Beginnig with the 1940s the art of the lacquer miniature experienced several decades of severe crisis.

The totalitarian regime, which left its mark on every sphere of culture, now began to attack not only the icon-painting tradition but also the use of metaphor and symbol as a whole. Socialist Realism demanded propaganda work and a realistic form of depiction that undermined the traditions of the miniature and denied its specific artistic, decorative and thematic originality. The language of allegory was abandoned and the new lacquers turned out to be crude imitations of posters or photographs.

The Fedoskino masters were transferred to the mechanical copying of classical Russian and Soviet paintings. In Palekh, Mstera and Kholui the greater part of output was devoted to portraits of the communist party leaders and pompous official events: "The March of the Victors", "The Festival of Harvest", "Handing Out the Awards" and so on. Against such a background the work of artists who proved able to preserve the traditional craft (I.I.Strakhov, V.D.Lipitsky, S.P.Rogatov, M.S.Chizhov and G.I.Larishev in Fedoskino; I.P.Vakurov, N.M.Zinoviev and D.N.Butorin in Palekh, and I.A.Fomichev and E.V.Yurin in Mslera) was a comforting phenomenon. In Mstera N.I.Shishakov, L.A.Fomichev and V.F.Nekosov all made a name for themselves with their search for new artistic approaches.

Renaissance in the art of the lacquer miniature

The renaissance in the art of the lacquer miniature began in the 1970s and, above all, in Palekh. An enormous and still insufficiently appreciated contribution was made to restoring the philosophy of this lost craft by the artists B.M.Khodov, I.B.Livanova, and E.F.Shchanilsyna. Today interesting and creative work is being produced by B.M.Yerinolaev, N.I.Golikov and G.N.Kochetov in Palekh: by S.I. Kozlov, A.V.Korchagin and Yu.V.Karapaev in Fedoskino: and by P.A. Milyashin, V.A.Yolkin, V. Yu.Baikalova, Z.Yu.Grachev and V.V.Kharchev in Kholui.

The new creative impulse has been productive. Working closely with the studios, the leading artists have tried to restore the skills and experience of the past to the contemporary miniature, painting variations on one or another motif or theme. They make brilliant use of allegorical language and folk imagination translated from mediaeval and folk art. This gives them wide scope for embodying their artistic ideas in meaningful stylized and symbolic images: the unity of man and nature is poetically portrayed as the essential source of life, the principles of love and goodness are perceived as the foundations of the world's oneness, and all that is depicted in the miniature gleams, glitters and glows.

Fedoskino

The Village of Fedoskino, located 38 km. north of Moscow, on the bank of the Ucha River, is Russia's oldest center of lacquer miniature painting. Many of the village inhabitants are engaged in this craft, or have at least something to do with it. The secrets of making and painting papier-mâché lacquers have been passed from generation to generation for over than 200 years. It is a place of unique beauty with it's coniferous forests, birch groves, meadows, hills, ravines and the bend of the Ucha River. Fedoskino is one of the most poetic and astonishing places near Moscow. It is not surprising that the art of lacquered miniature was born here.

The Fedoskino lacquer miniature developed separately from icon painting, and as such has several unique qualities. The most remarkable is that it is the only village to paint with oils, rather than with egg-tempera, and to use mother-of-pearl and gold inlay. The use of oils broadened the range of subjects the Fedoskino artists could cover, because in comparison with egg-tempera it allowed greater realism.

The technique originated in Japan, China and Persia oriental lacquer work first became known in Europe in the 16th century. By the 18th century lacquer snuffboxes decorated with miniatures made in England, France and Germany had become fashionable. One of the greatest European centers for such items was Johann Stobwasser's factory in Braunschweig. In 1795 the Russian merchant Pyotr Korobov visited the Braunschweig works and grasped quickly with his enterprising mind that cheap and simple articles could be mass-produced using this very durable combination of materials. Within a year he had opened his own factory on the outskirts of Fedoskino. It became famous for its simple, most often round, snuff-boxes. Specially prepared engravings were glued to the lids of these boxes, and were sometimes delicately colored and covered with a translucent layer of varnish. Most frequently the engravings depicted battles involving Russian troops, other important events of the recent past, portraits and landscapes.

“Lying on a sofa in a grey house suit, nestled in German pillows.... he used to fiddle with some small object, his old black snuffbox, its lacquer gone tarnished...." That was how Russkie Vedomosti (the Russian newspaper) described Russian Ivan Turgenev, the Russian writer, in 1884. History has surprisingly preserved for us Turgenev's favorite plaything. When leaving Russia for the last time for Paris, where he was not allowed to smoke or snuff tobacco, Turgenev left his snuffbox as a souvenir with his friend, writer Yakov Polonsky. The Polonsky family carefully stored that relic, which was then transferred to the Pushkin House the Museum of the Russian Literature Institute. Turgenev's snuffbox is still on display at that museum. It is a small oblong black lacquer box, the size of two matchboxes. Its lid is decorated with a picture of a sledge driven by three horses, flying along the snow-laden field. Smartly dressed rosy-cheeked young ladies are riding in the sledge, with a spirited coachman whipping the healed horses. Inside the purple lacquer coated lid you could see a semi-obliterated picture of a gold double-headed eagle with the letters "F. A. L." (Alexander Lukutin's factory trademark) underneath.

