ANDREEV Nikolai Andreyevich

14 (26) October 1873 (Moscow) - 24 December 1932 (Moscow)

sculptor, graphic artist, monumental, set designer

born in the family of a carpenter-contractor. In 1885-1891 he studied at the Stroganov School of Industrial Art in the Department of clearance fabrics (subsequently taught there until 1918). In 1892-1901 he pursued his studies at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture SM Volnukhin and PP Trubetskoy, which greatly influenced the formation of a creative vision Andreeva.

In 1900 visited France, where he attended private art school in Paris. In the early work was influenced by the Wanderers (for example, "reaper with a child", 1899), which since 1902 has been an active participant of exhibitions TPHV, and in 1904 became a member. By this time the projects are owned monuments of the Andreev in a realistic style: Glinka, Ushinski, printing pioneer Ivan Fyodorov.

sculptural portraits Andreeva period 1900-x - PD Boborykin (1904), Leo Tolstoy (1905) - impressionistic. In some works, particularly in portraits AP Lenski, AL Vishnevsky, AA Fedotova (all - 1906) and especially in the portrait of a psychiatrist NN Bazhenov (1907) - apparent attraction to the grotesque.

Andreev also appealed to the Art Nouveau style with its characteristic "Dionysian" erotica: served nudes bacchantes sirens of Greek, Egyptian dancers. Here he often monumentaliziroval form used polychromy and architectural decoration.

to the first years of the twentieth century is one and the decorative bas-relief of "Seasons", created by Andreev on the facade of the Hotel Metropole ».

For five years, from 1904 to 1909, Andreev worked on the monument to Nikolai Gogol, who became not only a true masterpiece of monumental art, but also the best sculpture of the writer and the best urban sculpture Moscow. Monument simultaneously violated and claimed the tradition: the tragic figure of the writer himself is coupled with a peculiar irony of Gogol and free connection details (in bas-relief figures of Gogol's heroes).

By 1913, include the first significant work as a theater artist Andreeva ( "Cleopatra" Potemkin theater "Die Fledermaus"). Many years working with the Moscow Art Theater, he not only made out for his productions, but he did and humorous panel, cartoon dolls and the like. He proved himself an inventive cartoonists when you make a theatrical капустников. However, Stanislavski developed the new, constructive and expressive design principles of the stage space.

Andreev belongs to a series of portraits of theatrical figures - the sculptural portraits of Kachalov, Lensky, V. Nemirovich-Danchenko, Kachalova as Hamlet, and others; graphic portraits AA Yablochkin, Fedotova, Stanislavsky, AI Yuzhin, Nezhdanova. After the revolution, the artist created the scenery for productions: "Cain" J. G. Byron (1920, MAT), "Inspector General" by Gogol, "Delo" Sukhovo -- Kobylin, "The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo (1927, 1929, MAT 2-nd). In his works Andreev skillfully and authentically recreated on the stage of the real environment.

After the 1917 revolution Andreev actively worked on the plan of monumental propaganda. In 1920, created the sculpture for the monument to the Soviet Constitution (nicknamed by the people pillar, or obelisk, Liberty), is installed on the site of the demolished monument to General MD Skobelev and at one time the former symbol of not only capital but also of all the liberated state ( blown up in 1941, miraculously survived the head of the statue is kept in the State Tretyakov Gallery). Powerful dynamic composition shapes reminiscent of ancient sculpture, art critics compared it with the Nike of Samothrace. Created in 1918-1922 monuments AI Herzen, NPOgareva and Danton tend to cubism, but they are easier to plan and did not reach the psychological depth characteristic monument to Gogol.

In 1921-1922 portrayed as a rule, with the nature of politics and culture, delegates to the Congress of the Comintern (M. Gorky, Stanislavsky and M. Chekhov, F. Chaliapin, Lunacharskii, Stalin).

For the first Agricultural Exhibition in 1923 Andreev made a sculpture "Work" and "Peasant».

By 1920 applies "Leniniana" - a series of several hundred portraits of Lenin (from sketches for me to sculptural works). This was a special type of a poster-parade, very convenient for printing reproduction of a portrait. On the one hand, the images of Lenin here officially, especially a graphic portrait of 1930-1932, later used for decoration party card on the other - and not without hard objectivism (eg, a sculpture of Lenin, the leader »1931-1932).

Cycle "Leniniana" (both its direction - specifically, social and historical) was a model for all Soviet artists of subsequent generations, who have treated this theme, created by Andreev graphic portraits of Lenin for a long time to copy to a huge poster and panels during the parade.

In the late period of his creative artists who "Leniniana" to the end of life, in his other works managed to escape from the stylization. He worked as a stage designer at the Moscow Art Theater, experimented with different materials - from granite to glazed ceramics (statuettes of women in national costumes: Mordvin, Tula, Ukrainian), easily change the scale, while carrying tombstones (VY ; Bryusov, KA Yasyuninskogo, NL Tarasova) and a very small plastic and graphics.

last finished work was a monument Andreyev AN Ostrovsky. Competition for him was announced in 1923, but only 27 May 1929 the monument was installed.

In recent years, life Andreev developed sketches of monuments of Taras Shevchenko in Kharkov, AI Zhelyabov in Leningrad, two sketches of the monument VI ; Chapaev in Samara, two projects of the monument to Chekhov (not implemented), was elected chairman of the Union of Soviet sculptors. Among his pupils - Mikhail Gerasimov, S. Aleshin, and many others.

Works Andreeva stored in the State Tretyakov Gallery, GRM, as well as in private collections.