Russian Art Aristarkh Lentulov

Aristarkh Lentulov was born in 1882 in the town of Nizhny Lomov, near Penza. His father, a rural priest, died just two years later, survived by his wife and four children. Lentulov was educated first at the religious school at Penza (where drawing became his favorite hobby) and, later, at the local seminary. Although the family struggled financially, when Penza Art College opened in 1898, he enrolled. After two years of study, he moved nearly 750 miles west to study at the Kiev School of Art, where he took a particular interest in the portrayal of light and color in painting. He later left the school with a group of like-minded student artists who wanted to find a better way to develop their styles away from traditional techniques and styles.

Lentulov failed to pass his entrance exams at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1907, but his bold style and his confidence in his work caught the attention of others, including artist, illustrator, and stage designer Dmitry Kardovsky. For two years, Lentulov studied in Kardovsky’s private studio in St. Petersburg. He went on to study at the Académie de la Palette and at the studio of Henri Le Fauconnier in Paris. Although he experimented with Fauvism, Post-Impressionism, and Cubism, Lentulov developed his own distinctive, colorful, Futurist-influenced style that earned the nickname “Futurist a la Russe” (The Russian Futurist) amongst his Parisian contemporaries. He is often credited with initiating the Russian art movement of Cubo-Futurism.(www.artinrussia.org)