Russian, 18th – 19th century, male.
Born 1754, in St Petersburg; died 1824, in St Petersburg.
Painter, watercolourist. Urban landscapes, architectural views, still-lifes. Stage sets (?).
The son of a retired soldier employed as a custodian at the fine arts academy in St Petersburg, Alekseev trained there ...
(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....
[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 Turin, Aug 18, 1871; d Rome, March 1, 1958).
Italian painter, sculptor, stage designer, decorative artist and actor. He was one of the originators of Futurism (see Furttenbach [Furtenbach; Furttembach], Josef [Joseph], the elder) and was particularly concerned with the representation of light and movement. His personal interest in scientific methods of analysis contributed to both the practical and ideological bases of the movement. His oeuvre from the Futurist period overshadowed the work of later years.
Balla was self-taught and began painting in Turin. In 1895 he settled in Rome. At the age of about 25 he painted some lively sketches of urban life that are characterized by a thick impasto, for example the series Machietta romana (1898; Rome, priv. col., see Lista, 1982, nos 12–17) and landscapes showing familiarity with the divisionism practised by the northern Italian artists Giuseppe Pelizza da Volpedo, Giovanni Segantini and Vittore Grubicy de Dragon, for example Luci di marzo (...
French, 19th century, male.
Born 1820, in Paris; died 18 October 1867, in Paris.
Painter, watercolourist, pastellist, draughtsman. Landscapes, urban views, scenes with figures. Stage costumes.
Hippolyte Ballue studied under Diaz and exhibited at the Paris Salon between 1842 and 1851, chiefly vividly coloured views of Paris, Sicily and Algeria, but also theatrical costumes....
Belgian, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 1875, in Verviers; died 1936, in Heusy.
Painter, draughtsman. Nudes, portraits, flowers. Posters, stage costumes and sets.
A student of Omer Ierickx at the academy of fine arts in Liège, he decorated the ceilings of the town hall in Louvain, produced sets and costumes for the stage and made posters....
French, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 1860, in Lyons; died 3 March 1905, in Paris.
Painter, draughtsman, decorative artist. Figures. Stage costumes.
Charles Bianchini began as a designer of costumes for revues and in 1893 was appointed artist to the Paris Opéra. He also produced costume designs for the Opéra-Comique and other companies, designs which were always right for the roles and for the physique of the actors involved....
(Yakovlevich)
(b Tarkhovka, St Petersburg, Aug 4, 1876; d Leningrad [now St Petersburg], Feb 7, 1942).
Russian graphic artist and stage designer. The son of a naval doctor, Bilibin was educated in St Petersburg, studying law at the University (1896–1900) and art at the school of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (1895–8); then, under Il’ya Repin, he studied at both Princess Maria Tenisheva’s Art School (1898–1900) and the Academy of Arts (1900–04). From 1899 he exhibited with the group known as the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva) and was elected chairman of its reconstituted exhibition society in 1916. He also contributed to the Mir Iskusstva journal. Meanwhile he taught graphic art at the school of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (1907–17).
Bilibin had a strong interest in Russian medieval and folk art and became famous for his book illustrations of Russian fairy tales, especially those by Pushkin. His most celebrated theatrical works were his set and costume designs for operas by ...
(b Vercelli, Piedmont, March 11, 1806; d Dijon, March 5, 1867).
French painter, illustrator, set designer and poet. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Guillaume Lethière from 1821. The Punishment of Mazeppa (1827; Rouen, Mus. B.-A.), inspired by the scene from Byron’s poem, in which Mazeppa is tied to the back of a wildly stampeding horse, is his most important early painting and one of the key images of the Romantic movement.
Early in his career Boulanger became friendly with Eugène and Achille Devéria. Through them he met Victor Hugo, who became his ardent supporter and the source of many of his most typical works. Among Boulanger’s illustrations were those for Hugo’s Odes et ballades (1829), Les Orientales (1829), Les Fantômes (1829) and Notre-Dame de Paris (1844). Boulanger interpreted the macabre and romantic quality of Hugo’s texts with an imaginative power and freedom that anticipated Redon (e.g. ‘...
(b Cormeilles-en-Parisis, nr Paris, Nov 18, 1787; d Bry-sur-Marne, Paris, July 10, 1851).
