Draft:Evgeny Teis

Evgeny Teis is a Soviet painter and graphic artist.

Evgeny Teis
Born	1900 Samara, Russian Empire
Died	1981 Moscow, USSR

Biography

Evgeny Teis began attending sunday classes in drawing and watercolors in Saratov in 1911 and in 1913 the Bogolyubov Drawing School. In 1916, after moving to Tiflis, he studied at the art school of O Shlefling and at the same time he worked as a decorator at the Tiflis Opera House under the direction of A Zaltsman. Young Evgeny Teis studied drawing at the VKhUTEMAS with the famous Petr Miturich, however, after completing the course, he chose etching. The end of the twenties was an extremely unfavorable time for creative searches - the Soviets were already fighting with might and main against formalism, reprimanding experimenters for "loss of content." Theis got out of this situation in an original way. He proclaimed himself an innovator trying to alleviate the burden of etching techniques for Soviet artists and was given the opportunity to create freely. To many, the engraver Illarion Golitsyn recalls, he seemed to be an alchemist: he constantly mixed something, conjured, spreading through his workshop on Meshchanskaya a bizarre mixture of odors of nitric acid, rosin, tinned iron. Devoted his life to the improvement of this difficult technique, Theis founded three etching studios: at the Museum of Fine Arts, the Moscow Architectural Institute, and in Stroganovka. Many artists went through his school, whose youth fell in the late sixties.

Exhibitions

• 2001 "Evgeny Teis, retrospective". State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.