Russian artists. Voloshin Maximilian Alexandrovich. Still life photo. Classic product photography

I wandered as a strict youth
Through the tart valleys
sad Cimmeria,
And my spirit is blind
I was languishing
The longing of the ancient land.

Maximilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin (pseudonym; real name Kirienko-Voloshin) (1877-1932), - Russian poet, artist, literary critic, art critic.

The edge of loneliness
Land of silence...
The prophecies came true
The aspirations have come true.

Born on May 16, 1877 in Kyiv, his paternal ancestors were Zaporozhye Cossacks, and his maternal ancestors were Germans who Russified in the 17th century. At the age of three he was left without a father; his childhood and adolescence were spent in Moscow. In 1893, his mother purchased a plot of land in Koktebel (near Feodosia), where Voloshin graduated from high school in 1897.

Here it’s stuffy and cramped... And there there’s space, freedom,
There the heavily tired Ocean breathes
And the smell of rotting herbs and iodine wafts through.

Having entered the Faculty of Law of Moscow University, he became involved in revolutionary activities, and was suspended from classes for his involvement in the All-Russian student strike (February 1900), as well as for his “negative worldview” and “propensity for all kinds of agitation.” In order to avoid other consequences, he went as a worker in the fall of 1900 to the construction of the Tashkent-Orenburg railway. Maximilian Voloshin later called this period “the decisive moment in my spiritual life. Here I felt Asia, the East, antiquity, the relativity of European culture.”

The slopes of the mountains are treeless. Their jagged crown
In the green twilight, mysteriously sad.
By whose ancient melancholy is my prophetic spirit stung?
Who knows the path of the gods - the beginning and the end?

Since 1899, Maximilian Voloshin traveled around Europe, visiting Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, Austria, Greece, and Spain. In 1899-1907 and 1913-1916 he lived in Paris, in 1907-1913 - alternately in St. Petersburg and Koktebel, from 1917 - in Koktebel.

Holy countries
Evening ecstasies.
Flashing armor
Have a defeated day!

He studied at the Louvre School of Museum Studies, the School of F. Kolarossia, and the workshops of D. Whistler and E. S. Kruglikova (since 1901). He listened to lectures at the Sorbonne and visited many libraries in Europe. In 1906 he married the artist V. M. Sabashnikova.

To these echoing sea shores,
Illuminated with cold blue,
I came through burnt meadows,
And my feet smell like wormwood.

He collaborated in the almanacs “Northern Flowers”, “Vulture”, magazines “Scales”, “Golden Fleece”, “Apollo”, newspapers “Rus”, “Russian Art Chronicle”, “Morning of Russia”. Since 1910 he worked on monographic articles about K. F. Bogaevsky, E. S. Kruglikova, A. S. Golubkina, M. S. Saryan. He spoke in the press in defense of the artistic associations “Jack of Diamonds” and “Donkey’s Tail”. Published the brochure “About Repin” (1913), promoting the rejection of naturalism in art.

In 1910, Maximilian Voloshin published his first collection of poetry (“Poems. 1900-1910.” M., 1910). He published collections of poems Anno mundi ardentis (Moscow, 1915), “Iverni” (Moscow, 1918), “Deaf and Mute Demons” (Kharkov, 1919), “Strife” (Lvov, 1923), “Poems about Terror” (Berlin, 1923); collection of articles about culture “Faces of Creativity” (Moscow, 1914). He translated poems by V. Hugo, P. Verlaine, C. Baudelaire, O. Barbier, G. Heine, E. Verhaeren, stories by G. Flaubert, O. Mirbeau.

In the 1910-20s, Maximilian Voloshin painted many landscapes of Crimea, France, and Spain. He wrote mainly from memory. Participated in exhibitions of the associations “World of Art” (1916-1924), “Fire-Tsvet” (1924-1929), the Art Society named after. K. K. Kostandi (1925-1929). Held personal exhibitions in Moscow and Leningrad (both 1927)

In the 1920s, he worked as a commissioner of the Crimean Revolutionary Committee for the protection of historical and cultural monuments of Crimea, gave lectures on art, and read his poems. Since 1923, Voloshin’s house in Koktebel had the status of a free House of Creativity.

Maximilian Voloshin died in Koktebel; buried on Kuchuk-Yenishar hill. A museum has been organized in Voloshin’s house-workshop.

Kara-Dag in the clouds

And this dim heat, and the mountains in a cloudy haze,
And the smell of sultry grass, and the mercury reflection of stones,
And the evil cry of cicadas, and the squeal of birds of prey -

They cloud the mind. And the heat trembles from the scream...
And there - in the hollows of the gaping eye sockets -
The huge gaze of the trampled Face.

I am walking along the mournful road to my joyless Koktebel...
In the highlands there are patterned thorns and bushes in silver.
Along the valleys the almonds below turn pink with thin smoke,
And the passionate land lies in black robes and orars.

Filled with ancient gold and bile
Evening light hills. Red, red, brown,
Tufts of shaggy grass, like strands of red fur.
The bushes are on fire, and the waters are like metal.

