Jaime Rall: Gregory Krug—Visual Theologian of the Neopatristic Synthesis

In the historical accounts of the so-called “Paris School,” the Russian émigré community in mid-twentieth-century Paris that transformed modern Orthodox theology, an enigmatic figure lingers in the margins: Gregory Krug, a monk and master iconographer who painted several of the churches that sprang up during this extraordinary period, and who has been little studied in the Anglophone world. This essay considers Krug not only as a preeminent artist, but as a theologian who expressed the “neopatristic synthesis” in color and line, drawing upon the textual and visual traditions of the Orthodox East to respond to the concerns of his time.

Biographical Context

Georgii Ivanovich Krug,[1] later Father Gregory, was born in 1908 in St. Petersburg to a Swedish Lutheran father and a Russian Orthodox mother and was raised in his father’s faith. In 1921, after the Russian revolution, the struggling family fled to Estonia. At age 19, Krug converted to Orthodoxy, and for the next few years studied fine art in Talinn and Tartu.

In 1931, Krug moved to Paris where he continued his artistic training and met Leonid Ouspensky, another young artist who became his lifelong friend and collaborator. Krug also joined the Confrerie de Saint Photius, founded by theologian Vladimir Lossky and others to promote Orthodoxy in France. Like Lossky, Krug remained in the Moscow Patriarchate and his first major iconographic work was the iconostasis for its Three Holy Hierarchs Church in 1933.

A turning point came during World War II, when Krug suffered a breakdown and entered a psychiatric hospital. After seven months, he was released under the supervision of his spiritual father, Archimandrite Sergius Schevitch. With Father Sergius’ support, Krug eventually returned to iconography, to which he devoted the rest of his life. In 1948, Krug was tonsured a monk and moved to the Skete of the Holy Spirit near Paris, where he stayed until his death in 1969.

Krug never took students and rarely let anyone see him paint. Yet the hundreds of works he produced—including panel icons, frescoes, and iconostases in France and elsewhere—deeply influenced modern Orthodox iconography. Many of these works are considered masterpieces, earning Krug the moniker “the Rublev of the twentieth century.”[2]

Theological Approach: Neopatristic Synthesis

            Artists such as Krug and Ouspensky, along with Photis Kontoglou in Greece, are often credited with the modern revival of “traditional” Orthodox iconography.[3] This so-called “rediscovery of the icon” was twofold. Aesthetically, it constituted a return from Western-influenced realism to the less naturalistic style of Byzantine and medieval Russian icons. Meanwhile, a new genre of theological writings—including definitive works by Ouspensky and Kontoglou—offered ideological support for stylistic traditionalism in Orthodox iconography.

This “rediscovery” was an expression of the “return to the Church Fathers” championed by contemporaneous émigré theologians Georges Florovsky and Vladimir Lossky. Florovsky coined the term “neopatristic synthesis” for his proposed theological approach, defined as a creative but faithful reassessment of the Fathers, addressed to the concerns of the current age.[4] This description also fits the icon revivalists, who sought to retrieve Orthodox tradition in ways that spoke to the present. Indeed, there was direct influence: Ouspensky’s account of the icon’s stylistic decline, for example, follows Florovsky’s narrative of Western “pseudomorphosis” in Orthodox theology,[5] and Ouspensky co-wrote The Meaning of Icons with Lossky, who contributed an essay on the reception and renewal of tradition.[6] Krug, too, was immersed in the neopatristic movement. It was to his friend Krug that Lossky submitted his theological works for review, remarking that “no one understood his thought as profoundly as Krug.”[7]

Krug, however, was not only a conversational partner, but a theologian in his own right, whose icons conveyed theological meaning in visual form. His distinctively neopatristic approach is revealed by both what and how he painted. A “return to the Fathers” is evident in his compositions, which show fidelity to Byzantine and medieval Russian types for the depiction of sacred persons and events. Yet, within that traditional framework, Krug never simply copied, but engaged in what Florovsky called “creative reassessment” through original details, stripped-down backgrounds, or fresh arrangements of key elements (figs. 1, 2).[8]

Further, Krug’s innovative style addressed the aesthetic concerns of the modern, Western milieu in which he worked. As he wrote in his private notebooks, images of holy events constantly change, containing “the spirit and uniqueness of the time in which they arose,” even as their “internal unity and integrity” is preserved by Church tradition.[9] Krug himself had trained not only in iconography, but with avant-garde artists such as Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov.[10] His style synthesizes these influences. Cubist and Rayonist tendencies, for example, can be seen in his geometric forms, flat planes, and dynamic highlights,[11] which extend and emphasize the non-realism characteristic of medieval icons (fig. 3). In an era when secular artists were eagerly looking to old Russian icons for aesthetic inspiration,[12] Krug in turn reintegrated contemporary art trends to reveal the theology of Orthodox sacred images to new eyes.[13] 

