Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar (, 25 March 1871 – 16 May 1960) was a Russian Post-Impressionist painter, publisher, restorer and historian of art. Grabar, descendant of a wealthy Rusyn family, was trained as a painter by Ilya Repin in Saint Petersburg and by Anton Ažbe in Munich. He reached his peak in painting in 1903–1907 and was notable for a peculiar divisionist painting technique bordering on pointillism and his rendition of snow.
By the end of 1890s, Grabar had established himself as an art critic. In 1902, he joined Mir Iskusstva, although his relations with its leaders Sergei Diaghilev and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky were far from friendly. In 1910–1915, Grabar edited and published his opus magnum, the History of Russian Art. The History employed the finest artists and critics of the period; Grabar personally wrote the issues on architecture that set an unsurpassed standard of understanding and presenting the subject. Concurrently, he wrote and published a series of books on contemporary and historic Russian painters. In 1913, he was appointed executive director of the Tretyakov Gallery and launched an ambitious reform program that continued until 1926. Grabar diversified the Tretyakov collection into modern art and in 1917 published its first comprehensive catalogue. In 1921 Grabar became the first professor of Art restoration at the Moscow State University. Grabar helped establish research-based approaches to art restoration in Russia, including examination and documentation before restoration. The Tretyakov Gallery Magazine specifically credits him with introducing pre-restoration examination, photographic documentation, and collaborative decision-making during restoration.
An experienced politician, Grabar stayed at the top of the Soviet art establishment until his death, excluding a brief voluntary retirement in 1933–1937. He managed art-restoration workshops (present-day Grabar Centre) during 1918–1930 and from 1944 to 1960. Grabar took active part in redistribution of former church art nationalized by the Bolsheviks and established new museums for the confiscated treasures. In 1943, he formulated the Soviet doctrine of compensating World War II losses with art looted in Germany. After the war, he personally advised Joseph Stalin on the preservation of architectural heritage.
Biography
Family roots
Emmanuil Hrabar (1830–1910), father of Igor Grabar and his older brothers Bela and Vladimir (the future law scholar, 1865–1956), was an ethnic Rusyn lawyer and a politician of pro-Russian orientation. He was elected to the Hungarian Parliament in 1869, at the same time, maintaining ties with slavophiles in Moscow and the Russian Embassy. Olga Hrabar (1843–1930), mother of Igor and Vladimir, was a daughter of Rusyn pro-Russian, anti-Catholic politician Adolph Dobryansky (1817–1901). According to Igor Grabar's memoirs, Dobryansky ran an underground network of obedient followers. Dobryansky and his group, unaware of the realities of living in the Russian Empire, leaned to its official doctrine of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality; Dobryansky, a man of wealth and pedigree, even imitated the lifestyle of a Russian landlord in minute details; two of his sons joined Imperial Russian service. Dobryansky praised the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 by Russian troops, dreaded by his own Rusyn peasants.
In the early 1870s, the Hungarian government forced Emmanuil Hrabar to leave the country. Olga with children stayed under police surveillance at the Dobryansky manor in Čertižné (now in Slovakia). In 1880, the Hrabars temporarily reunited in Russia. Emmanuil passed a qualification test to teach German and French and settled with Igor and Vladimir in Yegoryevsk. Olga returned to Hungary to continue pro-Russian propaganda; in 1882 she and her father were, at last, arrested for treason and brought to a trial that aroused public suspicion of a police provocation. She was acquitted for lack of evidence and emigrated to Russia for the rest of her life. In Russia, the Hrabars lived under nom de guerre Hrabrov; Igor Grabar restored his real surname (transliterated from Russian with a G, unlike his brother Vladimir Hrabar) in the early 1890s.
Education
Grabar (then Hrabrov) attended high school in Yegoryevsk, where his father taught foreign languages. The stream of magazine publications that followed the 1881 murder of Alexander II of Russia gave him the first impetus to draw. In 1882, the Hrabars (Hrabrovs) relocated to Kiev, closer to the continuing trial of their mother and grandfather; later in the same year, Emmanuil Hrabar accepted an appointment to Izmail. He sent Igor to Mikhail Katkov's boarding school in Moscow; the schoolmaster waived tuition fees for a fellow slavophile. Igor Grabar, interested in drawing, soon made contacts with the students of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and already established artists - Abram Arkhipov, Vasily Polenov and the Schukins, wealthy patrons of art. Strapped for cash, he painted portraits of fellow students for a fee.
In 1889, Grabar was admitted to the Law Department of the Saint Petersburg University; he made a living by selling short stories to magazines and soon became the editor of Shut, "the weakest of humour magazines" that nevertheless paid well. His illustrations to books by Nikolay Gogol, signed Igor Hrabrov, inspired the young Aleksandr Gerasimov (born 1881), but Grabar generally stayed aside from drawing. He later complained that tabloid bohemianism completely overwhelmed him. In his second year at the university, Grabar moved up to the respectable Niva magazine. He selected graphics for Niva and wrote essays on contemporary painters but did not yet have enough influence to change its policies. Law-department classes were uninspiring and Grabar spent more time attending history lectures and Pavel Chistyakov's school of painting, but he still managed to graduate in law, without delay, in April 1893.