I have come again - to your feet
Lay down the gifts of your sorrow,
Wander along bitter shores
And question the sea.

The stones are hot in the darkness in the heat of the day.
The sagebrush meadows of the uplands are dull grey.
And low above the hill the trembling sickle of Venus,
Like the flame of a candle shaken by air...

And starry nights pass by in tears,
And the dark faces of the rejected gods
They look and demand, call... inevitably.

In the wrinkles of the mountains, in the folds of embossed leather
The bluish shine of the sea scales is fading.

Here is a doubtful hill, like swollen
ribs
Whose bent spine is overgrown like wool,
chebrom?
Who is the resident of these places: a monster? titanium?

On the edge of the wild mountains you shed angry purple,
And the winds are the guardians of the abandoned land -
They scream in confusion, and the sea sings a melodious cry
Now growing in the distance.

And my harsh Koktebel
In tune with your smile,
Like a vault of ruins with flexible vines,
As with the flame of dawn - a pipe.

Growing up like a jagged wing,
The shadow of the peaks touches the sea,
And you will disappear, melting, melting,
In the wormwood gloom of the valleys.

...And in the depths the bay shimmers
The scaly shine of sleepy abysses,
In the gray frame of foamy manes
And in the red frame of the burned mountains...

The plain of waters sways widely,
Bordered with silver.
The thought is clouded, like a jagged wall
Stepping onto the swell of molten current.

I will fall to sharp rubble, to gray breakdowns
eroded mountains
I will partake of the bitter salt of the choking wave,
I will cover my gray brow with thyme, mint and wormwood.
Hello, you, crucified in the spring, my
solemn Koktebel!

And the number of stars in the sky.

The waves cast a pink gloss,
Wet arching ridges,
The shore is covered with salt and shale,
And the rubble turns red.

And let the thunder rumble dully all around,
Let the whirlwind of doubts and resentments blow,
The earth will not destroy the reality of our dreams!

Blurred scree, as before, calls of rubble,
And the ancient sea, raising its crests heavily,
It boils along the shallows of the buzzing shores.

Above the blue of the jagged thickets,
Above the brown-clay foreheads
June showers dark cloak
It billows in smoky columns.

Growing up like a jagged wing,
The shadow of the peaks touches the sea,
And you will disappear, melting, melting,
In the wormwood gloom of the valleys.

The sea trembled with eternal trembling
A blue shaft came from the darkness
I shook with the foam of victory,
Lying down at the granite foot,

In the granite rocks there are broken wings.
Beneath the burden of the hills is a curved ridge.
The outcast land's frozen efforts.
The lips of the Foremother, who

And piles of boulders and blocks of bare rocks
The blurry depressions are mysterious and gloomy.
In the winged twilight - hints and figures...
Here is a heavy paw, here is a grinning jaw,

Our daring spirit strives for blind rebellion
In the crimson darkness of the sunsets...
The path to proven orbits is closed to us!

And they became visible among the gloomy blue
All the hidden signs lying around:
And the letters of the roads drawn in the desert,
And the number of stars in the sky.

There was a sacred forest here. Divine Messenger
He touched these clearings with his winged foot.
There are no stones or ruins in place of cities.

Having twisted the clouds into a tow and enveloping the mountain crevices,
The wind, weeping, spins thin threads of rain.
The sea makes a dull noise, developing ancient scrolls
Along the desert sands.

For many days I have been walking the river Ocean
Towards the day, with the sails spread,
We are running towards inevitable countries.

I worship you, crystals,
Starfish and flowers
Plants, shells, rocks
(Petrified dreams
Silently dreaming nature),
Elements of the world: Air, Water,
Both Mother Earth and King Fire!

The surrounding hills are devastated
The prickly sun. Silver wormwood
On the slate scales of the desert
A tuft of shaggy gray hair sticks out.

Spain. Landscape with cypress trees. 31.6x47.4 Paper, watercolor

Dressed generously with ribbons
With this southern motley:
The Spanish heat lives in them,
A piece of light is hidden in them.

From the depths of an erupted gust,
Tragic and proud
Whirlwinds of ancient forces shot up -

Above the unsteady ripples of water rises from the depths
Desert ridge of the earth: rocky ridges
ridges,
Black cliffs, streams of red rubble -
The mournful limits of an unknown country.
I see sad, solemn dreams -
The echoing bays of a remote and ancient land,
Where in the late twilight it is sadder and more melodious
Desert wave hexameters sound.

Your soul is tormented by your melancholy,
Land of the Lost Gods!
A fresh wind was blowing... We sailed past
Monotonous shores.

I'm on my way to the highlands
Through the wormwood meadows, along the slope,
To turn your face from the hill
Towards the flaming sunset.

Sparks of light in a tilted disk -
The satellites are running fast,
And the bays in the green mirror
The flames of the constellations are protected.

The Euxine Pont is still empty
And just like the harsh sunset,
And the same horizon is visible,
Fluid, booming and purple.

