Sketch for the Painting “Red Sunset”

Arkhyp Ivanovych Kuindzhi was a landscape painter, teacher, and patron of the arts of Greek origin from the Nadazov region. He was born in Mariupol in 1841 (1842). The father of the future artist was a poor shoemaker and died very early, followed by his mother. Kuindzhi was left a complete orphan, so he was raised by relatives. He received the basics of education first from a Greek teacher, and then at the Mariupol parish two-class academy (the city school). At about the age of 10, he left school due to the difficult financial situation of his relatives and began to work. At the same time, the boy's creative abilities awoke. He wanted to truly study painting and therefore walked from Mariupol to Feodosia, intending to enter the school of the great marine painter I.K. Aivazovsky. Unfortunately, at that time he did not gain the support of the great artist, so he returned to his hometown. At the same time, his creative work began as an assistant retoucher in a Mariupol photo studio. Later, he went to Odesa, and then to Taganrog, where he continued to master the profession of a retoucher. Kuyindzhi arrived in St. Petersburg around the mid-1860s. Unexpectedly, fate gave him a chance. He met the Academy of Arts students I.I. Shishkin, V.V. Vasnetsov, and I.Yu. Repin, independently painted a night landscape ("Tatar Saklya in the Moonlight on the Southern Coast of Crimea") and showed it at an academic exhibition. The result was his acquisition of the title of non-class artist and the opportunity to enter the Academy as a free student. Kuyindzhi's original creative activity began in the early 1870s. He created his first known cycle of paintings, "Valaam", and received the title of class artist. Starting in 1873, he participated in international exhibitions of paintings by the Society of Traveling Art Exhibitions, gaining recognition there. At this time, Kuindzhi created such paintings as: "Autumn Roadlessness" (1874), "Milky Way in Mariupol" (1875), "Ukrainian Night" (1876), "North", "After the Rain", "Birch Grove" (all - 1879), "Moonlit Night on the Dnipro" (1880), and "The Dnipro in the Morning" (1882). Starting from 1882, Kuindzhi stopped exhibiting. A period of his life began which art historians would later call his "period of silence". It continued until the artist's death, a long 28 years. But at this time, Kuindzhi did not stop his creative activity (the creative output of these years was more than 500 paintings and graphic works), was engaged in pedagogical activities (he was a professor at the Academy of Arts and head of the landscape workshop), and became a patron (donating 100 thousand rubles to the academy, supporting young talented artists). The artist passed away on July 11 (24), 1910 from an incurable heart disease. He was buried in St. Petersburg. The artist bequeathed all his capital to the Kuindzhi Society, founded on his initiative together with K.Ya. Kryzhitsky in November 1908 to support artists. A.I. Kuindzhi's paintings are stored and exhibited in many museums in the post-Soviet space and abroad.