Alexander Nikolaevich Volkov

Alexander Nikolaevich Volkov (Russian: Александр Николаевич Волков; August 31, 1886, in Fergana – December 17, 1957, in Tashkent) was an avant-garde Russian painter. Although his style was much influenced by Cubo-Futurism, it was officially declared formalist and counter-revolutionary, condemning him to obscurity. He was also a poet.

Early life Alexander Volkov was born in Fergana, near Tashkent in the Russian Empire. His father, Nikolai Ivanovich Volkov, was a lieutenant-general in the medical corps, and his mother, Feodosia Filippovna Volkova-Davydova, by some accounts, was a gypsy camp follower. Between 1888 and 1900 he studied in primary schools in Tashkent. Between 1900 and 1905 Volkov was enrolled with the Second Orenburg Cadets Corps. In 1906, he started his college study in the Physics and Mathematics Faculty at the St Petersburg University, but abandoned it two years later to join the studio of Vladimir Makovsky, who at the time was an instructor at the Superior School of Art at the Imperial Academy of Arts.

In 1912, Volkov moved to Kiev to train at the Kiev School of Arts. and Roerich. Then he started painting in the same way as early Kandinsky. After moving to Uzbekistan, Volkov's works became marked by the influence of Matisse, Derain, Gauguin and Van Gogh. Then he went on to experimenting in the field of near-abstract art and became close in his manner to Tatlin and Malevich.

In 1919 Volkov was named the first director of the State Museum of Arts of Central Asia, which had been given the former palace of the Grand Duke Constantine Romanov in Tashkent to house its collection.

From 1929 to 1946, Volkov taught at the Tashkent School of Arts.

Between 1927 and 1930, Volkov was a member of a local union Masters of the New East.

In 1934 Volkov went to Moscow to participate in his first big exhibition held at the State Museum of Arts of the Peoples of the Orient. After this exhibition, several of Volkov's canvases were acquired by the State Tretyakov Gallery and the State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg.

That same year, Volkov's picture Morning in Shakhimardan was for the first time exhibited in the West, at the Soviet Art exhibition in Philadelphia.

Between 1934 - 1936 the political campaign of fighting formalism in art began in USSR. Volkov's art was declared formalist and anti-socialist.

When the campaign against free-thinking artists, writers and painters began in the USSR following orders from Stalin, Volkov along with writer Mikhail Zoshenko, poet Anna Akhmatova, painters Alexander Osmerkin and Robert Falk was labeled as an anti-communist formalist and abstractionist. He was fired from all his posts, lost all his earnings and money, and was committed to living in full isolation.

Volkov is moved by fire - by the purple and the gold. His skies are golden and the ground is multicoloured, and an unquenchable flame lurks beneath.

In 1923, the art historian Alexei Sidorov said of Volkov's work: "...by their rich colours and rhythm provide a description of the East which cannot be found elsewhere. His art is European and leftist in form. In many works, there is more Paris than Tashkent, more Matisse and Picasso than an Eastern carpet."

Volkov himself said of his work: The painting of the East is built chiefly on the primitive and on a painterly, decorative beginning. This is the basis of my work. Elaborating works of primitive flatness, I have introduced a whole system of triangles and other geometric forms and arrived at the depiction of man based on the triangle, that being the simplest of forms.In view of the politicisation of Soviet art and the demands of creating a nationalist art form that was distinct from modernism, Volkov used this argument to support his use of geometry (informed by Cubo-Futurism) as an overlay on an Uzbek sensibility. In 1937 Volkov's younger son Alexander Alexandrovich Volkov was born, who later became a painter and sculptor.

Volkov died in 1957, and was buried in Tashkent.

In 1937 A.N. Volkov, impressed by the tragedy taking place in Spain and delighted with the courage and heroism of the Basque people, Catalans, Spaniards, creates one of his best works, the painting "Spain."

The scene depicted by Volkov on canvas shows a clamouring civilian force of Spanish Republicans, wearing the clothing of workers but wielding firearms. Five male and female figures are painted in the foreground of the canvas, all wearing expressions of determination. Many more less detailed figures are depicted in the background. The heroic spirit of the era is expressed and the pathos of the Spanish Civil War is romanticized. The woman depicted in the centre represents the Revolution itself, holding aloft a red flag adorned with the golden letters 'U.H.P.' (Uníos Hermanos Proletarios; English: Unite, Proletarian Brothers) as the revolution bursts into the streets.

An artistic and semantic parallel can be drawn between "Spain" and the work of Eugene Delacroix "Liberty Leading the People". In this image, Delacroix combined the greatness of the Goddess of Liberty and the courage of a simple woman from the people. Marianne (heroine of the painting of Delacroix) is the personification of the national motto of France: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité; English: Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood.

In 1960, several of Volkov's canvases were acquired by the famous collector George Costakis. They now appear at the Costakis collection of the State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki.

In 1967, Volkov's first posthumous exhibition was held at the State Museum of Oriental Art - 33 years after his very first exhibition there - organised by his son Alexander Alexandrovich Volkov.

In 2007, a grand exhibition Alexander Volkov. The Sun and the Caravan celebrating the 120th anniversary of the artist's birth was held at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

In 2012, the first solo-exhibition of Volkov's work outside the erstwhile Soviet Union was held at Christie's.

Works

The most famous works by Volkov include the following: Lamentation (1921) In Chaikhana (1921) Caravan I (1922) Caravan II (1923) Caravan III (1923) The Fruit Vendors (1924) The Pomegranate Chaikhana (1924) Na Arbe, 1925 The Three Musicians (1926) Autumn, 1926 The Uzbek Singers, 1927 Chaikhana with the Portrait of Lenin, 1928 Spain, 1937