Alexander Kuprin
1880-1960

Alexander Kuprin
1880-1960

Born into a family of Russian intellectuals in Borisoglebsk, Kuprin was forced, after the death of his father in 1896, to become a railway conductor whilst at the same time taking free art lessons. Inspired by a Wanderers Society exhibition in nearby Voronezh in 1899, he moved to St Petersburg and entered the private studios of the battle painter, Dmitirev-Kavkazsky.

After a further period of privations, including a bout of tuberculosis, Kurpin moved to Moscow in 1904 and entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture where he studied under Yuon and Korovin. Like those before him, Kuprin saw the work of Cézanne and others in the collections of Morozov and Shchukin and was transfixed by them, joining the ‘Golden Fleece’ group the next year and in 1910 becoming a founder member of the ‘Knave of Diamonds’ group with Mashkov, Lentulov, Konchalovsky and Falk.

From 1913-14 Kuprin travelled abroad, returning before the outbreak of war and beginning to concentrate on still life and urban landscapes, sometimes in collage, sometimes in a Cubist manner. A supporter of the Revolution, Kuprin helped decorate Moscow for revolutionary holidays and in 1918 became a teacher at VKhUTEMAS, followed by an appointment between 1920 and 1922 as Head of the Nizhny Novgorod Art Studios.

Further teaching posts followed in the theatrical and ceramic sections of VKhUTEMAS and the Textile Institute in Moscow. By the mid-1920s he had become almost exclusively a painter of landscapes, largely of the Moscow District but also of the Caucases regions, Baku, Tbilisi, and the Crimea. In 1954 he was made an Honoured Artist of the Russian Soviet Republic.