Pavel Kuznetsov

Pavel Kuznetsov
Pavel kuznetsov, Self-portrait, 1906
Born	17 November 1878 Saratov, Russia
Died	21 February 1968 Moscow, Russia
Education	Bogolyubov Art School, Saratov (1891-6); Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1897–1904); Paris (1905)
Known for	Painter, graphic artist
Movement	Orientalist

Pavel Varfolomevich Kuznetsov (1878–1968) was a painter and graphic artist.

Life and career

He studied at Saratov at Bogolyubov Art School (1891–1896), then Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1897–1904) and for a year in Paris (1905). His early paintings were exhibited by the Mir Iskusstva group, and he was closely associated with the Russian Symbolists. He helped to organize the Crimson Rose exhibition (1904) and was a founder and leader of the Blue Rose in 1907. He taught at the Stroganov Institute (1917–18; 1945-8) and at the Moscow Institute of Fine Arts (1918–37). He headed the painting section of Narkompros until 1921, but fell out of official favour with the advent of Socialist Realism.

Kuznetsov's early paintings are typical of the Blue Rose group's poetic explorations of an interior, imaginative world through archetypal symbols. After 1910 he drew increasingly on folk culture, continuing to draw on the rich colours and harmonious rhythms of the Symbolists but simplifying his compositions to depict the everyday life of village communities of Kirghizstan in Central Asia.

Works

• 
  Blue Fountain, 1905
• 
  Evening on the Steppe, 1912
• 
  Still life with a Japanese Engraving, 1912
• 
  Eastern Motive, 1913-1914
• 
  Harvesting of Fruits, 1913-1914

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