French, 20th century, male.
Born 10 February 1944, in Rocroi (Ardennes).
Painter (including gouache), draughtsman, decorative designer. Stage costumes and sets.
Aballain graduated from the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1965.
He designed the stage sets and costumes for A Season in Hell...
Italian, 20th century, male.
Born 1900, in Marciana Marina (Livorno); died 1971, in Milan.
Painter, ceramicist, illustrator, scenographer, writer. Stage costumes.
Futurism.
Giovanni Acquaviva studied philosophy and law at the University of Pisa, while devoting himself to illustration at the same time. He founded the Futurist group ...
Belgian, 20th century, female.
Born 1903.
Painter. Stage costumes.
Primarily a dancer, Akarova was married to the painter Marcel Louis Baugniet, and it was probably under his influence as an artist of the Avant-Garde that she too emerged as a painter. Some exhibitions held in Belgium in the 1990s acknowledged her contribution to the art of the early 20th century....
(Pavlovich)
(b Kharkiv, April 16, 1901; d Moscow, Sept 6, 1968).
Russian stage designer, director, painter and graphic artist of Ukranian birth. He studied in Petrograd (now St Petersburg) from 1915 to 1919 in an artists’ workshop under Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Aleksandr Yakovlev and Vasily Shukhayev. From 1920 to 1922 he worked as a stage designer in Khar’kov (now Kharkiv). In 1923 he returned to Petrograd, where he worked as a book illustrator and stage designer at the Theatre of Musical Comedy, the Theatre of Drama and the Gor’ky Bol’shoy Theatre of Drama; he also worked in Moscow, at the Theatre of the Revolution, the Vakhtangov Theatre and the Moscow Art Theatre (MKhAT). From 1929 he worked as a director, designing his own productions. He was the Art Director of the Leningrad Theatre of Comedy (1935–49), where the most notable productions he directed and designed were Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (1938), Lope de Vega’s Dog in the Manger and ...
Romanian, 20th century, male.
Born in Bucharest.
Painter. Stage costumes.
Alkar Alexandresco was important as a theatrical costume designer and exhibited as such in Paris at the Salon des Indépendants in 1927. Assyrian Idol is quoted in a private collection.
French, 20th century, female.
Painter, illustrator. Figures, fruit. Stage costumes and sets.
A graduate of the École des Arts appliqués, Géraldine Allier started out as a graphic illustrator in the advertising and publishing industries. With the help of Louis Bercut, with whom she worked for several years, she then started making her own sets and costumes: ...
German, 20th century, male.
Active in France from 1960.
Born 1934, in Bad Bellingen.
Painter (including gouache), performance artist, watercolourist, engraver (etching), monotype artist, draughtsman. Stage sets, artists' books, posters.
Hermann Amann is very active. He has published written works and given numerous lectures on painting. As a painter, he produces very colourful, very musical works, with a dynamic rhythm, made up of geometric figures in thick lines or black rings, biomorphic forms and graphic signs. He also produces engravings (etchings and monotypes), artists' books ( ...
(Galaktionovych) [Petritsky, Anatoly Galaktyonovich]
(b Kiev, Feb 12, 1895; d Kiev, March 6, 1964).
Ukrainian painter, stage designer and draughtsman. He studied at the art school in Kiev (1910–18) and at Vkhutemas (the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops) in Moscow (1922–4). He was influenced by the tradition of Ukrainian national art and later, in his work for the theatre, by Constructivism. His work of the mid-1920s combined contemporary national and foreign Expressionism with the Realist tradition, as in Invalids (1924; Kiev, Mus. Ukrain. A.), an assertion of humanist and high moral ideals. A synthesis of Ukrainian artistic traditions with an experience of contemporary avant-garde artistic trends also underpinned Petrits’ky’s work in the 1930s to 1960s, for example Kharkiv Street in Winter (1934), Peonies (1945) and Not a Garden—a Kiev Street (1961; all Kiev, Mus. Ukrain. A.)
Petrits’ky’s stage designs of the 1920s were bright and original pictorial solutions (e.g. for productions of the operas ...
(Izrailevich)
(b Beltsy, Bessarabia [now in Moldova], Oct 14, 1879; d Waterford, CT, Dec 4, 1973).
Russian painter and stage designer. He was a Symbolist artist who, like many of his colleagues in the World of Art group, made his foremost contribution to the development of Russian art in the fields of graphic art and stage design. He first studied at the Drawing School of the Odessa Society of Fine Arts (1895–1900) and then at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts (1901–9), where his tutors included Dmitry Kardovsky and Il’ya Repin. His participation in exhibitions included the World of Art (St Petersburg and Moscow, 1906–18), the Union of Russian Artists (Moscow and St Petersburg, 1906–10), the Salon d’Automne (Paris, 1906), Wreath (St Petersburg, 1908) and the Izdebsky International Salon (Kiev and Odessa, 1909–10). His painting attracted considerable critical acclaim for its exotic themes and colouring. Simultaneously, he worked as a caricaturist, creating grotesque and fantastic images for satirical magazines as well as executing wall paintings for houses in St Petersburg. His prolific career as a stage designer began in ...
