Vasily Rozhdestvensky

Vasily Rozhdestvensky was born in provincial Tula, in the family of a career Russian Orthodox priest, just like his Knave of Diamonds colleague Aristarkh Lentulov. He began studying at the Tula Theological School (1896–1900), intent on continuing his family dynasty of priests. But the penchant for painting which he felt since childhood made him quit the theological school when only one year was left before obtaining the diploma, and go to Moscow in 1900 to study at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. His family was profoundly shocked by this sudden reversal and refused to support Rozhdestvensky, so at first he felt dire need. However, his teachers Valentin Serov, Konstantin Korovin and Abram Arkhipov quickly discerned his natural talent and encouraged him to carry on studying. However, the art studies were interrupted by the First Russian Revolution of 1905, when Moscow was dotted with barricades and subjected to martial law, and all schools were closed for an indefinite time, including Moscow School of Painting. Rozhdestvensky had to return to Tula – only to find his entire family get radicalized after the untimely death of his priestly father, with all his brothers and even sisters engaged in underground struggle against the tzarist regime of Russian Empire, either as Social Democrats or members of Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries.^[1]

Belonging to such a family, he had almost no choice but to engage in street protests and demonstrations in his native Tula. In the midst of revolutionary demonstrations, the Rozhdestvenskys made an almost anecdotal journey to listen to Leo Tolstoy preaching in his nearby estate at Yasnaya Polyana, travelling there with a self-made primitive bomb they scraped to assemble to dramatically accelerate the arrival of a new just order. However, the bomb was too primitive to explode, while Tolstoy's preaching of Mahatma Gandhi-style non-violent changes forced the ashamed revolutionaries to get rid of the failed explosive device immediately after listening to his lecture. Nevertheless, such vigorous activity of Rozhdestvensky could not fail to attract the attention of the police, who landed him into Tula prison, together with the other members of his revolutionary family. In 1907, he was set free due to amnesty declared by Emperor Nicholas II, and could resume his studies. In his memoir he noted: "Having paid for my love of freedom with imprisonment, having served time behind bars, I again turned to my beloved art, continuing my studies at the Moscow School of Painting".^[2]

The political revolution in Russia was suppressed, but it nevertheless spread into the sphere of art. Rozhdestvensky's mentors Konstantin Korovin and Valentin Serov took him to the luxurious palaces of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov where the students became acquainted with the greatest collection of modern French painters outside France – with the emblematic canvases of Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Henri Rousseau, André Derain. The revelation of modern French art made the most profound shock effect on Rozhdestvensky and completely changed his art manner. He became acquainted with other School of Painting students who also embraced the latest art tendencies such as Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, Pyotr Konchalovsky, Ilya Mashkov, Robert Falk, Alexander V. Kuprin. The discovery of French art and friendship with these cutting-edge artists-to-be shaped Rozhdestvensky's future destiny.^[3]

Valentin Serov who had started his career by painting the royal portraits of Tzar Nicholas II and his family members, felt all the more frustrated by the cruel suppression of revolution of 1905 and the growing reaction. The last drop was the School of Painting denial to admit as its student the talented female sculptor Anna Golubkina who distributed Social Democrat leaflets and carved the first Karl Marx bust in Russia. In 1909 Serov quit the School where he had been teaching for the last 20 years, and soon afterwards the School administration decided to cleanse its ranks, removing the most notorious troublemakers from art, the rebellious Cezanneists who disturbed the serene roseate atmosphere of the old academy with their bold experiments in the spirit of Fauvism and Cubism. The exiles were Mikhail Larionov, Pyotr Konchalovsky, Robert Falk, Alexander V. Kuprin and Vasily Rozhdestvensky, expelled in 1909 for the breach of discipline. Soon, Ilya Mashkov was also expelled, according to the official version – for failure to pay for tuition, according to the artist himself – for innovation in painting.^[4]

However, the shameful expulsion from the alma mater was not the beginning of the end, but the path to fame and recognition for daring young artists. Having been deprived of all support and left to their own devices, they, on the contrary, felt that their creative powers had been liberated, as now they ceased to depend on everything that had hitherto fettered and hindered them. So they decided to make a bold move, proclaiming the creation of a new style in Russian painting, and declaring the apostles of this new style. As they were officially persecuted rejects, they united in a group with the provocative name Knave of Diamonds, which was invented by Mikhail Larionov and Aristarkh Lentulov, which in Russian classical tradition meant rebellion, disobedience, challenge and audacity of youth, a sheer break with everything that existed in the realm of painting of that time - and this group was destined to become the most striking and significant phenomenon in Russian painting of the 20th century.^[5]

