5 Russian classical artists whose lives improved after the revolution

1. Ilya Mashkov

The revolution served as a springboard to a new life for the artist. Just yesterday, he had been creating impressionist works and, now, he threw himself headlong into creating propaganda materials, posters and leaflets.

His art was for everyone, but, at the same time, it never lost its connection with classical painting.

Fauvist works gave way to realistic portraits, landscapes and still lifes. Instead of nude bathers, he began painting shock workers, pioneers and factory buildings.

2. Pyotr Konchalovsky

A pillar of the Russian avant-garde, the ‘Soviet Cézanne’ as the artist was called.

After the revolution, he chose not to emigrate. In the 1920s, he taught at the avant-garde ‘VKHUTEMAS’ and ’VKHUTEIN’ schools, held his own exhibition in Paris and worked extensively in Abramtsevo and at his dacha in Kaluga Region. During this time, Konchalovsky created a gallery of portraits of Soviet cultural figures.

He continued working even during the Great Patriotic War.

3. Isaak Brodsky

Being a student of Ilya Repin, Brodsky became renowned for his delicate, openwork painting style. Before the revolution, he actively exhibited his work at the Academy of Arts and at the ‘Peredvizhniki’ exhibitions.

He viewed the events of 1917 with optimism, believing that "passing by those great events indifferently" would have been shameful.

He switched from vibrant paintings to canvases in the style of socialist realism, creating large-scale multi-figure compositions of Bolshevik congresses and repeatedly depicting Lenin, Stalin and other leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution. In 1934, he became director of the Leningrad Academy of Arts.

4. Igor Grabar

Incredibly, the artist managed to do it all – painting and teaching, working as an art critic and writing biographies of artists. And yet, he was convinced that life near and dear to him should be depicted on canvas.

Fascinated by Impressionism, Grabar steadfastly pursued this principle, creating expressive landscapes and still lifes. In 1913, he became a trustee of the Tretyakov Gallery and oversaw a major reorganization of its exhibitions. And, in 1918, on his initiative, the ‘Central Restoration Workshops’ was created, the first organization dedicated to the preservation of cultural monuments.

Later, Igor Grabar headed the Abramtsevo Museum-Estate, where he was involved in the restoration of Moscow's oldest monastery, the Andronikov Monastery, as well as the establishment of the Andrei Rublev Museum of Old Russian Art within it.

5. Konstantin Yuon

Yuon was a landscape painter, chronicler of the Russian provinces, designer of sets for Sergei Diaghilev's ‘Russian Seasons’, and the owner of his own art school, where Vera Mukhina and Robert Falk studied, among others.

Yuon captured the events of 1917, which he witnessed firsthand in Moscow, on canvas, creating a unique chronicle of the revolution. He continued to teach, continued to paint landscapes and worked as a theater designer.

In 1941, he captured the parade of Soviet troops on the Red Square and, two years later, he received the ‘Stalin Prize’.