Ivan Karpoff Biography
Ivan Mikhailovich Karpov (Novocherkassk, 30 January 1898 – Milan, 6 July 1970) was a Russian painter. Showing a great predisposition towards painting since he was a child, his surgeon father encouraged him by entrusting him to the supervision of a local painter. After finishing his studies at the Rostov art school, in 1916 he was called up and sent to the southern front. Wounded and taken prisoner first by the Austrians and then by the English, he took refuge in Bulgaria, in Sofia, where he began to study at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1925 he won an American scholarship which allowed him to leave for Italy. Having arrived in Milan in 1925, he graduated brilliantly from the Academy of Fine Arts after following Ambrogio Alciati's painting course. During his years at the Academy he met the painter Julia Ivanovna Lund (1905-1974), of Norwegian origins but born in Russia, who became his wife in 1930 and gave birth to three children. Although the Second World War had caused a period of stasis in the painter's Milanese exhibition activity, an extremely fruitful artist, he immediately stood out in the Milanese environment and his particular style attracted the attention of numerous art critics who appreciated his ability of knowing how to combine a sensitivity characteristic of Slavic art with themes that recall typically Italian (in this case, Lombard) landscapes. In fact, the subjects present elements that recall Russian landscapes and which betray the painter's nostalgia for his homeland, to which he will never return.
