Iuon, Konstantin

Born Oct. 12 (24), 1875, in Moscow; died there Apr. 11, 1958. Soviet painter. People’s Artist of the USSR (1950); member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1947). Member of the CPSU from 1951.

Iuon studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture from 1892 to 1898 under K. A. Savitskii, A. E. Arkhipov, and N. A. Kasatkin. After graduating he worked at the school, in V. A. Serov’s studio, from 1898 to 1900. He was a member of the World of Art, one of the organizers of the Union of Russian Artists, and a member of the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (1925).

Iuon employed motifs of the folklore, history, everyday life, and scenery of the Russian provinces. His rich, colorful painting style, which developed under the influence of impressionism, features varied compositional techniques incorporating architecture with landscape, for example, To the Trinity Church in March (1903).

In Soviet times, Iuon upheld the realistic traditions of Russian art, as in Cupola and Swallows (1921). He embodied themes of revolutionary history in such works as The Taking of the Kremlin in 1917 (1947) and captured the events and people of the Soviet era in The First Women on the Kolkhoz; In the Sun (1928), Parade on Red Square in Moscow on November 7, 1941 (1949), and Morning in Industrial Moscow (1949). All of the above works are housed in the Tret’iakov Gallery.

Iuon also produced designs for M. P. Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov (1912–13, Theatre des Champs-Elysées, Paris), M. Gorky’s play Egor Bulychov and the Others (1934, Moscow Art Theater), and Mussorgsky’s opera Khovanshchina (1940, Bolshoi Theater, Moscow). He worked in the graphic arts as well. Iuon taught at his own studio in Moscow with I. O. Dudin from 1900 to 1917, at the Moscow V. I. Surikov Art Institute, where he was a professor from 1952 and 1955, and at other institutions. From 1948 to 1950 he was the director of the Research Institute of the Theory and History of Fine Arts attached to the Academy of Arts of the USSR.

Iuon was the first secretary of the administrative board of the Artists’ Union of the USSR from 1957. A recipient of the State Prize of the USSR in 1943, he was awarded the Order of Lenin, two other orders, and several medals.