls, in 1925 it disposed with foreign masters, but these measures could not offset the inflow of new stock. Physical expansion of the building became a first priority, and in 1926 Grabar was replaced with architect Aleksey Shchusev.
Thriving under the Bolsheviks
In 1918 Grabar took the lead of the Museums and Preservation Section of the Soviet Government, the Museum Fund and the Moscow-based state restoration workshops, becoming de-facto chief curator of arts and architectural heritage for the whole Moscow region. As prescribed by the Bolsheviks in December 1918, Grabar's institutions catalogued all known heritage, "an action tantamount to confiscation", and despite continuing vandalismVandalism
Vandalism is the behaviour attributed originally to the Vandals, by the Romans, in respect of culture: ruthless destruction or spoiling of anything beautiful or venerable...
and war many nationalized landmarks were actually restored. Grabar's group, like the contemporary Gorky Commission
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...
, was torn by a conflict of preservationists (Grabar, Alexander Benois, Alexander Chayanov
Alexander Chayanov
Alexander V. Chayanov was a Soviet agrarian economist, and scholar of rural sociology and advocate of agrarianism and cooperatives....
, Pyotr Baranovsky) and "destroyers" (David Shterenberg
David Shterenberg
David Petrovich Shterenberg was a Ukrainian-born Russian painter and graphic artist.Born to a Jewish family in Zhitomir, Ukraine, Shterenberg studied art in Odessa and then from 1906-1912 based himself in Paris where he studied with, amongst others, Kees van Dongen...
, Vladimir Tatlin
Vladimir Tatlin
Vladimir Yevgrafovich Tatlin was a Russian and Soviet painter and architect. With Kazimir Malevich he was one of the two most important figures in the Russian avant-garde art movement of the 1920s, and he later became the most important artist in the Constructivist movement...
) and Grabar later complained that he had to offset two extremes, destruction of heritage and obstruction of avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
artists (he was himself the "main exponent of conservation"). Grabar successfully exploited whatever allies he could recruit amongst the ambivalent Soviet bureaucracy, starting with the Commissar for Education Anatoly Lunacharsky, and even managed to retain his affluent lifestyle of the past.
Since 1919 Grabar directed his commission into documenting and preserving Orthodox church murals and icons. The first 1919 expedition to Yaroslavl
Yaroslavl
Yaroslavl is a city and the administrative center of Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia, located northeast of Moscow. The historical part of the city, a World Heritage Site, is located at the confluence of the Volga and the Kotorosl Rivers. It is one of the Golden Ring cities, a group of historic cities...
located and restored previously unknown works of the 12th and 13th centuries. Restorers Fyodor Modorov, Grigory Chirikov and photographer A. V. Lyadov continued studies of northern church art throughout the 1920s and by 1926 produced the first comprehensive study of icons and an assessment of wooden churches that housed them. Grabar's icon restoration workshop became internationally known; Alfred H. Barr, Jr. who visited Moscow in 1927–1928, wrote of Grabar's technology "with great enthusiasm." "It is to Grabar', more than to any other single scholar, that Russia owes the rediscovery of his icons."
These appointments inevitably placed Grabar near the top of the Soviet machine of looting church and, to a lesser extent, privately held art treasures. Benois, who left the country, scorned Grabar for "ripping Princess Mescherskaya of her Botticelli." Grabar accepted the fact of Bolshevik expropriation and concentrated on preservation of the treasures and setting up local museums to display them in public. His and Roman Klein
Roman Klein
Roman Ivanovich Klein , born Robert Julius Klein, was a Russian architect and educator, best known for his Neoclassical Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Klein, an eclectic, was one of the most prolific architects of his period, second only to Fyodor Schechtel...
