Read the text and complete it with the phrases
- with some good humour
- was also a book illustrator
- spent his childhood and youth
- first impressions were formed
- lay on his mother's shoulders
- to have lessons with a local artist
- where painted a lot from nature
- a really promising student
- a genre in which he worked
Boris Kustodiev is an outstanding Russian artist of the first third of the 20th century. The subjects of the most characteristic and famous paintings by the artist were fairs, city and country celebrations, taverns, merchant women, whom Kustodiev depicted [ ]. In these paintings reality was closely interwoven with imagination. The artist's genre works are characterized by monumentality, ornamentality, deliberate bright colours and even crudeness of colour combinations. Boris Kustodiev, a famous Russian artist, [ ]. His life and work are inseparably linked with the Volga and the wide open countryside of the area, where Kustodiev [ ].
The Kustodiev family rented a small wing in a rich merchant's house. It was there that the boy's [ ] of the way of life of the provincial merchant class. The artist later wrote, "The whole tenor of the rich and plentiful merchant way of life was there right under my nose ... It was like something out of an Ostrovsky play." The artist retained these childhood observations for years, recreating them later in oils and water-colours. His deep love for this area never left him all his life.
Boris Kustodiev was born in Astrakhan. His father, a schoolteacher, died young and all financial problems of the family [ ]. Despite financial difficulties, Boris' mother sent the capable boy [ ] A. Vlasov. In 1896, Kustodiev went to St Petersburg and entered the Academy of Arts. He studied in Repin's studio [ ]. His teacher Ilya Repin thought that Kustodiev was [ ]. He once said, "Kustodiev is a talented artist, a thoughtful and serious man with a deep love of art …"
In 1905, Kustodiev first turned to book illustrating, [ ] throughout his entire life. He illustrated many works of classical Russian literature, including Gogol's "Dead Souls". His famous paintings are "The Fair" and "A Merchant's Wife at Tea".