Alexey Kravchenko (1889-1940)
Kravchenko found early success, amongst his first patrons was dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, mother of Tsar Nicholas II, and his work was in its day more coveted then that of Kazimir Malevich. Kravchenko’s precocious ability to draw reality around him which he honed during his years at the Moscow School of Art, Sculpture and Architecture, led him to become an official war artist for the Russian Empire during the First World War and spent the Winter of 1914 and 1915 on the Galician Front. After this and a return to Moscow, Kravchenko found himself at times among the avant-garde artists of his generation and he even exhibited with them in Berlin in the early 1920s, but this corpus of Kravchenko’s more experimental work created around this time, evidently did not complete him as an artist, and quickly gave way to an increased interest in a more traditional approach to drawing and watercolour, from which grew a deep love of printing which became a sanctuary for Kravchenko during the 1930s when he also worked as a professor at the Surikov Art Institute in Moscow. Posthumously, Kravchenko became best known as a book illustrator, bringing new material drawn from literature and legand, and the full breadth of his creative output was not fully appreciated until recent years which saw a solo show at the State Tretyakov Gallery in 2009, marking the 120th anniversary of his birth, and renewed interest among individual private collectors in Russia and through art sales at auction in London
As a Russian Art Dealer, Vickery Art has the pleasure to offer some of Kravchenko's work for you to purchase. This works have been selected by our Russian Art Advisor Jo Vickery, a world renown Russian Art Expert.