Grabar biography

The biography of the Russian artist Igor Grabar, the author of the text - Natalya Mamontova Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar was born on March 13 in Budapest, in a Russian family, which belonged to an ethnic group living in Ugric Rus. This Carpathian district was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Almost the entire large family of Grabar, first of all, his mother’s grandfather Adolf Ivanovich Dobryansky, was involved in the European Slavophil movement, involved in the struggle against the “ma'gorization” of the Slavs of Austria-Hungary.

The life of the family was permeated with socio-political interests, and Igor’s childhood passed in this specific atmosphere. It contained dramatic episodes, including the trial of grandfather and mother, Olga Grabar, who was nearly sentenced to death for the "state treason", the emigration of his father, Emmanuel Ivanovich Grabar, lawyer, deputy of the Budapest parliament, forced to hide behind the "anti -Madia" activity.

The father moved to Russia in the year under the conspiratorial name of the brave this surname for a long time, until graduation, remained in the life of Igor Grabar, and he signed some of his early works, for example, illustrations for Gogol’s stories published in years. Grabar’s childhood was not easy: from an early age, he lived almost constantly in separation from his parents and, with all the abundance of relatives, most often remained in the care of strangers.

In the year, his mother brought him to Russia, to Yegoryevsk of the Ryazan province, where his father taught at the gymnasium. But the reunification of the family did not happen - soon the father was transferred to Izmail, and the boy remained to study in Yegoryevsk. He forever retained love for this quiet provincial town, where he had many good friends, where he was loved and took care of.

Since childhood, he was not changed by the character properties that he created his life as he wanted - determination, a positive beginning in relations with people, the ability to find friends, amazing hard work, interest in life and arising in the most early hot love of art. Igor’s children's hobbies were very serious: at the age of eight, he built a house in the garden of a grandfather’s estate from real materials and according to all the rules.

Judging by his memories, he constantly loaded himself with a variety of activities, gradually choosing to work. Holding the “Ground of Paper”, he painted everything that came to mind, loved to copy portraits of generals from the Niva magazine from the Russian-Turkish war. The first artist he met in his life was a drawing teacher at the Yegoryevsky gymnasium I. Shevchenko, who graduated from the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture.

And finally, when he saw these silver tubes, the boy experienced the strongest impression: “I thought that I could not stand the happiness that filled the chest, especially when I felt a sweet, wonderful smell of fresh paint.” Dreaming of oil paints, he slowly but steadily advanced to his destiny. However, Yegoryevsk was nothing but drawings in the Niva, engravings in the "picturesque review" and "World illustration", could not offer the future artist.

But this was a lot - already in childhood, the grabar of reproductions met many outstanding paintings of the Russian school. The difficult stage in his life was connected with the Moscow Lyceum of Tsarevich Nikolai, where the grabar entered the year. The director of the lyceum was Mikhail Katkov, editor of the Moscow Vedomosti, the right -wing writer. Grabar was adopted by a “living scholarshipist”, and this situation was very different from the position of the rich boys surrounding him, which prevented him from forgetting about the poverty of his family.

But he already had his own world, allowing him to move away from difficult impressions. Moscow met Igor Grabar a huge All -Russian artistic and industrial exhibition, in the art department of which the boy survived the meeting with the best paintings of that time - already familiar from the engravings of Repin and Surikov, Flavitsky and Vereshchagin, Perov and Kuindzhi, Vasiliev and Kramskoy opened to him now in all of his picturesque brilliance.

The weekend and holidays completely belonged to Igor - all days he disappeared in the Tretyakov Gallery, at Moscow exhibitions, from acquaintances. In Moscow, he was looking for people and places related to art - an icon -painting school, apartments of students of the Moscow school of painting, sculpture and architecture or university friends of brother Vladimir. Among the latter, he met Dmitry Shcherbinovsky, a legal student and artist.

Shcherbinovsky had a strong influence on Grabar, who decided, by his example, first of all to get a university education. But the main content of the lyceum life was drawing and painting. In the lessons at the Lyceum and in the classes of drawing the Moscow Society of Fans of Arts, Grabar mastered the drawing from nature and the technique of writing with oil paints.

I did all this. " His models were classmates, teachers, ministers, Yegoryev’s acquaintances.In the summer months, Grabar tried himself in landscape sketches: “After two paintings by Kuindzhi, I also wrote a birch grove on the plot of“ Birch Grove ”, trying not to resemble Kuindzhi.” In his last lyceum year, he saw in his works new, stubborn labor, picturesque qualities.

Along with the main creative interests in the Lyceum, Grabar read a lot, successfully studied languages, tried himself in literature. He graduated from the Lyceum with a gold medal and in the year entered the University of St. Petersburg at the Faculty of Law. On this first wonderful autumn day, Petersburg seemed fabulously beautiful to me with the Admiralty needle sparkling in the distance, the blue Neva, the Granite Embankment and the Peter and Paul Spitz.

So he has remained for me since then and the most beautiful city in Europe. ”