A carpet spreads on a brown one
The midday flame is dry and clear,
The crystal of the foothills is so beautiful,
So pale are the distances of the gray mountains!

My land is in peace
Like the face of an icon, haggard.
Here every trace is burned with melancholy,
Here every hill is a constrained impulse

The day dragged on through the scorched meadows.
The heat was flowing. The ridges lined the walls.
The clouds were passing, throwing up shreds of foam
On a mountain ridge. (Available to whose feet?)
Whose voice from the mountains rang through the sultry din
Cicadas and wasps? Who thought of change?

The petrified faces of the Earth in the poet’s watercolors provoke the viewer to read the forms, obeying the play of his own imagination, into seemingly random images of the outlines of the horizon, clouds and ripples of waves. Thus, landscapes become equivalents of nature itself, acting as a challenge by the artist to its priority. With all the undoubted symbolism of the master’s poetics, in this kind of attitude towards delegating the powers of form-creation to the viewer, one can discern a trace of the avant-garde in search of an organic form. In his diary of 1909 (January 2, Paris) he wrote: “Our path lies through matter and through its forms. Those who call to the spirit call back, not forward.”7 The substance of the stone, its visualization called Voloshin to liberation from figurativeness while maintaining the Gnostic ambiguity of the act of this liberation. The folded texture of mountains in landscapes has its own ornamental expressiveness. The destruction of the boundary between nature and culture led to the animation of the inorganic and the mineralization of the anthropomorphic - ancient history seemed to be encrypted in the arabesques of stone rocks, and the latter seemed to have acquired some semblance of mysterious sculptures. I remember the artist Pavel Filonov, whose work clearly shows an interest in both organic form and the involution of the species: dogs with human eyes and crystal-shaped figures of people call back to prehistory. The origins of Voloshin’s existence are not so inflexibly outlined in Filonov’s style. However, he also makes an involutionary ascent to the origins: in the anthropomorphic fossilization of the landscape, it is difficult not to notice its appeal to the myth of Atlantis, to which the poet paid tribute in his poems. Nostalgia for ancient prototypes, seeping through the rocky soil of Voloshin's Cimmeria, acts as the flip side of the affirmation of invisible traces of a bygone civilization. This is evidenced by the pronounced tectonics of mountain landscapes, built like ancient ruins (ill. 5). Thus, it is not just stone as a part of nature that is the object of Voloshin’s implicit portraiture, but also stone as a material, cyclopean structures from huge stone blocks, created partly by human utopia, and partly by divine will.

The poet’s art history articles are also full of associations of the Crimean landscape with architecture, in particular his essay about Konstantin Bogaevsky, with whom Voloshin had many years of friendship, spiritual closeness and a common emotional attachment to the Crimean land. In the part where the nature of Cimmeria influenced the crystallization of the artist’s creative individuality, the text is equally applicable to the work of the author of the essay. But this verbal description of the landscape is especially interesting because it is integrated into Voloshin’s watercolor series and provides an example of ekphrasis, as if turned inside out, representing a literary parallel to the pictorial series. The latter acts as the leading principle, and the word follows it. And the main thing in these descriptions is the invisible outlines of ancient buildings, the mythopoetic image of Atlantis: “Karadag... its own battlements and peaks, visible from the depths of the Kerch steppes, are the portal of some unknown fantastic country, which can be imagined from Bogaevsky’s landscapes”8. Watercolors by Konstantin Bogaevsky from the Mamontov collection precisely reproduce this projection of architectural fantasies based on the Koktebel landscape (ill. 16, 17).

The myth of Atlantis is also evident in the dialogue between stones and water - the latter forms the most important part of Crimean sketches. Water is endowed with the same mythological potential for generating meaning as stone: reflecting the sky with anthropomorphic clouds running across it, water connects the lower and upper worlds, asserting the dominance of the vertical of the human spirit. The motif of a mirror reflection in the bay - another tribute to the symbolist past - in these watercolors achieves a capacious hieroglyphic quality, connecting the disparate parts of the image into a single whole. The crown of this rotation is the occasionally appearing luminary: a dim disk in the hot midday sky or its reflected satellites in the bluish darkness of the night bay (ill. 1).

Finally, the third component of landscape watercolors is a timid character of the plant world - a thin tree, a bush or the outline of a crown, always placed in the foreground and rendered extremely graphically (ill. 12, 15). The pointed modesty of the vegetative link of biological evolution contrasts with the grandiose timelessness of the mountains and the sea. Voloshin’s Dionysianism is paradoxical: the crumpled folds of the earth contain more traces of bacchanalian ecstasy than the witnesses to the cyclical whirlpool of life. The water-stone element thereby seems to be actualized, bringing distant periods of the planet’s history closer to the present. It is difficult not to see in this a hidden metaphor for the revolutionary upheavals in Russia, which produced a tectonic rift of times and peoples. And although Voloshin hardly did this consciously, the traces of the era all the more urgently require reading by a modern viewer.

