The red horse is aphoristic, we can easily remember it - moreover, it is self-fixed in memory. Petrov-Vodkin’s Horse-Fire is such a syncretized symbol of the folk myth closest to us, therefore, in order to understand the brotherhood of its subtexts, we will need to merge together two of the most mythological and powerful parallels of thinking - to merge in the way that, perhaps, it merged in the mind of the artist himself.

Of course, since the painting was painted (1912), art critics, historians, writers and cultural experts have studied thousands of references to horses in Russian life for common points of contact. But what turned out to be more convincing was that the painting “Bathing the Red Horse” is a harbinger of the coming revolutionary chaos, because ahead were the year 17, and the Civil War, and the RSFSR, and further down the list. The year 05 remained behind us with uprisings and bloody flags. They decided to attribute the essence of the horse to this color. At the World of Art exhibition, where the painting was exhibited, it was not given a place on the stand, but the canvas was hung above the front door, “like a banner around which you can rally.” I think it is unnecessary to say how closely the image of the red animal correlated with everything revolutionary.

We deliberately reject everything red in the context of the ideas of Leninism; we throw off the need to interpret the painting with the help of Freud’s discoveries (it’s scary to even think where this could lead us) and with a strong-willed gesture we reject interpretations like “ the experience of inaction, enchanted stillness, but felt movement(?)". When interpreting the horse, we will take a slightly different path.

Until now we have not mentioned one important detail: the young man. What is its purpose on the canvas, the horse will again help us. The young man is indeed not Apollo, but his rather weak whip-like hands hold the reins of the animal with uncertainty. In the concept of the picture, these two characters appeared simultaneously. From sources we know how it all began:

The first version (later destroyed by the author himself) was compositionally as a whole already close to the final solution. It was an almost real scene of horses and boys bathing on the Volga, well known to the artist from childhood. And then a magnificent, bluish-green lake appeared before his eyes... The cold sky hung low, bare trees swayed their branches above the brown earth. The sun kept peeking out and hiding, and the first clap of thunder scattered across the sky. The horses curled their ears and carefully, as in a circus arena, moved their front legs. The boys whooped, fidgeted on the shiny backs of the horses, kicked their sides with their bare heels...

The artist's hand slowly sketched horses, naked children, lake, sky, earth and distant hills. Some kind of vague vision suddenly crept into this real and completely cloudless picture: behind the distant hills the artist suddenly saw a large, painfully familiar and native country. Dark crowds of people with red banners walked along it...

It is worth noting that Petrov-Vodkin copied the young man from Shura Trofimov’s nephew, and the first sketches of the horse were taken from “a bay horse, old, but with a good muzzle.” Returning to the question, what kind of rider is this and what is his function, we can make the following remark: the horse’s neck is very thick, in other respects, like the body - real horses have more plastic shapes. Our horse-fire is unusually large and the normal human proportions of the rider only confirm this conclusion. True, it happens the other way around; The million-dollar question: where is spring in Venetsianov’s painting “Spring in the Field”?

All this gives us the right to say that the red horse is not a metaphor for the “petrel of the revolution,” and indeed not a metaphor at all, but a symbol. This is important for us.

Another observation of the painting will tell us that there are no shadows in it. At all. The Petrov-Vodkin technique requires conventional understanding, but a shadow on a flat image gives objects their size and volume. Moreover, the horse itself in the foreground and all the planning in the background are devoid of perspective. A flat image of an animal with a rider seems to be collaged and artificially superimposed on the background. In addition, the color scheme on the canvas is not mixed. That is, one color does not flow into another. Which, of course, was done on purpose - in order to draw and highlight the horse completely red. Not pink, pale red, scarlet, carmine or burgundy. The color is red. This shade is classic or even textbook for another direction of art: icon painting.

It is known how interested Pertrov-Vodkin was in icons executed using the technique of the Moscow and Novgorod school of icon painting and how much it amazed him. It is in the icon painting technique that every picture is devoid of perspective, and, consequently, shadows and volume. The boy-rider's face is tilted slightly to one side, like that of a saint or martyr. Even his body shimmers in gold - thematic color.

With the image of a horse it is more difficult. From the biography of Petrov-Vodkin it is known that he was born in Khvalynsk on the Volga into a poor working family. From childhood, Kuzma Sergeevich absorbed all the Russianness or even the nationality of the then empire. The horse symbol does not even relate to childhood, but to the archaic common cultural past. The horse's eyes are fiery, cheerful, mischievous, but extremely thoughtful and deep. All he's missing is steam from his mouth. I think it was the Russian fairy tale myth that played a decisive role in the image of the canvas. Let's turn to a traditional fairy tale.

