MYASOEDOV

 

Ivan G. Myasoedov (1881-1953). Russian painter.

Son of a painter rather well known, Grigory Myasoedov, had  a troubled childhood removed from his mother. He had a regular education to become a painter. Poltava, Moscow, and last in St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. He achieved brilliant outcomes and was awarded for his work "The Argonauts and the Golden Fleece" (1908).

 In this way he got the chance of traveling to Italy, the first of his several travels to Italy, Spain, and Germany. At the same time he started to be involved in circus traveling shows as wrestler, weightlifter, strongman, and showing his body. He collaborated to "Nudity on stage" (1911) produced by the regisseur Nicholas Evreinov. Myasoedov was a supporter of naturism and convinced of the naked body beauty. Everywhere it was his attractive figure  to bring him fame, in fact, he performed several times in public spaces with tests of muscle strength or just showing his beautiful naked body. With his statuesque physical (height 6'5") he was able to seduce the entire audience. Just in those years was borning in Europe the Bodybuilding that all we know today. As painter he was gifted of great ability, but his painting is decidedly academic and still imbued with mythological ideas, so spread in the artistic German environment of the beginning of the century. During the civil war he chose to side with Denikin and finally in 1921 he left Russia for ever. In the early '20s he and his second (?) wife, Malina Vernichi, of Italian origin, settled in Berlin; they were arrested and imprisoned twice for the manufacture and sale of counterfeit banknotes (it seems he was a forger of considerable ability); later they went to Latvia, then in Belgium, back to Italy, ending in Lichtenstein. After the war he was again arrested for collaborating with the Nazis and for production of counterfeit money. In Lichtenstein he painted a lot of portraits, murals, and even stamps. He died in 1953 shortly after his arrival in Argentina with his family.

Myasoedov was the only artist, maybe the first, who tried to combine art to the practise of physical beauty, convinced that beauty is only and always naked.