Fyodor Andreyevich Bedin (1888 – 1969) — a master of Khokhloma painting
From his young years, Fyodor Bedin, a master of Khokhloma painting, was known as a spirited and inventive man. His life was restless — active and vivid — though he had to endure his share of grievances and misfortunes, fully in keeping with his telling surname (Bedin comes from the Russian word for "trouble"). He was born into a peasant family in the village of Bolshiye Bezdeli, and from the age of eight he worked in a spoon-making workshop alongside his father. His hands were golden — he could manage any task. In his youth, Bedin became seriously drawn to woodcarving.
Word of his skill spread throughout the district. The young craftsman received a major commission — to carve an iconostasis for the church in the village of Novopokrovskoye. Bedin threw himself so completely into the work that he labored almost around the clock. More than a year passed before the iconostasis, painted with bronze powder and coated in varnish, was installed in the church. When the candles were lit, the bronze glowed like gold. People flocked to the church to see such beauty. That church commission later came back to haunt Fyodor Andreyevich. Yet he saw no reason to repent or renounce it when, during his nomination as a candidate for deputy to the USSR Supreme Soviet in 1937, he was reproached for aiding the clergy. At the time this was considered a serious offense, even sabotage. Unsurprisingly, he did not become a deputy. Bedin took up decorative painting only in his mature years, after serving in the Civil War — he had stormed Perekop and driven the White armies out of Crimea. He was well past thirty — hardly an age to be an apprentice — yet he resolutely crossed the threshold of the workshop of Stepan Fyodorovich Krasilnikov to become a pupil of the celebrated master. He mastered the new craft quickly, but flatly refused to work by stencil, as was then customary. He wanted to develop techniques of live, freehand brushwork and to breathe life into the floral ornament. Conversations with the well-known painter Pyotr Konchalovsky, who came to Pokrovskoye in 1935, greatly helped him in this. The two became friends. In Bedin's workshop, Konchalovsky painted "Khokhloma Painting," depicting Fyodor Andreyevich's wife and daughter, along with another craftswoman, decorating wooden tableware. That painting is still kept today in the museum of the town of Semyonov. Often repeating his motto — "Live simply, and you'll live to be a hundred" — Bedin experimented constantly. His inexhaustible imagination let him find ever new variations on herbal ornament, creating expressive compositions of field and forest flowers, berries, and branches, drawing on the full richness of his native land. Together with Nikolai Grigoryevich Podogov and his brothers Nikandr and Anatoly, Bedin in the 1930s gave the age-old Khokhloma craft fresh vitality and color, enriching it with an array of intricate patterns that became high examples of the art of Khokhloma painting. Fyodor Andreyevich's dedication showed itself most strongly during the years of the The Great Patriotic War, when he effectively saved the unique craft from ruin and oblivion. All the leading masters had by then been called to the front, and no one was left in the artels and workshops able to carry on the work. It was then that Bedin took it upon himself to organize a vocational school and headed its painters' department. In 1943, at the height of the war, the school opened. Teenagers came who did not even know how to hold a brush. And how much effort the master had to put in to instill in his young students a love of folk art, teach them the techniques of painting, and help them learn to tell genuine beauty from imitation. Fyodor Andreyevich often came to the young people's dormitory in the evenings for heartfelt talks about the need to preserve the spiritual heritage that the peasantry had kept alive for centuries. Many of Bedin's students became outstanding artists and simply worthy people. Fyodor Andreyevich lived in Novopokrovskoye. His house, with a rowan tree beneath its windows, was a familiar landmark to everyone. He had painted it, inside and out, in cheerful bright colors. The walls and doors were decorated, as were the cupboard, the teapot and the plates, even the buckets on the bench — Bedin's "golden grass" wound its way over everything. Not a house but a fairy tale. To great sorrow, it burned down in the dry summer of 1972. But the name of the remarkable master has not been forgotten in the Khokhloma lands. It is still spoken today with special reverence.