In Vladimir Propp’s book “The Historical Roots of the Fairy Tale we read”:

On Russian icons depicting snake fighting, the horse is almost always either completely white or fiery red. In these cases, the color red clearly represents the color of flame, which corresponds to the fiery nature of the horse.

White color is the color of otherworldly creatures, creatures that have lost their corporeality. That's why ghosts appear white. This is how the horse is, and it is no coincidence that he is sometimes called invisible: “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state, there are green meadows, and there is an invisible mare, and she has 12 foals.”

Observation of the color shows that the horse is sometimes represented as red, and in the icons depicting George on a horse fighting a snake - red. There is no need to repeat here the details regarding the fiery nature of the horse: sparks fly from the nostrils, fire and smoke pour from the ears, etc. We need to explain this phenomenon.

This is how Oldenberg describes the ceremony of lighting the sacred horse: “The senior priest orders one of the subordinate priests: “Bring the horse.” The horse stands near the place where the friction of the fire should take place, so that he looks at the process of friction... There is no doubt that the horse is nothing other than the embodiment of Agni." Here the horse looks at friction, but in the Vedic hymns it is extracted from flint: “Agni, which was produced as a newborn by the friction of two sticks” (Rigveda). Agni not only in many details, but also in essence, in its main function, coincides with the horse. He is the god-mediator (“messenger”) between the two worlds, taking the dead to heaven in fire. The religion of the Vedas is a very late phenomenon.

In addition, the main function of the horse in mythology is mediation between two kingdoms. He takes the hero to the thirtieth kingdom. In beliefs, he often transports the deceased to the land of the dead. Someone may even take the liberty of suggesting that since in the picture the horse seems to be going to the left, it means he is going there... But we will not highlight this idea.

In general, in art before Petrov-Vodkin, horse-fire was not a common image. He reigned supreme in myths and fairy tales, but was of little interest to people of modern times. True, this does not at all detract from all the power and charge of the image that the icon carries.

By the way, the winged horse that we see on the icon “The Miracle of the Archangel Michael” is traditionally a relic of the totemic bird, which, according to the rules of the fairy tale, carries the hero to the thirtieth kingdom. With the evolution of consciousness and spatial concepts, the horse replaces the bird. Hence his wings, so clearly used in Greek myth (Pegasus, Apollo's chariot, Bellerophon, Pelops, etc.). The last mythological connection of the horse - with water - remains unclear. Propp:

Another feature of the horse is its connection with water. He also shares this connection with water with his European and Asian counterparts - with the Indian Agni and the Greek Pegasus. True, this seahorse is somewhat unusual in the fairy tale, it is found relatively less often and is not always the hero’s assistant.

What did we get? Firstly, it became clear that the horse is a symbol that has its roots in the archetype itself, in myth and, as a consequence, in ancient Russian fairy tales. The horse is the assistant of the hero who is about to embark on a difficult journey. Whether he needs to pass through the mirror of water in order to find himself in the “far away kingdom” or ascend there on wings is no longer important to us. The horse is a magical ancient assistant to the hero, who, “like Vanka,” may not have the virtues of the ancient Greek gods, but be more of a spirit than a body. And the image of a thin boy-rider is just that.
The canvas was always intended to be revolutionary. Revolution comes from the Latin word “coup”, that is, a generation gap. “Bathing the red horse” is the opposite, continuity. In the composition of the painting, the entire archetypal pre-Christian essence of the animal and the plot as a whole is transferred into the mainstream of the iconographic tradition.

And now the most important thing. In icon painting, the color red has two meanings: it is also a symbol of life, animal energy, and the Resurrection. But it is also red, this is the color of sacrificial blood. That is, the victim sheds his blood for PMC love of something or someone. So the horse doesn't even PMCyes xia - is PMCyes sins and blood and 05th and 17th and further down the list...dragged into the abode of death, so that he would know
he is the sorrow of the shadows of the languid, unhappy
and he came to the sacred gates,
where he guards the abode of beautiful souls.

