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Kostandi,
Kiriak (Konstyantynovych)
(b Dofinovka, Odessa region, 3 Oct 1852; d Odessa, 31 Oct 1921).
 Ukrainian
painter. He studied at the Odessa Drawing School (1870–74),
then at the Academy of Arts in St Petersburg (1874) under Pavel
Chistyakov (1832–1919). He made his debut at the 12th exhibition
of the Wanderers (Rus. Peredvizhniki) with the painting By a Wounded
Comrade (1884; Moscow, Tret’yakov Gal.). At the next exhibition
he showed Going Out into the World (1885; Kiev, Mus. Ukrain. A.).
These works are in the tradition of Vasily Perov and Vladimir Makovsky,
depicting exclusively psychological-narrative subjects in the style
of Critical Realism. Kostandi played an important role in introducing
the ideology of the Wanderers to the Ukraine, where he taught at
the Odessa Drawing  School
after graduating from the Academy of Arts. In 1890 he set up the
Fellowship of South Russian Artists, effectively a branch of the
St Petersburg Wanderers, and was its director from 1902 until his
death. In Odessa Kostandi worked with the artists Nikolay Kuznetsov
(1850–1929) and G. A. Ladyzhensky (1853–1916) and was
an active opponent of the development of new trends in art, excluding
avant-garde works from the Fellowship’s exhibitions. His dogmatism
hindered his own development and he painted little, producing variations
on the same subjects, such as Sick Woman at Her Dacha, Geese and
Early Spring, 1892 (all Kiev, Mus. Ukrain. A.). He helped set up
the Odessa Art Museum in 1898–9 and from 1917 was director
of the museum and head of the easel painting studio in the reorganized
art school.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
P. Nilus: ‘K. K. Kostandi’, V Mire iskusstva (1910), nos
1–3, pp. 37–41
K. K. Kostandi, T. Ya. Dvornikov, G. S. Golovkov: Katalog tvoriv
[K. K.Kostandi, T. Ya. Dvornikov, G. S. Golovkov: catalogue of works]
(Kiev, 1941)
K. K. Kostandi, 1852–1921 (exh. cat., Odessa, 1952)
A. Afanas’yev: Kiriak Konstantinovich Kostandi, 1852–1921
(Moscow, 1953)
A. N. Shister: Kiriak Konstantinovich Kostandi (Leningrad, 1975)
I. Parkhomenko: ‘Kiriak Kostandi (Do 125-richchya vid dnya
narodzhennya’ [Kiriak Kostandi (on the 125th anniversary of
his birth)], Obrazotvorche mystetstvo (1978), no. 1, pp. 25–7
SERGEY KUZNETSOV
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