Aleksandr Matveyev (1878-1960)

Aliases: Aleksandr Terent'evič Matveev; Aleksandr Terentevich Matveev; Aleksandr Terent'yevich Matveyev; Alexander Terentjewitsch Matwejeff

Professions: Sculptor

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Aleksandr Matveyev Biography

(b Saratov, 25 Aug 1878; d Moscow, 22 Oct 1960). Russian sculptor. He studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1899–1902) under Sergey Volnukhin (1859–1921) and Paolo Troubetskoy. He took part in the World of Art and Blue Rose exhibitions. The influence of the impressionistic sculpture of Troubetskoy is particularly noticeable in Matveyev’s early works (e.g. the sculpture of the painter Viktor Borisov-Musatov , plaster, 1900; Moscow, Tret’yakov Gal.). Matveyev borrowed from this impressionism a sensitivity to texture and to the ‘breathing’ surface of forms, and from Symbolism and Art Nouveau an inclination towards images of sleep and of outward contentment along with inward anxiety, a shaky equilibrium on the boundaries of dream and reality, life and a deathly torpor. Although as a result Matveyev was called the ‘Russian Maillol’, his work is nearer to the painting of Gauguin and the sculpture of George Minne. The figures of naked adolescent boys (marble and Inkerman stone, 1908–11; destr.; fragments in St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.) that decorated the villa of Ya. Ye. Zhukovsky in Kuchukskoye, Crimea, evoke a mood of harmony ineluctably merged with an an anxious longing, as does the sleeping figure of a boy (granite, 1910) that decorates the gravestone of Borisov-Musatov in Tarusa near Moscow. The latter not only conveys magnificently the melancholic spirit of Borisov-Musatov’s work but also shows a virtuoso use of texture and the exploitation of nonfinito effects.

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