Leonard
Victorovich Turzhansky

He studied at the Moscow school of painting, sculpture and architecture (1898-1909) at V. N. Baksheev, V. A. Serov and K. A. Korovin. In 1911-1912, a member of the Association of traveling art exhibitions (Peredvizhniki, see; Exhibitor of 1904). One of the typical representatives of the Union of Russian artists (member since 1912). A member of AHRR (1924). Under the influence of their teachers, as well as Isaac Levitan and late impressionism, So have developed several decorative, delicate in color, impasto brushwork, referring mainly to the modest lyrical motives of the North and the Ural nature (mostly rural landscape).

L. V. Turzhansky was born in the Urals, in the family physician. From a young age became interested in painting, and the question of choosing the life path was clearly resolved.

In 1898 he entered the MUZHVZ, where he studied with V. N. Baksheev, V. A. Serov, K. A. Korovin. Having experienced at first impact of their famous teachers, Turzhansky gone from mere imitation of their manner and managed to develop his own style. Among his early works there are portraits (artist M. Petrova, writer I. A. Bunin, both 1905), and genre paintings ("In the provinces", 1910), but the creative face painter is most clearly manifested in the landscape.

Still a student, he showed at the exhibition TPHV series of works, written during his travels in the Russian North ("North. Silent night", "coast-dwellers in the fields," "Northern shores of Murman", etc., all in 1905), and appeared in them as a well-established, bold master, in his own way embodies the beginning of a poetic nature. No wonder the best of these landscapes were immediately purchased for the Tretyakov gallery.

A constant source of inspiration for the artist was the nature of the native Urals. Dear to his heart the village of Maly Istok near Yekaterinburg were marked with original beauty, but it is here Turzhansky drew his favourite motifs, the nectar of his art for many years (even settled since 1920 in Moscow, he said every spring he came to his native land).

The artist liked to portray the peaceful life of the earth, the silence in which we hear the familiar sounds of the village: "Arable land" (1910), "Autumn. Sun", "afternoon" (both 1912), "a Study. Middle Urals", "the Village street" (both 1930), "Autumn night. Quiet" (1935), etc. With a superb gift, animal, Turzhansky almost every landscape animates the presence of livestock is chickens, calves, goats, and most of all - horses, each endowed with its own character, mood ("Yellow foal", 1914; "Early spring", "Rustic horse", both 1910s; "Evening. Old horse", b. G., etc.).

Paintings Turzhansky terse, unsophisticated, devoid of any effects that are simple and solid in composition. The main content of his canvases laid in color palette. A born painter, he thinks and feels the color, and its range is not built on the richness of the palette, and opportunities favorite colors. In the paintings of masters dominate rich "earthy" colors - red, brown, green and yellow. His gift of a colorist, a subtle sense of decorative colors with impressive fullness manifested in a specific genre, as the image of interiors.

Like other members of the CPX, which Turzhansky was in 1912, he became interested in the motives of the Patriarchal antiquity. But not nostalgia about the past life of the estate (as, for example, in the interior of I. P. Petrovicheva or C. Zhukovsky), and delight in the beauty of the objects, their picturesque being clearly expressed in the works Tourjansky "Interior. Red carpet" (1921), "Interior. Bolshaya Nikitskaya" (1928), etc. Turzhansky Contribution to the development of Russian painting and especially landscape are undeniable. Creatively associated with the tradition, he nevertheless determined than any of the masters of the CPX, enriching them with new methods of pictorial synthesis.