“Whenever I am intimidated by life, I repose in art ... then I feel that I am on an uninhabited island and that reality no longer exists.” These words by Viktor Borisov-Musatov are the key to understanding his oeuvre, in which quests for beauty and harmony led to the creation of an illusory, elegiac and dream like world. The artist’s works are generally deprived of any clearly expressed subject. Tinged by his own inner thoughts and feelings, Borisov-Musatov’s paintings are peopled by pensive and dreamy characters, the inhabitants of the old estates. Like memories come to life or incorporeal ghosts of the past, they slip down alleys in parks, make music or engage in silent, neverending conversations.

Borisov-Musatov Victor

Borisov-Musatov, Victor Elpidiforovich
1870, Saratov - 1905, Tarusa
Painter, draughtsman. Studied under Vasily Konovalov in Saratov (from 1886), under Vasily Polenov at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1890-91, 1893-95), under Pavel Chistyakov at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1891-93) and at the Academic Fernand Connon in Paris (1895-98). Member of the Moscow Fellowship of Artists (1899) and the Union of Russian Artists (1903). Contributed to exhibitions (from 1885). Contributed to the periodical exhibitions of the Moscow Society of Lovers of the Arts (1898) and the exhibitions of the Moscow Fellowship of Artists (1899-1905), Scarlet Rose (1904), Union of Russian Artists (1904-05), Salon des Independants (1905), Salon de la Nationale (1905), Salon d''Automne (1905) and the World of Art (1906).