Talashkino

a village 18 km from Smolensk, the former estate of the arts patron, collector, and artist M. K. Tenisheva; a historical and art preserve since 1946.

Talashkino’s park and the building that housed Tenisheva’s studio have been preserved. Two other buildings still stand, both done in the Russian style and located on the Flenovo farmstead near Talashkino: the Teremok (Little Tower), designed by S. V. Maliutin (1901–02), and the Church of the Holy Spirit, designed by Maliutin, Tenisheva, and I. F. Barshchevskii (1902–05) and with mosaics (1910–12, 1914) by N. K. Rerikh.

At the turn of the century, Talashkino was a notable artistic center. Seeking to revive peasant handicrafts, Tenisheva and her guest artists organized artistic training and manufacture workshops for such crafts as joinery, wood carving and painting, pottery, and embroidery. The articles produced, whether executed according to designs by professional artists or designed by the craftsmen themselves, combined the traditions of Russian folk art with features of the modernist style. Among those who visited and worked at Talashkino were the artists Maliutin, M. A. Vrurbel’, Rerikh, Aleksandr N. Benois, Al’bert N. Benois, M. V. Nesterov, K. A. Korovin, and I. E. Repin, the sculptor P. P. Trubetskoi, and the composers A. A. Andreev and I. F. Stravinsky.