Voloshin stood above the fray - in this position his role in Russian culture of the twentieth century is worthy of respect, and this is also sometimes seen as his weakness. However, the nature of his mythopoetic language reveals him to be a child of his time - a time that is actively renouncing its former idols and just as actively creating a new utopia based on ancient myths. And in this construction, the poetic word - the spoken word and the pictorial word - the word conveyed by the hand of the watercolorist, dispute primacy.

The poet and artist Maximilian Voloshin, expelled from the university, surprised his contemporaries with the versatility of his interests. A creator who knew how to encapsulate the passions raging within within the framework of the poetic genre, in addition to painting and poetry, he wrote critical articles, was engaged in translations, and was also fond of astronomical and meteorological observations.

From the beginning of 1917, his bright life, full of stormy events and various meetings, was concentrated in Russia. At the literary evenings held by the writer in the house he personally built in Koktebel, his son Nikolai, and, and, and even, were repeatedly present.

Childhood and youth

Maximilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin was born on May 16, 1877 in Kyiv. The poet's mother Elena Ottobaldovna was a strong-willed and original woman. Soon after the birth of her son, she separated from her husband. The woman wanted to cultivate a fighting character in Max, and the boy grew up, as Marina Tsvetaeva later said about him, “without claws,” and was peaceful and friendly towards everyone.

Maximilian Voloshin as a child with his mother

It is known that in Koktebel, where Voloshin moved with his mother at the age of 16, Elena even hired local boys to challenge Maximilian to a fight. The mother welcomed her son’s interest in the occult and was not at all upset that he always remained in the second year at the gymnasium. One of Max's teachers once said that it is impossible to teach anything to an idiot. Less than six months later, at the funeral of that same teacher, Voloshin recited his wonderful poems.

Although the writer was a student at the Faculty of Law at Moscow University from 1897 to 1899 and regularly attended lectures, he already acquired his amazingly versatile knowledge on his own. From the biography of the publicist it is known that Maximilian was never able to obtain a diploma. Expelled for participating in the riots, the guy decided not to continue his studies and engage in self-education.

Literature

Voloshin’s first book, “Poems,” was published in 1910. In the works included in the collection, the author’s desire to understand the fate of the world and the history of mankind as a whole was clearly visible. In 1916, the writer published a collection of anti-war poems “Anno mundi ardentis” (“In the year of the burning world”). In the same year he settled firmly in his beloved Koktebel, to which he later dedicated a couple of sonnets.

In 1918 and 1919, two of his new books of poetry were published - “Iverni” and “Deaf and Mute Demons”. The hand of the writer is invariably felt in every line. Voloshin’s poems dedicated to the nature of Eastern Crimea are especially colorful.

Since 1903, Voloshin has published his reports in the magazine “Scales” and the newspaper “Rus”. Subsequently, he writes articles about painting and poetry for the magazines “Golden Fleece”, “Apollo”, the newspapers “Russian Art Chronicle” and “Morning of Russia”. The total volume of works, which to this day have not lost their value, amounts to more than one volume.

In 1913, in connection with the sensational attempt on the painting “And His Son Ivan,” Voloshin spoke out against naturalism in art by publishing the brochure “About Repin.” And although after this the editors of most magazines closed their doors to him, considering the work an attack against the artist revered by the public, in 1914 a book of Maximilian’s articles “Faces of Creativity” was published.

Painting

Voloshin took up painting in order to judge fine art professionally. In the summer of 1913, he mastered the technique of tempera, and the following year he painted his first sketches in watercolor (“Spain. By the Sea”, “Paris. Place de la Concorde at night”). Poor quality watercolor paper taught Voloshin to work immediately in the right tone, without corrections or blots.

Painting by Maximilian Voloshin "Biblical Land"

Each new work of Maximilian carried a particle of wisdom and love. While creating his paintings, the artist thought about the relationship between the four elements (earth, water, air and fire) and the deep meaning of the cosmos. Each landscape painted by Maximilian retained its density and texture and remained translucent even on canvas (“Landscape with a lake and mountains”, “Pink Twilight”, “Hills parched by the heat”, “Moon whirlwind”, “Lead light”).

Painting by Maximilian Voloshin "Kara-Dag in the clouds"

Maximilian was inspired by the classic works of Japanese painters, as well as the paintings of his friend, the Feodosian artist Konstantin Bogaevsky, whose illustrations adorned Voloshin’s first collection of poems in 1910. Along with Emmanuel Magdesyan and Lev Lagorio, Voloshin is today considered a representative of the Cimmerian school of painting.

Personal life

His corpulence, coupled with his short stature and unruly mane of hair on his head, created a misleading impression among the opposite sex about Voloshin’s male incompetence. The women felt safe next to the eccentric writer and believed that it would not be shameful to invite a writer who bore little resemblance to a real man to take him to the bathhouse to rub his back.

Throughout his life, Voloshin took advantage of this misconception, replenishing his amorous piggy bank with new names. The critic's first wife was the artist Margarita Sabashnikova. Their romance began in Paris. Young people attended lectures at the Sorbonne, at one of which the writer noticed a girl who looked exactly like Queen Taiah.

