Brodsky Isaak Izrailevich: biography and pictures

In the Soviet art of the twenties there was a bacchanalia of various styles and directions, born of artistic searches of the beginning of the century. The pragmatic Bolsheviks had no time to sort out the aesthetic merits of different pictorial currents, it was necessary to choose one path, best understood by the masses, far from art criticism. The embodiment of this path was the talented master of realism - Brodsky. Isaak Izrailevich became a "court" artist, in whom Soviet power needed no less than any monarchy of the past.

Unsuccessful architect

If his parents could see a little through the shroud of the future, they would not have assured little Isaac that the artist's profession is too unreliable a way to secure a comfortable life. They liked the future architect by the name of Brodsky more. Isaak Izrailevich, whose family lived beyond the Pale of Settlement in the Taurida Gubernia, went through a path unthinkable in another era. Imagine that their son will live in a big house in the center of the Russian capital, own the richest collection of works of art and become a personal painter of the rulers of a huge country, rather poor Jewish merchants from the small town of Sofiyivka near Berdyansk simply could not.

Born in 1883, the future head of the Academy of Arts at first wanted to become a musician. But then he liked to redraw the pictures from the church calendar. It turned out similar, and he wanted to learn how to draw from real artists. The closest similar educational institution was the Odessa Drawing School, which soon became the Art School at the Academy of Arts. His student and became in 1896 Brodsky. Isaak Izrailevich did not listen to the advice of his parents to study more reliable architecture and entered the picturesque department.

Disciple Repin

The ability to please people, on whom your destiny depends, supported by diligence and undoubted talent, always helped Brodsky in life. It also allowed him in 1903 to become a disciple of the great Repin, when Isaac was transferred to the first course of the Academy in St. Petersburg after the brilliant end of the Odessa School. The course of Repin was overcrowded, but Brodsky managed to get to the entrance examination for drawing living nature, which was conducted by the master. He got a place where the model was visible in a very difficult angle, but he managed to cope with this task. Among those whose work was highly appreciated by Ilya Yefimovich, Brodsky also appeared. Isaak Izrailevich for five years was one of the favorite pupils of the best painter of Russia.

In addition to his virtuosic technique and keen eye, the young artist adopted from Repin his negative attitude to various "harangues" in painting, to any deviations from the realistic reflection of nature. Unlike other disciples of Repin, who came under the great influence of the teacher and began to blindly copy his manner of master, Brodsky developed his own style, which was called "azhur" and which also became a model for imitation. Repin defended his pupil when Brodsky was on the verge of expulsion from the Academy for caricatures of government officials during the time of the general entrainment of students by politics.

Trip to Europe

Following the results of training at the Academy, the best graduates - holders of the gold medal - were given the right to continue their studies abroad. Brodsky also receives the highest final award and the possibility of a paid trip to Europe. Isaak Izrailevich fruitfully spends his time studying masterpieces of masters of the past and acquaintance with new trends in painting. He works a lot and exhibits, earning the reputation of the established master. Following the tour, after discussing his work, the Academy decides to extend his trip for another six months.

During the craze of searching for new forms and trends in art, Brodsky did not escape the influence of the new European painting. Isaak Izrailevich, whose biography represents the way of a convinced realist, used in his paintings the motifs of art nouveau and symbolism. But, following the precepts of his teacher and remembering Repin's words about "antics", he accepts avant-garde creativity with bayonets. After visiting the workshops of Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Brodsky forever becomes an adherent of traditional, realistic painting.

Master of Salon Painting

Among the historians of art there is a conviction that if in the fall of 1917 there was no radical change in the social and political system in Russia, Brodsky would quickly achieve the status and standard of living of such salon or contemporary glamorous artists as Konstantin Makovsky and Henry of Semiradsky. He had a lot for this: energy and diligence, masterly skill, the ability to please people from high society, the ability, speaking in the present, to "be in a trend".

It is not known how sincerely the artist Brodsky welcomed the collapse of the autocracy and the subsequent victory of Soviet power. Isaak Izrailevich probably would have been a successful painter somewhere in Paris or in New York. But he remains, unlike many intellectuals, in Russia and is experiencing with it global shocks, knowing, however, always to be in the right place, near the people who became the head of a huge country.

Yesterday - Kerensky, today - Lenin

In Russia, there were times when exquisite peaceful landscapes and refined female portraits became irrelevant, and Brodsky went to where the story was directed to capture those who followed ahead. After the February Revolution, the time came when the Russian advanced society freed from the shackles of the monarchy wore the premier of the Provisional Government of Kerensky, and the artist wrote his portrait. On it, the former lawyer appears as a real hero, able to revive the country to a new glory. True, the artist completed this portrait after the arrival of other heroes.

Brodsky one of the first creates picturesque depictions of Lenin and his associates, and the image of the main Bolshevik for a long time becomes for him the most important topic. Then he takes a great interest in global multi-figured compositions: "Lenin and manifestation" and especially - "Inauguration of the Second Congress of the Comintern". On this colossal canvas, several hundred real people are depicted, from which portrait sketches were made. Brodsky showed his outstanding organizational skills, consonant with the era and in demand for his future life.

Artist, teacher, collector

Three main circumstances determined the life that Brodsky lived from the beginning of the 1920s. Isaak Izrailevich, the painter No. 1 for official power, persistently created the complete iconography of Soviet leaders, with the endless replication of its main images - Lenin and Stalin. To carry out the main state order, he attracted a whole army of apprentices and often, like the head of a medieval painter's workshop, only introduced minor amendments to the paintings and put his signature.

The second most important thing was the revival of the academic system of art education. When he became director of the All-Russian Academy of Arts, it represented the ruins left after the barbarous activities of those who thoughtlessly denied the legacy of the past, destroying both its spirit and the material fund that had been accumulating for decades. Brodsky's merits in the revival of this temple of the arts are difficult to deny.

The third component of his life - collecting - was a real passion. Among the connoisseurs of Russian painting of that time there was no better expert than Brodsky. Isaak Izrailevich, a photo of the interiors of a huge house whose walls are hung with floor-to-ceiling paintings, collected a collection, the second in volume and significance after the collection of the Russian Museum. The circumstances under which she was replenished are covered in gloom, and the fact of her will to her Brodsky state is called forced due to Party and Chekist pressure.

Everyone has his own way

They say that when Brodsky invited Pavel Filonov, who was deprived of work, mercilessly poisoned by criticism and power, poor and hungry, he did not dare come - he was afraid to spoil the biography. He was a barrier to the reputation of the "red master", who lived with respect to the authorities on the principle "What do you want?", Which Brodsky possessed among artists.

Use one, black or white, paint to describe the life path of any person - means to make it flat and unambiguous. Isaak Brodsky did not deserve this because of his obvious talent, diligence and energy.