"The Gypsy" by Evgeniy Ilyin
1927 painting
Posted on October 16, 2015
This 1927 painting by Evgeny Ilyin is one of his masterpieces, depicting his incredible talent as a portrait artist.
Reading his biography will give an insight of this work and his many other paintings and life accomplishments.
Evgeniy Ilyin was born in Samara. He studied in M. I. Stepanov’s art studio a Samara’s Peoples’s University from 1918-1919. In 1919 he joined the army and fought in the Civil War until 1922. Between 1922 and 1925 he studied at the Worker’s Faculty, evening classes for adults preparing for higher education. In 1926 he moved to Moscow and was accepted into Vkhutemas-Vhutein where he studied until 1930. His teachers were the famous artists Aleksander Osmerkin, Konstantin Istomin, Alexander Shevchenko, and David Shterenberg.
In 1930-1931 Ilyin worked as an academic secretary in fine arts at Narcompros (People’s Commissariat for Education). In 1928-1932 he was a member of the Moscow branch of the Association of Artist’s of Revolutionary Russia (AHRR), and a member of the Russian Association of Proletarian Artists (RAPH). In 1932 Ilyin was accepted as a member of the Moscow Union of Soviet Artists. Since 1934, his works were shown at exhibitions in the USSR and abroad. His painting “Chapaev Before the Flight” was chosen to represent Soviet art at the exhibition of Soviet Art in Philadelphia.
During the Great Patriotic War Ilyin went to the front as an artist-correspondent. He sketched liberated cities, portraits of soldiers, and was there with the soldiers breaking out of the encirclement in the Battle for Velikiye Luki. Ilyin's painting “Boyan” that he created in 1948 became a sort of a ballad, an anthem glorifying the victory.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Ilyin worked on historical canvases. He created a series of paintings devoted to V. I. Chapeau, V. I. Lenin, and N. G. Chernyshevsky.
In 1955 - 1968, Ilyin taught a the Graphic Arts department of the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute named after V. I. Lenin.
In the 1970s, Ilyin created mainly portraits and landscapes. In 1980 he completed the major painting “Morning At The Collective Farm”. The painting reveals the influence of the favorite artist of Ilyin - V. I. Surikov.
Evgeniy Ilyin’s solo exhibitions were held in Moscow in 1949, 1971, and 1987, and in Samara in 1972.
In 1975, the artist was awarded the title “The Honored Worker of Culture of the Russian Federation”.
During those later years the artist often returned to his early unfinished works, spending several years working on some of them.
Paintings by Evgeny Ilyin are part of the collection of the State Historical Museum (Moscow), the Museum of Contemporary History of Russia (Moscow), Volgograd State Museum of Defense, Smolensk State Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve, the State House Museum of N. G. Chernyshevsky (Saratov), Samara Regional National History Museum, V. I. Chapeau Museum (Pugachev), the Central House of Aviation and Astronautics of M. V. Frunze (Moscow), and ROSIZO collection (Moscow). A large part of the heritage is represented in galleries and private collections in Russia, Austria, Spain, Italy, France, Turkey, Japan and The United States of America.
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