's proposal to convert the whole Moscow Kremlin
Moscow Kremlin
The Moscow Kremlin , sometimes referred to as simply The Kremlin, is a historic fortified complex at the heart of Moscow, overlooking the Moskva River , Saint Basil's Cathedral and Red Square and the Alexander Garden...
into a public museum failed, and the Kremlin was quickly taken over by the sprawling Red government. Among the masterpieces found during these campaigns was The Madonna of Tagil
Nizhny Tagil
Nizhny Tagil is a city in Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia, situated east of the virtual border between Europe and Asia. Population: -History:...
(Madonna del Popolo) taken from the Demidov
Demidov
The Demidov family, also Demidoff, were an influential Russian merchant, industrialist and later chivalry family, possibly second only to the Tsar himself in wealth during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.-History:...
house and attributed by Grabar to Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
. Most, however, ended up at overseas auctions. Less formal attempts of individual artists to raise money in the United States failed: the 1924 show in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
attracted 17 thousand visitors but raised only $30,000 and Grabar admitted "We do not know what to do".
1930s
Great Soviet Encyclopedia
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia is one of the largest and most comprehensive encyclopedias in Russian and in the world, issued by the Soviet state from 1926 to 1990, and again since 2002 .-Editions:There were three editions...
, and concentrated on painting. Grabar himself wrote: "I had to choose between the daily mounting administrative burden and creating ... I had no choice. A personal pension granted by Sovnarkom fastened my retirement." According to Baranovsky and Khlebnikova, the decision was influenced by his mother's death; Grabar the artist shifted his attention to problems of age, aging and death. According to Colton, the change followed a campaign of demolition inside the Kremlin (Chudov Monastery
Chudov Monastery
The Chudov Monastery was founded in the Moscow Kremlin in 1358 by Metropolitan Alexius of Moscow. The monastery was dedicated to the miracle of the Archangel Michael at Chonae...
) and all over Moscow. The preservationist Old Moscow Society, unable to influence the authorities any longer, voted itself out of existence, and Grabar's heritage commission was disbanded a few months later. Grabar's influence over impending demolitions was now reduced to writing pleas to Stalin, as was the case of the Sukharev Tower
Sukharev Tower
The Sukharev Tower was one of the best known landmarks and symbols of Moscow until its destruction by the Soviet authorities in 1934. The tower was built in the Moscow baroque style at the intersection of the Garden Ring with the Sretenka street in 1692-1695.Tsar Peter the Great ordered the...
in 1933–1934.
Grabar supervised another New York exhibition, this time of icon
Icon
An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...
art, in 1931 and painted a string of official "socialist realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
epics" but it was the 1933 Portrait of Svetlana that gave him an enormous and unwanted exposure at home and abroad. Grabar himself rated this portrait, painted in one day, among its best. The public identified its title subject as none other than Stalin's daughter
Svetlana Alliluyeva
Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva , later known as Lana Peters, was the youngest child and only daughter of Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Stalin's second wife...
(born in 1926, she could not have been Grabar's subject; the legend persisted into 1960s). Either this dangerous publicity, or his earlier association with Natalia Sedova
Natalia Sedova
Natalia Ivanovna Sedova is best known as the second wife of Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary. She was, however, also an active revolutionary in her own right and wrote on cultural matters pertaining to Marxism...
and other trotskyists
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
compelled Grabar to retire to relative obscurity. He kept on painting and wrote his Autobiography that was ready for print in June 1935 but was barred from publication until March 1937. Contrary to the communist policy, Autobiography appreciated the "formalist" art of Mir Iskusstva and dismissed "some critics applying Marxist analysis
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
" as utterly incompetent. In the same 1937 Grabar published Ilya Repin that earned him the State Prize
USSR State Prize
The USSR State Prize was the Soviet Union's state honour. It was established on September 9, 1966. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the prize was followed up by the State Prize of the Russian Federation....
four years later and began writing Serov. By 1940 he was firmly back into the Soviet establishment and was featured in propagandist newsreels produced for distribution in Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
.
