Kuzʹma Petrov-Vodkin

The author gives biographical details that provide a background on the artist's origins and education: his provincial home and attempts to educate himself; his study at the Stiglits Institute of Technical Drawing in St. Petersburg and at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture; study trips to Germany, Italy and France; work in the studio of Valentin Serov. He then reviews the stages of Petrov-Vodkin's career: how he associated with different artists' groups in the prerevolutionary years, but adhered to a style all his own; his commissions in the Soviet period that he managed to interpret independently refining a large and original talent without close analogies in twentieth-century art. -- Summary written by John W. Emerich, Bronze Horseman Literary Agency.