The art of blacks

Reprint from the publication. Petersburg, 1919. 123 Illustrations. Voldemar Matvey (in Russia was written - Matvey) The pseudonym - Vladimir Markov (1877, Riga - 1914, St. Petersburg) - Russian Latvian artist and art theorist. He studied at the school of painting and drawing Benjamin Bloom in Riga. In 1902, the painting by Matveyis "birch at sunset" (Latv. Berzi Saules Rieta) was included in the mobile exhibition of the Baltic Society, he received a gold medal for it. In 1905 he entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. In St. Petersburg, he organized a group of artists "Union of Youth" (Latv. Jaunatnes Savieniba), which adhered to the basic principles of the "Russian avant -garde" and "new principles of art". The group worked in modernist art styles (Fovism, cubism, post -impressionism), also following the traditions of pre -Raphaelites and Russian icon painting. Matvys also seriously studied the "primitive" art (in 1907-1914 he traveled a lot, was engaged in ethnography and study of the art of the peoples of Africa and Oceania, the results of these studies were described in his works" Art of Easter Island ”) Wrote an essay on the texture (1914) In 1913, together with the artist Varvara Bubnova (wife), he made a trip to the ethnographic museums of Western Europe to collect materials and photograph African sculpture. It was she who, after the sudden death of V. Matvey, in 1914, prepared his book "The Art of Negro" (1919) to print. He died of an unidentified disease of the abdominal cavity. He was buried in Riga, in a large cemetery. Circulation 30 copies. Made using Print-on-Demand technology