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Terpsikhorov: Master Artist of Mother Russia
13 September - 16 October 2008
Nikolai Borisovich Terpsikhorov (1890-1960) is well beloved among devotees and connoisseurs of Russian art. Among Soviet era artists whose paintings are both realistic and exhibit Narodnost, the “interests of the people and of the land,” Terpsikhorov takes a prominent place. He received an art education at the beginning of the twentieth century, before the Bolshevik coup, but matured to become an original master only after the Great October socialist revolution of 1917. The oeuvre of Terpsikhorov encompasses many subjects including revolutionary, history, ethnographic, and working-class genre paintings, as well as portraits and an abundance of landscapes. Since the mastery of Terpsikhorov was developed on the basis of the reflection of Soviet life, all his pictures bear a definite stamp of social themes and revolutionary times. Yet, ultimately he is a painter of Russia and its exotic far flung empire. He is among the truly important Russian artists of his age, and this retrospective exhibition represents a fair spectrum of his body of work. He stands as a master artist of Mother Russia.
 Born in St. Petersburg in 1890 to a middle class family, he attended the Moscow College of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (MuZhVZ, later called the Surikov Institute of Art). There his instructors taught him to feel and reproduce the poetics and beauty of Russian nature with its visual wealth and variety. After his service in the military, however, a new epoch in art began in Russia. The political and military milieu in the country connected with the events of the revolution, which promoted more traditional art as a service to the people, played a decisive role in the formation of a new attitude for Terpsikhorov. He, with other realist artists, began to realize that the winds blew toward the progressive social tasks of art. Accordingly, many of his earlier works focused on kartina paintings, and thus most scholars have viewed him merely as Bloshevik partiinost painter.
 This view, however, diverts attention from his thirty-five year career of outstanding aesthetic production in many genres including landscape. The living and inspired landscapes of Terpsikhorov are always connected with the thought of man, his sorrows and joys, which is why they naturally supplemented his genre painting. Terpsikhorov’s love of people, life, and the lively truth in art assisted his creative work. He continued to integrate fresh influences within himself. His artistic reputation as an AKhRR and Socialist Realist painter is now being positively reevaluated. Terpsikhorov will be placed among the leading Soviet artists of his day.
A full catalogue written by Dr. Vern G. Swanson and Nicole C. Romney, MA will accompany this exhibition.
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