Sergei Ivanovich Osipov (; 22 September 1915 – 12 October 1985) was a Soviet painter, graphic artist, and art teacher, who lived and worked in Leningrad, a member of the Leningrad branch of Union of Artists of Russian Federation.Справочник членов Союза художников СССР. Т.2. М., Советский художник, 1979. С.163. He regarded as one of the representatives of the Leningrad school of painting,Sergei V. Ivanov. Unknown Socialist Realism. The Leningrad School. Saint Petersburg, NP-Print Edition, 2007. P.9, 15, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 27-31, 36-37, 63, 76, 77, 86, 87, 95, 107, 108, 125, 159, 217, 367, 387-406, 414-423, 443-445. most known for his landscape and still life paintings.
Biography
Sergei Osipov was born in a peasant family in the village of Stepankovo in the Bezhetsky Uyezd of the Tver Governorate. Since pre-revolutionary years, his father worked in construction in Leningrad.
Osipov started his education in primary school of the village of Porechie. In 1927 he joined his father in Leningrad. There, he completed seven classes of secondary school No. 57 and entered at a plant. Then he worked with his father in construction. At the same time, Osipov attended evening classes of Tavricheskaya Art School, where he studied with famous teachers Vladimir Sukov and Semion Abugov.Сергей Иванович Осипов. Живопись. Рисунок. Выставка произведений. Каталог. Л.: Художник РСФСР, 1990. C.3.
In 1932, Sergei Osipov entered the preparatory classes at the Russian Academy of Arts, and in 1936 he became a student of painting department of the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. He studied of Semion Abugov, Mikhail Bernshtein, Genrikh Pavlovsky.Sergei V. Ivanov. The Leningrad School of Painting. Essays on the History. St Petersburg, ARKA Gallery Publishing, 2019. P.352.
After the second year, Alexander Osmerkin invited the young artist to continue studies in his personal workshop. About years of study Osipov left memories:
Alexander Alexandrovich Osmerkin was, in my opinion, a born teacher who knew how, like no one else, to explain the difficulties encountered in the work, while finding surprisingly accurate, sometimes not direct, but giving food for thought words. We painte a model. I work over the canvas, trying to put together the whole production, and applied thousands of fractional strokes with small brushes. Osmerkin said: “Osipov, it would be nice for you to addd a some Fechin ...” And somehow everything became clear.Personal artistic experience allowed Alexander Osmerkin to discover difficult and subtle connections in the painting of Russian and Western European masters. So, revealing to us the method of Cezanne, he compared it with the picturesque experience of Alexander Ivanov, and then Cezanne's “Mount St. Victoria ”with its transitions of clearly defined color plans – from warm pink and orange to blue and blue – becomes somewhere very close to the Italian canvases of our great Alexander Ivanov.Осипов С. И. Прекрасные годы // Осмеркин. Размышления об искусстве. Письма. Критика. Воспоминания современников. М.: Советский художник, 1981. С.246-249.
The Great Patriotic War caught Sergei Osipov on graduate course of Alexander Osmerkin workshop. He volunteered to go to the Red Army and participated in battles at Leningrad. In December 1941, under the demining of passes for the upcoming battalion sailors from Kronshtadt to the Old Peterhoff, he was seriously injured, and lost a leg. He spent more than a year in the hospital for treatment. In 1943, he was discharged as a disabled of the Great Patriotic War.
In the same year Osipov went to Samarkhand to complete his studies at the Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Alexander Osmerkin workshop. His graduation work was painting named Partisans, dedicated to the guerrilla struggle against the Nazis in occupied territory of the Soviet Union.Юбилейный Справочник выпускников Санкт-Петербургского академического института живописи, скульптуры и архитектуры имени И. Е. Репина Российской Академии художеств. 1915–2005. СПб., Первоцвет, 2007. С.56.
In 1944 Sergei Osipov returned to Leningrad. For the courage shown in the Great Patriotic War against fascist Germany, he was awarded the Order of Glory III degree, medals "Medal "For the Defence of Leningrad"" and "For Victory over Germany".Мы помним… Художники, искусствоведы — участники Великой Отечественной войны. М., Союз художников России, 2000. С.208.
After almost half a century, the circumstances of the wound and treatment of S. Osipov were described in the memoirs of the head of the surgical department of a military hospital: In the most difficult time of our hospital’s life at the end of 1941, in the cold and darkness, we had to make the first amputation of the lower leg. The wounded Osipov was admitted to the seventh surgical department. Young, exhausted, with a reddish head of hair and a beard. As I found out 50 years later, he was on the five course at the Academy of Arts. Osipov was shot in the thigh. The wound is small, but a large blood vessel was damaged and gangrene of the foot began. To save the life of the wounded one had to sacrifice a foot. The operation was carried out in purely front-line conditions: in the small cold tent, in the evening, with obligatory darkening of the window, on the bed instead of the operating table, under the light of two flashlights “bat”, and only at the most crucial moment the emergency lamp was turned on. Surgeons, including myself, in quilted jackets under dressing gowns, emaciated, sawed bones with difficulty.
