Belarusian Fine Arts

XII c.

Lasar Boksha

XVI-XVIII cc.

Dr. Francysk Skaryna

XIX-XX cc.

• Vitebsk the school of Yury (Iehuda) Pen; (see also some information here on the Vitebsk School of Art)
• Vilna School of Beu Arts
• Kruger's school of drawing in Miensk.

Marc Chagall (native of Vitebsk) was apointed Vitebsk region Commissar of Arts in 1918 and founded later becoming famous Academy of Fine Arts in Vitebsk, Belarus in 1919-1921. Marc Chagall became its director. He was later replaced by another ingenious  artist - Kazimir Malevich. 

Napoleon Orda

(1807-1883)

Repin had met Pen at the Academy of Arts and had spoken favorably of his younger colleague's works. Pen visited Zdravnevo on many occasions and received visits from Repin in turn. The landscape artist Yuri Klever (1850-1924), who was renown at that time and also a graduate of the St. Petersburg Academy, lived in neighboring Vitebsk. Zdravnevo, where many artists came, including those from Vitebsk to visit Repin, was make new friends among his contemporaries. Thus, living in Kreizburg, he was in no way secluded from news of artistic life nor deprived of "professional" contacts. On the contrary, Pen could establish business contacts in Vitebsk in those years and find patrons among the local Jewish bourgeoisie.

and later settled for live in Vitebsk, Belarus. It is here he had started his famous school of drawing. .Pen's private school existed until Marc Chagall opened the пublic Higher School of Art in 1918. He invited his first teacher to head Нe of the studios in it. After the Higher School became an institute, Pen, in addition to teaching, also served as vice-rector. Despite the lactless attacks made on him by Malevich, Pen was invariably trealed with love and respect by students, many of whom often came to his classes, though working in other studios.

This year Belarus has marked 150th anniversary of the artist in Vitebsk.

(1919-1926)

Though relatively short-lived, UNOVIS--the acronym for the Russian translation of "Affirmers of the New Art"--was an organization of art students and professors dedicated to the exploration of new theories and concepts in art, aiming to shape the new Soviet society through art. Founded in Vitebsk, Belorussia, in January of 1920, under the name POSNOVIS, the group produced a number of projects and publications whose effects on the avant-garde in Russia and abroad were immediate and far-reaching. With a membership which included El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Nikolai Suetin, Ilia Chashnik, Vera Ermolaeva, Anna Kagan, Lev Yudin and others, the group put itself at the service of the revolution st and reflective of the new Soviet society.

UNOVIS members were united by a set of progressive social ideals and theories and the desire to reinvent the role of art and the artist. The artist was to be a constructor of society. In order to bring "art into life", they believed artistic activity should lead to practical applications, such as new modes of production, which would benefit the whole society. In order to be this productive, UNOVIS doctrine delcared that artists should be bound together by the grandiose nature of their tasks and group themselves as "collectives" where they would reinforce the sense of shared social responsibility.

Founded originally by a group of students at the Vitebsk Free Art Schools as MOLPOSNOVIS, ("Young Followers of the New Art"), the group quickly evolved into POSNOVIS, ("Followers of the New Art") when the students were joined by their professors. Dedicated to introducing "new forms into all types of creative endeavors"¹, the POSNOVIS members engaged themselves in a wide range of experiments, working in all media. In February of 1920, the group presented the first "suprematist ballet", choreographed by Nina Kogan, and the first production of Aleksander Kruchenykh's futurist opera, Pobeda nad solntsem, ("Victory Over the Sun"). With costumes designed by Vera Ermolaeva under the direction of Kazimir Malevich, "Victory over the Sun" was one of the first avant-garde attempts to present abstract art simultaneously through multi-media. More

Links:

• UNOVIS page from russianavangard.com
• Lazar Lissitsky and UNOVIS by Liliya Popova
• PT Unovis™ Fonts Designed for ParaType in 2001 by Tagir Safayev.

