Philip Maliavin

Philip Maliavin
Comrades (1893)

Philip Maliavin (1869-1940) is undoubtedly a remarkable representative of Russian genre painting of the late nineteenth – early twentieth century. And this is not only due to his indisputable talent, nor to his passion for the scarlet colors that fascinate the viewer. Malyavin was the only Russian painter who could feel and transmit a popular element untouched by civilization: the temperament, spontaneity, beauty and a childish side of the muzhiks and Russian women who made up the majority of the population at the turn of the century. The Comrades is an example of this type of painting.

Philip Maliavin came from the peasant background and was a novice in the monastery on Mount Athos. A chance encounter with the sculptor Beklemichev, overwhelmed by his ecclesiastical paintings, changed the young man’s life. He was twenty-three years of age, without any training or money, but with an apparent talent. He was admitted as a free student at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. From the beginning it was the subjects of peasant life that interested him particularly. His final work, a representation of five peasant women in scarlet robes bursting with laughter, was rejected by the Academy’s Art Council as deprived of creative ideas, but applauded with enthusiasm by the general public at the 1900 Paris World Exposition. The Laughter caused a sensation, won the gold medal and was bought for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Venice. The French newspapers competed to compliment the force of the young painter’s temperament. Simple Russian peasants, scarlet and ardent colors, became his distinctive mark. His many canvases and drawings are mostly found in museums and private collections abroad.