Russian, 20th century, male.
Born 1879, in Beltsy; died 1973, in Stonington (Connecticut).
Painter (gouache), draughtsman. Scenes with figures. Stage costumes and sets.
Symbolism.
Boris Anisfeld studied at the academy of fine art in St Petersburg. He spent some time in the south of France working on the Spanish border around 1913 and exhibited at the Salon d’Automne, of which he became a member. He then returned to work in Petrograd, only to leave again in 1917. From 1918 to 1920, he took part in a touring exhibition in the United States: Brooklyn Museum in New York, Allbright Knox Museum in Buffalo, Chicago Art Institute, Museum of Art in St Louis and in San Francisco....
Russian, 20th century, male.
Also active in France.
Born 11 July 1889, in Petropavlosk (Kamchatka); died 1974, in Paris.
Painter, collage artist, sculptor, illustrator, draughtsman. Stage costumes and sets, film sets.
The son of a political exile in Kamchatka, Yuri Annenkov was able to go to St Petersburg in 1898 and study at the school of fine art and at several artists’ workshops between 1908 and 1911, developing a passion for the theatre and theatrical production. He went to Paris in 1911 and studied with Maurice Denis and Félix Vallotton and then went to Switzerland in 1913. He exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1912 and 1913 and then returned to Russia where he joined the...
[Georges] (Pavlovich)
(b Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan, July 23, 1889; d Paris, July 18, 1974).
Russian painter, draughtsman and stage designer. He studied at the University of St Petersburg (later Petrograd) in 1908 and in the private studio of Savely Zeidenberg (1862–1924). In 1909–10 he attended the studio of Yan Tsyonglinsky (1850–1914) in St Petersburg, where he became acquainted with the avant-garde artists Yelena Guro (1877–1913), Mikhail Matyushin and Matvey Vol’demar (1878–1914). In 1911–12 he worked in the studios of Maurice Denis and Félix Vallotton in Paris, then in Switzerland (1913) before returning to St Petersburg. As a painter he was a modernist, and his work developed rapidly towards abstraction, although he did not adhere to any particular branch of it. His works of the time use various devices of stylization and decorativeness, and some of them echo the free associations of Marc Chagall, but fundamentally they remain geometrically based compositions. In 1919–20 he made a series of abstract sculptural assemblages and a great number of abstract collages....
French, 20th century, male.
Born 1926, in Frémery (Moselle).
Painter, sculptor, decorative designer. Figure compositions, religious subjects, landscapes. Murals, church decoration, designs for mosaics and stained-glass windows, stage sets, stage costumes.
Arcabas studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and also had a degree. He was a friend of the painter Dimitri Varbanesco. He exhibited in numerous towns in France and abroad. From ...
(b Madrid, Feb 26, 1937).
Spanish painter, sculptor, potter, printmaker and stage designer . As a painter he was mainly self-taught. After working as a journalist in 1957, he left Spain in 1958 to avoid military service, settling in Paris. There he continued to work both as a journalist and painter. From 1968 to 1972 he lived in Milan, returning to Paris in 1973. His work developed from expressionism to realism (Nueva figurina), which reflected on the pictorial language and function of painting and the artist’s role in society. He manipulated ready-made images, words and elements derived from commercial art and the work of other painters. His pieces formed series whose titles referred to the legacy of the Spanish Civil War and the contemporary political situation to help make their critical point. His work frequently provoked controversy, for example his series Arcole Bridge and St Bernard’s Pass (1962–6) was based on the theme of Napoleon Bonaparte as a symbol of imperialism (e.g. ...
French, 20th century, male.
Born February 1903, in Tunis; died 24 January 1978, in Aix-en-Provence.
Painter, architect, decorative designer, designer, poster artist. Wall decorations, stage costumes and sets, furniture, advertising art.
Art et Lumière.
Félix Tahar Marie Aublet was the son of the Orientalist painter Albert Aublet. He was brought up both in Neuilly, France, and in a Moorish palace in Tunis, where the family spent six months of the year. His second forename, Tahar, means 'blessed one' in Arabic. In ...
(b London, Feb 20, 1921; d London, Nov 16, 1975).
