My instructor that was the most advanced of all was Wassily Kandinsky, the great innovator. Surprisingly for me, he demanded from his pupils a vigorous study of academic skills, to know how to draw, etc. I was complimented of course, most of his pupils were beginners.

About this time (1921), I had an encounter with the horrible "CHEKA", the KGB now. Terror in full bloom, people were rounded up like cattle and searched in the streets. Caught in one of those "oblavas" and having failed to renew my address certificate, I found myself with many others in a CHEKA basement. Packed in a small room, we spent the night sitting on the floor. In the morning, I was summoned to see the judge, or whatever she was called, who happened to be a stout and tall, Amazon-like female, and oh, surprise, an art enthusiast. I did all the talking and lectured her on modern art, and believe me, she was an eager listener. I was dismissed with a smile, a free man again.

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) died in Paris just a few months after it's liberation. A charming man, soft spoken, a typical Russian intellectual, he had all my admiration for his moral courage, his total artistic integrity, and the force of his unique vision. He wasn't appreciated in Moscow and even the most advanced considered him sort of eccentric. At that time, his pictures to me looked like visions of the Holocaust. I remember a remark by Robert Falk who said, "art was dying . . . the abstract art in its final expression and the death of it?"

Before the revolution, Russian art had been second only to the French. Russian artists contributed greatly to modernism. Most important were certainly abstraction and constructivism. The communist revolution destroyed these movements, in short the freedom of artistic expression was the obvious reason for artists' exodus abroad . . . life became impossible in Moscow. Artists were forced to make their living painting portraits of Lenin, Marx, etc. A desire to escape had been growing in me, but how? A miracle happened . . . a commission came from the Graphic Arts Academy to design a variation on Russian lettering.

A revolt was growing in me. I felt sure that art would live as long as the human spirit was alive. Annihilation couldn't mean the end, but the beginning of a new life for art. I dreamed to go beyond abstraction, to give in my work, not a color photo naturalistic imitation, but images of visual beauty, to transcend, to recreate my vision of reality.

With the money earned and permission granted to go to Italy to perfect my art, Vera and I left Russia in 1925, never to return. Two wonderful years in Rome, Florence, Venice. Enchanting were Sienna and Ravenna. I fell in love with the Pre-Renaissance; Giotto, Cimabuie and Byzantine mosaics. Their purity of line, the radiance of color, and the nobility of style enraptured me. I wanted to recreate their unique beauty on my canvas.

Next move was to Paris, the world’s artistic center. Not to return to Russia was a natural decision, for freedom of expression was a most precious thing for me. I made rather well in Paris. Louis Cheronot, the number one French art critic liked my work and bought my paintings along with an art dealer who sold my work well. As time went by, the dealer and Cheronet both died, and the thread of communism covered France like a thick veil. We left for the America.

NICOLAS MOROSOFF