Moscow
1875-1958 Moscow
At
the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, which he
attended from 1892 to 1898, Konstantin Iuon was instructed by K. A.
Savitskii, A. E. Arkhipov, N.A. Kasatkin, and K.A. Korovin. After
graduation, he worked in the studio of V.A. Serov (1898-1900) and lived
in Moscow. He later taught at his own studio for seventeen years, from
1900 to 1917, with fellow artist I.O. Dudin; at the Leningrad Institute
of Painting, Architecture, and Sculpture (1934-1935); and then at
the Moscow Art Institute (1952-1955). Iuon participated in the
exhibitions sponsored by the Itinerants in 1900 and by World of Art
(1903,1906), and he was a member of the Union of Russian Artists for
twenty years (1903-1923) as well as a life member of the Salon d'Automne
in Paris. From 1925 on he held a membership in the Association of
Artists of Revolutionary Russia. Iuon was made chief painter of the
State Academic Maly Theater (MKHAT) in Moscow (1945-1947), director of
the Research Institute of Theory and History of Fine Arts of the Academy
of Arts of the USSR (1947), and three years later; People's Artist of
the USSR.
Beyond
producing landscapes, portraits, genre scenes, and paintings on
historical-revolutionary themes, Iuon worked in the theater and wrote
many articles and books on art. In his own art, Iuon presented motifs
common to the Russian provinces, using their distinctive
historical-national characteristics in scenes of everyday life and
richly painting landscapes in a style influenced by Impressionism.