English sculptor, painter, printmaker and writer . He left school at 14 to begin his painting career. After spending time in France, Ayrton returned to England in 1939, finding success in stage design and art criticism. His writings in The Spectator (1946–8) were important in the acceptance of Neo-Romanticism. From 1946 he travelled widely in Italy, admiring the Quattrocento painters, especially Piero della Francesca. At Cumae he began the preoccupation with Greek mythology that continued throughout his life; he visited Greece regularly from 1957. After 1955 sculptures became his preferred medium, although drawing remained essential and he produced etchings and lithographs. However, his many bronzes of the Minotaur, Daedalus and Icarus (e.g. Icarus III, 1960; London, Old Change Court) remain his best-known images. The Arkville Maze (1968), built of brick and masonry, contains two lifesize bronze sculptures and still stands in the estate of Armand Erpf in the Catskill Mountains, New York (see Hopkins, p. 402)....
(b Burgas, Nov 8, 1924).
Bulgarian painter, printmaker and stage designer . In 1949 he graduated from the National Academy of Arts (Natsionalna Hudozhestvena Academia) in Sofia, having studied painting under Dechko Uzunov. In the early part of his career he made prints and did stage designs, but in the late 1950s he began to focus exclusively on painting. Although he depicted both industrial and urban landscapes (e.g. Industrial Landscape, 1979; Sofia, N.A.G.), he became better known as a painter of seascapes. His compositions are extremely tactile and consist of highly coloured planes and contrasting tones, tending towards abstraction and expressive drama. Seascapes are usually painted in intense hues of ultramarine and cobalt blue, forced together to create a sense of movement. Among his most popular marine paintings are Fishermen (1963) and Seaport (1969; both Sofia, N.A.G.) and Old Boats (1978; Sofia, City A.G.). After 1983 new philosophical tendencies appear in his paintings, although his seascapes continue to be his most expressive works....
[Rosenberg, Lev (Samoylovich)]
(b Grodno, Belarus, May 10, 1866; d Paris, Dec 27, 1924).
Russian painter and stage designer of Belorussian birth. Born into a middle-class Jewish family, Bakst was educated in St Petersburg, attending a gymnasium and then the Academy of Arts (1883–6). He began professional life as a copyist and illustrator of teaching materials but quickly moved on to illustration for popular magazines. His tastes were influenced and horizons enlarged when he met Alexandre Benois and his circle in 1890. Bakst travelled regularly to various countries in Europe and North Africa and studied in Paris with a number of notable artists including the French Orientalist painter Jean-Léon Gérôme at the Académie Julian and, from 1893 to 1896, the Finnish landscape painter Albert Edelfelt. Returning to St Petersburg, he became active as a book designer and fashionable portrait painter. With Benois and Serge Diaghilev he was a founder and leading member of the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva) group in 1898...
(b Rovereto, Dec 10, 1896; d Milan, Sept 26, 1982).
Italian architect, stage designer and painter . After studying at the Scuola Reale Elisabettiana, an applied arts school in Rovereto, he joined the Futurist movement, headed locally by Fortunato Depero. After serving in World War I, he enrolled at the Scuola Superiore di Architettura del Politecnico, Milan, graduating in architecture in 1922. He then spent four years (1922–6) in Berlin working as a stage designer and frequenting the avant-garde milieu around Max Reinhardt, Erwin Piscator and Oskar Kokoschka. He returned to Italy in 1926 and set up his own practice. His first important commission, the remodelling of the Bar Craja (1930; with Figini and Pollini) in Milan, with its handsome glass and steel interior, established Baldessari’s reputation as an innovative designer. He collaborated again with Figini and Pollini on the De Angeli-Frua office building (1931–2) in Milan, a fine example of Italian Rationalism at its most restrained. Baldessari’s architectural masterpiece of this period was, however, the Press Pavilion (...
(b Budapest, Oct 14, 1914; d Budapest, May 3, 1986).
Hungarian painter, printmaker, critic and stage designer . He studied at the School of Applied Art, Budapest (1930–34). Bálint went to Paris for a short time and then attended János Vaszary and Vilmos Aba-Novák’s private school in Budapest, where he met his future brother-in-law Lajos Vajda, whose Constructivist–Surrealist style had a great influence on him. They spent their summers together at the Szentendre colony. Béla Czóbel’s lyrical expressive paintings also influenced Bálint’s early work. From 1939 to 1942 he edited the art column of the newspaper Népszava, to which his father had contributed until 1925, and also published his own articles. He destroyed many of his early works after World War II. The persecution of the Jews was the theme of a series of linocuts, By Candlelight (1939–41; see Román, nos 21–4). In 1946 he became a member of the European School in Budapest, and in 1947 he went to Paris and took part in the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme (Gal. Maeght). Subsequently his work changed, and in his ...
