Nesterovmikhailnesterov

Nesterov | Mikhail Nesterov Mikhail Nesterov was an artist whose work bridged the great shift in Russian political power of the twentieth century. To those of us in the West this means very little, but to a Russian artist who produced from the Tsarist regime through the 1917 Revolution and on into Stalin’s realm, it means quite a bit.

He felt lost during his nine years at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1876-1885) as he was criticized by both Ivan Kramskoy and Ilya Repin for his lack of talent. As Kramskoy put it “he should keep looking for his real vocation.” It wasn’t until the tragic death of his beloved first wife Maria in 1886 that Nesterov’s voice as an artist starts to emerge. He wrote, "My love for Masha [Maria] and losing her made me an artist, brought substance into my art that had not been there before, gave it feeling and a living soul, in a word, everything that people came to value, and still value in my art."1 Returning to his religious roots he found a subject matter that resonated with his very core and one upon which he could build.

In many ways there was nothing extraordinary about his artistic skills in his St. Sergius Series, the body of work that first made him famous. The strength of the work, however, is in the way Nesterov simplified the compositions, allowing a single message to come through. Nesterov spent the second half of his life painting murals for cathedrals. Here his work is highly influenced

by Mikhail Vrubel and Victor Vasnetsov. While Vrubel’s work exudes the emotions of our inner demons, Nesterov’s work is soft, delicate and mystical.

It isn’t until Nesterov’s later years when he focused on portraiture that we see a real master’s skills start to emerge. Here we see Nesterov’s immense ability to translate the inner qualities of people onto the canvas.

Read more on https://musings-on-art.org/nesterov-mikhail-nesterov