World War Two and beyond
In June 1943 Grabar proposed tit-for-tat compensation of Soviet art treasures destroyed in World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
with art to be taken from Germany. Compiling the target list of German treasures was easy, but estimating own losses was not: by March 1946 only nine out of forty major museums could provide an inventory of their losses. The government used Grabar's proposal as a smoke screen: while Grabar's deputy Victor Lazarev was discussing the legality of equitable reparations
War reparations
War reparations are payments intended to cover damage or injury during a war. Generally, the term war reparations refers to money or goods changing hands, rather than such property transfers as the annexation of land.- History :...
with the Allies, Soviet "trophy brigades" had practically completed a wholesale campaign of organized looting.
Grabar consulted Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
in preparation to Moscow's 800-years jubilee celebrated in 1947. He persuaded Stalin to return the former St. Andronik Monastery
St. Andronik Monastery
Andronikov Monastery of the Saviour is a former monastery on the left bank of the Yauza River in Moscow, consecrated to the Holy Image of Saviour Not Made by Hands and containing the oldest extant building in Moscow...
, once converted to a prison, if not to the church but to the artistic community. The remains of the monastery, restored by Pyotr Baranovsky, became the Andrey Rublyov Museum of Old Russian Art (Grabar upheld Baranovsky's dubious "discovery" of the alleged tomb of Andrey Rublyov). Grabar, as the senior in artistic community, retained some independence from the ideological pressure, as indicated by his 1945 obituary for the emigre
Emigre
Emigre, also known as Emigre Graphics, is a digital type foundry, publisher and distributor of graphic design centered information based in Berkeley, California, that was founded in 1984 by husband-and-wife team Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko. The type foundry also published Emigre magazine...
Leonid Pasternak
Leonid Pasternak
Leonid Osipovich Pasternak was a Russian post-impressionist painter. He was the father of the poet and novelist Boris Pasternak.-Biography:...
printed in Soviet Art.
Things weren't always smooth: in 1948 Grabar was caught in another campaign against random targets in art and science. He retained his administrative and university jobs and in 1954 co-authored Russian architecture of the first half of the 18th century, a revisionist study of the period that dismissed the knowledge collected by fellow historians before 1917. He made an exception, though, for his own works that allegedly "correctly understood" the subject. Contrary to Grabar's own understanding of East-West cultural relationship presented in History but in line with the rules of Soviet historiography
Soviet historiography
Soviet historiography is the methodology of history studies by historians in the Soviet Union . In the USSR, the study of history was marked by alternating periods of freedom allowed and restrictions imposed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , and also by the struggle of historians to...
, the new book claimed that Russians of the 18th century "yield nothing in their work to foreign contemporaries" and overstated the influence of folk tradition on polite architecture
Polite architecture
Polite architecture, or "the Polite" refers to buildings designed to include the artifice of non-local styles for decorative effect by professional architects. The term can be used to describe any number of non-vernacular architectural styles...
. These falsified theories, easily dismissed today, established the "provincial outlook" that governed the post-war generation of Soviet art historians.
After Stalin's death Grabar was the first to publicly denounce run-off-the-mill socialist realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
and pay the dues to once banished Aristarkh Lentulov
Aristarkh Lentulov
Aristarkh Lentulov was a major Russian avant-garde artist of Cubist orientation who also worked on set designs for the theatre.- Biography :...
and Pyotr Konchalovsky
Pyotr Konchalovsky
Pyotr Konchalovsky , was a Russian painter, a member of Jack of Diamonds group.-Life and career:...
. The "unsinkable" Grabar earned derogatory nicknames Ugor Obmanuilovich ("cheating eel
Eel
Eels are an order of fish, which consists of four suborders, 20 families, 111 genera and approximately 800 species. Most eels are predators...
") and Irod Graber ("Herod
Herod
Herod is a name used of several kings belonging to the Herodian Dynasty of the Roman province of Judaea:...
the Robber"). Baranovsky and Khlebnikova noted that the reaction against Grabar was frequently provoked by his work at the helm of museum purchasing committees: mediocre artists inevitably had a grudge against his buying and pricing decisions.