Draft:Alessio Issupoff

Alessio Issupoff is a Russian and Soviet painter.

Alessio Issupoff
Born	(1889-03-10)March 10, 1889 Vyatka, Russian Empire
Died	June 17, 1957(1957-06-17) (aged 68) Rome, Italy
Nationality	Russian Empire, USSR

Biography

Aleksej Vladimirovich Isupov, known with the Italianized name of Alessio Issupoff, was born in Vyatka (present-day Kirov) on March 10, 1889. He was the son of an engraver and gilder of icons. Issupoff learned to paint studying with the artisan painters who worked with his father. Wanting to give expression to his artistic creativity, the young Alessio did not undertake the paternal profession but left Vjatka for Moscow, where he attended the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture.

The painter Apollinary Vasnetsov, Viktor's brother, mentored him and introduced him to the Moscow artistic circles, and helped him find work. Issupoff formed his own aesthetic "taste" by modulating it on contemporary Russian and French art, by studying and visiting museums. In addition to Vasnetsov, he had teachers Valentin Serov and Konstantin Korovin, who educated him on genre painting, landscape painting, and portraiture. After graduating in 1912, he began to travel to Ural. Assigned to the garrison of Tashkent, he avoided having the experience of the First World War. After his military service, he traveled to Turkestan immersing himself in a colorful and "magical" environment, which would have strongly marked his painting. Many of his best-known works, in fact, offer suggestive visions of the most remote moors of Central Asia.

Having settled in Samarkand with his wife Tamara Nikolaevna, he performed the functions of director of the local Restoration and Conservation Committee for works of art and city monuments here. He then perfected himself in the technique of tempera on a wooden panel, creating works that, in style, refer to traditional icon painting. The return to Moscow, which occurred in 1921, marked the beginning of the most suffered period of his private life. Finding himself in economic hardship, Issupoff was reduced to being the "regime" artist, that is, to painting portraits of senior Soviet leaders and scenes inspired by the Russian Revolution and the Red Army enterprises. Once again it was Vasnetsov who helped him, finding him a salaried job within one of the many Muscovite Committees. Afflicted by health problems, in 1926 he went to Italy to heal himself. His life then took a radical turn. Italy was the place of its personal and artistic rebirth. Issupoff immediately found a benevolent and flattering welcome. Since his arrival, he has had the opportunity to be appreciated by critics and the public. Already in 1926, his first solo exhibition was set up in Rome. Numerous other exhibitions followed in the most important cities of the Peninsula and, in 1930, the XVII Venice Biennale "consecrated" the work of the Russian painter. Enjoying esteem, ease, and freedom of expression, the artist decided not to return.

How painful this decision had been demonstrated by Issupoff's own production. By painting "by heart", he recreated the Russia he had left. Not the Soviet one, but the pre-revolutionary one he had known in childhood and youth. "The impressions he has of his country return to the new paintings with greater richness of motifs and amplitude of unwinds: misty heaths, the rivers that cross, freezing and gloomy, the white countryside of snow, birches that embroider their silver frappe between veils of fog, and grazing horses, sled, troika, plow "[1]. Nostalgia, combined with unsteady health, exacerbated the depression, which struck him in old age making him holed up in his own home and isolating him from the world. In recent years, says his wife Tamara, he painted very little and was never present at the inauguration of the exhibitions dedicated to him. He died in Rome on 17 July 1957 and was buried in the Testaccio cemetery. Nine years later, Tamara returned to Russia carrying the paintings inherited from her husband. Many of these works were donated by her to the art museum of Vjatka, the birthplace of Issupoff.

Art

Themes, styles and orientations Issupoff painted mainly the places and faces of his home country. When portraying an Italian peasant woman, her hand drew a face with Slavic features, while the small countryside of central Italy, on her canvas, became a corner of boundless Russia. The female figure, the genre scene, and the landscape were his favorite themes. Given the frequency with which they appear in his works, it can be said that he loved horses very much. «The horses of the Issupoff» writes Giorgio Nicodemi [3] «are not those of the elegant meetings (...) they are those of the Russian peasants or small owners, attached to cars or mounted by people who know how to ride well». As a young man, Issupoff could have been labeled as an "Orientalist painter", while at a mature age he was primarily a portraitist and landscape painter. The broad brushstroke and the supremacy given to colors (instead of drawing) express his will to highlight the spirit rather than the shape of things. This is evident in some scenes painted with elements so elementary as to border on the sketch. It would seem then that the vivid subjectivity of the artist Issupoff prevails over the "objective" world. He, therefore, "is to be placed among the masters who drew from Impressionism the norm of an open and breathing painting of light".