Pavel Kuznetsov  (English, Hardcover, Stupples Peter)

Pavel Kuznetsov (1878-1968), the leading figure in the development of intuitivism, made a considerable impact on the Russian art world 1907-14 and had a profound influence on his colleagues well into the 1930s and in the years following Stalin's death. There are few of his paintings in the West and so he is comparatively (and undeservedly) unknown, unlike Malevich and Kandinsky who are well represented in Western collections. Kuznetsov lived in the last years of the Russian Empire, through the revolutions of 1917, the turbulent 1920s, the Stalin era and into the Brezhnev years. Thus as a politically committed painter his story in particular highlights the prevailing difficulties for a lyrical intuitivist artist during the post-revolutionary period. This study will make Kuznetsov's work more familiar to Western art historians and collectors, and should also engage the interest of readers more generally interested in Russia and the Soviet Union.