The portrait of Konstantin Ivanovich Mazin, a member of the Soviet Artists’ Union, teacher, portraitist and landscape painter, was created by Fyodor Alexandrovich Modorov in 1944.
In the portrait, Fyodor Modorov depicted a thin elderly man with a high forehead and blue eyes. The artist gazes at the viewer from behind round glasses. His gray hair is cut short and combed back rather carelessly. He is dressed in a white shirt with a turndown collar and cufflinks.
Konstantin Mazin was born in Astrakhan, which is far from Mstyora. He studied at the Kazan Art School, and then attended the landscape class of Professor Alexander Alexandrovich Kiselyov at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, from which he graduated in 1906.
The artist first came to Mstyora in 1903, when he was painting sketches for his graduation work “Spring”. The Vyazniki region and the surroundings of Mstyora became the artist’s favorite places for working. There Konstantin Ivanovich Mazin got acquainted with Fyodor Modorov, a student of the icon painting school. Their meeting had a great influence on the fate of the future People’s Artist of the RSFSR: on Mazin’s advice, Modorov continued his studies at higher institutions.
In 1920, Konstantin Mazin returned to Mstyora and stayed there for many years. He fell in love with the village and its wide-open spaces, rivers, and picturesque landscapes. He lived in an ordinary wooden house, among apple trees, in the village of Barskoye-Tatarovo, which became part of Mstyora. The walls of the house were completely covered with paintings, and there were many albums with drawings scattered on the tables. From the porch, the artist could admire the dawns turning red in the evenings, and meadows creeping across the river.
The artist often took his easel to the river
Mstyorka. Devoting a lot of time to teaching at the art and industrial school,
Konstantin Mazin sought to inspire in his students an understanding of the
essence of Russian nature, its diversity and rich colors. As a result, the
future artists developed an acute sense of subtle moods and colors of the
landscape. Konstantin Mazin taught for over 40 years. He raised many
accomplished professional masters of lacquer miniature and landscape painting.