On the day they met, the writer took his chosen one to the museum and showed her a statue of the ruler of Egypt. In letters to friends, Maximilian admitted that he could not believe that Margarita was a real person of flesh and blood. Friends in reply messages jokingly asked the amorous poet not to marry the young lady made of alabaster.

After the wedding, which took place in 1906, the lovers moved to St. Petersburg. Their neighbor was the popular poet Vyacheslav Ivanov. Symbolists gathered in the writer’s apartment every week. Voloshin and his wife were also frequent guests. While Maximilian enthusiastically recited, argued and quoted, his missus carried on quiet conversations with Ivanov. In conversations, Margarita has repeatedly stated that in her opinion, the life of a real artist should be imbued with drama and that friendly married couples are not in fashion today.

During the period when Vyacheslav and Margarita were just beginning to develop romantic feelings, Voloshin fell in love with the playwright Elizaveta Dmitrieva, with whom in 1909 he created a very successful literary hoax - the mysterious Catholic beauty Cherubina de Gabriac, whose works were published in the Apollo magazine.

The hoax lasted only 3 months, then Cherubina was exposed. In November of the same year, who at one time introduced Dmitrieva to Voloshin, in the presence of Maximilian, spoke impartially on the side of the poetess, for which he immediately received a slap in the face from the author of the poem “Venice”.

As a result, the ugly lame-legged girl became the reason why Voloshin and Gumilev had a duel on the Black River. After a scandalous fight, during which miraculously no one was injured, Maximilian’s wife informed her husband, who was immersed in a pool of amorous passions, of her intention to divorce. As it turned out later, Ivanov’s wife invited Margarita to live together, and she agreed.

In 1922, famine began in Crimea. The publicist's mother, Elena Ottobaldovna, began to noticeably lose control. Max lured paramedic Maria Zabolotskaya from a neighboring village for his beloved parent. It was this kind and sympathetic woman, who stood next to him during his mother’s funeral, that he married in March 1927.

And although the couple never managed to have children, Maria Stepanovna was next to the writer in both joy and sorrow until his death. Having been widowed, she did not change the Koktebel customs and also continued to receive traveling poets and artists in Voloshin’s house.

Death

The last years of the poet's life were full of work - Maximilian wrote and painted a lot in watercolors. In July 1932, the asthma that had long troubled the publicist was complicated by influenza and pneumonia. Voloshin died after a stroke on August 11, 1932. His grave is located on Mount Kuchuk-Yanyshar, located a couple of kilometers from Koktebel.

After the death of the eminent writer, the sculptor Sergei Merkurov, who created the death masks, and, took a cast from the face of the deceased Voloshin. The writer's wife, Maria Zabolotskaya, managed to preserve the creative legacy of her beloved husband. Thanks to her efforts, in August 1984, Maximilian’s house located in Crimea received the status of a museum.

Bibliography

• 1899 – “Venice”
• 1900 – “Acropolis”
• 1904 – “I walked through the night. And the flames of pale death..."
• 1905 – “Taiah”
• 1906 – “Angel of Vengeance”
• 1911 – “To Edward Wittig”
• 1915 – “To Paris”
• 1915 – “Spring”
• 1917 – “The Capture of the Tuileries”
• 1917 – “Holy Rus'”
• 1919 – “Writing about the kings of Moscow”
• 1919 – “Kitezh”
• 1922 – “Sword”
• 1922 – “Steam”
• 1924 – “Anchutka”

Maximilian Voloshin, poet, artist, literary critic and art critic. His father, lawyer and collegiate adviser Alexander Kiriyenko-Voloshin, came from a family of Zaporozhye Cossacks, his mother, Elena Glazer, came from Russified German nobles.

Voloshin spent his childhood in Taganrog. The father died when the boy was four years old, and the mother and son moved to Moscow.

“The end of adolescence is poisoned by the gymnasium,” wrote the poet, who was not happy about studying. But he enthusiastically devoted himself to reading. First Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov, Gogol and Dostoevsky, later Byron and Edgar Allan Poe.

In 1893, Voloshin’s mother purchased a small plot of land in the Tatar-Bulgarian village of Koktebel and transferred her 16-year-old son to a gymnasium in Feodosia. Voloshin fell in love with Crimea and carried this feeling throughout his life.

In 1897, at the insistence of his mother, Max entered Moscow University at the Faculty of Law, but did not study for long. Having joined the All-Russian student strike, he was suspended from classes in 1899 for “negative worldview and agitation activities” and exiled to Feodosia.

“My family name is Kirienko-Voloshin, and it comes from Zaporozhye. I know from Kostomarov that in the 16th century there was a blind bandura player in Ukraine, Matvey Voloshin, who was flayed alive by the Poles for political songs, and from Frantseva’s memoirs - that the surname of the young man who took Pushkin to the gypsy camp was Kiriyenko- Voloshin. I wouldn't mind them being my ancestors."

