IVASHEV-MUSATOV (Musatov) Sergey Mikhailovich (Nikolaevich)

April 19 (May 2), 1900 (Moscow) — 1992 (Moscow)

Painter, graphic artist

Sergey Ivashev-Musatov studied at the physico-mathematical faculty of Moscow State University (1918–1926), at the central courses of the Association of the artists of the Revolution (AKhR; 1926–1930) under the guidance of I. I. Mashkov, M. F. Shemyakin and B. V. Ioganson, and at the Institute for advanced studies of painters and designers (1936–1938) under the guidance of M. K. Sokolov.

Ivashev-Musatov lived in Moscow. He painted landscapes, portraits, still lifes: Still life with a Hat, Portrait of Doctor S. I. Preobrazhensky, The First Snow, Military Girl, The Road beyond the Lake Ritsa, The Group Portrait of the Brigade of Communist Labour of plate rolling Workers at the plant “Serp I Molot” (“Sickle and Hammer”) and others.

In 1947 Ivashev-Musatov was arrested and accused of anti-Soviet agitation and terror; in 1948 he was sentenced to imprisonment for 25 years in labour camp with later disfranchisement. Till 1954 Ivashev-Musatov was imprisoned in StepLAG (Steppe Camp) in Karaganda region, and he worked as a painter there. In 1954 he was released early from a camp in connection with his disease and was sent for settlement to Karaganda. In April of 1956 he was released finally and the painter returned to Moscow; in November of the same year he was rehabilitated. A. I. Solzhenitsyn depicted Ivashev-Musatov in his novel In the First Circle under the name Kondrashev-Ivanov.

Since late 1950s Ivashev-Musatov performed cycles of paintings and drawings (pencil, Indian ink) on the motifs of the Tragedy of Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet by W. Shakespeare; the novel Notre-Dame de Paris by V. Hugo; the Little Tragedies by A. S. Pushkin.

Since 1934 Ivashev-Musatov participated in different exhibitions (the art exhibition of Moscow young artists). He exposed his works at the exhibition in Philadelphia (1935).