The "golden age" of the Russian lacquers would begin after 1819 when the factory passed into other hands: Korobov was succeeded by his son-in-law Pyotr Lukutin and the latter by his own son Alexander. The originality of the scenes depicted, and the high quality of these articles made the Fedoskino masters so famous that in 1828 Lukutin was given the right to show the Russian coat of arms and his own surname on the boxes. (Usually only his initials rather than his name in full were written on the label. By this time there were already about 100 employees at the factory. It had its own vocational school where the peasants were taught this craft and a museum that included lacquer miniatures from Braunschweig, painted porcelain, and miniatures on ivory and metal.

The most important article of production remained the snuffbox. It was made in a variety of shapes - ovals, rectangles and more complex forms. The box fitted snugly in the hand and its edges were smoothly rounded. Inside, the box might be separated into several compartments and covered with a colored or black lacquer, or even with tin leaf. Certain snuffboxes had an exterior ornamental decoration imitating tartan patterns, or tortoiseshell, mother of pearl, ivory and mahogany. The output of the factory was divided into single items which were commissioned or used as original models for copying, and the ready-for-sale articles that were based on already existing models. Most were decorated with pictures of domestic everyday scenes, but there were also historical and mythological subjects, landscapes and portraits. It was a particular feature of the Lukutin lacquers that these decorative scenes were derived from the drawings, paintings or engravings of other artists rather than from the real life. The creative variation of a single model and its new treatment in accordance with the decorative task became an essential part of the art of the classic Fedoskino miniature, linking it with the traditional folk arts. There was a permanent danger, however, that the process would come to a simple mechanical copying. The creative element here lies in the individual reworking of the original composition, line and coloring, which were adapted to the form and proportions of the decorated object, and to the possibilities afforded by the material and the technique of lacquer painting.

The pictures were produced by the application of several layers of oil paints, thus following the techniques that became wide-spread in the classical painting and miniatures of late-18th and early-19th-century Russia. One after another, up to four layers were added and worked over - ground tinting, outlines, successive translucent layers and finally, highlights. Each in turn was dried and sealed with lacquer. In certain places mother of pearl was cut into the surface of the object, layers of gold leaf were glued to it and powdered silver sprayed on. The richness of texture was attained by an alternation between thickly painted colours covered with a translucent top layer, and "through-painted" areas where one color shone through another. It was this technique that gave the Lukutin pictures their distinctive succession of brilliant and subdued, matt and shining, translucent and opaquely dense sections of the painted surface.

The themes and subjects depicted depended to a large extent on demand. And the demand came, naturally, from a variety of social strata, ranging from the gentry and the merchant class to the urban population as a whole. Hence there were mythological and allegorical subjects, copies of Western and Russian painters, scenes from rural life and portraits made to order. Scenes from Russian life were in great demand, both abroad and within Russia itself. The subjects chosen varied greatly, and together made up an entire encyclopedia of rural life: "Rest during mowing", "Girl with a yoke", "Spinner", "Tea-drinking", "Returning from the fair", "Grandfather and child", "Harvest", "Sharpening the scythe" and "Round Dance".

The most favorite subjects were rides in a troika, folk dances, fortune-telling, card-playing, homely houses of the landed gentry, finely dressed young gentlewomen engaged in embroidery etc, hunting scenes, views of St Petersburg and Moscow, and pictures of horse-cab drivers, merchants and shop assistants. These varied and detailed scenes of everyday life were often derived from the paintings or drawings of famous professional artists. Constantly reworked at Fedoskino in the spirit of the traditional peasant arts, they were adapted to express popular and idealized notions of life. In the work of these peasant masters, reality was transformed, acquiring the optimism and vitality of their own festive celebration of life. This accounts for the rhythmic completeness of the whole as repeated in the miniature. It explains the pictorial nature of the artistic image which is idealized and abstracted from specific circumstance and detail. Given the slightest opportunity, the subject of the majority of copied miniatures was simplified and displaced by landscape.

The latter gave an emotional setting that echoed the mood of the figures depicted. Landscape evolved as an independent theme in the Fedoskino miniatures. The unity of man and nature was a fundamental theme in the art of lacquer miniatures. The individual blended with the landscape, and this found its expression in the use of palette, rhythm and interplay of color. This quality and the intimately lyrical nature of the Lukutin paintings on small domestic objects (snuffboxes together with plates, boxes, glasses etc), was linked to a way of viewing the world nurtured by mediaeval Russian artistic traditions and the 18th and early 19th century paintings of Borovikovsky and Venetsianov. It was this that explains the flourishing of such genres as the miniature and the informal portrait. Even when the Fedoskino painting comes closest to the professional arts it still retains an inimitable originality thanks to its folklore roots.