Painting

History of creation

In 1912, Petrov-Vodkin lived in southern Russia, on an estate near Kamyshin. There is an opinion that the painting was painted in the village of Gusevka. It was then that he made the first sketches for the painting. And also the first, unpreserved version of the canvas, known from black and white photography, was painted. The picture was a work of everyday life rather than symbolic, as happened with the second version; it depicted simply several boys with horses. This first version was destroyed by the author, probably soon after his return to St. Petersburg.

Petrov-Vodkin based the horse on a real stallion named Boy, who lived on the estate. To create the image of a teenager sitting astride him, the artist used the features of his nephew Shura.

Description of the canvas

The large, almost square canvas depicts a lake of cold bluish shades, which serves as the background for the semantic dominant of the work - the horse and rider. The figure of the red stallion occupies the entire foreground of the picture almost completely. He is given so large that his ears, croup and legs below the knees are cut off by the picture frame. The rich scarlet color of the animal seems even brighter in comparison with the cool color of the landscape and the light body of the boy.

Waves of a slightly greenish tint, compared to the rest of the surface of the lake, scatter from the front leg of the horse entering the water. The entire canvas is an excellent illustration of the spherical perspective so beloved by Petrov-Vodkin: the lake is round, which is emphasized by a fragment of the shore in the upper right corner, the optical perception is slightly distorted.

In total, the painting depicts three horses and three boys - one in the foreground riding a red horse, the other two behind him on the left and right sides. One leads a white horse by the bridle, the other, visible from the back, riding an orange one, rides into the depths of the picture. These three groups form a dynamic curve, emphasized by the same curve of the red horse's front leg, the same curve of the boy rider's leg, and the pattern of the waves.

Influence of iconography

It is believed that the horse was originally bay, and that the master changed its color after becoming acquainted with the color scheme of Novgorod icons, which he was shocked by.

The collection and clearing of icons was in its heyday in 1912.

From the very beginning, the picture caused numerous disputes, in which it was invariably mentioned that such horses do not exist. However, the artist claimed that he adopted this color from ancient Russian icon painters: for example, on the icon "The Miracle of the Archangel Michael" the horse is depicted completely red. As in the icons, in this picture there is no mixing of colors; the colors are contrasting and seem to collide in confrontation.

Avant-garde influence

Contemporary perception

The painting so impressed contemporaries with its monumentality and fate that it was reflected in the works of many masters of brush and words. This is how Sergei Yesenin came up with the following lines:

The red horse acts as the Fate of Russia, which the fragile and young rider is unable to hold. According to another version, the Red Horse is Russia itself, identified with

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Bathing the red horse. 1912 Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

We are all accustomed to looking at “The Bathing of the Red Horse” by Petrov-Vodkin as a symbol of the 1917 Revolution.

Yes, Petrov-Vodkin was sympathetic to the revolution. And one of the few pre-revolutionary artists was able to adapt to the new world.

But is everything so clear? After all, the picture was painted 5 years before the revolution, in 1912.

Where did the idea for The Red Horse come from? And how did he turn from a genre scene into a symbol of an entire era?

Features of "Bathing the Red Horse"

Petrov-Vodkin's work was very bold for the beginning of the 20th century.

Although the event depicted is not such a significant one. The boys are just bathing the horses.

But the main horse is an unexpected color. Red. And rich red.

Behind are pink and white horses. Against their background, the redness of the main horse appears even more clearly.

The image is almost flat. Clear outline. The black bit, black hoof and black eye make the horse even more stylized.

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Bathing the red horse (detail). 1912

The water under the hooves is more like a thin fabric. Which bubbles under the hooves and diverges into folds.

And also a double perspective. We look at the horse from the side. But the lake is from above. That's why we don't see the sky, the horizon. The reservoir stands almost vertically in front of us.

All these painting techniques were unusual for Russia at the very beginning of the 20th century. Considering that at that time the works of Vrubel were very popular, and. She was a rising star.

Where did Petrov-Vodkin get all these ideas for his painting?

How Petrov-Vodkin’s style developed

The simplified color scheme and minimalism in details are a direct influence of the works of Matisse.

This is especially noticeable in the work “Boys at Play.” Which was created almost at the same time as “The Bathing of the Red Horse.”

Doesn't she remind you of anything?

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Boys playing. 1911

Of course, much in it has something in common with. At that time, the work had already been bought by Russian collector Sergei Shchukin. And Petrov-Vodkin saw her.

Henri Matisse. Dance (II). 1909-1910

At the same time, scientists and artists began to take an active interest in icon painting. It was at the beginning of the 20th century that many ancient icons were cleared away. And the world realized what an important layer of world painting had been ignored until now.

