Nikolay Gushin

Russian artist, restorer and teacher Nikolai Gushin received recognition as an author of landscapes, still lifes and plot compositions, draftsman.

He was born into a poor family of a village teacher in the village of Taloklyuchinsky Vyatka province. He spent his childhood and youth in provincial Perm’, where the family had moved. In 1908-1910, simultaneously with studying at the Bekhterevsky Psychoneurological Institute (general education department, St. Petersburg), Gushin was a student of Ya. S. Goldblatt, visited his preparatory classes of painting and drawing.

Not betraying his style of the symbolism of images, he painted ordered portraits, which were liked by the public and willingly bought by art collectors. The artist participated in the Paris Salons, exhibited his paintings at the Royal Academy of London, in the cities of Germany and the United States. An active organizer of the art school in Saratov and the first creative association of the Prikamye “Union of Free Artists”. Gushin’s works are exhibited at the city museums of Paris and Grenoble, Monte Carlo and Nice, but the largest collection belongs to the Saratov Art Museum.

Key ideas:

– Among the stylistic features of the plastic language of Nikolay Gushin, there is a rare for the twentieth century connection to a classically bright, fairly clear picture with a loose feeling in the choice of color and light-tone solutions. At the same time, the texture of painting, especially in the works of the last Russian period, is extremely rich. The expressively pasty smear of Gushin often coexists with almost perfectly smooth.

– His landscapes are more homogeneous in texture than compositions and portraits. The colors are intense, even forced, and every centimeter of the image contains a large number of shades.

– The European press has repeatedly emphasized the identity of the artist, who was able to form his own style, which combines the depth of the meaning of Symbolism, the sophistication of Art Nouveau with the brightness of Fauvism and the powerful energy of Expressionism. The painting of Nikolai Mikhailovich has, therefore, that fullness of tone, which is characteristic of exceptionally famous artists.

– The romantic symbolism of Gushin is distinguished by its seriousness; it is devoid of theatricality, naivety, and irony and is always combined with a high technique of painting. It is the combination of meanings with the virtuosity of the brush – the style of the work of Gushin.

– As the basis of color solutions, the master, as a rule, chose dark and light blue shades of two elements – air and water. Such a mystical interpretation of blue is typical for Symbolists in general. And for N. Gushin with his musical and literary analogies, this is a manifestation of the arch-integral concept in its philosophical and aesthetic components.