Konstantin Chebotarev
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Konstantin Chebotarev (1892-1974) was a Russian painter.
Chebotarev was born in 1892 in a small village in present-day Bashkiria, Russian Federation. Chebotarev is a Ukrainian word for cobbler, but his father had risen in his family from peasant to land surveyor and eventually estate steward. Young Chebotarev attended secondary school in Kazan. He began a self-published journal there in which he would present his writings. Chebotarev entered the Kazan Art School in 1910.
While a student, Chebotarev visited the Crimea in 1914, which is said to have inspired him greatly. His early paintings were a homage to Impressionism, but soon his work began to shift into the modern era.
In 1918, Chebotarev created an art group called The Sunflower Union, which claimed to revolt against old art and embrace everything. The union held its first exhibition in Kazan. The exhibition, featuring three-hundred and five works, was a landmark in the development of Russian art. Out of these, fifty belonged to Chebotarev, displaying elements of Cubism and Expressionism.
The Russian Civil War broke out and Chebotarev was enlisted in the White army. After being crushed by the Reds, Chebotarev fled to the east, but eventually returned to Kazan in 1921. Chebotarev resumed his work as an artist and teacher. He married another noteworthy artist, Alexandra Platunova. In the 1920s an artistic almanac, The Rider, began to be published, and upon his return Chebotarev actively contributed to it.
In 1923 Chebotarev began to teach theater design and created settings for the numerous plays began performed in the artistically productive Kazan. In 1926 Chebotarev moved to Moscow, when the transform to Socialist Realism began to take place and stiffle the revolutionary avant-garde. He eventually ceased working for the stage.
Being braided as a bourgeois and reactionary for his art, and enemy of the people for his participation in the White army, Chebotarev met with hard times, bringing a fall from his position as leading artist in Kazan. Chebotarev survived, however, though with a flattened reputation in Russia. His art was successful abroad and critics spoke of him highly in other countries. He tried but failed time and again to join the Moscow Artist's Union. Finally, in 1970 he was accepted to the Artists' Union, dying just four years later, impoverished and virtually unknown.