In the mind of ordinary people, the colorful elegance of the garments worn by the inhabitants of the gentry estates and the splendor of their formal outings were identified with ideals of beauty, truth and liberty. They mixed with poetic and fairy-tale images of peasant life that were far from the realities of everyday existence. This perhaps explains why scenes from works by the painter Roussel ("Grandmother's tales", "Russian folk dance" and "The happy family") were so freely and vigorously borrowed and adapted. These idyllic compositions first became widely known as engravings.

As lacquer miniatures they were painted in bright and pure colours. The dominance of vermilion, used to denote the main image, and the intense individual colours gave them a joyful, song like resonance. Lively depictions of summer and winter troikas were also very much in tune with the spirit of the miniatures. Original works by professional artists, and especially A. O. Orlovsky's drawings of troikas, received a new decorative and figurative treatment in the lacquers of the Lukutin masters. Lithographs of Orlovsky's troikas were very popular among the peasantry, a phenomenon comparable to that of the Russian drawing-room romance - once it had left the gentry estate, it became a part of folk culture.

The distinctive features of the Fedoskino style of illustration in its classical Lukutin-workshop period, is derived from a creative synthesis. The images and subjects of professional Russian painting of the first half of the 19th century were combined with the ideals and artistic methods of traditional Russian folk art. The original models were progressively altered. The subject was simplified, the symmetry and enclosed circular bounds of the composition were intensified, while the palette was restricted and the image idealized. The result was the creation of a quite different and self-sufficient type of art that reflected the tastes and conceptions of both the gentry and large sections of the urban population. Among them were the lower middle classes, the merchants and related social groups and of course, the peasant masters of the Fedoskino works themselves.

By the mid 19th century about one thousand peasants were already engaged in producing lacquer miniatures. The world still retained its wholeness in the popular imagination. However, the artistic quality of the lacquers declined noticeably towards the end of the century. In 1904 the Lukutin works closed, following the death of its last owner. For six years the former of masters of Lukutin workshop organized the Artel of Fedoskino, concerning the name of the center of lacquer miniatures. This center of lacquer miniature has conserved the same name. From the very beginning the works were decorated with painted engravings. Later there appeared the first painted works after Italian and Dutch landscape originals, genre motives in imitation of Chinese works. But generally the masters turned to Russian topics. Well-known pictures, lithographs, popular prints were the bases for the plots of their works. The years of the revolution and the subsequent Civil War took a heavy tool on the craftsmen and artists of Fedoskino and the workshops often stood idle as a result of raw material shortages and little demand for finished goods.

This situation changed for the better in 1923, when the All-Union Exhibition of Agricultural, Industrial and Cultural Products was held in Moscow, where Fedoskino wares were awarded the first degree diploma "for preserving the craft and high cooperation". The Artel's products were exported abroad to international exhibitions where they were awarded the Paris Exhibition diploma in 1925, and the Milan Exhibition diploma in 1927.

In 1928, a group of very gifted painters from among the Vishnyakov miniaturists joined the Fedoskino Artel. Their skill, especially in making landscapes greatly enriched the Fedoskino craft. In 1931 a miniature painting vocational school was opened which has passed these skills onto younger generations. In the 1940's and 1950's the artel focused primarily on copying the works of renowned Russian artists. However since few easel paintings could be adapted to the laws of miniature painting, the more creative artists came up with their own compositions. For example, the work of Y.V. Karapayev marked a fundamentally new stage in development of landscape painting.

This genre flourished in the 1980's and is now going strong in the works of S.I. Koslov, G.I. Larishev, G.V. Skripunov, Y.L. Dubovikov, Y.S. Shishkin, among others.

In the 1960's through the 1980's, the Fedoskino factory produced many boxes mostly with Russian style salon scenes. Another group made caskets and panels of multi-figure compositions, which were often intended as rich and prestigious gifts. State orders allowed the painters to worry little about marketing problems thereby doing little to enhance creative quests.

Serious changes occurred in the ideology of Russian society in the late 1980's. Restrictions, which formally curbed creative freedom and prevented artists from self-expression, were lifted. Interest surged in the world in the Russian cultural heritage and especially the decorative and applied arts, giving rise to a new market for unique and expensive artifacts. Fedoskino lacquer miniatures are again treated as genuine works of art in which shape, color scheme and decor are on an even par with painting. Despite their delicacy and seeming fragility, papier-mache products are very durable and functional.

Today many Fedoskino artists experiment with form and style. The Fedoskino art school stores a collection of 19th Century lacquer miniatures as well as diploma works from its graduates from the 1930's onwards. Opposite the present day factory still stands the old building of the former Lukutin workshops, where the great-grandfathers turned out exquisite papier-mâché lacquer miniatures. Today Fedoskino village has a variety of works offering us fine world of magic, joy and holiday. It tells about the mutability and complicity of the surrounding life, creating images-symbols and images-enigmas. Its traditional plots are enriched with a new experience and feeling.