Petrov-Vodkin was delighted with the iconography. It was on them that he saw the red horses. Before the Renaissance, artists used color freely.

And if the horse was considered beautiful, then it was symbolically depicted red.

Icon "St. Demetrius of Thessalonica on horseback." 16th century. Albanian Museum of Medieval Art

Petrov-Vodkin’s signature tricolor (red-blue-yellow) – the predominant colors of the icons.

This is how, by mixing the features of modernism and icon painting, Petrov-Vodkin formed his own unique style. Which we see in “Bathing the Red Horse”.

“Bathing the Red Horse” among other works by Petrov-Vodkin

To understand what makes the painting unique, it is important to compare it with other works of the artist.

Formally, “Bathing the Red Horse” does not stand out much among Petrov-Vodkin’s other works.

Of course, he did not arrive at his recognizable color scheme right away.

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A few years earlier, the master’s color solutions were different, the shades were more varied. This can be clearly seen in the work “The Shore” of 1908.

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Shore. 1908 Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

In the same years that “The Bathing of the Red Horse” Petrov-Vodkin created paintings in the same style: three-color, simplified background.

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Two girls. 1913

Even after the revolution, the style remains the same. And even the horse appears again.

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Fantasy. 1925 Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

In Soviet times, simplicity remained. But the shadows and volume returned. Socialists ruled the roost. realism. And all sorts of modernist “things” were banned.

Therefore, the background becomes more complex. This is not just a meadow painted over with pure green. This is already a cliff with a complex pattern of stones. And well-described village houses.

Although we still see the “signature” tricolor.

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Spring. 1935 Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

When you look at a number of these works created by the artist over 30 years, you realize that “Bathing the Red Horse” does not stand out as particularly unique.

So how did the painting become the artist's most famous work? And most importantly, how did you “manage” to become a symbol of an entire era?

Why did “Bathing the Red Horse” become a symbol of the era?

At first, Petrov-Vodkin began to paint “The Bathing of the Red Horse” as another picture based on an everyday subject. And really, what’s unusual is that the boys, the groom’s assistants, came to wash the horses at the lake.

But then the artist began to consciously give it monumental features. Realizing that it is increasingly moving beyond the boundaries of the everyday genre.

As we already understood, Petrov-Vodkin loved the color red. But in this case, red is not just a peasant woman’s skirt or a worker’s cap. And a whole horse. Color becomes more than just dominant. But simply all-consuming.

In addition, the horse is deliberately enlarged. He just doesn't fit in the picture. The horse's legs, tail and ears were not included in the frame.

He is very close to us. He literally falls on us. Hence the feeling of anxiety and discomfort.

And to top it off - the detached, out-of-place calm look of the young rider. Not only is it difficult for us to believe that such a young man can cope with such a colossus. He's also not particularly focused.

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Bathing the red horse (fragment). 1912 Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

As a rule, this does not lead to good. And we all know what the good intentions of the revolutionaries led to. When the “Red Horse” at some point got out of control and began to crush everyone. No longer understanding who is right and who is wrong.

All this together makes the picture symbolic and prophetic.

Can Petrov-Vodkin be called a visionary? To some extent, yes. Brilliant artists are able to read the invisible layers of the Universe without realizing it.

He didn't realize it. Considering that he painted the horse on the eve of the First World War. Not suspecting that his entire country would soon be painted red. On the world map.

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Work on the painting began in the winter of 1912. The artist began to paint his first sketches on the Mishkina Pier farmstead in the Saratov province. The first, unsurvived version of the canvas is known from a black and white photograph. The painting was a work of everyday life rather than symbolic; it simply depicted several boys with horses. Petrov-Vodkin based the horse on a real stallion named Boy, who lived on the estate. To create the image of a teenager sitting astride him, the artist used the features of his nephew Shura. This first version was destroyed by the author, probably soon after his return to St. Petersburg.

The fact is that a magnificent, bluish-green lake appeared before his eyes... The cold sky hung low, bare trees swayed their branches above the brown earth. The sun kept peeking out and hiding, and the first clap of thunder scattered across the sky. The horses curled their ears and carefully, as in a circus arena, moved their front legs. The horse on which one of the boys was sitting was bright red. .