According to Liliya Pavlova, an artist from Vitebsk, Belarus:

Malevich was born February 26, 1878, near Kiev. He studied at the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in 1903. During the early years of his career, he experimented with various Modernist styles and participated in avant-garde exhibitions, such as those of the Moscow Artists’ Association, which included Vasily Kandinsky and Mikhail Larionov, and the Jack of Diamonds exhibition of 1910 in Moscow. Malevich showed his Primitivist paintings of peasants at the exhibition Donkey’s Tail in 1912. After this exhibition, he broke with Larionov’s group. In 1913, with composer Mikhail Matiushin and writer Alexei Kruchenykh, Malevich drafted a manifesto for the First Futurist Congress. That same year, he designed the sets and costumes for the opera Victory over the Sun by Matiushin and Kruchenykh. Malevich showed at the Salon des Independants in Paris in 1914. At the 0.10: The Last Futurist Exhibition in Petrograd in 1915, Malevich introduced his non-objective, geometric Suprematist paintings. In 1919, he began to explore the three-dimensional applications of Suprematism in architectural models. Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, Malevich and other advanced artists were encouraged by the Soviet government and attained prominent administrative and teaching positions. Malevich began teaching at the Vitebsk Popular Art School in 1919; he soon became its director. In 1919–20, he was given a solo show at the Sixteenth State Exhibition in Moscow, which focused on Suprematism and other non-objective styles. Malevich and his students at Vitebsk formed the Suprematist group Unovis. From 1922 to 1927, he taught at the Institute of Artistic Culture in Petrograd, and between 1924 and 1926 he worked primarily on architectural models with his students. In 1927, Malevich traveled with an exhibition of his paintings to Warsaw and also went to Berlin, where his work was shown at the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung. In Germany, he met Jean Arp, Naum Gabo, Le Corbusier, and Kurt Schwitters and visited the Bauhaus , where he met Walter Gropius. The Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow gave Malevich a solo exhibition in 1929. Because of his connections with German artists, he was arrested in 1930 and many of his manuscripts were destroyed. In his final period, he painted in a representational style. Malevich died May 15, 1935, in Leningrad.

Links:

• Kazimir Malevich - reference page: exhibitions, dealers, etc
• Kazimir Malevich page from WebMuseum.
• K.S. Malevich - a series of three articles by Digital Arts and Sciences.
• "Kazimir Malevich and the Art of Geometry" by John Miller - book review.
• "Victory Over the Sun" - Malevich's design and decorations for theatre play by Velimir Hlebnikov.
• DreamWorks - the founders of Suprematism. See there Black Suprematist Square, 1914 and Eight Red Rectangles, 1915
• The Pioneers - site on the origins of Abstractionism in art.
• Suprematism, 1921-1927? - from the web art collection of Frank Weiner at University of Texas.
• DreamWorks (the Original) -- some Mentors
• Suprematism, 1918 rug design from EGE Art Line.
• Female Reaper, 1912and Lady and a grand piano, 1913 from IGallery

Photo by Patrick Gérin

After his studies under J.Pen 's guidance Marc Chagall began to work as a retoucher But painting remained the main thing in the life of this young man. He made sketches together with J.Pen and in 1907 Marc Chagall went to St.Petersburg to continue his studies. He tried to enter Baron Stiglits's School of Arts and Trades but failed. Then he entered the school of the Arts Encouragement Society where Nikolai Rerich was his teacher. Marc Chagall spent two years in this school. Later he called those years lost without any benefit. In 1910 he began to attend the Art School of Ekaterine Zvantseva. Leon Bakst and Mstislav Dobuzinsky were his teachers there. But the famous Russian lawyer and public figure Maxim Vinaker was the first to notice and singled out beginner-artist Marc Chagall, and become its patron. In autumn 1910 he granted Marc Chagall a monthly scholarship of 125 francs for his studies in France. Marc Chagall moved in the famous Hive on Montparnasse in Paris. Already in May, 1914 the personal exhibition of Marc Shagall was organized in the Berlin gallery . A month later he returned to Russia. On the 25th of July, 1915 Marc Chagall married Bella (Berta) Rosenfeld, the daughter of a jeweller. Marc Chagall loved his Bella ardently for 29 years of their life. (More) She was not only a beloved women, the mother of his daughter, the mistress of his home for him but inspiration as well.