The Fedoskino practice and experience inspired the creation of a new art for Palekh, Mstera and Kholui that united in their works a centuries-old experience of the Russian painting and the history of the Russian lacquer.

Palekh

The unbelievably colourful art of Palekh lacquer miniatures which appeared in the beginning of the XX century is known of

the world. The elegant black-lacquered art pieces on which the heroes of Russian folklore come to life - the amazing

fire-birds and the gold-manned troikas - seem so admirable to us with their fabulous world of beauty, movement and harmony

of their color chords.

Palekh is situated about three hundred eighty kilometers (250 miles) northeast of Moscow in Ivanovo region (about 70

kilometers from Ivanovo), amidst meadows, fir and birch woods, straddling the banks of the little Paleshka river. The

former impenetrability of its forests and the poor state of its roads kept all trade routs away from the village helping it

preserve its integrity as an icon-producing center.

Palekh, along with the other tempera villages, was part of the old Vladimir-Suzdal principality, the very birthplace of

Russian icon painting. The village itself seems to date back to the XIV century, when monks fleeing the Mongol invaders set

up a community. It is known that the serfs of the Buturlin estate took up icon painting in the XVII century, and in the

middle of the same century a letter addressed to the Moscow artist Semion Ushakov mentions the villagers of Palekh, who

bartered the icons they had painted for onions and eggs.

The XVIII century saw the development of iconography as a cottage industry, with division of labor. By the mid XIX century

- when the artists still ran small peasant farms cultivating rye - the Safonovs family, who sent painters out to various

parts of Russia on commission work, were the ones who ran an iconographic business.

The Palekh school of lacquer miniatures appeared in the 1920s and was followed in the 1930s by those of Mstera and Kholui.

The work at Fedoskino served as an example to them and, to some extent, provided a model in the preparation of lacquer

items on papier-mache. However these three related schools, located in the area of the mediaeval Vladimir-Suzdal

principality shared one fundamental stylistic trait that distinguished them from Fedoskino in the Moscow region.

After the revolution of 1917, because of the persecution of religion, former painters were forced to look for new jobs

where they could use their experience. The decision was found thanks to the unique talent of Ivan Golikov and the

organization of his brother-in-law A. Glazunov. Using experience of Lukutino miniature and art traditions of old Russian

painting, Golikov started to create miniatures. His charming and original works fascinated his former colleagues. Even

their first works found a broad response among experts and public in Russia and abroad. Wonderful artists like Ivan

Golikov, Alexander Kotukhin, Ivan Zubkov, Nikolai Zinoviev, Ivan Bakanov, Ivan Markichev and Ivan Bakurov had to master the

art of making papier-mache and lacquer boxes and (most importantly) learn how to prepare and polish the lacquer since the

Fedoskino masters did not share many of these secrets with others.

While the basic technologies in the treatment of papier-mache were the same, the painting in Palekh, was quite

distinctive. As well as in Mstera and Kholui an egg-based tempera was used instead of oil-paints. The bright-localized

colours were applied to the white guidelines on the black background. The abundance of delicate flowing golden lines

followed a definite system and order.

The first exhibitions of Palekh in Paris and in Venice made a sensation. Golikov's miniatures, inspite of their small

size, expressed a spirit of time rather successfully. His couples, troikas, rendezvous, dances, battles, all beautiful in

form and color, were full of dynamic rhythm, reflecting the time of rapid change.

A deep feeling for the native Russian landscape and nature pervades these paintings. This quality was well developed in

the Palekh miniatures and is particularly felt in the vigorous images of hunts and battles. Ivan Golikov, who did more than

any other to develop the art of Palekh, painted unsurpassed works on such subjects. His compositions are meaningful and

impressive, and the lids of the boxes decorated in his passionate and optimistic style glow with all rainbow colors.

Depending on the effect they wished to achieve, the Palekh masters applied their paint in thick or almost translucent

layers, thereby creating an exceptionally rich variety of tonal effects. Their sense and awareness of each different

object, a feeling they brought with them from icon-painting, provided the artistic framework for the Palekh miniatures. The

poetic lines and musical repetition of the elements in the composition transformed the picture into a delicate pattern that

gave shape to the smooth and shining surface of the black lacquer.

The Palekh masters understand the painted area as something, which has weight along with form. This led to the

predominance of the black background and the simplicity of ornamentation (which would appear later in Mstera miniatures) so

that the miniature merges with the box or other article to form a single object. Gold was applied with a fine brush making

the form glow, and was used to indicate leaves on trees, the outlines of hills, architecture and ornamental details of the

composition.

