Isaac Levitan
Isaak Ilyich Levitan (Russian Исаак Ильич Левитан, scientific transliteration Isaac Levitan Il'ič, .. * 18 Augustjul / August 30 1860greg near Wirballen / Lithuania (then Russia ). † 22 Julijul / August 4 1900greg in. Moscow) was one of the greatest Russian painters of realism. Part of it is also known by its Yiddish name Yitzhak Levitan, in English spelling Yitzchak Levitan. Levitan's very influential work consists of more than a thousand paintings.
Life
Levitan was the son of impoverished Jewish parents to the world. His father was a teacher of foreign languages and taught in private houses, but he was occasionally forced also to other works. Despite oppressive material conditions but it was not lacking in the family of an educated and intellectual atmosphere that was conducive to Levitan's mental development.
End of the 60 years the family moved to Moscow, where Levitan in September 1873 at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture where his older brother Awel (Adolf) met for two years, enrolled. After he spent a year in the copying class, he moved to the naturalism class and soon the landscape painting class. Levitan's teachers were Alexei Sawrassow who had the greatest influence on him, Vasily Perov and Vasily Polenov. Levitan received an award for his quick progress a box of colors and two dozen brush.
1875 Levitan's mother died, and two years later his father. Already during the serious illness of his father ( typhoid fever ), it became clear that the family would be in even more severe poverty. Levitan received because of his great talent and his very advanced awarded a scholarship and could remain at the school. This time, in which he occasionally lived with friends and some nights had to spend in the classrooms of the school, was probably the worst in his life.
1877 work has been exhibited by Levitan and very well received by the press for the first time. When in May 1879 mass deportations of Jews from the Tsarist cities were conducted also Levitan Moscow had to leave. But he was soon allowed to return to Moscow thanks to the efforts of influential art experts.
1880 purchased the famous millionaire and art collector Pavel Tretyakov Levitan painting autumn day. Sokolniki (1879 ). Since 1884 Levitan participated in a traveling exhibition, the " Peredvizhniki " part. During his studies at the Moscow School of Painting, he made by the painter Mikhail Chekhov acquaintance with his brother, the writer Anton Chekhov, who became his closest friend. Levitan frequently visited Chekhov and obviously in love with his sister Maria Chekhova.
He collaborated with the Chekhov brothers on the illustrated Moskva River, in the early 1880s, he illustrated a copy of the Kremlin by M. Fabricius. 1885 and 1886 he worked together with Konstantin Korovin at the scenery for performances of the Private Opera SM Mamontew.
Levitan painted with very few exceptions, only non-urban landscapes. A lost, mentioned by Nesterov exception is Simonowklosters view of how the illustrations to the Kremlin already mentioned. The gifted with a unique deep sense of quiet grandeur and the lyrical charm of the Russian nature Levitan caught the mood of the landscape. This concept, which should express the partly spiritual effects of nature on the human psyche and the end of the 19th century, was very popular in Russia, was decisive for Levitan's work.
The summer of 1890 he spent in Jurjewez and wrote, in addition to the production of numerous images, an essay, the view of the Kriwooserskiklosters. This it became the basis for one of his most influential pictures, The Silent Monastery. This painting, which expresses Levitan deep reflections about life as an artist, made a deep impression on Anton Chekhov.
1897, when he was already world-famous ( his work was, inter alia, in the Munich Secession issued ), was diagnosed with a serious heart condition. In the same year he was inducted into the Academy of Arts and began teaching in 1898, he was already the head of landscape painting studios in his university.
1900, year of his death, he met the last time with Chekhov in the Crimea. He was initially buried in the Jewish cemetery Dorogomilow, but in 1941 reburied at the Novodevichy Cemetery, near the Chekhovian necropolis.
Exhibition
- 2010/2011: On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the painter an exhibition of the most famous paintings from the museums of Russia was held in the Tretyakov Gallery at Wal Krimski in Moscow.