Returning to Russia in summer 1914 to marry Bella Marc Chagall couldn't get back to France because of the beginning of the First World War. He was mobilized and served in Petrograd (former St. Petersburg) in the Central Industry-Military Committee where the brother of his wife was head of the department. The October Communist Revolution of 1917 caught Marc Chagall in Petrograd. A post in the Culture Ministry was offered to him but he preferred to return to Vitebsk. Marc Chagall arrived at Vitebsk as an Art commissar of the Vitebsk region. The main goal of Marc Chagall was the foundation of Art School in Vitebsk. It was opened on the 28th of January, 1918 due to the great enthusiasm and efforts of Marc Chagall. Mstislav Dobuzinsky, Marc Chagall 's teacher in St. Petersburg, was the head of this Art School. Marc Chagall directed one of the studios. But soon Mstislav Dobuzinsky returned to Petrograd and Marc Chagall became the head of the school. All trends of painting were represented in his school, Kasimir Malevitch who became the most popular artist in Vitebsk was one of the lecturers. On the 29th of June, 1920 Marc Chagall and his family left Vitebsk for Moscow. He had no suspicion that he would never see his native town anymore.

At the end of May, 1921 the artist went to Kaunas for his exhibition organization. In summer 1922 Marc Chagall went from Kaunas to Berlin. There he got acquainted with a picture gallery owner and publisher P. Kassirer who intended to publish Marc Chagall's memoirs with the author's illustrations. But in 1923 Kassirer was able to publish only illustrations as there were problems connected with the translation of the memoirs into German. The complete publication of Marc Chagall's memoirs was realized in 1931 by the Paris public-house . The translation of the text into French was done by Bella Chagall.

For many years Marc Cagall stayed in France. In 1941 he came to USA happily kept out of Nazi way. When Marc Chagall learned that Vitebsk was completely ruined and lost nearly all its population during the Second World War he published in one of US newspapers. Vitebsk streets and squares, houses and lovers are present in many pictures of Marc Chagall.

During his long life (he died at the age of 98) Marc Chagall experienced a lot of: failure and success, poverty and richness, indifference and the world fame. But he was deprived of only one thing - acknowledgment in his motherland. It caused him much suffering. But times flies and in January, 1991 the first Marc Chagall Festival took place in Vitebsk. In June, 1992 the monument to Marc Chagall was erected in his native Pokrovskaja street and a memorial inscription was done on the wall of his house. Marc Chagall plain-air and musical festivals are held in Vitebsk annually as well."

Marc Chagall died in St-PAUL-DE-VENCE (FRANCE) 1985

• Chagall site from the Arta Gallery in Jerusalem. Many pictures.
• Chagall's biography + two pictures from French site.
• Two pictures from Czech site.

Chaim Soutine

A renown Belarusian-French painter Chaim Soutine was born in Smilavichy in 1893. He was the tenth of eleven children of a poor Jewish clothes mender Zalma (Salomon) and of Sarah Sutin. In 1907 Soutine attended the courses of drawing in Minsk. A Jewish artist named Kruger, Director of the School taught him the elementary aspects of work as an artist. There he met an art
student Michel Kikoine from Rechytsa who became his friend. In 1910 Soutine entered after his second attempt Académie des Beaux Arts in Vilna where he attended the courses of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. In 1912 Soutine followed his friends Pinchus Kremègne (from Zhaludok) and Michel Kikoine to Paris. Later he and a number of Jewish artists from Belarus created what is now known as Ecole de Paris, or School of Paris. Soutine died in Paris in 1943.

