Eugene
Iosifovich Bukovetsky

Evgeny Iosifovich Bukovetsky (December 17, 1866 - July 27, 1948) - Ukrainian painter, master of portraiture, one of the key figures in the cultural life of Odessa at the beginning of the 20th century.

Features of the work of the artist Evgeny Bukovetsky: Bukovetsky was a fairly versatile artist; he was equally good at portraiture, landscape, and genre scenes. But most of all, the artist loved the portrait genre, creating a wonderful gallery of faces of famous contemporaries. Witty and erudite man, he knew how to talk his model - so as to capture the most subtle strings of the human soul. No wonder Bukovetsky was called the "main portrait painter of Odessa."

Famous paintings by the artist Evgeny Bukovetsky: "Near the window", "Portrait of Vera Prokudina," "Portrait of Ivan Bunin."

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Evgeny Bukovetsky was born and raised in Odessa, in the family of a wealthy businessman Joseph Bukovetsky. The boy received an excellent home education, studied at the Odessa real school of St. Peter and Paul, and honed his artistic abilities at an art school, where his teachers wereKyriak Kostandi and Gennady Ladyzhensky. At the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, Bukovetsky studied for only a year and went to recover fragile health on a tour of European countries. The young artist visited museums, galleries, studied at the Paris Academy of Julian with Jean-Paul Laurent, visited Munich and returned to his native Odessa in 1891. A year later, his painting "At a Relative Relative" for his gallery acquiredPavel Tretyakov - It was a public recognition of Bukovetsky's accomplished talent.

Bukovetsky regularly exhibited - in particular, in Moscow and St. Petersburg at the exhibitions of Wanderers. In 1894, together with his friend, an artist Peter Nilus, he became the author of the charter of the Association of South Russian Artists, taught at the art school. His house on Knyazheskaya Street, 27, became one of the main cultural salons in Odessa. Being quite wealthy, the owner of the apartment building, Bukovetsky, could live the way he liked: he painted, took time to play music, collected old icons, and hosted creative intelligences on Thursdays. Soon, the artist married Vera Prokudina, the daughter of an Odessa merchant, their daughter Irina was born. A friend of Bukovetsky, the artist Peter Nilus lived and worked in his house, and after the scandalous divorce of Evgeny Iosifovich, he conducted all his home and accounting affairs.

Kyriak Kostandi, Korney Chukovsky, Alexei Tolstoy often visited the cozy drawing room of Bukovetsky, the famous ophthalmologist Vladimir Filatov and aviator Sergey Utochkin, historian De Ribas and Ivan Bunin visited. Over time, the owner of the house created a wonderful portrait gallery of his distinguished guests - he was sometimes called the “main portrait painter of Odessa”. In turn, the owner of the salon himself became the prototype of several works by Ivan Bunin and Alexander Kuprin.

After the October Revolution, Odessa was shaken by riots, from here steamboats, taking emigrants to European countries, left. The first wife of Bukovetsky and his daughter left the country. In 1919, his sincere and devoted friend, Peter Nilus, left. Bukovetsky went to work, opened an art studio in his house, traveled to the open air out of town, painted portraits and everyday scenes. In 1920, on the way to emigration, in his mansion on Knyazheskaya Street, 27 Ivan Bunin and his wife Vera Nikolaevna stopped — they lived here for more than a year, here Bunin wrote his novel “Cursed Days”. These times in his novel "The Grass of Oblivion" was described in detail by Valentin Kataev.

After the final establishment of the power of the Soviets, Bukovetsky remained in Odessa. In 1922, he became one of the initiators of the creation of the Kiriak Kostandi Art Society. The artist remarried - his favorite model, Alexandra Mitrofanovna Alekseeva, became his companion. In 1937, Bukovetsky began to teach at the Odessa Art College. He survived the hardships of World War II and died at the age of 82. In 1990, according to the will of Bukovetsky’s daughter, Irina,OHMU A number of her father's works were handed over. In 2017, in the famous artist’s house on 27 Knyazheskaya Street, a private museum and photo studio was openedCeremonial Bukovetsky".