1865 -1911 · Moscow, Saint Petersburg and modern Russian portrait

Direct glances, clear light and uncompromising poses make Valentin Serov the great renovator of Russian portraiture at the turn of the two centuries.

Valentin Alexandrovitch Serov was born in Saint Petersburg in 1865 and died in Moscow in 1911. Son of the composer Alexander Serov and the musician Valentina Bergman, he grew up in an artistic environment and received advice from Ilia Repin at a very young age. At the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, Pavel Tchistiakov transmitted to him a rigorous discipline of drawing and construction. At the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, Pavel Tchistiakov transmitted to him a rigorous discipline of drawing and construction. Young girl with peaches, painted in 1887 in Abramtsevo, announced a new Russian painting: the freshness of the light, the apparent speed of the touch and the intimacy of the model replaced academic solemnity. Serov soon became the most sought-after portraitist of his time. Artists, writers, industrialists and members of the aristocracy pose before him, but social prestige never prevents him from observing a personality with frankness. The Portrait of Maria Yermolova transforms the actress into a monumental presence through a vertical silhouette and an almost abstract space. Ida Rubinstein, on the contrary, is stretched in a decorative pose that mixes modernity, theater and strangeness. Princess Olga Orlova emerges among furs, satin and furniture, while the Portrait of Nicholas II seeks a gravity more private than ceremonial. Serov also practices landscape, watercolor, drawing, illustration and ancient themes. After 1905, he resigned from the Academy to protest against the repression and approaches a more synthetic language. His work unites psychological truth, elegance and pictorial freedom. The "Valentin Serov" selection notably compares Portrait of Maria Yermolova and Portrait of Ida Rubinstein. His reading favors details.

Serov flatters neither rank nor beauty: he builds a space around the model where character becomes visible.