Links:

• Focus on Soutine at the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer at PBS has very interesting account of Soutine's artistic life. At first he was received in Paris as "the exotic primitive". Ken Silver, co-curator of New York Jewish Museum :"He was a fairly agonized and miserable character who tended to find his own unhappiness wherever he went. ...There were a number of critics, both Jewish and Gentile, who said, "This is a powerfully agonized Jew, a Jew of the Old Testament whose sense of suffering is as old as the millennia."

  Paul Solman, "News Hour with Jim Lehrer" art correspondent :"Materially, however, Soutine wasn't suffering much at all. Another Jewish émigré artist, the Italian Amedeo Modigliani, introduced Soutine to his art dealer and painted Soutine's image on the dealer's door. The dealer-the guy with the beard next to Soutine-took the artist under his wing and in 1922, fabled Philadelphia art collector Albert Barnes bought 52 Chaim Soutines. "The main reason I bought so many of the paintings," Barnes wrote, "was that they were a surprise, if not a shock, and I wanted to find out how he got that way." Barnes showed his haul in Philadelphia and Paris, launching Soutine into the big time, at which point French taste-maker Madeleine Castaing took the artist under her wealthy wing. She and her husband, Marcellin, became Soutine's great patrons and friends in the late 1920's. ...According to co-curator Norman Kleeblatt, this acceptance by the French bourgeoisie brings us to Phase 2 of Soutine's critical reception. The erstwhile primitive now became the last great hope for traditional French art. Same painter, totally different reaction."

  Norman Kleeblatt: "A 180-degree turn, a complete contradiction of Soutine the barbarian, the primitive, the outsider Jew, the wild man, the beast. Here he becomes the most cultured Frenchman, the heir to the great tradition of European painting in general, French painting, in particular. Here he's seen as the artist who reinterprets Rembrandt, who reworks Chardin, who rethinks Courbet....Soutine absolutely adored Rembrandt. He would take the train to Amsterdam and actually spend the night on a park bench just so he could look at the Rembrandts in the Rijksmuseum. But, whereas Rembrandt captures sort of the silveriness of his attraction to the woman, for Soutine she's stodgy, she's hard, she's connected to the earth. And in that sense, one could almost see it coming out of impressionism and post-impressionism, and their love of connecting the peasants with the land."

  Ken Silver: "They (critics, A.A) were thrilled that he was still someone who cared about paint, oil on canvas. He was held up by any number of critics as a man who could do battle with the Parisian avant garde."

  Paul Solman: "So, according to this show, the critics, the naïve outsider had become the naïve classicist, though to us the works may look awfully similar. But there was still one more critical reaction to go, because in the 1940 and 50's, Soutine was transformed again, into the forerunner of "Abstract Expressionism," on the basis of work he'd done decades before. This side of beef, for instance, no longer reminded critics of Rembrandt, says Norm Kleeblatt, but of Jackson Pollack."

  Ken Silver: "The term "Abstract Expressionism," if we put the focus both on abstract and expressive, in a way Soutine fills the bill perfectly. He's an artist who at moments, as in the Ceret landscape, is almost an abstract artist and expressive in the extreme. He seemed to be the right man for the moment, a powerful precedent for a certain kind of visceral, painterly, and at the same time abstract and tragic style of painting, kind of painting."

• Website dedicated to Chaim Soutine by Herve Monteils
• Page about Soutine from Peinture Moderne
• Great Masters at Artcult.com
• Swedish Soutine page at Ronnaskolans Galleri
• Soutine Page from Maria Casanas
• Biography of Soutine by Encyclopédie at Yahoo France
• "Le beau est inséparable du terrible.." Soutine page by Michel Ellenberger

Pinchus Kremegne

"...Pinchus Kremegne was a friend of both Soutine and Kikoine. After studying sculpture at the Vilnia School of Drawing, he left for Paris in 1912. In Paris, Kremegne joined the group of painters of Montparnasse and soon became one of the respected residents of La Ruche. In 1915, He gave up sculpture in order to dedicate himself to painting.