The Palekh masters inherited from mediaeval Russian artists the idea of paint as a precious material. The mediaeval

Russian method of a gradual shading from dark to light was used to accentuate the landscape, give a special nuance to

hills, water and palaces, and created an enchanting delight with its tenderly flowing tones that add a richness to the

painted surface. The painting was completed with the addition of gold, and then it was sealed with lacquer.

Nature was also delicately and perceptively depicted in these miniatures. In the works of Zubkov we find an elegance of

composition, with the vitality of lines and its flowing continuous rhythm, combined with a striking directness of

expression. His pictures of village life are filled with calm, silence, and meditation. The effect of depth in his

compositions is created by the existence of several parallel planes of depiction. The glittering blue of the sky may be

sensed in the soft golden paint on its black velvet lacquer background. In Palekh miniatures the sky is never depicted

literally - the black background has not been painted in and neither is the horizon defined.

The decorative structure of the Palekh miniature reflected the artists' deep understanding of folk song. Whether we look

at the complex interplay of rhythms in the miniature, the mingling lines of its figures or the consonance of colors, and

depths of field, echoes of Russian folksongs can be heard. Formerly, icons based on subjects from religious songs and hymns

were painted in Palekh. In the lacquer miniatures the song enabled the painted image to acquire a musical and rhythmical

structure. The local masters were willing to illustrate certain songs: "Down Mother Volga", "We have sown and we have

reaped our flax", "I harvested my strip of land", and "See where the bold troika flies". The artists' deep feeling for song

and melody were reflected in their artistic treatment of the miniature.

Again it was Ivan Golikov who painted the most outstanding works of this genre. Both musical and poetic echoes can be

found in his miniatures. His interpretation of the mediaeval Russian classic "Lay of lgor's Host" is a work of brilliance.

A distinctive and expansive rhythm conveys the determined spirit of the Russian warriors who had come to defend their

motherland. The blue color in this series is always threatening. Blue flashes of lightning rend the clouds on the morning

of the battle at the Kayala river; Svyatoslav sees a blue wine containing deadly poison in his dream; and the werewolf

Vseslav is shrouded in blue mist. Golikov makes extensive use of this symbolic meaning of the color, especially when

depicting the eclipse of the sun over the heads of lgor's army.

After the decline of the industry, the period of the World War I and the Civil War, followed by the discovery of the

possibilities of painting on lacquered papier-mache, the revival came with the Museum of Handicrafts commissioning

miniatures from I.Golikov, I.Vakurov, I.Bakanov, I.Markichev and A.Kotukhin.

Previous to this, in response to the Bolsheviks' encouragement for folk art producers to set up cooperative ventures, the

village craftsmen had formed the Palekh Wood Painting Society in 1919, concentrating on the decoration of metal and wooden

artifacts, as well as pottery. After Golikov's vision of a new life for icon art this was replaced by the Old Style Guild,

with the above painters at the heart of it.

Other great Palekh pioneers have included Ivan Zubkov, Alexei Vatagin and Nikolai Zinoviev, while among the gifted pupils

of veteran artists have been Tamara Zubkova, Anna Kotukhina, Grigory Bureyev, Grigory Melnikov, Pavel Chalunin and Nikolai

Golikov, who produced really outstanding works.

In 1924, seven Palekh artists founded the Old Painting Artel. Thus a new page in the history of the craft had been opened,

and soon after lacquer miniature got world recognition. Folklore way of thinking, richness of content, figurativeness -

these are typical features of the traditional Palekh art. Folklore energy until now has always inspired the art of

miniaturist-painters. Genre motifs, as a rule, have retrospective character. It is not only the tribute to historical

memory, or just poeticizing the past, but a search of harmony in eternal themes which expressed the charm and appeasing

beauty of ordinary human life.

Classical literary works, which every generation of Palekh painters turn their attention to, serves as inspiration. The

artist adds his emotional perception and professional fulfillment and introduce different nuances, thus reaching a sharp

contemporary expression of theme. Goethe, speaking of his understanding of art, mentioned that painters using the same

story and characters as before change and transform them in a new way.

During the Perestroika, painters used the freedom they recieved for creative work unseen before differently. Elder

generations of high professionals remained loyal to classical themes: folklore motives and literary sources. They were

devoted to lofty perception of life and their works are poetical images of the world.

Mastering Palekh painting technique starts with five years in the Palekh Art School learning the elements of the craft.

Pupils begin their training from copying works at the same time as trying to create their own composition, developing the

image-bearing way of thinking. Without it a painter is condemned to making merely copis, only modifying them a little.

After many years of work with mentors they master the essence of the image structure of the Palekh miniature.

The majority of Palekh painters being religious believers, even during the soviet times, have turned back to icon and

miniature painting of Biblical content. Returning to icon-painting is a complex process not only for Palekh. If the

creation of the unique center of lacquer miniature which made Palekh world famous happened thanks to the high style of old

Palekh painting, then the revival of icon painting is taking place thanks to the preservation of icon painting technique in

miniature. Russian Orthodox icon is inexhaustible, rich material with no analogues. Experience and life itself prompt

understanding of icon image to the painter.