Theological Themes: Light and Image

            An analysis of Krug’s iconographic works, considered in view of his private notebooks, shows how he conveyed theological themes through his compositional and stylistic choices. One such theme, strikingly apparent throughout his oeuvre, is that of light. As a monk in the hesychast tradition,[14] and consistent with the neo-Palamite theology of his friend Lossky, Krug believed that the role of the icon was to bear witness to the divine uncreated light, that light revealed on Tabor as a “radiant outpouring” of grace that “enlightens the saints” and “clothes the Holy Church with glory.”[15]Citing Gregory Palamas and Symeon the New Theologian among others, Krug writes, “…the light of the Transfiguration of Christ fills the icons, sanctifies them, is for them the creative principle that defines the very nature of the icon…”[16]Krug’s icons achieve great luminosity through spacious white backgrounds (rare in icons), diaphanous paint layers, radiant palettes, ubiquitous highlights, and delicately rendered rays (fig. 4). His holy figures glow with light, emanate light, are surrounded and garbed with light.[17]

            For Krug, the light shining forth from icons of Christ and His saints testifies to the twin truths of incarnation and deification. It is by God becoming man, he writes, that every person now has the opportunity to ascend to God, to be clothed in His divine light. Krug also links these truths to the theological theme of the image. The veneration of icons in the Orthodox Church, he writes, rests on the dogma of the incarnation of Christ, “the total and perfect fulfillment and realization of the image of God” in man,[18] Who came to restore that divine image in us. Thus, the image on which all other holy icons depend is the "Image Not Made by Hands,” the cloth on which Christ’s face was miraculously imprinted, as “evidence of the connection of the created human principle with the imperishable divine being.”[19] Krug unsurprisingly painted this iconographic type many times (fig. 5). But another expression of the doctrine of theosis, understood in terms of image, can also be found in Krug’s icons. “…every image of the human face,” he writes, “is raised or seeks to rise to the image of Christ.”[20] And indeed, every holy face Krug depicts subtly resembles that of Christ in its features and expression, in the loving depths of its eyes (fig. 6), attesting to our possibility of regaining the likeness of Christ, the image of God.

Personal Reflection

           When I first converted to the Orthodox Church, informed by the writings of Krug’s friend Lossky on mystical theology, I found its iconography foreign, cartoonish, and overwhelming. I could not find my way in. Then I discovered Father Gregory Krug. The beauty and sensitivity of his icons helped me experience sacred images as a means to communion with their prototypes, and their fusion of tradition and modernity showed me the possibility of a visual theology that speaks to the here and now. My current studies in sacred art are largely thanks to him. This project has given me an opportunity to delve into his work and writings, and there are more areas of his thinking I would like to explore, such as apophaticism and canonicity in sacred art. But the greatest gift has been to spend time with this holy ascetic, for whom painting was his prayer, united with his spiritual and liturgical life, who painted icons for orphans, exiles, the poor, and the aged[21]that overflowed with the love of Christ and His saints. May his memory be eternal.

FIGURES:

Figure 1. The Descent into Hades, wall painting, Mesnil-St-Denis. This wall painting is an example of Krug’s “creative reassessment” of traditional iconographic types. In general, this composition reflects earlier types, such as those at St. Maria Antiqua in Rome, in which Adam and Eve are both shown to one side of Christ, rather than later and better-known variants in which they flank him. The scroll Christ holds is also typical of earlier models. Krug has innovated by stripping away other details, such as a representation of the conquered Hades, favoring instead a minimalistic background dominated by a large tripartite mandorla, and by shifting the tone from triumphant to tender. Image source: Tregubov, The Light of Christ, 47.

Figure 2. Christ Pantocrator, icon, Noisy-le-Grand. This icon provides a second example of Krug’s “creative reassessment” of traditional iconographic types. In particular, the original detail of Christ’s massive right hand, held in a gesture of blessing, signifies, in Larchet’s reading, “the immensity of Christ’s mercy and the generosity with which He dispenses His grace” (Larchet, “Tradition,” 99, trans. author). Further, the highlights on Christ’s garments evoke geometries that were characteristic of the Rayonist movement. Image source: Tregubov, The Light of Christ, 9.

