Aristarkh Vasilevich Lentulov

Born Jan. 4 (16), 1882, in Nizhnee Lomovo, in present-day Penza Oblast; died Apr. 15, 1943, in Moscow. Soviet painter.

Lentulov attended art schools in Penza and Kiev between 1897 and 1907 and the St. Petersburg studio of D. N. Kardovskii between 1908 and 1910. He worked in Paris at the studio of H. Le Fauconnier in 1911. One of the organizers of the Jack of Diamonds Association in 1910, Lentulov became a member of the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia in 1926 and the Society of Moscow Artists in 1928. He was a professor at the Moscow Vkhutemas-Vkhutein (State Higher Arts and Technical Studios-Higher Art and Technical Institute) from 1919 and at the Moscow Art Institute from 1937 to 1943.

Between 1910 and 1920, Lentulov was influenced by cubism, futurism, and orphism. At the same time he sought to endow his paintings with a distinct national character, drawing upon the motifs of pre-Petrine architecture and upon the traditions of icon painting and the liubok, or inexpensive popular print (Vasilii Blazhennyi, 1913; Chimes, 1915; At Iversk Chapel, 1916—all in the Tret’iakov Gallery). Beginning in the early 1920’s, Lentulov’s painting reflected a spontaneous, realistic perception of the world. In the 1920’s and 1930’s he painted industrial landscapes, portraits, and still lifes. Permeated with a sense of the fullness of being, these works are closer to nature and to the real objects being depicted (Cracking at the Oil Refinery, 1931; Vegetables, 1933—both in the Tret’iakov Gallery). Lentulov also worked as a set designer for the staging of the play The Spanish Curate by F. Beaumont and J. Fletcher (1934, the Second Moscow Art Theater, Moscow).