Art and Memorial Museum of Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin
The house in the small town of Khvalynsk where Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin (1878-1939) spent his formative years.
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin (1878-1939) creator of Bathing the Red Horse (1912, Tretyakov Gallery), was born and spent his childhood in this small town in the Saratov region of Russia, the son of a shoemaker. He began studying painting in the 1890s, and travelled across France, Italy, Greece and North Africa before moving to St Petersburg in 1908. His innovations in spherical perspective and bold, stripped down colour palettes paved the way for later innovations in Russian avant-garde painting. Throughout his career, Petrov-Vodkin experimented with different media, and he worked in graphic art, set design and art theory as well as book illustration.
The memorial museum established in Khvalynsk is in a complex that includes the memorial house Petrov-Vodkin built for his parents. It also has an art gallery exhibiting his works along with those of his contemporaneous and contemporary Khvalynsk colleagues.