Figure 3. The Evangelists (Royal Doors), set of four icons, Noisy-le-Grand. These icons are fine examples of Krug’s use of geometric forms, flat planes, and dynamic white highlights—all reminiscent of modern art movements of the early twentieth century—to extend and emphasize the non-realism typical of medieval icons. Image source: Tregubov, The Light of Christ, 43.

Figure 4. The Mother of God with Joachim and Anna, wall painting, Moisenay. Although this composition is not typical of Krug’s oeuvre—it was specifically commissioned for a church that was designed to correspond to the sophiological teachings of Father Sergei Bulgakov and may in fact be unique—it remains nonetheless an excellent example of how Krug achieved luminosity through his use of spacious white backgrounds (rare in icons), diaphanous layers of paint, radiant color palettes, ubiquitous planar and linear highlights, and delicately rendered rays of light. Image source: Tregubov, The Light of Christ, 17.

Figure 5. The Holy Face, wall painting, Paris. Krug saw the “Image Not Made by Hands,” the cloth on which Christ’s face was miraculously imprinted, as “the original seal and source of every image,” from which “every image proceeds and is born” (Krug, Carnets, 49, trans. author). He painted this iconographic type many times using various media, never exactly the same way twice. More examples are available in (Higoumène) Barsanuphe, Icônes, and L’iconographie de l’église des Trois Saints Hiérarques. Image source: Tregubov, The Light of Christ, 7.

Figure 6. Faces of Christ and other holy figures. From left to right: Christ Pantocrator, icon, Montgeron (detail); Saint Genevieve, icon, Noisy-le-Grand (detail); Saint Nicholas, icon, Clamart (detail). As shown here, faces of holy figures in Krug’s icons generally resemble that of Christ in their golden skin tones, elegant long noses, slim and dispassionate lips, rounded heads, and especially the oversized irises and pupils that give the eyes an expression of great tenderness and compassion. Krug’s extant non-religious works include highly skilled and realistic portraits that precisely convey the idiosyncratic features and expressions of each subject, indicating that this subtle but powerful “family resemblance” among his iconographic figures was a deliberate choice. Image sources: Tregubov, The Light of Christ, 13, 35, 37.

Notes

[1]   On Krug’s biography, see Kari Kotkavaara, Progeny of the Icon: Émigré Russian Revivalism and the Vicissitudes of the Eastern Orthodox Sacred Image (Åbo: Åbo Akademis förlag, 1999); Michael Plekon, “Gregory Krug: Artist of the Icon, Theologian of Beauty,” in Living Icons: Persons of Faith in the Eastern Church (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 128–48; Irina K. Yazykova, Hidden and Triumphant: The Underground Struggle to Save Russian Iconography (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2010); Tatyana V. Yurieva, “Iconostases of the Russian Abroad: Monk Grigory Krug,” Yaroslavl Pedagogical Bulletin 120, no. 3 (2021): 168–74; Emilie van Taack, “L’icône à travers l’enseignement du moine Grégoire (Kroug) et de Léonide Ouspensky,” [seminar, Athens, October 2, 2018), trois-saints-docteurs.fr/fr/2021/04/12/emilie-van-taack-licone-a-travers-lenseignement-du-moine-gregoire-kroug-et-de-leonide-ouspensky/; and Le Père Grégoire: la voie vers la Lumière, directed by Alexey Vozniuk (2019; Paris: Éditions Sainte-Geneviève), www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4s_x1ZHWZI. Some helpful biographical context is also provided in Andrew Tregubov, The Light of Christ: Iconography of Gregory Kroug (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990) and (Higoumène) Barsanuphe, Icônes et fresques du père Grégoire (Marcenat: Monastère Orthodoxe Znaménié, 1999).

[2]   Yurieva, “Iconostases,” 169. A list of Krug’s major works is available online at eglise-orthodoxe-vanves.org/personnalites/moine-gregoire/principales-oeuvres-du-pere-gregoire-kroug/.

[3]   On the “rediscovery of the icon” in the twentieth century, see Evan Freeman, “Rethinking the Role of Style in Orthodox Iconography: The Invention of Tradition in the Writings of Florensky, Ouspensky, and Kontoglou,” in Church Music and Icons: Windows to Heaven: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Orthodox Church Music (University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland, 3–9 June 2013), ed. Ivan Moody and Maria Takala-Roszczenko (Joensuu: The International Society for Orthodox Church Music, 2015), 350–69; Andrew Louth, “The Recovery of the Icon: Nicholas Zernov Lecture 2015,” in Selected Essays, Volume II: Studies in Theology, ed. Lewis Ayres and John Behr (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 341–61; Kotkavaara, Progeny; Yazykova, Hidden and Triumphant; and Patrick Doolan, Recovering the Icon: The Life and Work of Leonid Ouspensky (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008).

