My life

Konstantin Alekseevich Korovin (1861–1939) was a brilliant landscape painter, an accomplished portraitist, and a theatrical designer who introduced the aesthetics of Impressionism to Russian visual art at the turn of the 20th century and left behind an extensive artistic and literary legacy that cannot be overstated. Korovin lived and worked during a period rich in historical events, and fate brought him into the company of the leading figures of his time—painters, actors, theatre figures, and patrons, many of whom became his close friends. Among them were Vrubel, Serov, Polenov, Levitan, Savrasov, Chaliapin, and Mamontov. All those who knew Korovin admired his exceptional ability to captivate his audience, his rare sense of humor in dramatizing dialogues, and his gift for bringing vivid color to ordinary life—qualities that were equally evident in his writing. Korovin began his memoirs in the early years of the Revolution and completed them in forced exile, where he lived from 1922 until the end of his life. There, longing for his homeland, he wrote more than four hundred remarkable stories, vividly and simply capturing the Russia dear to his heart and the people he loved and remembered. This volume contains his memoirs, My Life, selected stories from 1929–1939, and reproductions of the artist’s paintings.