Shukhaev Vasily

Vasily Ivanovich Shukhaev (1887-1973) – Russian and Soviet painter, graphic artist, stage designer, teacher, honored art worker of the Georgian SSR, was born in Moscow. He is a man and an artist of a difficult fate. Having lived a long, eventful life, he became a living history, a bridge connecting the second half of our century with the beginning of the century, in the artistic events of which Shukhaev was directly involved.

In 1897, Vasily Shukhaev entered the Imperial Stroganov School of Industrial Art, studied with K. A. Korovin, I. I. Nivinsky, I. V. Zholtovsky. In 1906, after graduating from the minting class in Stroganovka, after preparatory classes in the private studio of S. M. Dudin and N. N. Gerardov, Shukhaev entered the Higher Art School at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, and in 1908 was accepted into the workshop of D. N Kardovsky. Kardovsky largely predetermined the direction of the creative searches of the young artist, instilled in him interest and love for the art of old masters. In Shukhaev’s thesis “Bacchanalia” (1912), many traits are characteristic of the old masters, and the influence of Rubens is especially noticeable. The Academy of Fine Arts appreciated the picture in different ways, but it earned a positive rating from A.N. Benois himself, the unquestioned authority of the time, and, on his recommendation, two-year paid pension from the Mug for encouraging young artists in Rome.

1913-1914 years of Shukhaev’s retirement trip to Italy. Alexander Yakovlev is Shukhaev’s friend and associate since his student days. It so happened that he arrived in Italy a little earlier than the Shukhaevs, and in two paid years of a retirement trip, they together managed to visit all the largest centers of Italian art – from Rome, Florence and Venice, to Siena, Padua and Bologna.

at the end of 1910 – beginning of 1912, Yakovlev and Shukhaev participated in the pantomimes “The Columbine Scarf” (House of Intermedia), “Lovers” (house of the lawyer N. P. Karabchevsky) and “Harlequin – the petition of weddings” (Noble Assembly) staged by V. E. Meyerhold ) It is interesting that Yakovlev finished his part of the self-portrait back in Italy, while Shukhaev repeatedly returned to his own – he changed something, added it. He put the final touch on his self-portrait only many years later, in 1962.

In January 1920, Shukhaev crossed the territory of Finland on the ice of the Gulf of Finland.

The next ten months he spent in the villages of Raivola and Mustamyaki had a rather strong influence on the artist’s manner and work. Struck by the nature of the northern country, the artist expands his creative range – for the first time numerous landscapes come out from under his hands, not as sketches or sketches of the surrounding area, but as independent finished works.

In 1921, Shukhaev arrived in Paris, where Yakovlev helped a friend engage in teaching: a few weeks after his arrival, Shukhaev began teaching at their own art school-workshop on Campagne Premiére in the 14th district of Paris. For less than fourteen years in France, Shukhaev created hundreds of paintings, drawings, theater sketches, book illustrations, and monumental and decorative works. He painted mainly genre paintings, still lifes, landscapes.

At the beginning of 1935, Shukhaev returned to the USSR and began to teach at the Academy of Arts – both in Leningrad and Moscow. And in 1947 he moved to Tbilisi and became a teacher, led a drawing class in the Tbilisi Academy of Arts (from October 1948 – professor of the department of drawing).

In the next 10 years, he was mainly engaged in Georgian landscapes, still lifes, genre scenes, and in the late 1950s he became interested in portraits using the encaustic technique – another appeal to the art of previous eras, the interest in which he carried through all life’s hardships. In the 1960s, Shukhaev mainly worked on the motives and sketches of his many travels – in the south of France, Corsica, Spain and Morocco – and even rewritten some of his French landscapes. He again returned to the past, but this time in his own. Among the artist’s latest works is a series of paintings based on the Abkhaz epic, outline illustrations for the story of Asya by I. S. Turgenev (1973).

Today his works are in many museums in Russia and the CIS countries.