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From Primedia Publications
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The Fechin Institute
The ultimate artist's retreat in Taos.
By Sharon Karpinski
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Taos, New Mexico, is a sun-baked Spanish village at the foot of a notable mountain. It's just down the road from a thousand-year-old Indian pueblo still inhabited by the tribe that built it. The entire valley basks in a pinkish-gold light that makes the sky appear ever-so-slightly on fire. At last count Taos had 88 art galleries for 6,000 residents. Between the Indians, the Penitentes, the painters, the writers, the tourists, the mountain's heart-stopping beauty and its heart-stopping roads, Taosenos have seen it all. Usually more than once.
One artist who succumbed to the charms of Taos was Nicolai Fechin, a Russian emigre painter. Though Fechin himself is long gone (he died on the West Coast in 1955) you can still sense his presence at the Fechin Institute, the home he crafted more than 70 years ago and open today to the public as a museum. The place is a unique artifact of Russia's Imperial Art Academy, the Russian woodcarving tradition, and the fallout of a very American marital war.
Nicolai Fechin was born in 1881 in Kazan, a Tartar city on the Volga River, site of the last Mongol khanate. He had art in the blood, for his father, Ivan Alexandrovitch, was a woodcarver and icon maker. At 13 Nicolai received a six-year scholarship at the Kazan branch of the Imperial Art Academy. By World War I Fechin was known for his portraits and enjoyed an international reputation, with shows in Europe and the United States. In 1913, he married Alexandra Belkovich, the daughter of the founder of the art academy in Kazan.
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 | Fechin caught pneumonia, which reactivated his childhood tuberculosis, while his daughter, Eya, suffered from fevers. Alexandra, no peasant, just wanted out of the Reds' social experiment. | |
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In 1923, the family migrated to America. It was not a political move (as a teacher-artist, Fechin received state protection) but a pragmatic attempt to stay alive. Post-Revolutionary Russia killed even the healthy. Fechin caught pneumonia, which reactivated his childhood tuberculosis, while his daughter, Eya, suffered from fevers. Alexandra, no peasant, just wanted out of the Reds' social experiment.
The Fechins lived four years in New York City and visited rural Pennsylvania for a time before British artist Jack Young-Hunter, whom they had met in New York, invited them to Taos in 1926 to experience "real America." Nicolai immediately fell in love with northern New Mexico. It was perhaps "real America" only to someone from the banks of the Volga, but the Fechins felt at home.
Young-Hunter and his wife were renting a guest house from Mabel Dodge Luhan, who had set up a Taos-style salon in 1918. Mabel had "talent for talent," said Ansel Adams, who decided to switch from music to photography while visiting her. Other guests included painter Georgia O'Keeffe, author D.H. Lawrence and actress Greta Garbo. The Fechins initially stayed in one of Mabel's guest houses but soon Alexandra, who was as strong-willed as her hostess, had a falling out with Mabel and insisted on moving. She precipitously bought three adobe houses (two of them tiny) on six acres near the old Plaza. The third house was a two-story square of no provenance whatever—a blank canvas for Nicolai.
Sharon Karpinski returned to New Mexico after selling real estate in California. She wrote "Las Vegas . . . New Mexico?" for the February 1997 issue of Historic Traveler.
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