Konstantin Nikolaevich Istomin

Born Dec. 26,1886 (Jan. 7, 1887), in Kursk; died Aug. 28, 1942, in Samarkand. Soviet painter.

Istomin studied at the painting school of S. Hollosy in Munich from 1906 to 1909. He was a student in the art history department at Moscow University from 1909 to 1913. An organizer of the first Soviet institutes of art education, Istomin was also one of the professors and directors of Vhutemas-Vkhutein (State Higher Arts and Technical Studios-Higher Art and Technical Institute) from 1921 to 1930. He taught at the Moscow Institute of Typography from 1930 to 1939.

Istomin’s work from his mature period (late 1920’s-early 1930’s) includes genre paintings and landscapes. He sought to combine the ideological and thematic traditions of Russian democratic art of the second half of the 19th century with the search for precise plastic solutions that was characteristic of European painting of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among Istomin’s paintings are Morning (1928, Russian Museum, Leningrad) and College Girls (1933, Tret’iakov Gallery).

REFERENCE