Pyotr Konchalovsky

Pyotr Petrovich Konchalovsky (; – 2 February 1956) was a Russian and Soviet painter. Konchalovsky was a founding member and chairman of the Knave of Diamonds group.

Early life and education Pyotr Konchalovsky was born on 21 February 1876 in the village of Slavyansk in Kharkov Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine). His father, , was a translator and art publisher with connections to many artists active in Russia during the late 19th century. His brothers were Maxim, a physician, and , a historian.

In 1889, the Konchalovsky family moved to Moscow and their house became a part of the Moscow art scene of the 1890s. Their house was often visited by Valentin Serov, Konstantin Korovin, Mikhail Vrubel, Vasily Surikov, and Konchalovsky used to spend every weekend at Tretyakov gallery to study the canvases painted by key Russian artists.

During his gymnasium years Konchalovsky attended classes of Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. After advice of Konstantin Korovin and Valentin Serov, in 1896–1898 he traveled to Paris to study at the Académie Julian, one of his classmates being Albert Gleizes. In 1899, he returned to Russia and entered the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, graduating in 1907. At the academy, he studied under , and .

Career Breakout days in the Moscow avant-garde

In the book Pyotr Konchalovsky (1936) by V. Nikolsky, Konchalovsky recollects that he "found his art" when he visited Paris for the second time in 1907, and discovered Paul Cezanne and Vincent van Gogh. He even made a week-long trip to Arles, to "penetrate even deeper into van Gogh’s world and to learn his art to the bottom".

Working under these influences, he made a public debut at the Salon des Indépendants exhibition in Paris, 1908, but Konchalovsky soon returned to Moscow, bringing with him new ideas (elements of his work from this period have been identified as "Fauvist" and cezannism).

Personal life In 1902, Konchalovsky married Olga Surikova (1878–1958), the daughter of painter Vasily Surikov. Konchalovsky and Surikova had two children, the painter and the poet and children's writer .

Through his daughter, Konchalovsky was the father-in-law of Sergey Mikhalkov a notable poet, the author of children's poetry and two versions of the State Anthem of the Soviet Union and the present national anthem of Russia. They have two sons: Andrei Konchalovsky, a film writer, director and a painter (whose son Egor is also a notable film director) and Nikita Mikhalkov, also a movie director who, in 1994, won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for his film Burnt by the Sun.

Works Konchalovsky was a very prolific painter, and is known to have created more than five thousand works over the course of his long creative life. His work demonstrates a "complex evolution" of styles.

The influence of Paul Cezanne was "clearly visible" in Konchalovsky's paintings in the pre-WWI period.

Heralded as a member of Russia's avant-garde, following World War II he became a member of the USSR Academy of Fine Arts and a People's Artist of the RSFSR.

His paintings are considered to have made a significant contribution to "the development of Soviet realistic art."

A street in Moscow is named after the artist.

Galleries