1881 -1955 · Kazan, Saint Petersburg, New York and Taos

Virtuoso drawing, vibrant material and intense portraits make Nikolai Fechina a Russian painter who became a major figure in Taos.

Nikolai Fechine was born in Kazan in 1881 and died in Santa Monica in 1955. Son of an iconographer, wood sculptor and gilder, he acquired direct knowledge of materials at a very young age. He studied at the Kazan art school then at the Imperial Academy of Saint Petersburg with Ilia Repin. His extremely sure drawing supports a painting where faces and hands emerge from free, scraped, pasted or left almost abstract material. Cheremise wedding, also known as Bearing Away the Bride, belongs to his great Russian scenes: the crowd, the costumes, the movement and the color render all the energy of a collective rite without dissolving individual presences. After the Revolution, Fechine emigrated to the United States in 1923. He first worked in New York, then settled in Taos in 1926. He found in the landscapes, pueblo peoples and architecture of the American Southwest a echo of the forests and communities of his youth. His house in Taos, which he sculpts himself, becomes a total work and today houses the Taos Art Museum. His house in Taos, which he sculpts himself, becomes a total work and today houses the Taos Art Museum. His house in Taos, which he sculpts himself, becomes a total work and today houses the Taos Art Museum. His house in Taos, which he sculpts himself, becomes a total work and today houses the Taos Art Museum. His "Nikolai Fechine" selection notably compares Mariage Tcherémisse. His reading favors composition.

Fechine constructs the resemblance between precision and freedom: the face is drawn with authority while the material around it still seems to be in motion.