In Palekh there are several dynasties of painters who continue the work of their parents and grandparents. A family of

painters show the best result of the joint art. In this hereditary succession we see one of the conditions of viability of

Palekh art and its future development in future. In spite of great changes in the art of Palekh artists, miniature still

can be called “fairy tales”. This is expressed not only in the predominance of fairy-tale themes, but in a structure of

images itself, which are full of loft fantasy poetry. The most popular motif of Palekh miniature always was and still

remains an image of Zhar-Ptitsa (Fire-Bird). Fairy-tale characters were looking for the bird which was not only a symbol of

beauty thanks to its sunlight feathering, but a symbol of eternal youth and happiness. Zhar-Ptitsa for decades was an

emblem of Palekh art, reflecting the essence of beautiful and young art existing in spite of the hard reality of the world.

Palekh lacquer miniature is not only the embodiment of historical memory but of the originality of nation.

Kholui

Kholui is one of the most ancient villages in the Vladimir-Suzdal area. Legend has it that arts and crafts were practiced in these parts from as early as the time of the Tatar-Mongol invasion. In the 1230-40s the highly developed urban culture of Northeastern Russia was almost wiped out by the Tatar-Mongol hordes. The local people fled to remote marshlands inaccessible to the Tatar cavalry.

Kholui may well have been such a place, its name meaning "marshlands" in Finno-Ugrian languages. The first recorded mention of the settlement in Kholui goes back to the mid-16th century. It is the deed issued by the grand prince Ivan Vasilievich to the Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery near Moscow relieving the Starodubsky salt works of obligations to the state. This indicates that at the time Kholui was owned by the monastery, which supplied Moscow with salt, which was a highly prized commodity of that time.

Document of the 17th century already mention Kholui icon-painters. These documents are dated 1613, the year when the Kholui sloboda (settlement exempt from state obligations) was given as an allodium to Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Pozharsky who liberated Moscow besieged by the Polish troops in 1612. The level of literacy in the icon-painting centers of Kholui, Palekh and Mstera was markedly superior to that of the peasants of surrounding villages. In 1861 the village community opened the Sofinskaya School in Kholui with the assistance of Duchess Sofia Bobrinskaya.

Almost the whole male population of Kholui was engaged into icon making. In the 1870s, many icon-painting shops sprang up. Some of them were quite large, such as the two-storied workshop of Blinnichev, which had craftsmen from Kholui and Palekh. Among them were the Kryukovs-father Alexander and his sons Pavel and Ivan, the Denisovs-father, Ivan and sons, Ivan and Alexander; V.M.Blinnichev, V.I.Kurakin, and M.F.Khrenkin. Professor Kondakov, who visited the old icon-making centers of Palekh, Mstera and Kholui in 1900 pointed out that Kholui was the most important icon-painting center predated all others Thanks to old legends the craft of icon painting was sustained in those areas.

The first icon painters of Kholui were monks from the Trinity Monastery, who taught local craftsmen the art of icon painting. The monastery archimandrite Afanasy had given an order to choose in Kholui ten children from 12 to 15 "...keen both of mind and of icon painting prowess, literate, and, giving them abode, food and clothes at the monastery, have monk Pavel teach them painting". Kholui thus emerged in the late 17th century as the center of the icon painting tradition of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery. Icon painting developed fairly quickly in Kholui in the 18th century - demand grew up with every passing year. Exceptional gift and profound knowledge of the possibilities and methods of tempera enabled artists to produce wonderful works of art.

In 1882, the Alexander Nevsky brotherhood founded in Vladimir opened, in Kholui, six-year drawing classes, which were later transformed into an icon painting school. Icon painting, drawing and painting within the framework of the Academy of Arts curriculum were taught there. The activity of the icon painting and drawing school (1882-1920) was quite fruitful. The Kholui icon painting and drawing school played an important role. Its most gifted graduates enrolled at the Academy of Arts or the Stroganov Art School in Moscow, did book design for Moscow publishing houses and worked as graphic artists and painters. Some abandoned Kholui and icon painting and gained prominence in other fields of Russian art. Most graduates, however, continued to work in Kholui, leaving an indisputable impact on the artistic level of icons and frescoes and fulfilling the most important commissions. The school also laid the groundwork for the development of modern miniature painting in Kholui.

Religion was persecuted and desecrated after the October 1917 revolution and the Civil War in Russia. Together with churches and cathedrals - historical and cultural monuments of the Russian people, remarkable icons and frescoes were also lost. Kholui's icon painting workshops were closed. Kholui painters had to look for jobs, painting houses, cars at railway stations, barges at piers, road milestones and swing-beam barriers. Excellent painters were for long unable to show their worth at that time of trouble and starvation.