Pyotr Konchalovsky became the chairman of “Knave of Diamonds”, Ilya Mashkov – secretary, Alexander V. Kuprin – treasurer, Rozhdestvensky – member of the board. The first exhibition was held from December 10, 1910, to January 16, 1911, and also featured Natalia Goncharova, Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, French cubist paintings by Henri Le Fauconnier, André Lhote, Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger. Contemporaries called it "an exhibition of madness", the first "slap in the face of public taste" – which became the reason for the popularity and further fame of the artists.^[6]

The expulsion of the artists from the School of Painting meant that they lost their military service deferment, so Rozhdestvensky was sent to military encampment near Mozhaisk to be drilled as the future artillery officer. This brought him even closer to Konchalovsky who was put through the same drilling there. In the evenings, Konchalovsky told Rozhdestvensky about his studies in Paris at Académie Julian, together with Albert Gleizes, and how he found his own path in art when he came to France in 1907 and was captivated by Paul Cezanne and Vincent van Gogh and decided to base himself on their findings. When they completed their military training and became artillery reserve warrant officer, Rozhdestvensky and Pyotr Konchalovsky went together to France and then Italy, where they painted views of Cassis and Siena side by side. Rozhdestvensky also travelled with Ilya Mashkov to Monaco, Switzerland, Liechenstein and the German Empire.^[7]

At the start of WWI in 1914 Rozhdestvensky was called up for military service in the artillery and fought from 1914 to 1917 – longer than any of his fellow artists. He fought with the Siberian Corps in East Prussia in 1914. In 1915, he became Captain and continued fighting in East Prussia, near Przasnysz. For taking this town from Paul von Hindenburg's troops, he was mentioned in the Emperor's rescript and got an award. In 1916, Rozhdestvensky participated in General Brusilov's assault near Zborov. He was lucky not to be severely wounded, but when he was demobilized towards the end of 1917, he found himself in entirely different situation as a painter. As an artist, he had half-dropped out of the artistic life while it had quickly evolved. The "Jack of Diamonds" society went through several crises and finally fall apart in 1917. While the author was in the active army, his paintings were exhibited in 1915 at the "Exhibition of Contemporary Russian Painting" and in 1916, but the October revolution of 1917 shattered all former society foundations.^[8]

However, the old connections he had cultivated with the most radical part of Knave of Diamonds played out well. While Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova who had emigrated to France before the revolution and preferred to stay there afterwards were labelled as "traitors", Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin, Wassily Kandinsky and Robert Falk were elected to the Painting section of the Department of Visual Arts of Soviet Ministry of Culture. When Soviet culture minister Anatoly Lunacharsky decreed to create Museums of Painting Culture throughout the country, in order to acquaint the Soviet people with best examples of progressive art and improve the general state of culture, the Moscow Museum of Painting Culture was headed by Wassily Kandinsky, and Rozhdestvensky was included in the list of 38 best Russian painters whose canvases were selected to adorn the walls of new museums.^[9]

He also returned to his former alma mater, the Moscow School of Painting, now renamed into "State Free Art Workshops", now as a professor, and taught there along with Kazimir Malevich and his former mentors Konstantin Korovin and Abram Arkhipov. Thus his art style got absolute recognition and acknowledgment. However, deep inside Rozhdestvensky had a staunch premonition that the triumph of modern art and artistic freedom granted immediately after the revolution could not be lasting, and that the truly hard times only lay ahead. That dictated his personal strategy of calculated escapism which was to seal the rest of his life. In 1918, he started this strategy by accepting the position of professor at the State Free Art Workshops distant outpost on the shore of Lake Udomlya in Tver province, long considered a "Russian Barbizon" by many painters. Thus he distanced himself from Moscow and Leningrad and the future battles in art sphere that forced Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Boris Anisfeld, Ivan Puni, Konstantin Korovin, Konstantin Somov, Alexandra Exter, Leonid Pasternak into exile, and ousted Kazimir Malevich from all posts, leading to his untimely death.^[10]

As the authorities began their crusade against the "formalist art" and "bourgeois Cézanne perversions in art", Rozhdestvensky with his wife, folklorist and anthropologist and poet Natalia Rozhdestvenskaya (1899 — 1975) decided to engage in a kind of escapism – they traveled a lot around the country, visiting Crimea, the Caucasus, Karelia, Central Asia, Altai Mountains and since 1930s the Archangelsk region, the village Lopshenga on the coast of the White Sea and river Pinega. He painted those villages and natural scenery, and his wife as ethnographer wrote down tales, folklore, songs, and collected rural household items. The Rozhdestvenskys made friends with famous Russian North folklorist Boris Shergin and tales author Pavel Bazhov.^[11]