[4]   Florovsky defined what he meant by “neopatristic synthesis” later in life, in his “Theological Testament”; see Paul L. Gavrilyuk, “Varieties of Neopatristics: Georges Florovsky, Vladimir Lossky, and Alexander Schmemann,” in The Oxford Handbook of Russian Religious Thought, ed. Caryl Emerson, George Pattison, and Randall A. Poole (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 528–42, at 533–34.

[5]   Paul L. Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 241–42; see also Freeman, “Rethinking,” 355–56.

[6]   Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, trans. G. E. H. Palmer and E. Kadloubovsky (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982).

[7]   As recounted by Lossky’s daughter, who was also Krug’s goddaughter: Catherine Aslanoff, “Le Père Grégoire (Krug),” Messager de l’Exarchat du patriarche russe en Europe occidentale 17, no. 68 (1969): 212–17. Translation is author’s own.

[8]   On tradition and innovation in Krug’s icons, see especially Jean-Claude Larchet, “Tradition et créativité en iconographie: L’oeuvre du moine Grégoire Krug,” in L’iconographe et l’artiste (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2008), 93–107. See also Plekon, “Gregory Krug”; Tregubov, The Light of Christ; Yazykova, Hidden and Triumphant; and Yurieva, “Iconostases.”

[9]   G. I. Krug (Moine Grégoire), Carnets d’un peintre d’icônes, trans. Jean-Claude and Valentine Marcadé (Lausanne: Editions L’Age d’Homme, 1983), 32. Translation is author’s own, with reference to the original Russian available online at www.nesusvet.narod.ru/ico/books/krug/. Krug’s personal notebooks were recovered from his cell and published after his death. They are his only extant writings.

[10] Other artists with whom Krug studied in Paris include the iconographers Sergei Fyodorov, Dimitri Stelletsky, and Julia Reitlinger (Sister Joanna) as well as secular artists Nikolai Milioti, Boris Grigoriev, and especially Konstantin Somov. Accounts vary as to when and where he might also have studied with Old Believers, who strictly adhered to ancient iconographic types and techniques.

[11] Krug worked in Goncharova and Larionov’s studio a few decades after their abstract Rayonist period, during which they sought to depict rays of light reflecting from objects rather than the objects themselves. The possible link between Rayonism and Krug’s visually similar depictions of light has not yet, to my knowledge, been identified or explored in the scholarship.

[12] On the fad for antique Russian icons among secular artists and connoisseurs in the early twentieth century, see Freeman, “Rethinking,” 352–53; Yazykova, Hidden and Triumphant, esp. chapters 3 and 4; and Kontkavaara, Progeny.

[13] While some of these stylistic elements can also be found in icons by Ouspensky, who was certainly influenced by Krug, it would be an error to conflate the two friends and collaborators. They sometimes disagreed on specific compositions and Ouspensky’s paintings are more solidly molded, as befitting a sculptor, compared to Krug’s transparency and dynamism.

[14] See Emilie van Taack, “La fondation de la paroisse des Trois Saints Hiérarques: les fondements théologiques et spirituels du retour à l’Îcone, 1925–1945,” in L’iconographie de l’église des Trois Saints Hiérarques et l’oeuvre de Léonide A. Ouspensky et du moine Grégoire Krug (Paris: Patriarchate of Moscow, 2001), 5–44, at 30–34; see also Larchet, “Tradition,” 102.

[15] Krug, Carnets, 125, 127, trans. author.

[16] Krug, Carnets, 37–38, trans. author.

[17] On luminosity in Krug’s icons, see Larchet, “Tradition,” 101–2; Tregubov, The Light of Christ; and Yurieva, “Iconostases.”

[18] Krug, Carnets, 36, trans. author.

[19] Krug, Carnets, 48, trans. author.

[20] Krug, Carnets, 39, trans. author.

[21] Krug’s works include the chapel of an orphanage in Montgeron near Paris, a church at a retirement home in Noisy-le-Grand that was founded by Mother Maria Skobtsova, and countless icons for impoverished Russian émigrés, often given away freely.