The figure of the red stallion occupied the entire foreground of the picture almost completely. He is given so large that his ears, croup and legs below the knees are cut off by the picture frame. The rich scarlet color of the animal seems even brighter in comparison with the cool color of the landscape and the light body of the boy. Waves of a slightly greenish tint, compared to the rest of the surface of the lake, scatter from the front leg of the horse entering the water. The entire canvas is an excellent illustration of the spherical perspective so beloved by Petrov-Vodkin: the lake is round, which is emphasized by a fragment of the shore in the upper right corner, the optical perception is slightly distorted.

In total, the painting depicts 3 horses and 3 boys - one in the foreground riding a red horse, the other two behind him on the left and right sides. One leads a white horse by the bridle, the other, visible from the back, riding an orange one, rides into the depths of the picture. These three groups form a dynamic curve, emphasized by the same curve of the red horse's front leg, the same curve of the boy rider's leg, and the pattern of the waves.

From the very beginning, the picture caused numerous disputes, in which it was invariably mentioned that such horses do not exist. However, the artist claimed that he adopted this color from ancient Russian icon painters: for example, in the icon “The Miracle of the Archangel Michael” the horse is depicted completely red. As in the icons, in this picture there is no mixing of colors; the colors are contrasting and seem to collide in confrontation. The collection and clearing of icons was in its heyday in 1912.

K. Petrov-Vodkin himself was called an ancient Russian master, who by some miracle found himself in the future.
And here he abandoned linear perspective in favor of reverse perspective. His red horse seems to be superimposed on the image of the lake. And it seems to the viewer that the red horse and rider are no longer in the picture, but in front of it - in front of the viewer and in front of the canvas itself. He came to us here from the heavenly world.

The painting so impressed contemporaries with its monumentality and fate that it was reflected in the works of many masters of brush and words. This is how Sergei Yesenin came up with the following lines:

“I have now become more stingy in my desires.
My life! Or did I dream about you!
As if I were a booming early spring
He rode on a pink horse."

The red horse acts as the Fate of Russia, which the fragile and young rider is unable to hold. According to another version, the Red Horse is Russia itself, identified with Blokov’s “steppe mare.” In this case, one cannot help but note the prophetic gift of the artist, who symbolically predicted with his painting the “red” fate of Russia in the 20th century.

Since ancient times, the image of a horse in Russian art (and not just one) has been perceived as significant. In the figurative and poetic structure of Slavic mythology, the horse was an adviser and savior of man, a seer, it was a horse of fate, whose every step meant a lot.

The epic power of a fiery horse, the gentle fragility and peculiar sophistication of a pale youth, the sharp patterns of waves in a small bay, the smooth arc of a pink shore - this is what makes up this unusually multifaceted and especially heightened picture. On it, almost the entire plane of the canvas is filled with a huge, powerful figure of a red horse with a young rider sitting on it. The fateful significance of the horse is conveyed by K. Petrov-Vodkin not only by the stately, solemn step and the very pose of the horse, but also by the humanly proud position of his head on a long, swan-like curved neck.

In contrast to the horse, the young rider - a naked teenage boy - seems fragile and weak. And although his hand holds the reins, he himself obeys the confident gait of the horse. It is not without reason that the art critic V. Lipatov emphasized that “the horse is majestic, monumental, full of mighty strength; if he rushes, his indomitable run will not be stopped.” The power of the horse, its restrained strength and enormous internal energy are precisely emphasized by the fragility of the rider, his dreamy detachment, as if he were in a special inner world.

The fate of the picture also turned out to be extraordinary.

The painting was first shown at the World of Art exhibition in 1912 and was a stunning success. In 1914, she was at the “Baltic Exhibition” in Malmo (Sweden). For participation in this exhibition, K. Petrov-Vodkin was awarded a medal and a certificate by the Swedish king. The outbreak of the First World War, then the revolution and civil war led to the fact that the painting remained in Sweden for a long time. After the end of World War II and after stubborn and grueling negotiations, finally, in 1950, Petrov-Vodkin’s works, including this painting, were returned to their homeland. The artist’s widow donated the painting to the collection of the famous collector K.K. Basevich, and she donated it to the Tretyakov Gallery in 1961.

And today, 104 years after the Red Horse appeared to us on the eve of 2017, this is what we will say about this picture.