Under the circumstances a new media to carry on the icon painting traditions had to be found. An idea emerged in Palekh to form an association of icon painters, who would use something other than an icon board or canvas and paint secular scenes instead of the images of saints and scenes from their lives. The first experiments in papier-mâché miniature painting were made in Kholui as early as in 1928. They borrowed the Fedoskino methods of making papier-mâché articles and lacquering their surfaces, using however the icon painting technique to decorate their products. Kholui started to evolve its own style much later, when some of its painters returned home after long and fruitless quests and wandering across Russia. By that time the artists of Palekh, looking for ways to apply their icon-painting skills, started decorating papier-mâché boxes following the technology they borrowed from the Fedoskino artists. While the latter used oil, the Palekh artists used tempera technique. Kholui artists decorated several semi-processed plates and boxes made in Palekh.

Masters of Kholui founded Kholui lacquer workshops in 1934 to try their hand in the new media. Icon painting school graduates were all talented professionals with vast experience. The war which broke out in 1941, the temporary closure of the association and its art school, and the mobilization of gifted young artists capable of carrying on the cause of their predecessors largely delayed the development of Kholui lacquers. On a government decision a vocational art school opened in Kholui in 1943. Artists serving at the front and in the rear were summoned to teach there, and appropriations were made to equip the classrooms, to buy fire-wood, teaching aids, clothes and footwear for future students. Another graduate of the Leningrad Academy of Arts, U. A. Kukuliev was sent to Kholui. He worked as the association's artistic director and taught drawing and painting at the art school. The four-year program focused on miniature painting. The first post-war graduates of the art school joined the association. They were fourteen and included Nikolai Baburin, Alexei Kosterin and Boris Tikhonravov. Vladimir Belov became their unofficial leader. He was five or so years older than the rest of them and was distinguished above all by his love for miniature, hard work, imaginative thinking (very much like his teacher) and awareness of the creative goals and obligations of his generation. That was in fact the beginning of Kholui lacquers. Ever since that time Kholui became known as a center of lacquer miniatures, and museums, galleries, Russian trading houses and foreign firms showed keen interest in the works of its craftsmen. Kholui lacquers gained recognition. Its painters produced both unique works of art, which were bought by famous museums and displayed at exhibitions, and models used to make small batches for the market. Though less time consuming in execution, the latter nevertheless had well balanced compositions and expressive themes and images, were well done, elegantly beautiful and, what was of no small importance, quite affordable. Sales revenues formed the association's economic base, making it possible to finance creative activity and thus promoting the development of Kholui lacquers.

Lacquer miniatures are distinguished in multifarious Russian decorative, applied and folk art by their uniqueness and beauty, and the gift and craftsmanship of their creators. Handmade, labour-consuming and intricate, lacquer miniatures have much in common with easel painting. Nevertheless, these are pieces of applied art because painting here is utilitarian and inseparable from the object.

Modern Kholui lacquer workshops were founded in 1993 on the basis of an artistic Guild. Kholui miniature painting is executed with egg yolk tempera over papier-mâché articles. They represent folklore and historic subjects, everyday life motive with stylized figures, which are depicted against the stylized landscape background. Famous artists are involved in the workshops activities; each of them is of vivid talent and inimitable individuality. Their creations won great fame - their artworks were rewarded with high awards, including the Great Silver Medal of the International Exhibition in Brussels. The artists were rewarded with honorary titles of Peoples Artist and Honored Artist of the Russian Federation; they also were honored with the Russian Federation State Prize named after Ilya Repin.

A lacquer miniature is an intimate type of art, the minute details of which may be missed in exhibition halls. Miniatures can only be understood and duly appreciated after scrutiny at close quarters. Kholui miniatures are easily understood because they are realistic, decorative and focus on the portrayal of the personality. New times dictate new approaches to icon painting, nourished by a great love for Russia's past and present, deep knowledge of the sources, the inspiration and talent of those who have undertaken the arduous and noble job of reviving the traditions of old Russian painting. Kholui craftsmen are once again going through a period of dissatisfaction with their present accomplishments. Their creative quests aim to breathe life into icon painting and to produce miniatures on biblical and Gospel themes. These eternal themes of world art, which have for many years been banished from Russian lacquers, are being given a new lease on life at a confluence of past traditions and novel aspirations of local craftsmen.

MSTERA

Mstera village is a unique place in the eastern Vladimir Region. Known as Bogoyavlenskaya Sloboda before 1917, the village now takes its name from the little Msterka (Mstiorka) River, which flows through it, merging with the Kliyazma. It is in Vladimir Region, but not far from the border with Ivanovo Region, south of Palekh and Kholui, in breathtakingly beautiful countryside - the one that forms the backdrop background to its paintings.

Since the 17th century, it has been the Mecca of Russia's icon painting and other arts and crafts. A special place in the Mstera icon painting tradition was held by Byzantine art, the successors of which were the Vladimir and Suzdal icon painters. The Byzantine technique of painting with flux and Byzantine icon painting was preserved in Mstera for many centuries, right up until the start of the 20th century.

