Nicolai Fechin
was born in the village of Kazan, Russia, the son of Ivan Alexandrovitch
Fechin, an accomplished woodcarver, icon maker and gilder. At
the age of thirteen Fechin was ready to begin his life's work.
The Art School of Kazan, a branch of the celebrated Imperial
Academy of Art of St. Petersburg had just opened and the promising
young youth received a six year scholarship. His work appeared
in America for the first time at the International Exhibit of
the Camegie Institute in Pittsburgh. In both western Europe and
America, Fechin was greeted with instant acclaim. Among such
distinguished contemporaries as Claude Monet, Pisarro, Gaston
Latouche, Sisley and John Sargent, he won his first prizes and
medals. He was called a "Moujik in art", the "Tartar
painter."
Hardships following
the Bolshevik Revolution eventually led Fechin to take his wife
Alexandra and daughter Eya to the United States in 1923. The
family first settled in New York but not for long. Since a child,
he had loved the somber forests and peoples near the Tartar border
in his homeland. He found their equal in the high pine forests
of the Colorado Plateau, the old adobe villages, and the Pueblo,
Apache and Navajo tribes of the American Southwest. He moved
his family to Taos, where a small community of artists also made
their home. He purchased a house in the middle of seven acres
adjoining the Indian reservation. His father's influence took
over as Fechin spent the next several years handcrafting every
viga, corbel, lintel and swinging door and niche for icons. Today
the home itself remains a work of architectural art and is the
base for the Taos Art Museum
- a non-profit cultural organization formed in 1981 to celebrate
the life and creative pursuits of Nicolai Fechin and to host
exhibits, concerts and make available information about this
artist.
For seven years,
before finally settling in Santa Monica, Fechin took great delight
in the abundance of subject matter the Taos area provided him.
He worked with vibrant hues to paint the native people and traveled
south to Mexico to sketch in charcoal, pencil and pastel the
many faces of its people. The sketches reveal the superb draftsmanship
underlying all his work. Author Frank Waters once wrote of Fechin,s
paintings, "How they shout and sing! No man. ..has this
intensity of color. Few can equal his masterful draftsmanship.
Whatever his subject, Fechin's work is stamped with his immediately
recognizable style.