“The greenish-blue curliness of the waves, raised by the sharp movement of a horse bursting into the water. The dazzling red tone of his coloring, the intensely squinting eye, the quivering neck bent in a swift impulse. A naked young man sits on a horse, holding the bridle with one hand. The forms of his body are perfect, as if it had absorbed all the Beauty of a person of past centuries. Man and horse merged in a single impulse and formed a single whole of Beauty, Harmony and Form. The painting and what was depicted on it seemed to exist outside of time and space. She seemed eternal, for her holy Beauty seemed not written, but cast from life itself, from its lofty and perfect forms. There was nothing superfluous about it. And it seemed that it was created not by an artist, but by some alien creator who breathed into it his idea of ​​the perfection of the world and man. The twentieth century may not have known anything more beautiful than this painting. The picture was iconic in every way. In it, the Spirit transformed matter.

Never before had an artist achieved such an ideal rhythm of color and lines, such a perfect composition. This was the Summit. Behind it stood either a takeoff or a descent down to something still unknown and threatening. The picture carried forebodings, unclear and alarming. The red color was exciting, it sounded a strange melody, similar to the song of the wind bending feather grass...

The death of Beauty, which had absorbed all the best from the past, was as inevitable as the appearance of a different Beauty, somewhat similar and at the same time different from the previous one. This moment was not quite accurately called the crisis of art. In fact, this was a turning point in the development of art, moving from symbolic to real beauty. This movement turned out to be long and painful and was accompanied by acute contradictions, not so much of a historical, but of a spiritual and cultural nature. The path itself ran through that creative revelation, without which the Transfiguration of either creativity itself or the creator himself would have been impossible...

The creative act of Beauty not only fills creativity itself with new meaning, each time increasing its level and complicating its forms, but also improves the perception of Beauty itself by a changing person, its continuously evolving energy. In other words, the creative evolution of Beauty was approaching the Planet in the rays of new cosmic energies, heralding a new creative era and the emergence of a New spiritual man...

This is what the last, rarest sight of departing Beauty looked like. The beauty of the art of the Silver Age of Russia, which, more than any previous artistic creation, came closer to understanding Otherness, its role in the evolution of man, its transformative power.

“And then the world will be amazed,” wrote one of the authors of “The Golden Fleece,” “by the dazzling radiance of the New Beauty. We can be sure that the new unknown life of the future brings us, along with other novelties, new rights and a new social role for art, “new testaments of a new aesthetics.” Little by little, the type of artist who pleases patrons of the arts will disappear, and a new type of inspired artist will appear. These new artists will be prophets and priests-broadcasters of the suggestions of the inner World Soul”...

Two paths confronted humanity in the twentieth century - the path of Beauty and evolutionary ascent and the path of Chaos, ugliness and involutionary fall. Now... we can say that the majority of creators and non-creators chose the second path, which seemed easy to them and therefore, from their point of view, true. This choice was facilitated not only by the energetic weakness of the internal structure of the person himself, but also by a number of external circumstances, which we sometimes call historical conditions.” L.V. Shaposhnikova. The thorny path of Beauty. M., 2001, pp. 253-265.

Come down and appear to us, red horse!
Harness yourself to the earth's shafts.
The milk has become bitter for us
Under this dilapidated roof.

Spill, pour over the water for us
Your dull neigh
And a bell-star
Cold radiance.

We give you a rainbow - an arc,
The Arctic Circle is on harness.
Oh, take out our globe
On a different track.

Cling to the ground with your tail,
From dawn the mane set off.
Beyond these clouds, these heights
Ride to the happy land.

And let them, those who are in the darkness
They drink us with a lamp in the sky,
They will see from their fields,
That we are going to visit them.

Sergey Yesenin.
February 1919

,

became a milestone for the artist and broughthe is world famous.In 1912, Petrov-Vodkin lived in the south Russia, on an estate near Kamyshin . There is an opinion,that the picture was painted in the village Gusevka

It was then that he made the firstsketches for a painting. And also the first, unpreserved version of the canvas, known from black and white photography, was painted. The picture was a work of everyday life rather than symbolic, as happened with the second version; it depicted simply several boys with horses. This first version was destroyed by the author, probably soon after his return to Petersburg . Petrov-Vodkin based the horse on a real stallion named Boy, who lived on the estate.

To create the image of a teenager sitting on a horse, the artist used the features of his student, a very handsome young man, artist Sergei Kalmykov: “For the information of future compilers of my monograph. Our dear Kuzma Sergeevich portrayed me on a red horse. ...In the image of a languid youth on this banner I am depicted in person.” Sergei Kalmykov studied with K. S. Petrov-Vodkin since 1910. In 1911 he painted a painting of red horses bathing in water; it is possible that it was this student work that inspired Petrov-Vodkin to create his own work on the same topic.

