Solomon Nikritin
The artist, painter and scholar Solomon Nikritin (1889-1965) was born in Chernigov. In 1915-16 he attended art lessons at private studios of M.Leblan and L.Pasternak in Moscow, in 1917-18 at studious of A.Yakovlev, M.Dobuzhinsky and E.Lanceray in Petrograd as well as A.Exter studio. In 1921-22 he attended VkHUTEMAS (Higher Arts and Crafts studios) classes in Moscow conducted by Wassily Kandinsky and the head of IZO department of the Public Commissariat of Education David Shterenberg.
As many other avant-garde artists, Nikritin himself was involved in the Proletkult workshops in Moscow in 1921. The same year he founded the last group of avant-garde painting in Russia called Projectionists (or the Method). One year later he founded the Studio of Projection Theatre. In 1924 he takes part in the First Discussion Exhibition of Associations of Active Revolutionary Art. In 1925-1929 Nikritin is a president of the Art Research Council of the Museum of Painterly Culture (MPC) and the head of its Analytical Cabinet, were he conducted experimental research work. MPC was the only state funded museum intended to collect works of the avant-garde. MPC collection was the biggest in Russia. In 1932-1934 Nikritin was the head of the Department for Visual Art at Moscow Polytechnic Museum. He joins the Methodology Bureau and the Exhibition Commission, takes part in the reconstruction work. He is among the first to create a method for exhibition design were each exposition has a script of its content and stylistic direction.
Since the early 1930s, in the epoch of the Socialist Realism, the Moscow Union of Artists accused Nikritin of the formalism. Since that time his paintings were never exhibited in Russia. Most of the works and writings from his private archive ended up in the collection of Georgy Kostakis and were divided between the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the Museum of Modern Art in Thessaloniki. Solomon Nikritin is mainly recognized now as an avant-garde painter and draughtsman; his art critical works and philosophical theories as well as his experiments in the field of theatrical culture related to biomechanics of movement and sound are almost forgotten. (Source)
