Arseny Semionov

Arseny Nikiforovich Semionov (Арсе́ний Ники́форович Семе́нов; January 23, 1911 – September 13, 1992) was a Soviet painter and art teacher, lived and worked in Leningrad, a member of the Leningrad Union of Artists, regarded as one of the representatives of the Leningrad school of painting, most famous for his landscape and cityscape paintings.

Arseny Nikiforovich Semionov was born January 23, 1911, in the village of Maksimkovo, Polotsk Uyezd, Vitebsk Governorate, Russian Empire in the family of the master-builder of railway bridges.

His father died when Arseny was four years old.

The future artist spent his childhood in the Belarusian town of Bykhaw.

In 1927 Arseny Semionov arrives in Leningrad.

He worked as a general worker, while engaged in painting and drawing at the private art studio of Alfred Eberling, a famous art teacher and a member of AKhRR (Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia).

In 1930, Arseny Semionov took preparatory courses at the Academy of Fine Arts and in the same year he became a student of the Institute of Proletarian Fine Art.

Arseny Semionov years of study coincided with a radically reformed of institute and the whole system of art education.

In 1932, the period ended, notorious in the history of the institute as "maslovschina".

October 11, 1932, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars accept the decree "On creation of the Academy of Arts."

Institute of Proletarian Art was transformed into the Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.

Thus was the line be drawn under 15-year period of continuous transformations of the largest art institutions in the Soviet Union.

However, it took several years to ensure that assemble disparate teaching force and a new way to build an art education.

A new director of the Academy of Fine Arts sculptor T. A. Matveev and his Deputy for Academic Affairs professor of painting Alexander Savinov his started this process.

They invited for the teaching job at the institute professors Dmitry Kardovsky, Alexander Osmerkin, Semion Abugov, Eugene Lanceray, Nikolai Radlov, Pavel Shillingovsky, Isaak Brodsky and others, many have made subsequently to the formation of the Leningrad school of painting.

In 1934 the director of the All-Russian Academy of Arts and the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture was appointed Isaak Brodsky, a student of Ilya Repin.

According to Veronika Bogdan, it was just with the arrival of Brodsky to the leadership of the Academy that the active formation of the Leningrad school of painting began.

To work at the Institute Brodsky attracts major artists and educators Konstantin Yuon, Pavel Naumov, Boris Ioganson, Alexander Lubimov, Rudolf Frentz, Nikolai Petrov, Vasily Shuhaev, Dmitry Kiplik, Nikolai Punin, Vasily Meshkov, Mikhail Bernshtein, Yefim Cheptsov, Ivan Bilibin, Matvey Manizer, Piotr Buchkin, Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Alexei Karev, Leonid Ovsyannikov, Sergei Priselkov, Ivan Stepashkin, Konstantin Rudakov, and others.

At the department of painting was re-established a system of individual creative workshops in which students continued their studies after the second course.

Workshops led by professor Isaak Brodsky, Boris Ioganson, Vladimir Yakovlev, Dmitry Kardovsky, Alexander Osmerkin, Alexander Savinov, Rudolf Frentz, Pavel Shillingovsky.

It was in the studio Dmitry Kardovsky Arseny Semionov was lucky to do in the years 1934–1937.

Methodology and views Kardovsky boiled down to the fact that, firstly, the Academy would give the student professional knowledge to the extent necessary for a mature implementation of the finished work of art – school, how loved to talk Kardovsky, common to all students regardless of their artistic inclinations and orientations.

Talent does not ruin it, but its mediocre student enough to be useful worker in the life.

Second, studies should be carried out the influence of so-called "trends" in art.

The task of the school – to give the student the knowledge and education, which is suitable for its development in any theoretical approach.

Foundation of school – a study of the nature, utility – the study of art.

The basis of learning – re-experience.

Third, the drawing should not be detached from the painting.

A task, basically, need to be addressed comprehensively.

Drawing – a means of mastering painting.

Tone drawing – a means to organize color.

The tone keep the unity of color.

Therefore, the analysis of tone – the most important task for any art works.

Finally, in the opinion of Kardovsky, the basis of all the work – identification of the disposition of nature.

Classes at the studio of Kardovsky, itself an outstanding personality of the teacher had a great influence on the fate of the young artist.

His teaching methods and attitudes are deeply accepted by Arseny Semionov in his own teaching, which he has devoted almost half a century.

In 1937, shortly before graduation Institute in studio of Dmitry Kardovsky, Arseny Semenov became ill and was forced to stop training.

After his recovery he obtained a certificate of completion of 5 courses of the department of painting without doing graduate work.

He was sent to work in the Penza Art College.

In 1938 Arseny Semionov accepted membership in the Penza Organization of Soviet Artists.