KONSTANTIN KOROVIN

 KONSTANTIN KOROVIN

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SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture -by Gautam Shah

Konstantin Alekseyevich Korovin (1861-1939) was a leading Russian colourist, Impressionist, and later An Art Nouveau style painter. Korovin travelled within Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia, Italy and Spain, and loved visiting Paris every year. In Paris he visited boulevards at all different times of the day, but preferred painting in the evening ‘because it reminded him of the theatre and he thought the colours were more intense at night’.

Korovin used large flat brush strokes or directions to shape a form. He used large variety of tones, from mixed hues to purest shades, often straight out of the tubes. His colour contrasts were highly skilful that he began exploring in the design of sets. ‘All the colours of the world beckoned to him and smiled at him’.

One pupil has described him, as ‘Unusually emotional and impatient to act, he quickly burned with enthusiasm about everything that fell under his painter's eye’.

‘My major and the only ever-pursued purpose in the art was beauty, aesthetic influence on the viewer, the fascination of colours and shapes. No lecturing, no moral tendency to anybody ever.’

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ANNE ESTELLE RICE

 

ANNE ESTELLE RICE

SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture -by Gautam Shah

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Anna Estelle Rice (1877-1959) was an America born a modernist painter. In 1899-1902, she studied sculpture and life drawing. She arrived in Paris (1905), just in time to see Henri Matisse, display his Fauvist paintings. She became a part of the Parisian avant-garde art scene. Initially, she began composing with Manet’s and Impressionists’ vivid colours palette and style of brushwork. But from 1910 she turned to pure primary and secondary colours, and lines in place of planes. As she said “the value of line to give energy and force” — “the value of doing juxtapositions to create life and movement in masses of colour”. Later she moved away from Cubism.

FAUVISM is a style of painting that flourished in Paris from 1905-1910. It uses vivid expressionistic and non-naturalistic colours. Matisse is considered a main exponent of the style. (fauve means “wild beast”.)

Anna Estelle Rice was a skilled illustrator and contributed for social magazines (Colliers, Harpers, and Rhythm) and theatres (designing sets and costumes) during the 1930s.

Rice’s art shows less concern for finish. There is no fine detailing, at places, raw canvas and under-drawing show through. No attempt was made to soften the outlines, and the contours are left boldly as literal lines.

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