In the end of 1894, he enrolled in Ilya Repin's class at the Imperial Academy of Arts that had just been radically reformed. His classmates, the first "spendid" post-reform group, included Alexej von Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin who introduced him to French Impressionism, Konstantin Bogaevsky, Oleksandr Murashko, Nicholas Roerich and Arkady Rylov. Filipp Malyavin, Konstantin Somov, Dmitry Kardovsky also studied alongside Grabar but were admitted earlier. Grabar remained "a fervent admirer" of Repin for life but became quickly dissatisfied with academic studies and in July 1895 left for a brief study tour of Western Europe financed by Niva magazine.
Munich
His return to Saint Petersburg finally persuaded him to drop out of the Academy; in May 1896, he and Kardovsky left for Munich via Berlin and Paris; Jawlensky and Werefkin joined them later in summer. They enrolled at a private school of painting run by Anton Ažbe. Grabar, who soon became assistant to Ažbe, rated him as "a poorly gifted painter, a superb draftsman and an outstanding teacher". Two years later, when Grabar was ready to leave Ažbe, he was offered an opportunity to open his own, competing, school; Ažbe made a counter-offer, making Grabar his equal partner. The partnership existed for less than a year, from June 1899 until spring of 1900, when Grabar accepted a lucrative offer from Prince Shcherbatov and left Munich.
Grabar kept close ties with Saint Petersburg artists and publishers. In January–February 1897, Grabar, obliged to write for Niva, published an article defending avant-garde art against Vladimir Stasov, making a bombshell effect and inadvertently provoking Stasov's campaign against Repin as the dean of the Academy. Another article published in 1899 caused a conflict between Ilya Repin and Mir iskusstva.
Life in Munich also aroused Grabar's interest in architecture, and its history, that soon became his second profession. By 1901, Grabar completed architect's training at the Munich Polytechnicum but did not take the final exams.
Mir Iskusstva
In 1901–1902, Grabar presented twelve of his paintings at an exhibition hosted by Mir Iskusstva; these were the first "truly French" impressionist works displayed in Russia by a Russian painter. One painting went straight to Tretyakov Gallery, others were auctioned to private collections.
1903–1907 became Grabar's highest point in painting; according to Grabar's Autobiography, the summit (February–April 1904) coincided with the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War. In this season, he practiced moderate divisionism with elements of pointillist technique. Three paintings of this period that Grabar himself considered seminal (February Azure, March Snow and Piles of Snow) garnered wide and generally positive critical response. Kazimir Malevich wrote that, had it not been for linear perspective that Grabar preserved in his March Snow "as a remnant of narrative from the nineteenth century", the whole picture would blend in "a uniform painterly texture" without clearly defined front and middle planes. In 1905, Grabar travelled to Paris to study the new works of French postimpressionists and changed his technique in favor of complete separation of colours. Incidentally, although Grabar appreciated and studied Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh, he himself ranked "the king of painters" Diego Velázquez above them all.
At the end of 1905 and the beginning of 1906, when Moscow was burning from riots and shellfire, Grabar tackled another challenging subject, frost, at the same time investing more and more time into writing and editing. Snow, and winter in general, remained his favorite subjects for life.
Relations between Grabar and the founders of Mir Iskusstva were strained. Sergei Diaghilev tolerated Grabar as a business asset but feared and distrusted him as a potential new leader of the movement; Grabar' financial backing provided by Shcherbatov seemed especially menacing. Diaghilev's sycophants Nurok and Nouvelle led the opposition, Eugene Lansere and Konstantin Somov followed suit; Valentin Serov was perhaps the only member who treated Grabar with sympathy. Grabar, indeed, used funds of Shcherbatov and Nadezhda von Meck to launch his own short-lived art society that failed to shake Mir Iskusstva and soon fell apart. Memoirs of the period, although biased, indicate that Grabar himself was a difficult person. According to Alexander Benois, Grabar practiced an unacceptably patronizing tone and at the same time, had absolutely no sense of humour. No one questioned his talent and encyclopedic knowledge, but Grabar was unable to persuade people or barely coexist with them in small communities like Mir Iskusstva. As a result, in 1908 Grabar broke with the movement completely and tried, in vain, to launch his own art magazine.
Grabar's History
In the same 1908, Grabar abandoned painting in favor of writing; he became chief editor and writer for Joseph Knebel's series of books on Russian artists and Russian towns. He quickly amassed a wealth of historic evidence and settled on publishing a comprehensive History of Russian Art. Grabar initially concentrated on project management alone, leaving principal writing to Alexander Benois, but when the latter stepped aside in May, Grabar was compelled to pick up the writing task. He now concentrated on architecture; only then did he realize that Russian architecture of the 18th century and earlier periods had never been properly studied. Grabar locked himself in the archives to study the subject for a year; in July 1909 he took a short leave from writing and designed the Palladian Zakharyin Hospital in present-day Khimki, which was completed by the onset of World War I and operates to date.