Nikritin graduated from the Kiev Art School in 1914, moving to Moscow shortly after where he studied under Leonid Pasternak. Whilst in Moscow he designed the scenery for a production of the ‘Green Ring’ at the Moscow Arts Theatre. Returning to Kiev, he designed the decorations for Revolutionary celebrations around the city and won the silver medal in the prize for a political poster in 1920. Evacuated from Kiev in 1920, the city was under threat of the Polish Army, he was sent to Kharkov where, in a stroke of good fortune, he met Anatoly Lunacharsky, Soviet Minister for the Enlightenment who suggested and indeed gave the recommendation to complete his education at VKhUTEMAS, the best school of its day and in 1920 Nikritin entered the studio of Vasily Kandinsky. >> Read more
Nikritin graduated from the Kiev Art School in 1914, moving to Moscow shortly after where he studied under Leonid Pasternak. Whilst in Moscow he designed the scenery for a production of the ‘Green Ring’ at the Moscow Arts Theatre. Returning to Kiev, he designed the decorations for Revolutionary celebrations around the city and won the silver medal in the prize for a political poster in 1920. Evacuated from Kiev in 1920, the city was under threat of the Polish Army, he was sent to Kharkov where, in a stroke of good fortune, he met Anatoly Lunacharsky, Soviet Minister for the Enlightenment who suggested and indeed gave the recommendation to complete his education at VKhUTEMAS, the best school of its day and in 1920 Nikritin entered the studio of Vasily Kandinsky. IN 1921 he founded the Projectionists Group whose ideas were based on biomechanics. The Group was joined by luminaries such as Redko, Tyshler and Luchishkin, taking part in the ‘First Discussion Exhibition of Active Revolutionary Art’ in 1924. In 1925 Nikritin became the Head if the ‘Analytical Cabinet’ of the Museum of Painterly Culture in Moscow, where he also held personal exhibitions in 1926 and 1927, a post he held until its closure in 1929. In the 1930’s he was the Main Artist at the Polytechnical Museum but drifted into art, for example ‘The People’s Court’ and, ‘The Old and the New’, that was very much at odds with the Soviet system leaving him, according to certain sources, ‘alive only by a miracle’. Banned from exhibiting, it was only the death of Stalin that caused a re-assessment of this artist, quite unique to the Soviet hierarchy and he was awarded a personal exhibition at the Moscow Society of Artists in 1969.
Nikritin, more than any other artist, owes his fame to the active collecting of George Costakis and an exhibition ‘The Sphere of light, the Station of Darkness’ was held at his Museum in Salonika whilst the Tretyakov Gallery put on the exhibition of his oils and works on paper in 2007.