Pinchus Kremegne is today one of the great names of contemporary painting. As a human being, however, he has
lost none of the modesty and gentles he brought with him from Belarus in 1912, traits which we can certainly consider part of his Belarus heritage."

Pinchus Kremegne and a number of Jewish artists from Belarus created what is now known as Ecole de Paris, or School of Paris.

Links:

• Modarco.com: "A music fan, Kremegne claimed that he organized his canvasses like a maestro his orchestra.  To him each color is an instrument which plays its own score.   Kremegne nudes are known for their powerful violence, whereas landscapes are constructed like a "bouquet" of flowers."s 
• Purchase lithographies of Kremegnemegne

Michel Kikoine

Belarusian-French painter Michel Kikoine was born in Rechytsa near Homel in 1892. Later, when Kikoine was 15 years old, he met Chaime Soutine at Kruger's School of Drawing in Mensk. One year later, they were both studying art in Vilna, and in 1911 Kikoine left for Paris. There, he was admitted to l'Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux -Arts and moved into La Ruche, where he met the other members of the School of Paris. In 1914, he married Rosa Bunimovich, a girl from Vilna. They had two children, one of whom, Jankel Jacques, became a painter in his own right and still lives and works in Paris.

Links:

• Exposition of Michel Kikoine at Musee d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaisme
• Some info on Michel Kikoine on Chaim Soutine website

Ossip Zadkine
(1890 - 1967)

Famous Belarusian-French sculptor Ossip Zadkine was a sculptor of Russian descent who spent most of his life in France during which time he did most of his best work. Since his sculptures did not begin to sell well until the late 1920’s, Zadkine originally supported himself with his works on paper, and it was the acquisition of a whole batch of such works by Zborowski, who at the time acted as Modigliani’s dealer, that enab-ledZadkine to leave Paris and relocate to Bruniquel, in the Tarne-et- Garonne. The Montparnasse era also saw Zadkine’s first contacts with Belgian and Dutch artists, and with the Brussels Centaure Gallery, which first put him in touch with Belgian collectors and led to an increasingly significant presence of his work in Belgian collections. In a 1933 retrospective organised by the Brussels Musée des Beaux-Arts, a full third of the works on paper exhibited came from Belgium (cf: Voilier et Port). While North American interest in his work as a sculptor was pro-nounced from a very early date, the accompanying transport pro-blems favoured the sale of his works on paper, as evidenced by the major Chicago Art Club exhibitions in 1930 and particularly in 1936, which consisted entirely of such works. Between 1924 and 1925, during his visits to Italy, Zadkine realised a considerable number of gouaches, and the profundity (?) of Lake Como and the local palette influence many of his works from this period.

Links:

• Books about Ossip Zadkine at Le Boutique
• Museum of Zadkine in Paris, France
• Zadkine paintings at International Auctioneers

Also these Jewish artists emigrated to Paris from Belarus:

