Grabar Biography Book

Russian lifetime publication. In automonography, I. Grabar attracts a huge amount of material characterizing the Russian and European art culture of the late XIX - early XX centuries. In the person of the author of this book, an artist, an artist and a subtle art critic connected together. The great ups and grandiose disasters of the century postponed a powerful imprint on the fate of many people, caused a special craving for the memories of the former and worried, the desire to comprehend their life path, to capture the characteristic signs of the era.

There have never been such a variety of authors belonging to all layers of society, who would try to tell about the past with varying degrees of success. The indisputable successes of domestic memoirs include the memories of many artists, especially the first half of the century. It turned out that among them it was not at all uncommon to those who also possessed a literary gift, knew how to express their feelings, thoughts, attitude to the experienced events in the word, showing the skill of ownership not only with a brush or instrumentation of graphics, but also with a pen.

The classics of memoir literature were the memoirs of A. Benois, K. Korovin, M. Nesterova, A. Ostroumova-Labedeva, K. Petrov-Vodkin and other prominent masters of fine art. Each of them managed to tell about himself and his time in a unique individual way, to give his memoirs a deeply personal coloring. Automonography of I. Grabar “My Life” also possess these qualities. For the first time published in the year, she has not been reprinted since then and became a bibliographic rarity.

Almost little known or not at all familiar to a wide circle of readers, this book has always been highly valued by specialists in the history of Russian art. In the publications of sources, in research literature there are constantly links to the memories of grabar, quotes and whole excerpts from them. Such interest is not accidental: the author not only fascinatingly tells about his life, but also recreates the wide panorama of the artistic culture of Russia of the last third of the XIX - the first third of the XX century.

At the same time, it shows particular interest primarily in the actions, actions of people, and not in their psychological motivation. For him, those creative searches and impulses that lead to certain practical results are worthy of him. Speaking about one’s own activity, the grabar clearly characterizes its main stimulus - the all -consuming passion for art: “From childhood, it is still the only source of joy and grief, enthusiasm and suffering, and indeed, no matter what a person’s boiling energy and versatile talent: a painter, art criticism and museum leader, one of the foundations of domestic scientific restoration and protection and protection and protection Culture monuments - it was art that was invariably in the center of his attention and care.