Pavel Korin

Born June 25 (July 7), 1892, in Palekh; died Nov. 22, 1967, in Moscow. Soviet painter. People’s Artist of the USSR (1962). Became a member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR in 1958.

Korin, the son of a peasant icon painter, studied under K. A. Korovin and S. V. Maliutin at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture from 1912 to 1916. His long friend-ship with M. V. Nesterov and A. M. Gorky greatly influenced his creative development. Korin headed the restoration workshop of the A. S. Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts from 1932 to 1959. In collaboration with his brother A. D. Korin (born 1895) and others, he restored paintings in the Dresden Picture Gallery. Korin’s own works are characterized by the spirituality and boldness of images, the orderliness and clarity of design, the integrity of plastic forms, and the intense saturation of color.

From the late 1920’s to 1940, Korin worked on the canvas The Rus’ Left Behind (including the studies Skhimnitsa, 1930, and Father and Son, 1931—both in the Tret’iakov Gallery), in which he endeavored to create a figurative epic of the old Russia that was becoming part of the past. In the landscape painting My Country (1928, 1947, Tret’iakov Gallery), Korin created a lyrical image of his native countryside.

Beginning in the late 1930’s, Korin was principally interested in depicting his contemporaries—representatives of the Soviet artistic intelligentsia. He imparted to his portraits images of purposeful people, full of intellectual tension. These qualities are reflected in his portraits of L. M. Leonidov (1939), M. V. Nesterov (1939), and N. F. Gamaleia (1941), which are all in the Tret’iakov Gallery. In 1963, Korin was awarded the Lenin Prize for his portraits of M. S. Sar’ian (1956), R. N. Simonov (1956), the Kukryniksy (1958), and R. Guttuso (1961); these portraits are also in the Tret’iakov Gallery.

From 1941 to 1945 and during the postwar period, Korin executed works that were filled with the fervor of the war years and with the invincible spirit of the Russian people. These works include the triptych Alexander Nevsky (1942—43, Tret’iakov Gallery) and a series of portraits of Soviet military leaders. Korin’s principal monumental works, which were created in the 1950’s, include the mosaic plafonds in the KomsomoPskaia-koPtsevaia subway station (1951; State Prize of the USSR, 1952), the stained glass in the Novoslobodskaia subway station (1951), and the mosaic in the new Smolenskaia subway station (1953) in Moscow. He also designed a mosaic for Moscow State University (1952).