Autobiography of Maximilian Voloshin. 1925

Over the next two years, Voloshin made several trips to Europe. He visited Vienna, Italy, Switzerland, Paris, Greece and Constantinople. At the same time, he changed his mind about returning to university and decided to engage in self-education. Wanderings and an insatiable thirst for knowledge of the world around us became the engine through which all the facets of Voloshin’s talent were revealed.

See everything, understand everything, know everything, experience everything
All forms, all colors to absorb with your eyes,
Walk across the entire earth with burning feet,
To perceive everything and embody it again.

He studied literature in the best European libraries, listened to lectures at the Sorbonne, and attended drawing classes in the Parisian studio of artist Elizaveta Kruglikova. By the way, he decided to take up painting in order to professionally judge the work of others. In total, he spent abroad from 1901 to 1916, living alternately in Europe and in the Crimea.

Most of all he loved Paris, where he visited often. In this Mecca of art of the early twentieth century, Voloshin communicated with the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writers Anatole France, Maurice Maeterlinck and Romain Rolland, artists Henri Matisse, Francois Léger, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Diego Rivera, sculptors Emile Antoine Bourdelle and Aristide Maillol. The self-taught intellectual surprised his contemporaries with his versatility. At home, he easily entered the circle of symbolist poets and avant-garde artists. In 1903, Voloshin began to rebuild a house in Koktebel according to his own design.

“...Koktebel did not immediately enter my soul: I gradually realized it as the true homeland of my spirit. And it took me many years of wandering along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea to understand its beauty and uniqueness...”

Maximilian Voloshin

In 1910, the first collection of his poems was published. In 1915 - the second - about the horrors of war. He did not accept the First World War, just as he later did not accept the revolution - the “cosmic drama of existence.” His “Iveria” (1918) and “Deaf and Mute Demons” (1919) were published in Soviet Russia. In 1923, the official persecution of the poet began, and they stopped publishing him.

From 1928 to 1961, not a single line of his was published in the USSR. But in addition to poetry collections, the creative baggage of Voloshin the critic contains 36 articles about Russian literature, 28 - about French, 35 - about Russian and French theater, 49 - about events in French cultural life, 34 articles about Russian fine arts and 37 - about art France.

After the revolution, Voloshin constantly lives in Crimea. In 1924, he created the “House of the Poet,” whose appearance resembles both a medieval castle and a Mediterranean villa. The Tsvetaeva sisters, Nikolai Gumilyov, Sergei Solovyov, Korney Chukovsky, Osip Mandelstam, Andrei Bely, Valery Bryusov, Alexander Green, Alexey Tolstoy, Ilya Erenburg, Vladislav Khodasevich, artists Vasily Polenov, Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Boris have been here Kustodiev, Pyotr Konchalovsky, Aristarkh Lentulov, Alexander Benois...

Maximilian Voloshin. Crimea. In the vicinity of Koktebel. 1910s

In Crimea, Voloshin’s gift as an artist was truly revealed. The self-taught painter turned out to be a talented watercolorist. However, he painted his Cimmeria not from life, but according to his own method of finished image, thanks to which from under his brush came views of the Crimea, impeccable in form and light. “The landscape should depict the earth on which you can walk,” Voloshin said, “and the sky on which you can fly, that is, in the landscapes... you should feel the air that you want to breathe deeply...”

Maximilian Voloshin. Koktebel. Sunset. 1928

“Almost all of his watercolors are dedicated to Crimea. But this is not the Crimea that any photographic camera can photograph, but this is some kind of idealized, synthetic Crimea, elements of which he found around him, combining them at will, emphasizing the very thing that in the vicinity of Feodosia leads to comparison with Hellas, with the Thebaid, with some places in Spain and in general with everything in which the beauty of the stone skeleton of our planet is especially revealed.”

Art critic and artist Alexander Benois

Max Voloshin was a fan of Japanese engravings. Following the example of the Japanese classics Hokusai and Utamaro, he signed his watercolors with lines of his own poems. Each color had a special symbolic meaning for him: red is earth, clay, flesh, blood and passion; blue – air and spirit, thought, infinity and the unknown; yellow – sun, light, will, self-awareness; purple is the color of prayer and mystery; green – the plant kingdom, hope and joy of being.

Master class program

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Lighting, composition, frame color... According to Maxim Voloshin, the author of the master class, still life is exactly the genre that slowly develops these basic skills of strong artistic photography. However, not only any spectacular photograph, but also a valuable, marketable frame is based on this knowledge.

That's why in this master class:

• all participants will leave with interesting shots and add still lifes to their portfolio.
• amateur photographers will improve their skills in working with lighting, frame composition and color selection.
• photographers will learn to take interesting pictures at home, using a minimum of equipment and space.
• professionals will learn a set of useful techniques. You can’t do without them if still life, product photography or stock photography are your leading genres

Date: May 19 at 12:00 Price: 1200 UAH. for school graduates, 1500 UAH for guests
5 hours of practice and theory with breaks for coffee, buns and communication.

