Ilya Mashkov

A Russian and Soviet painter, still-life master, landscape painter and portraitist, one of the founding members of the exhibition and art association “Jack of Diamonds”, a member of the Society of Moscow Artists.

Ilya was born into the family of “state peasants” engaged in petty trade. He was the oldest of nine children and had to start working at the age of 11.

He worked in the styles of post-impressionism, fauvism, neo-primitivism, in the late period – in the style of postmodernism (“socialist realism”).

He was a member of the movement “The World of Art” (since 1916), the creative group “Moscow painters” (since 1925), and became an active member of the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia in 1924-1928. The fame of I. I. Mashkov spread beyond the European continent, since from 1924 works were exhibited in America, Venice, London. Vienna and Paris. He was awarded the title of Honored Art Worker of Russia in 1928, was awarded a gold medal at the International Exhibition in Paris in the late 1930s, received a bronze medal “For Outstanding Contribution to the World Art” in New York.

Key ideas:

– Being one of the organizers of the scandalous exhibition “The Jack of Diamonds”, Ilya Ivanovich Mashkov described the main task of his exposition: “I wanted the painting to be powerful, full of rich color.” Among other things, he presented “Self portrait and portrait of Peter Konchalovsky” – a picture that he called programmatic. The demonstrative corporeality and the celebration of the triumph of the flesh as the trends of the newest art are displayed in their entirety in this canvas. In addition, a double portrait of athletically built and almost nude handsome artists with weights and musical instruments is a real challenge to the academic “mouged and ironed” approach to the image object, and Symbolism that was popular at that time, striving for philosophical skies.

– The researchers refer to the peculiarities of Mashkov’s creative work not only the passionate brightness of pure colors, unrestrained even for “wild ones,” but also the special density of a thick brushstroke. It was not without reason that Mashkov was called “the king of still lifes”, especially during the development of the “poster genre”, when the composition was maximally primitivized.

– Still lifes are remembered due to their expressiveness and what can be called “edibility”, if they depict fruits, bread or other food. I. Mashkov easily sought such an effect, as by nature was kinesthetic, that is, he liked to touch everything, to work with his hands. His artistic talent in the compartment with such a feature allowed a piercing sensuality to appear; the Fauvist idea of ​​displaying the carnal origin in his canvases entirely suited him. And this applies not only to “tasty” still lifes, but also to colorful bathers, whose bodies exude heat, and to landscapes, the air of which, it seems, can be inhaled.

– In the future, the still lifes of the master lose their super-flatness, becoming more voluminous. There is also a softening of the hyperbolized contrast between the texture of fruits and the objects around them.

– There was Mashkov’s special story of depicting female nude. He depicted them almost whole his life. Usually, the figures are devoid of grace, but they are voluminous. The artist emphasizes the corporeality, which strikes with color solutions. Two bathers, for example, are depicted in contrasting greenish (standing) and bright cherry-violet (sitting with her back to the spectator) colors. The artist who created his “I see it” from nature, really often painted the models.

– It should be added that the late works, formerly called socialist Realism, have recently been increasingly interpreted as the style of “postmodernism.”