Leonid Osipovič Pasternak, Леонид Осипович Пастернак (1862-1945) è stato un pittore Russo, appartenente alla corrente Post-impressionista, padre di Boris Pasternak.
Leonid Pasternak è nato a Odessa in una famiglia ebrea. Erano cinque bambini ed il padre era albergatore.
Dal 1878-1881, studia il disegno in una scuola di Odessa, poi entra alla facoltà di medicina dell'Università statale di Mosca.
Dal 1883-1885 studia alla facoltà di diritto dell'università di Nuova Russia a Odessa.
Contemporaneamente, Pasternak si dedica al disegno e allo studio della pittura.
Frequenta nel 1882 l'atelier di Sorokine e più tardi prende corsi d'acquaforte con Ivan Ivanovič Šiškin.
Poi, nel mezzo degli anni 1880, se ne va a Monaco di Baviera (Regno di Baviera), all'accademia delle Belle Arti. Studia con Herterich e Lizen-Meyer.
Il collezionista Pavel Mikhaïlovitch Tretiakov gli compra il riquadro Lettera di casa per la sua Galleria Tret'jakov, e Pasternak decide allora di muoversi a Mosca. Nel 1889, si sposa con Rosalie Isidorovna Kaufmann.
Partecipa alle esposizioni dei Peredvižniki, e diviene membro dell'unione artistica Mir iskusstva (letteralmente il Mondo dell'arte). Poi insegna all'Accademia di pittura di Mosca, ma rifiuta di domandare il battesimo.
Illustra parecchie opere di Lev Tolstoj, cui fu legato da venerazione e amicizia.
Dopo la Rivoluzione, Pasternak ottiene il diritto di andare a farsi sanare in Germania.
Parte colla moglie e le figlie, nel 1921, per sistemarsi a Monaco di Baviera. Non tornerà mai in U.R.S.S..
In esilio, fa i ritratti di Eisenstein, di Rainer Maria Rilke, di D. Osborne.
Si trasferisce in Palestina nel 1924.
Crescendo i pericoli, all'epoca del Terzo Reich, emigra con la famiglia a Londra, nel 1938, dove la moglie muore l'anno successivo.
Crescendo i pericoli, all'epoca del Terzo Reich, emigra con la famiglia a Londra, nel 1938, dove la moglie muore l'anno successivo.
Il 31 maggio 1945, muore ad Oxford. | © Wikipedia
Leonid Pasternak | Alexander Pushkin at the seashore
Leonid Pasternak | Sergei Rachmaninov, 1916
Leonid Osipovich Pasternak / Леони́д О́сипович Пастерна́к was a Russian post-impressionist painter.
He was the father of the poet and novelist Boris Pasternak.
Pasternak was awarded a medal at the World Fair in Paris (1900) for his illustrations of Tolstoy's novels.
Pasternak was elected a member of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1905), and also taught at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.
Leonid Pasternak was born in Odessa to an Orthodox Jewish family on 4 April 1862.
The family claimed to be distantly descended, in one line, from Isaac Abrabanel, the famous 15th-century Jewish philosopher and treasurer of Portugal, although no independent evidence of this exists.
Leonid's father made an income by renting out a guest house.
The courtyard of the guest house, with its adjoining coach-house, first awakened Leonid's artistic imagination.
He was the youngest of the six children in the family.
He started to draw very early, but his family tried to discourage him, as they feared that his drawing would interfere with his studies.
His first sponsor was the local street cleaner who began buying Pasternak's art when Leonid was seven years old.
During 1879-81 Leonid Pasternak was a graduate of the Grekov Odessa Art school.
From 1881-1885, Leonid studied at Moscow University, first in the Department of Medicine, then at the Department of Law. Eventually he decided to devote his life to art and entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich from which he graduated in 1887.
He returned to Russia, served the compulsory two years in the Imperial Russian Army (artillery regiment) and in 1889 started a career as a full-time painter.
The start of his career was very successful.
His first exhibited painting was bought by Pavel Tretyakov, the most important art sponsor in Russia of the time.
He soon became a popular painter, a member of the so-called Polenov circle, that included Valentin Serov, Isaac Levitan, Mikhail Nesterov, Konstantin Korovin.
In 1889 he married the pianist Rosa Isidorovna Kaufman, the daughter of Isidor Kaufman, a well to do Jewish industrialist - and not of his famous namesake, the painter Isidor Kaufman, as many err to think. The newlyweds settled in Moscow and in (1890) the first of the couple's four children was born - the famous author and poet Boris Pasternak.
Leonid Pasternak was one of the first Russian painters who labeled himself an Impressionist.
In Russia in the 1880s and 1890s such a proclamation was novel enough to draw attention to an artist. Leonid also was a member of the Peredvizhniki and Union of Russian Artists movements.
He was a friend of Leo Tolstoy, for months lived in Yasnaya Polyana, and painted many portraits of the great writer, also illustrating his novels War and Peace and Resurrection. | © Wikipedia
Leonid Pasternak | Sergei Rachmaninov, 1916
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