Part I. Composition and light in still life (1 hour)

1. What makes a still life “beautiful”? About the importance of lighting schemes from the experience of masters, the choice of objects, the arrangement of objects, texture.
2. Where to start? Studying masterpieces, thinking through history, sketching.
3. Selecting items - practical recommendations: color, shape, size, texture, theme.
4. Basics of composition: eye movement - “strong hand rule”, golden ratio and power points. Conclusions and practical recommendations.
5. Examples of lighting schemes in still life. One light source: light from a window at the level of the subject, light from above at 45º to the subject. Volumetric shapes, glare and reflections.
6. Light brush. Simulates multiple light sources.
7. An idea of ​​the possibilities of using still life techniques in other genres of photography

Coffee break

Part II. Equipment, shooting techniques, post-processing (1.5 hours)

1. Lens selection. Why 85 mm? Focal length, aperture and depth of field. We are exploring options.
2. Choosing a tripod. Advantages of a tripod with a rotating column.
3. Remote control. The benefits of using a remote control and shooting directly to your computer. Survey software review.
4. How to choose and prepare a table for composition?
5. Light modifiers: gobos, diffusers, reflectors, black flags. How do I use them?
6. Backgrounds and surfaces for composition. Creating an atmosphere and managing your own mood. DIY background.
7. Additional equipment: DIY flag holder, clothespins, foil, plasticine, tweezers, gloves, sticks and brushes.
8. Light brush. DIY light brush. Smartphone as a light brush: advantages and disadvantages, programs like Softbox.
9. Basic principles of image processing. Lightroom and Photoshop – we use them together and separately. Features of combining layers and applying textures. Using some plugins. Preparing work for posting on the Internet and for printing.

Coffee break

Part III. Still life photography practice (2 hours). Portfolio shots. Ideas for tricky still lifes! (new)

1. Practicing shooting techniques with simulating light from a window. One constant light source.
2. Setting up a light source, using a diffuser, features of setting up flags and reflectors: how to preserve the volume of a picture.
3. Practice working with a light brush. Using different brush options (flashlight with diffusers, LED panel, smartphone/tablet). Development of object lighting scenarios.
4. Technique for shooting flying objects. Ideas for trick still lifes.
5. Practicing shooting several frames for subsequent editing.

I am sure that at the end of the master class you will be in a good mood and spectacular photos! It is desirable for MK participants to:

• be able to set up your camera and have a basic understanding of aperture, shutter speed, ISO, depth of field;
• have with you a camera with an 85-100 mm lens (if you have a crop sensor, then 50-65 mm), a dim flashlight (keychain) or a smartphone, and a tripod.

The outstanding poet and artist, philosopher and critic Maximilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin spent a significant part of his life in Crimea. The house in Koktebel where Max lived became a poetic mecca that attracted creative people from all over Russia. Marina Tsvetaeva, Valery Bryusov, Mikhail Bulgakov, Vikenty Veresaev, Maxim Gorky, Pyotr Konchalovsky and many other outstanding personalities stayed here. Today Voloshin's house is one of the most visited literary and art museums in Crimea.

In the land of blue peaks

A small village on the Black Sea coast, located at the foot of the ancient Karadag volcano, is a favorite place for artists, poets, writers, and, in general, creative people. The mystical beauty of Koktebel is sung by talented writers and captured on the canvases of famous painters. For one of them, the “land of blue peaks,” as the word “Koktebel” is translated from Turkic, became a source of inspiration, home and, ultimately, final refuge. We are talking, as you might guess, about the poet Maximilian Voloshin.

My dream has been filled with water since then
Foothills heroic dreams
And Koktebel has a stone mane;
Its wormwood is intoxicated with my melancholy,
My verse sings in the waves of its tide,
And on the rock that closed the swell of the bay,
My profile is sculpted by fate and the winds,

Voloshin once wrote. Indeed, the cliff of Mount Kok-Kaya with its outlines resembles a man’s profile. Marina Tsvetaeva, who visited Koktebel in 1911, will share her impressions: “In the face of the mountain. I’m writing and I see: on the right, limiting the huge Koktebel Bay, more like a flood than a bay, a stone profile extending into the sea... Maxine’s profile.” The poet himself associated the rocky face with his own.

True, even before Voloshin moved to Crimea, the face of another famous poet was recognized in the Koktebel profile. There is a postcard with a view of the village, published in Feodosia in 1910, on which it is written: “Koktebel. Mountain profile of Pushkin." The guidebooks of 1911 and 1914 also indicate that this is a “profile of Pushkin.”

Well, everyone has the right to see in stone blocks what is close to them. But hardly anyone would argue that the Koktebel face can truly be called a monument to a poet - a man with a rebellious, passionate soul, who merged with the elements in a creative impulse, a creator creating himself.

