Mikhail Vasilyevich Matyushin (October 16/28, 1861, Nizhny Novgorod — October 14, 1934, Leningrad) was a Russian artist, musician, composer, art theorist, publisher, and educator, one of the leaders of the Russian avant-garde in the first half of the 20th century.[1] Born in Nizhny Novgorod, he took his first musical steps there and later became one of the central figures of the St. Petersburg avant-garde movement of the 1900s–1920s.[2]

Origins and the Nizhny Novgorod Years

Matyushin was the illegitimate son of the accountant Nikolay Aleksandrovich Saburov (brother of the Alexandrinsky Theater actress Ye. A. Saburova) and the serf Irina Petrovna Matyushina; his father did not acknowledge him, and the boy took his mother's surname.[1] By the age of seven he had taught himself to read and write, and at nine he made a violin and tuned it himself. A friend of his elder brother heard the boy's virtuoso playing and took him to Villuan, the director of the newly opened Nizhny Novgorod Conservatory; Matyushin was accepted at once, and he studied the violin there under the assistant director Lapin.[3] From 1870 he sang in a church choir together with his brother Yegor.[1] In 1874 his elder brother Nikolay moved the whole family to Moscow.[1]

Musical Career

From 1876 to 1881 Matyushin studied at the Moscow Conservatory under Professor A. A. Gilf (violin) and S. I. Taneyev (harmony).[1] Seeking to avoid military service and to find steady work, he passed a competitive audition and from December 1882 to September 1913 held the post of "first violin" in the Court Orchestra in St. Petersburg.[1] The young orchestra performed an extensive repertoire — classics and new works of Western European and Russian music; from the late 1890s Matyushin also played in the Italian opera at the Panayevsky Theater.[3] In 1885 he married M. I. Patuak (Patzak); the couple had four children.[1]

Path in the Visual Arts and the Avant-Garde

At the end of the nineteenth century, Matyushin turned to painting. On the advice of the artist I. E. Krachkovsky, whom he met through his wife, he enrolled in the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, where he studied from 1894 to 1898. In 1900 he visited the World's Fair in Paris and studied the collections of the Louvre and the Luxembourg Museum.[1] He later studied in the studio of Ya. F. Tsionglinsky (1903–1905), where he met the artist Elena Genrikhovna Guro, who became his second wife (around 1904–1906), and then in the studio of E. N. Zvantseva under M. V. Dobuzhinsky and L. S. Bakst (1906–1908).[1]

In 1909, after joining N. Kulbin's group "Impressionists," Matyushin met the Burliuk brothers and the poets V. Kamensky and V. Khlebnikov. In 1910, together with Guro, he initiated the founding of the "Union of Youth" and established the Zhuravl ("Crane") publishing house, which released about 20 Futurist books before 1917, including the first collection of the Cubo-Futurists, "A Trap for Judges" (1910).[2][3] In 1912 he met K. Malevich, V. Mayakovsky, and A. Kruchenykh. Matyushin's house at 10 Pesochnaya Street became an unofficial "refuge for artists and writers": Mayakovsky, Pavel Filonov, Velimir Khlebnikov, David Burliuk, and other figures of the avant-garde visited it.[2]

In 1911 Matyushin became fascinated by the "fourth dimension" ideas of the philosopher and mathematician P. D. Ouspensky and by the organic theory of N. O. Lossky. On this basis, by the mid-1910s, his own scientific and philosophical view of art had taken shape.[1] In 1923 he created the group "KORN" ("Collective of Expanded Observation"), developing the "Zorved" system ("zor" — sight, and "vedat" — to know), a theoretical basis for the expanded perception of space and color.[2][4]

Teaching and Late Period

After the Revolution of 1917, Matyushin taught at the Academy of Arts and headed the department of organic culture at the State Institute of Artistic Culture (GINKhUK).[2] His students included many artists who united in the "Zorved" group.[4] After Guro's death in 1913, his third wife became the writer and former revolutionary Olga Konstantinovna Gromozova.[4] Matyushin died on October 14, 1934, in Leningrad.[1]

In 2004, the academic council of the State Museum of the History of Saint Petersburg approved a concept for creating a Museum of the Petersburg Avant-Garde in Matyushin's former house at 10 Professora Popova Street.[2]

Sources

  1. rusavangard.ru — MATYUSHIN Mikhail Vasilyevich
  2. dates.pr-cbs.ru — Memorable Dates of the Petrogradskaya Side. Matyushin Mikhail Vasilyevich
  3. spb-tombs-walkeru.narod.ru — Matyushin Mikhail Vasilyevich
  4. yavarda.ru — Matyushin Mikhail Vasilyevich — Avant-Garde Artist and Violinist