 | Konstantin Fyodorovich YUON 1875 — 1958Костянтин Федорович ЮОН • Константин Фёдорович ЮОНKonstantin Fyodorovich Yuon (Juon) was born in Moscow in 1875 to a family of a banking clerk of Swiss-Russian origin. He was a painter and theatre designer associated with the Mir Iskusstva; later a co-founder of the Union of Russian Artists and the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia. His brother Paul Juon was a notable composer. From 1892 to 1898 he studied at the Moscow Art School where Konstantin Savitsky and Konstantin Korovin were among his distinguished teachers. After graduating from the Moscow Art School he took private lessons from Valentin Serov (1898-1900). During several trips to Western Europe he became acquainted with the cityscapes of Camille Pissarro and other Impressionists, but retained his own distinctive style. In 1900 he opened the first private painting and drawing school in Moscow. Later he taught in Leningrad Academy of Arts and the Surikov Art Institute in Moscow. He designed sets for plays at the Moscow Art Theatre and the Maly Theater, becoming the official designer for this theater in 1945 - 1947. He also contributed sets for operas. In Soviet era, Yuon was the director of the Research Institute of the Academy of Arts (1948-1950) and the First Secretary of the Union of Soviet Artists (1956-1958). He won a Stalin Prize (1943), received the Order of Lenin. He died in Moscow in 1958. |
