Nicolai Fechin

Nicolai Fechin (1881-1955) was a Russian-American painter whose distinctive fusion of Russian academic training and expressive modernist paint handling produced some of the most powerful portraits and figure studies in early twentieth-century American art. Born in Kazan in the Russian Empire, he first studied at the Kazan Art School, which his father directed, before moving to St. Petersburg to attend the prestigious Imperial Academy of Arts. There he studied under the great Russian painter Ilya Repin, whose commitment to psychological depth in portraiture would profoundly influence Fechin's own approach. His extraordinary early success at the Academy culminated in a gold medal and a traveling scholarship that took him through Europe.

The upheavals of the Russian Revolution and the civil war that followed left Fechin's family impoverished and his professional future uncertain. In 1923 he emigrated to the United States with his wife Alexandra and their daughter, settling first in New York, where he established himself remarkably quickly within the American art community. In 1927 he moved to Taos, New Mexico, drawn by the light, landscape, and cultural richness that had already attracted the Taos Society of Artists. His years in Taos produced some of the most celebrated paintings of his career, including his intense portraits of Native American subjects. In 1933 Fechin relocated to the Los Angeles area, where he continued to paint until his death.

Fechin was elected to the National Academy of Design and became renowned for his bold, thickly applied paint, his frequent use of the palette knife, and his vivid, saturated color. His pictures are held in major American museums, and his beloved Taos home is preserved today as a museum dedicated to his life and work.