Arkhip Kuindzhi (Painter) Biography, Age, Death, Wife, Children, Family, Facts, Wiki & More

Short Biography

Arkhip Kuindzhi was born on 27-01-1842 in Mariupol, Russian Empire (Present-day: Mariupol, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine). He was a Russian Painter who was famously known for his landscape paintings.

Arkhip Kuindzhi Complete Bio & Career

Arkhip Kuindzhi was born in January 1842 in Mariupol, and he grew up poor. His father died when Arkhip was three years old, so he had to make a living working at a church building site, grazing domestic animals, and working at the corn merchant's shop. A Greek friend of the family who was a teacher taught him some things, and then Arkhip went to the local school.

In 1855, at the age of 13–14, Kuindzhi visited Feodosia to study under Ivan Aivazovsky, who was the most famous artist of his time. However, he worked mostly with mixing paints and instead studied with Aivazovsky's student Adolf Fessler. Although Kuindzhi cannot be called Aivazovsky's student, he borrowed much from him in the way of painting storms, sunsets, and raging oceans.

Arkhip Kuindzhi worked as a retoucher in Simeon Isakovich's photography studio in Taganrog. Then he moved to Saint Petersburg and studied painting at the Imperial Academy of Arts (from 1868 to 1893). He was a co-founder of the Peredvizhniki group of realist artists, who held traveling art exhibitions and refused to join the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts because they considered it an academic institution.

When he was in his mature period, Kuindzhi aspired to capture the most expressive illuminative aspect of the natural condition by applying composite receptions (high horizon, etc.), creating panoramic views. In his paintings, Kuindzhi used light effects and intense colors shown in main tones to create an illusion of illumination. These paintings include “Evening in Ukraine, 1876”, the “Birch Grove, 1879” “After a thunderstorm, 1879” and “Moonlit Night on the Dnieper, 1880.” His later works displayed the remarkable decorative effects of color building.