Ivan Dmitrievich Ermakov
( born 1875 )
Ivan Dmitrievich Ermakov (born 1875) was a highly gifted member of the older generation of Muscovite artists. He was trained in the academic traditions of pre-Revolutionary Russia. In 1916 he was invited to join the Mir Iskusstva (World of Art), a society which played a major role in the development of twentieth-century Russian art.
The greatest service of the members of the World of Art to Russian artistic culture lay in their “discovery” of forgotten spheres of the national heritage - Russian eighteenth-century art, old portraiture, the Russian Empire style, Petersburg with its classical beauty, and in their acquainting Russian artists and the Russian public with the latest achievements of European painting and graphic art. The society published a magazine "The World of Art" which set an example for many later publications. In their affirmation of Russian Art Nouveau, the members of the group reassessed all the achievements of their predecessors. Their favorite genre was the historical painting. They sought their ideal in the art of the past, in the beauty of a vanished way of life, combining the interest in the past of modern man with an ironical attitude to its lost majesty. This "self-irony" was inherited from the early nineteenth-century romantics, especially the German painters whom the members of the World of Art took as a kind of model. Their nostalgic musings about Russian life and culture after the reign of Peter the Great were closely connected to their almost religious devotion to beauty. It was here that Ermakov exhibited his painting "Still Life " (1916), and "Apples" (1917).
The October Revolution opened a new chapter in the history of Russian art. "Futurist art alone is at present the art of the proletariat." wrote Nathan Altman as he called for a struggle against realism. The new government, taking advantage of their leading position in institutions and organizations, withheld state commissions, refused to buy pictures painted by realist painters for museums, denied them paints and brushes, and subjected them to fierce criticism in the press, even going so far as to call the realists class enemies. At one exhibition in the Russian State Museum in Leningrad, they had special "black walls" on which they hung the work of the realist painters, as examples of works "belonging to the class alien to the proletariat".
However, life itself and the creative endeavor of the artists refuted any attempt at state control. In 1918, Ermakov exhibited a painting "Still Life with Game" at the Union of Russian Artists. The Union, which was dedicated to age-old traditions and national themes was formed to give the Moscow painters proper representation at the World of Art exhibitions in St. Petersburg.
In the years to come, many of the painters who had previously exhibited in the salons of the Golden Fleece, World of Art, Society of the Blue Rose, or the Union of Russian Artists were reunited with the formation of the society Chetyre Iskusstva (Four Arts) which held exhibitions in 1925, 1926, 1928, and 1929. Ermakov was involved in all of the societies exhibitions: "Still Life with Game" (1925), "Cordova at Sunrise" (1926), "Apples with Game" (1928), and "Before the Storm" & "Landscape" (1929).
In the painting "Mother with Child", Ermakov vividly expresses the World of Art's dedication to the classical beauty of a dying age. It is a nostalgic look at the "Madonna" of the eighteenth century painter, a tender plea for Divine Intervention, and an expression of hope for a quickly changing world. The infant reaches to the beauty of the past, as the proud mother bravely gazes ahead - assured that in her child, lies hope for the future.