Pyotr Konchalovsky
1876-1956

Pyotr Konchalovsky
1876-1956

Despite being a winner of the Stalin Laureate in 1943, his appointment in 1946 as an Honoured Artist of the Russian Soviet Republic, and having his work emblazoned on Soviet postage stamps, Konchalovsky is – at his best – one the most important and recognizable artist of the pre-Soviet era.

With a colossal output of more than 5,000 paintings, Konchalovsky was, from 1910, a leading member of the ‘Jack of Diamonds’ group, together with Lentulov, Falk and Kuprin. These four artists were the principle filters of the work of Cézanne into the Russian Avant Garde and their group one of the first in Russia to exhibit the work of Western masters together with their own. Combining Fauvism and Cubism, Konchalovsky produced realist work that never quite carried over into abstraction.

After 1917, his work moved into an ever more realist style and, without entirely giving himself to the Soviet system (he apparently refused to paint Stalin), Konchalovsky concentrated on landscape and still-life painting. His first personal exhibition, at the Tretyakov Gallery in 1922, was followed by a further exhibition there in 1951 and, in total, 16 personal shows in Soviet Russia alone.

Married into the family of Vassily Surikov, one of the leading artists of the day, Konchalovsky became a member of the Soviet beau monde, founding a dynasty of painters and film directors – Andrei Konchalovsky among them – famous to this day.