The theme of horse bathing itself has always been very popular in Russian painting.

The large, almost square canvas depicts a lake of cold bluish shades, which serves as the background for the semantic dominant of the work - the horse and rider. The figure of the red stallion occupies the entire foreground of the picture almost completely. He is given so large that his ears, croup and legs below the knees are cut off by the picture frame. The rich scarlet color of the animal seems even brighter in comparison with the cool color of the landscape and the light body of the boy.

Waves of a slightly greenish tint, compared to the rest of the surface of the lake, scatter from the front leg of the horse entering the water. The entire canvas is an excellent illustration of the spherical perspective so beloved by Petrov-Vodkin: the lake is round, which is emphasized by a fragment of the shore in the upper right corner, the optical perception is slightly distorted.

In total, the painting depicts three horses and three boys - one in the foreground riding a red horse, the other two behind him on the left and right sides. One leads a white horse by the bridle, the other, visible from the back, riding an orange one, rides into the depths of the picture. These three groups form a dynamic curve, emphasized by the same curve of the red horse's front leg, the same curve of the boy rider's leg, and the pattern of the waves.

Influence of iconography

There is an assumption that the horse was originally painted as a bay, and that the master changed its color after becoming acquainted with the color scheme of Novgorod icons, which he highly valued.

The collection and clearing of icons was in its heyday in 1912.

From the very beginning, the picture caused numerous disputes, in which it was invariably mentioned that such horses do not exist. However, the artist claimed that he adopted this color from ancient Russian icon painters: for example, on the icon "The Miracle of the Archangel Michael" the horse is depicted completely red. As in the icons, in this picture there is no mixing of colors; the colors are contrasting and seem to collide in confrontation.

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K. S. Petrov-Vodkin managed to achieve in this picture a synthesis of “past and present, pointing the way to the future. Paolo Uccello and Novgorod icon painting, that is, classical European and classical Russian lines, merged into an inextricable whole, underwent Matisse’s arrangement and turned into an unusual an expressive statement where the past is not anathematized, but at the same time the notes of prophecy are discernible... this is a work in which the breath of Russian open spaces rhymes with the blue of Tuscany, where a truly Russian image is painlessly combined with classical ideality, where there is the expressiveness of the avant-garde and the depth of traditionalism The guardians of style will call it eclecticism, but it can also be called a new unity<...> Petrov-Vodkin’s work ceased to be a painting and turned into a symbol, an epiphany, a manifesto. To some extent, its impact is no less strong than the impact of Kazimir Malevich’s “Black Square”, and if<..>If something can be opposed to pointlessness, then only Petrov-Vodkin.

The painting greatly impressed contemporaries with its monumentality and fate. It is reflected in the works of many masters of brush and words. So do Sergei Yesenin lines were born:

The red horse acts as the Fate of Russia, which the fragile and young rider is unable to hold. According to another version, the Red Horse is Russia itself, identified with Blokov’s “steppe mare.” In this case, one cannot help but note the prophetic gift of the artist, who symbolically predicted with his painting the “red” fate of Russia in the 20th century.

The red horse acts as the Fate of Russia, which the fragile and young rider is unable to hold. According to another version, the Red Horse is Russia itself, identified with the “steppe mare.” In this case, one cannot help but note the prophetic gift of the artist, who symbolically predicted with his painting the “red” fate of Russia.

Another article on this picture was of interest to me:

Source: Magazine Around the World

Bohemian Trinity

9 interesting facts about the painting "The Bathing of the Red Horse"

