Spotlight on Russian Artist Pavel Nikolayevich Filonov ~ Should He Be Praised or Pitied?
Below is a short bio-sketch of a now well-known Russian painter Pavel Nikolayevich Filonov (1883–1941) ~ Praise him or pity him?
Pavel Nikolayevich Filonov is a notable Russian avant-garde painter and art theorist.
Filonov started his art lessons in St. Petersburg at about the age of fourteen and began formal studies in 1908 at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. He was expelled 2 years later. So he went to work. Got a job as a magazine contributor for Soyuz Molodyozhi, an art group. He continued painting. In 1912, he published an essay “The Canon and the Law” and expressed his artistic views and ideas on analytical realism, also known as *Universal Flowering*, which refuted the surface geometry of cubism.
He made very little money from his painting. He wanted to donate his works to the Russian Museum as a gift, so they could start a Museum of Analytical Realism. He naively believed that the Russian Revolution would help to spread his ideas. He taught at free art workshops and established a group called Masters of Analytical Art. Sadly the Soviet Regime disapproved and forbid the exhibition of his works. (“Works”? I call them his “treasures”.)