The wounded man slowly recovered, his life was saved. After improving his condition, Osipov was evacuated by a plane to the rear for aftercare. Unfortunately, his further fate was unknown to me. And suddenly, accidentally turned on the radio on September 19, 1991 brought me the answer to a question of half a century ago. The art critic Nadezhda Neshataeva spoke about the life of the artist Osipov Sergey Ivanovich in connection with a personal exhibition of his paintings. The coincidence of the name of the artist, his wound near Leningrad, the amputation of the leg in the Leningrad hospital gave me reason to believe that this is our wounded Osipov, who was operated on in blockaded Leningrad by me and another surgeon. The coincidence of the data left almost no doubt that this is the hero of our department and of my memoirs. But still I tried to test myself. Having received information through many inquiries, I phoned the widow of Sergei Ivanovich, Antonina Ivanovna. She confirmed that Sergei Ivanovich was operated on in 1941 in our hospital. She said that he met her at the hospital in Sverdlovsk. Osipov completed his art education in Samarkand, where the Academy of Arts was evacuated from Leningrad. For me and my friends, employees of our surgical department of the hospital, such a belated message about the fate of one of our seriously injured was not only a great joy, but also a reward for our selfless work in the besieged city.Сергей Осипов в воспоминаниях современников. Из записок военного хирурга.
In 1945 begins a multi-year teaching job Sergei Osipov, first at the Tavricheskaya Art School, then in the years 1946–1949 in the Art Studio at the Palace of Culture named after Maxim Gorky. From 1949 until the end of 1970 Osipov taught at the Department of General painting of the Leningrad Higher School of Art and Industry named after Vera Mukhina.Сергей Осипов. Живопись. Рисунок. Каталог. М., Советский художник, 1983. C.3.
At the same time since 1944, Sergei Osipov begins to work on contracts with LENIZO. In April 1945 he was taken as a member of the Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists. From the same year, he began to participate in art exhibitions. He painted landscapes, genre scenes, still lifes, gradually restoring lost during the war skills. Later his art has been shown on the solo exhibitions in Moscow (1983) and in Leningrad (1990).
The art works of the 1960–1970s nominated Osipov as one of the leading Leningrad painters with deep and original manner. In 1983, with the support of E. E. Moiseenko, a large solo exhibition of Sergey Osipov's works was shown at the Central House of Artists in Moscow.
Sergei Ivanovich Osipov died on 12 October 1985 in Leningrad at the seventieth year of life.
Creation In the artistic fate of S. Osipov, which began from the work at diploma picture, which developed progressively, without visible zigzags and jumps, researchers distinguish several periods.
1945–1958
His own recognizable individual style Sergei Osipov acquired gradually. Every year trips from the late 1940s to Staraya Ladoga, Izborsk, Pskov, and Staritsa helped the artist to restore his creative skills and establish himself in a circle of preferred topics. In the middle of 1950s in technical terms he was a well established as a master. This is evidenced his works partly shown at major exhibitions: A BoySergei V. Ivanov. Unknown Socialist Realism. The Leningrad School. Saint Petersburg, NP-Print Edition, 2007. P.86. (1950), "The Gathering"Выставка произведений ленинградских художников 1950 года. Каталог. М.-Л., Искусство, 1951. С.19. (1950), Pskov little streetSergei V. Ivanov. Unknown Socialist Realism. The Leningrad School. Saint Petersburg, NP-Print Edition, 2007. P.87. (1951), "On the Volga River"Выставка произведений ленинградских художников 1951 года. Каталог. Л., Лениздат, 1951. С.15. (1951), "Last Snow"Весенняя выставка произведений ленинградских художников 1954 года. Каталог. Л., Изогиз, 1954. С.15. (1954), "Reaping field"Весенняя выставка произведений ленинградских художников 1955 года. Каталог. Л., ЛССХ, 1956. С.14. ( 1954), "On the Volkhov River" (1955), "A Little Brook"Осенняя выставка произведений ленинградских художников 1956 года. Каталог. Л., Ленинградский художник, 1958. С.18. (1956) and others.
My creative life begins from the work under the landscape, – Osipov wrote in 1968. - The landscape has always interested and excited me as an artist. Working on him, I sought to express my feelings and love to nature of my native land.Центральный Государственный Архив литературы и искусства. СПб. Ф.78. Оп.8. Д.123. Л.17.
About his painting style of this period can be judged by the painting Street. Pskov (1951). The artist himself considered it to be very characteristic of his early work, include this painting among only few works of the early 1950s in the exposition of the Moscow exhibition in 1983.Сергей Осипов. Живопись. Рисунок. Каталог. М.: Советский художник, 1983. C.31. It is distinguished by a certain conventionality of form, timid attempts to go away from the illusory naturalism to a more generalized manner of painting. In the future, Osipov will practically abandon the presence of figures of people in the landscapes and the detailed reproduction of panoramic architectural views.
The just following to nature no longer satisfied the artist. He felt the need to move on. But how, in what way? A new 1958 creative trip to Pskov and its environs gave Osipov, by his own words, some push.Центральный Государственный Архив литературы и искусства. СПб. Ф.78. Оп.8. Д.123. Л.18. Landscapes painted as a result of this trip were positively received by critics.Ковтун Е. Заметки о художественной выставке. // Вечерний Ленинград, 1958, 29 ноября.Шумова М. Не уступать завоёванных рубежей. Осенняя выставка работ ленинградских художников. // Ленинградская правда, 1958, 2 декабря.
1959–1969