The most famous painting by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, born exactly 135 years ago, is not as simple as it might seem at first glance. Images of bohemia from the beginning of the last century are combined in it with classical techniques of Russian icon painting
Rider on a horse. It resembles the traditional Russian icon painting image of St. George the Victorious - a symbol of the victory of good over evil. At the same time, in the guise of a rider, outwardly completely different from a simple village boy, the artist showed the typical refined features of the St. Petersburg bohemia of the beginning of the century, far from the people.
Red horse. By painting the horse in an unusual color, Petrov-Vodkin uses the traditions of Russian icon painting, where red is a symbol of the greatness of life, and sometimes denotes sacrifice. The indomitable horse is often present in literature as an image of the mighty elements of the native land and the incomprehensible Russian spirit: this is the “three bird” in Gogol, and the flying “steppe mare” in Blok.
Pink Coast. The bright pink color is associated with flowering trees - an image of the Garden of Eden.
Water. The picture shows not a specific place near some real body of water, but the space of the Universe. Blue-green colors connect the earthly world and the heavenly world. The green color is a reminder of a blooming, eternally ongoing life, and the blue sky reflected in the reservoir is a reference to thoughts about a higher world.
Bathing figures. Petrov-Vodkin never depicts fleeting movement. In all his works, the action seems to slow down, the figures acquire a ritual stillness. In addition, the boys' bodies lack any hint of individuality. These are young men “in general”, in all the beauty of plastic perfection. They perform a smooth round dance in the eternal cycle of days.

Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin

1878 - Born in Khvalynsk, Saratov province, into the family of a shoemaker.
1901-1908 - Studied at the art schools of Anton Azhbe in Munich and Filippo Colarossi in Paris.
1904 - Graduated from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.
1910 - Became a member of the World of Art association.
1913 - Worked as a graphic artist and theater artist.
1918-1930s - Participated in the artistic life of Soviet Russia, taught at the Academy of Arts.
Early 1930s - Wrote autobiographical books “Khlynovsk” and “Euclidean Space” outlining the “science of seeing.”
1939 - Died in Leningrad.

Not a household picture

About the picture According to Elena Evstratova, an art critic and employee of the Tretyakov Gallery, in Petrov-Vodkin’s painting the mundane, everyday verisimilitude disappears and a feeling of belonging to the cosmos arises. Petrov-Vodkin developed this system of depicting the world on a canvas plane in the 1910s; he called it “the science of seeing.” The artist used the technique of spherical perspective - like icon painters, he depicted objects simultaneously from above and from the side. The horizon line acquired rounded outlines, drawing distant planes of the picture into its orbit. The artist’s famous tricolor served the same purpose—the painting is based on a combination of primary colors: red, blue and yellow. The artist learned about this principle, used in icon painting, in his youth, when he observed the work of an Old Believer icon painter. Petrov-Vodkin was fascinated by jars of paints: “They shone with virginal brightness, each one sought to be more visible, and each one was held back by the one next to it. It seemed to me that if it weren’t for this cohesion between them, they, like butterflies, would fly up and leave the walls of the hut.”

The artist began work on the canvas in the spring of 1912. The preliminary drawings did not contain even a hint of symbolic subtext - Petrov-Vodkin intended to depict an everyday scene: “In the village there was a bay horse, old, broken in all its legs, but with a good muzzle. I started writing about bathing in general. I had three options. In the process of work, I made more and more demands for purely pictorial significance, which would equalize form and content and give the picture social significance.”

Who is this young man
However, in the fall of 1911, student Sergei Kolmykov showed his work to Petrov-Vodkin. It was called “Bathing the Red Horses”: yellowish people and red horses splashed in the water. Kuzma Sergeevich described it very harshly: “Written as if by a young Japanese.” Whether the student’s work influenced Petrov-Vodkin and at what point the village horse turned into a miracle horse is unknown.

However, it is known that Kolmykov later wrote in his diaries: “Our dear Kuzma Sergeevich depicted me on this red horse. Only the legs are short from the hips. I’ve had longer in my life.” There are two more contenders for the role of the prototype rider. In the summer of 1912, Petrov-Vodkin wrote to his cousin Alexander Trofimov: “I am painting a picture: I put you on a horse...” There is also an opinion that Vladimir Nabokov posed for the artist (this is what Alexander Semochkin, the former director of the writer’s museum in Rozhdestveno, thinks). It is unknown which of the three contenders is depicted in the final version of the film. The artist could remember all the boys, creating a symbolic image of the young horseman.

Long road to understanding

The public first saw “The Bathing of the Red Horse” in 1912 at the exhibition of the World of Art association. The painting hung above the door of the hall. The famous critic of the 1910s, Vsevolod Dmitriev, who published reviews in Apollo, perhaps the most famous magazine of that time, called it “a high-flying banner around which one can rally.” However, Petrov-Vodkin had no followers: his manner was too strange and inaccessible. In the Soviet years, the picture was interpreted as a premonition of the onset of revolutionary fires in Russia. The artist thought differently. When the First World War began, Petrov-Vodkin said: “So that’s why I wrote The Bathing of the Red Horse!”