No wonder that in Russia, at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, the creation and development of the science of restoration of ancient Russian art was closely associated with the names of the Mstera icon-painters and restorers. It was these people who reintroduced the allegedly lost ancient Russian art to the St. Petersburg and Moscow professors of the history of art. Almost the whole Mstera population was involved to some extent with the icon-painting industry. Icon-painting workshops being a family business were normally handed down from generation to generation. One of the largest icon-painting workshops was that of Suslov (a man who came from the shores of the White Sea) and the oldest was that of the Old Believer, Yantsev.

After the revolution, the private icon-painting workshops in Mstera were closed. The lean years after the revolution forced many inhabitants of Mstera to move to the bread basket provinces. But the majority stayed home in Mstera, where a new life was gradually coming up. In January 1923, the first group of former Mstera icon-painters was formed.

In 1931 seven artists organized the Proletarian Art Artel, which had grown to fifty-five in number by 1933. Following a suggestion by Anatoly Bakushinsky, an art critic who had also helped Palekh, the promising studio expanded on the border decorations which had been the characteristic feature of Mstera icon painting, and was to characterize its new medium also. At first the Mstera artists could not get rid of the structures of iconography. They were the painters, N.P. Klykov, A.F. Kotiagin, and A.I. Briagin, who help them disentangle from such situation.

The 1930's played a very important role in the further development of the genre. This was because the art of miniature lacquer painting was based on the traditions of Mstera icon-painting, which had existed in that area for many centuries and the experienced icon-painters and restorers became the basis for this new art form.

Today, Mstera is famous for its lacquer papier-mâché miniatures. The style of Mstera is also derived from the traditions of Russian icon-painting. It develops and deepens a realist perception, and displays a variety and subtlety of palette, being picturesque, ornamental and decorative. Against light blue, pink, golden and orange backgrounds, the delicate combinations of color in the main drawing seem to glitter and glow. Traditionally the Mstera miniature incorporates cliffs, small mountains, hills, architectural details and fantastic decorative foliage as its basic forms and themes.

As one of the tempera villages, the preparation of the paint is similar to the Palekh method, though in the case of Mstera the artist would sometimes grind his own pigments out of colored pebbles he would find in Msterka River. Their miniatures are characteristically done in pale tones, usually on an ivory background. Colors are commonly more muted than those of the other villages with figures, sometimes elongated, against backgrounds of light blue or other pastel shades, with landscapes predominating, the trees showing a tendency towards Stroganoff style. The overall effect is that of a "Persian tapestry". Faces are usually "cartoonish", lacking the realism of Palekh or Kholui. The use of gold is traditionally avoided, except in borders, which are often intricate. Bylini (epic stories) and skazki (fairy-tales) is a dominating theme of Mstera, though it has produced many classic boxes of political topics and village scenes in the Soviet times.

"Mstera Jeweler" is one of the largest factories in Russia based on folk craft with the richest traditions of artistic metalwork, the roots of which lie in cultural layers, brought to Russia, with the adoption of Christianity, in the magnificent culture of church art and icon-painting. The craft of Vladimir-Suzdal land had been developing for centuries due to the efforts of individual craftsmen who united themselves into small artels (cooperatives) at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century. The production of "Mstera jewelers" is well known in Russia and abroad. It is widely used in modern household and is in great demand. The talented artists and masters of the factory preserve the best traditions of "Mstera jewelry" craft and create new and unique works of art.

Nikolai Klykov (1861-1944) is by right known to be the leading Mstera artist among the painters of miniatures. For a long time he was a real driving force for the search for an original style of the Mstera lacquered miniatures. His former way of life no longer existed and he was forced to find new ways of developing Mstera art. In his early work, he used the traditions of the ancient Russian miniatures of the 15th to 16th centuries. These works stand out due to their sweet naivety, but it is this very naivety that often borders on the sublime. It is these works, where we can see a harmonious, stable, and colorful way of life. Klykov painted works depicting Russian folk tales and episodes from the works of Russian writers, but hardly changed the landscapes in which his contemporary heroes found themselves. In 1937, at the World Exhibition in Paris, Klykov's work "Dubrovsky", received a diploma and a gold medal. The most attractive style for the artist was the Stroganov style. He believed that the great delicacy and colorful variety of this style was most ideally suited to papier-mâché miniatures.

A new period for the development of Mstera miniature lacquered art was at the beginning of the 1960s. That time, the visual arts, which also included lacquered miniatures, were under the influence of the so-called "severe style", with its generalizations, laconism and emphasized decorativeness.

In the 1970's, the development of Mstera lacquered miniature painting went along the lines of not so much rejection of the old aesthetic ideals, but the creation of definite syllabus for its further development. The new generation of artists, who replaced those of the 60's, had no declared syllabus, but on the other hand, they had a strong desire to express their own creative individuality. The creativity of the young artists made it possible to look at Mstera art in terms of an open system which is looking to the future.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1009