My shelter is poor

One of the first Russian intellectuals to appreciate the beauty of Koktebel was the famous ophthalmologist Professor E. A. Junge. Being an energetic and versatile person, he acquired a piece of land in the Koktebel Valley and decided to turn it into a blooming garden. Junge dreamed of building a reservoir here, planting vineyards on the hillsides, and laying a convenient road to Feodosia. However, there were not enough funds to implement grandiose plans. After the death of the professor, his heirs sold part of the land on which the first dachas appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. One of the plots by the sea was purchased by Elena Ottobaldovna, the mother of the poet Voloshin. The Voloshins' neighbors were children's writer N.I. Manaseina, poetess P.S. Solovyova and opera singer V.I. Kastorsky. Thus, Koktebel became a resort for the intelligentsia.

The fate of Maximilian Voloshin is closely connected with Crimea. Max received his secondary education at the Feodosia Gymnasium, then entered the Faculty of Law of Moscow University. After the revolution, the poet settled in Koktebel, in a family dacha by the sea. Here the poet is destined to survive the tragic events of the civil war. The Voloshin house becomes a refuge for both reds and whites. Not accepting violence, regardless of its origin, Maximilian helped underground communists under the White Guards, and white officers under the Bolsheviks. The poet played an important role in the liberation of Mandelstam, who was captured by Wrangel’s troops.

The post-revolutionary period - a period of changing ideals and a total revaluation of values ​​- radically changed people's worldviews. Max Voloshin did not escape this fate either. Being a democrat by nature, he enthusiastically accepted proletarian sentiments. The poet's appearance emphasized his closeness to the people. Voloshin walked barefoot, wearing a canvas shirt with a belt, and tied his hair with a strap. The artist treated his own life in the same way.

The poet will dedicate the following poetic lines to the house in which Tsvetaeva, Bryusov, Bulgakov, Veresaev, Maxim Gorky, Konchalovsky, Green will stay:

Come in, my guest, shake off the dust of life
And the mold of thoughts is at my doorstep...
From the bottom of centuries he will greet you strictly
The huge face of Queen Taiakh.
My shelter is poor. And times are harsh.
But the shelves of books rise like a wall.
Here at night they talk to me
Historians, poets, theologians.

What is Voloshin's dacha like? The house was erected in 1903 under the direction and drawings of the poet. Its architecture reflects the conflicting views and unconventional thinking of the owner. The asymmetrical structure consists of two separate structures connected into a single whole. If you look at the building on the left side, you will find an ordinary rural house with white walls and a balcony. The right side of the building, made of orange brick, features a protruding triangular trapezoidal wall with tall windows. It resembles a fragment of an ancient castle. Looking at this part of the house, a romantic impression is created. After all, the house was built by a poet. By the way, Voloshin fiercely criticized the bad taste of the Russian bourgeoisie. In one of the articles devoted to the architectural appearance of Feodosia, the poet will write: “Ekaterininskaya embankment with its palaces in the style of Turkish baths, brothels and lemonade stands, with its concrete Erechtheions, plaster “Milos”, naked pistachio ladies from decadent postal cards represents absolutely the completed "Museum of Bad Taste". The Bolsheviks and anarchists, in whose hands Theodosia was twice, did not want to provide her with the only service they were capable of: they did not blow up these villas.”

Fortunately, the Bolsheviks did not appeal to all the villas. However, all more or less decent buildings were nationalized, and Voloshin’s dacha almost escaped the same fate. In Soviet times, thanks to the help of A. Lunacharsky, the poet managed to preserve his Koktebel monastery. The way out of the situation was to organize a creative house. After going through all the permitting procedures, in 1924 Voloshin was issued a safe conduct letter, which read: “Maximilian Voloshin, with the full approval of the People’s Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR, established a free holiday home for writers, artists, scientists in Koktebel in a house he owned...”

In the spring of 1927, Maximilian Voloshin married Maria Stepanovna Zabolotskaya. The poet's faithful girlfriend will courageously share difficult years with him and become a real support in life. After Voloshin’s death, Maria Stepanovna will preserve his creative heritage, as well as interior and household items that surrounded the writer during his lifetime.

Voloshin died on August 11, 1932 and was buried near Koktebel on Mount Kuchuk-Yanyshar. The funeral was attended by N. Chukovsky, G. Storm, Artobolevsky and A. Gabrichevsky

Voloshin House-Museum

Today, in an ancient building from the beginning of the 20th century, the house of the famous poet Maximilian Voloshin, there is a memorial museum, famous throughout the world. Everything in the poet’s house remained unchanged. Interior items that are 100 years old remember the times of Tsvetaeva, Bulgakov and Mandelstam. From the time of Voloshin, exclusive pieces of furniture decorated with inlay, painting, and burning have been preserved, including a desk for A.N. Tolstoy, made by the poet himself.

The museum's collection consists of Voloshin's personal belongings: paintings, documents, manuscripts, translations, letters, as well as a unique collection of books numbering about 10 thousand volumes. Many of them are rare and have autographs of the authors.

Thanks to Voloshin, the sound of poetry does not subside in Koktebel. Every year poetry festivals are held in the writer’s house. Creative people come from all over Russia, Ukraine and neighboring countries to communicate, be inspired by the atmosphere of the Crimean South Coast and then create imperishable works of art.