Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin
(b Khvalynsk, Saratov province, 25 Oct 1878; d Leningrad
[now St Petersburg], 15 Feb 1939).
Russian painter. He began his studies in the drawing and painting classes
of F. Burov (1843–95) in Samara (1893–5), and he attended Baron
Stieglitz’s school in St Petersburg from 1895 to 1897. He studied under
Abram Arkhipov, Nikolay Kasatkin and Valentin Serov at the Moscow School
of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture from 1897 to 1905 and at Anton
Azbé’s school in Munich (1901). After working in various private studios
in Paris between 1905 and 1908, he travelled to Constantinople (now
Istanbul), Greece and Italy in 1905 and to Algiers in 1906. On his return
to Russia, he held an exhibition in the editorial offices of the magazine
Apollon in St Petersburg (1909). From 1911 to 1924 he exhibited
with the WORLD OF ART group and from 1925 to 1928 with the FOUR ARTS
SOCIETY OF ARTISTS. From the early 1910s Petrov-Vodkin’s work was
influential in the artistic life of St Petersburg. He attempted to
reconcile classical and modern trends. His style was formed under a wide
range of influences, often seemingly incompatible: 19th-century Russian
painters such as Aleksey Venetsianov, Aleksandr Ivanov and Mikhail Vrubel’,
the artists of the Munich Secession, Ferdinand Hodler, Maurice Denis,
Gauguin, Puvis de Chavannes, Matisse, the painting of Giovanni Bellini,
early Russian frescoes and icons and Russian folklore and popular songs.
