Serge Sudeikin

A Russian Symbolist painter and graphic artist, theater artist and decorator.

Sergey was born into the family of a lieutenant colonel who served in the Gendarmerie Separate Corps. In 1897–1909, he studied (with a break in 1902 due to temporary exclusion because of the presentation of his works of frivolous content at the student exhibition) at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture; was a student of A. Arkhipov, A. Stepanov, A. Vasnetsov, N. Kasatkina, L. Pasternak.

He was one of the organizers of the Blue Rose group, as well as a founding member of the revived “World of Art”, a member and designer of the literary cabaret “Stray Dog”, a participant in the expositions “Wreath” and “Wreath-Stefanos”, movements that played a significant role in the history Russian art. S. Sudeikin published his graphic works in the magazines “Libra”, “Apollo”, “Golden Fleece”, “Satyricon” and “New Satyricon”.

Key ideas:

– Unlike his comrades, the members of “Blue-Rose”, S. Sudeikin adhered to some “ironic symbolism”. The artist turned his canvases into pictorial paintings on various themes of theatrical art, folklore, or “beautiful old times”, as can be seen in “Festivals”, “Ballet”, and in the series “Foam-like heroes”. In the plots of fairs, balagans, scenes from the nobility-estate life of the times of Pushkin or from the life of provincial cities, Sudeikin used a sharp grotesque, which made his easel painting improvisational and similar to sketches for theatrical scenery.

– When a part of a symbolist group that was heterogeneous in composition was immersed in science fiction and fairy tales, the creative aspirations of the other part, to which Sergei Sudeikin belonged, were animated by the search for the newest pictorial and plastic systems corresponding to the pulse of modernity.

– Actively cooperating with directors who advocated “pure theatricality” and stylization, Sudeikin refuses from vague softness, “soft” color gamut, which is inherent in the first period of his creativity. The master applies a “full-blooded” painting, exciting with the elements of emotional color.

– Sudeikin, designing operettas, farces, interludes, freely improvises, almost instantly turns an ordinary room into a fancy-motley hall, composes costumes and performs sets.

– In the portrait genre, Sergey Yuryevich was rather a modernist than a symbolist. He used a simple background, a minimum of detail and local color filling of large planes.