Jacob BALGLEY- BREST-LITOWSK (BIELORUSSIE) 1891 - PARIS (FRANCE)1934
Jacques CHAPIRO - DVINSK (BIELORUSSIE) 1887 - PARIS 1972
Ossip LUBITCH - GRODNO (BIELORUSSIE) 1896 - PARIS (FRANCE) 1990
Eugène ZAK - MOGILNO (BIELORUSSIE) 1884 - PARIS (FRANCE) 1926
Sam ZARFIN (Faïbich-Schraga ZARFIN, dit) SMILOVITCHI (BIÉLORUSSIE) 1899 - ROSNY-SOUS-BOIS (FRANCE) 1975
Moses BAGEL (Moshe BAHELFER, dit) - VILNIUS (LITUANIE) 1908 - PARIS (FRANCE) 1995
BENN (Bension RABINOWICZ, dit) - BIALYSTOK (POLOGNE) 1905 - PARIS (FRANCE)1989
Marc CHAGALL (Moyshe SHAGAL, dit) - VITEBSK (BIÉLORUSSIE) 1887 - St-PAUL-DE-VENCE (FRANCE) 1985
Molli CHWAT BIALYSTOK (POLOGNE) 1888 - FRANCE 1979
Michel KIKOÏNE - GOMEL (BIÉLORUSSIE) 1892 - PARIS (FRANCE) 1968
Meyer-Miron KODKINE - VILNIUS (LITUANIE) 1887 - CHAMARANDE (FRANCE) 1940
David-Michel KREWER (Aron KREWER dit ) -VILNA (LITUANIE) 1904 - déporté en 1942
Jacob MILKIN- MAGILEV (BIELORUSSIE) 1877- déporté en 1944
Lasar SEGALL - VILNIUS (LITUANIE) 1891 - SAO PAULO (BRÉSIL) 1957
Chaïm SOUTINE - SMILOVITCHI (BIÉLORUSSIE) 1894 - PARIS (FRANCE) 1943
Zelman UTKES - BIALYSTOK(POLOGNE) 1892 - d?port? ? AUSCHWITZ en 1944
Ossip WEINBERG - VITEBSK(BIELORUSSIE)1899 - d?port? ? AUSCHWITZ en 1942

I understand that listing artists from Vilna (currently Vilnius in Lithuania) and Belastok (currently Bialy Stock in Poland) as Belarusian is controversial. But at the time of emigration both of the cities were culturally predominantly Belarusian, the areas are mostly populated by Belarusians and at some point both cities were officially part of Belarus - Vilna in 1939-1940 and Belastok in 1944-1954.

According to Liliya Pavlova, an artist from Vitebsk, Belarus:

"Lissitzky grew up in Vitebsk, the hometown of Chagall, and studied architecture in the Polytechnic school in Darmstadt between 1909 and 1914.

He then went to Moscow where he began to work as an architect. He also began to illustrate Jewish books for children in 1917, at first in a style influenced by Chagall and produced  popular prints as well.

In 1919 he was appointed professor of architecture and applied art at the art school in Vitebsk, where Malevich was a colleague, and collaborated with him in the Unovis group. More

He began to make abstract pictures, which he called Prouns, as the interchange station between painting and architecture. Lissitzky was sent to Berlin in 1921 to establish contacts between artists in the USSR and Germany. There he met Schwitters, Moholy-Nagy, van Doesburg and many others, and has his first one-man exhibition at the Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover, in 1923

He also designed books and periodicals with radical innovations in typography and photomontage. Lissitzky went to Switzerland in 1924 and returned to Moscow a year later. He then devoted himself to designing, periodicals and exhibition displays, including an exhibition room for the Landesmuseum, Hanover, and the Soviet pavilions for several international exhibitions. "

Links:

• "Two Squares" - Suprematic tale by El Lissitsky
• El Lissitsky page from A Grande Utopia - A Vanguarda Russa website
• El Lissitzky - Constructivist of the Russian Avant-Gard from Roland Collection of films and videos: "For many, Lissitzky will be a serendipitous discovery"

Valery Martynchik

Nikolay Pavlovski

Lappo

Genady Hackievich

Nikolay Seleshchuk 

See also these links:

• Artfacts.net on Tarasewicz
• Interview with Tarasewicz on Nasha Niva 
• Tarasewicz exhibition at Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej, Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw, Poland

Ruslan Vashkevich
Adam Globus
Andrej Zadoryn
Natal'lia Zaloznaja
Artur Klinau
Zoia Lucevich
Alies' Rodzin
Mikalaj Seliashchuk(†)
Ihar Cishyn

also,

Siarhej Kryshtalovich
Siarhej Malisheuski
Alies' Pushkin
Siarhej Rymasheuski
Dz'mitry Surynovich

Photography

Traditional Folk Arts and Crafts

Applied Art and Design

Children's Galleries

Art Critics

Other Sites About Belarusian Art