French photographer, inventor, painter, printmaker, entrepreneur, and stage designer. He began his artistic training at the public school of drawing, and possibly served as an architect’s apprentice, in Orléans. He began his career in Paris around 1804 as a student of the stage designer Ignace-Eugène-Marie Degotti (c. 1759–1824), who led the painting studio of the Paris Opéra. Daguerre first appears as a day labourer in the records of the Opéra in 1808 and held various posts as a painter through to 1816. He also may have been a student of Jacques-Louis David, and early biographies of Pierre Prévost (1764–1823) state that Daguerre was one of Prévost’s assistants in the production of immense panorama paintings; extant documentation has not been found to support either claim, however. Daguerre exhibited his first independent work at the Salon of 1814, Interior of a Chapel in Feuillants Church (Paris, Louvre), which was purchased by Louis XVIII. During the next twenty years he exhibited four paintings and two lithographs at the Salon. He received the Légion d’honneur in ...
(Valerianovich)
(b Novgorod, Aug 14, 1875; d New York, Nov 20, 1957).
Russian graphic artist, painter and stage designer. He first studied art from 1885 to 1887 at the School of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, St Petersburg, and then enrolled in St Petersburg University from where he graduated in Law in 1898. Unwilling to give up his early interest in art, in 1899 he went to Munich to study under Anton Ažbé and Simon Hollósy and met there the large colony of Russian artists, including Igor’ Grabar’. He also saw the work of German Jugendstil artists.
Dobuzhinsky returned to St Petersburg in 1901, and in 1902 he was invited by Grabar’ to join the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva) group in 1902. His first works were historical landscapes in the manner of Alexandre Benois, but he soon began to portray the specific traits of the contemporary industrialized city and its suburbs, in both paintings and prints. In Man in Glasses...
(b Lille, Feb 8, 1861; d Ghent, Jan 7, 1938).
Belgian painter, sculptor, illustrator, and stage designer. He studied music at the Koninklijk Muziekconservatorium and sculpture at the Gewerbeschule, Ghent (after 1877). He visited Paris in 1887 and Italy in 1890, with a grant from the city of Ghent. He was deeply impressed by the masters of the Quattrocento, and was encouraged to take up painting after meeting Constantin Meunier (1891). He painted Symbolist scenes and was influenced by Art Nouveau. After exhibiting his work with Les XX in Brussels (1893), he made decorative panels for Oostakker Castle.
As an illustrator Doudelet worked on Pol De Mont’s Van Jezus (Antwerp, 1897) and books by Maurice Maeterlinck, for example Douze chansons (Paris, 1896) and Pelléas et Mélisande (Brussels, 1892 or 1922). He illustrated the periodicals Réveil (1895–1896), De Vlaamsche school, Mercure de France, Pan, L’Eroica, Nuovo Convito, De Vlaamsche School, Woord en beeld...
French, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 11 January 1869, in Versailles; died 1929.
Draughtsman, watercolourist, designer. Figures, scenes with figures. Designs for tapestries, patterns (fabrics), stage costumes and sets.
Orientalism.
Jacques Drésa is known for his tapestry and fabric patterns, but he was also a set designer, particularly at the Théâtre des Arts (...
Italian, 19th – 20th century, male.
Active in France.
Born 1859, in Codogno; died 16 December 1912, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France.
Painter, watercolourist, sculptor. Stage costumes, figurines.
Edel made figurines and theatre costumes. He worked for Coquelin, Sarah Bernhardt, the Comédie Française and Barnum in Paris, as well as the Olympia Theatre in London and La Scala in Milan....
(b Melun, Seine-et-Marne, Aug 14, 1870; d Paris, April 17, 1950).
French painter, illustrator and stage designer. Disdaining the traditional art schools, he studied part-time at the Académie Colarossi in Paris under Gustave-Claude-Etienne Courtois (1852–1923) and Jean-André Rixens (1846–1924) but was mostly self-taught. In 1891 he exhibited at the Salon des Refusés and the following year at the Salon des Indépendants. His early works, such as Suburban Railway (c. 1895; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay), showed a strong debt to Impressionism. He was a friend of Renoir as well as of Paul Signac, Henri Edmond Cross, Louis Valtat and later Maurice Denis, Bonnard and Vuillard. In 1898 he visited Morocco where he painted such works as Moroccan Horseman (1898; see Cailler, p. 7). After his return to France, he concentrated on studies from nature, paintings of women, children and flowers and decorative projects for private patrons. In 1904 he exhibited at the Salon d’Automne, becoming its Vice-President in ...
or Ekster; maiden name: Grigorovich
Russian, 20th century, female.
Active in France from 1924.
Born 1882 or 1884, in Bielostok (Kiev); died 17 March 1949, in Fontenay-aux-Roses, France.
Painter, decorative artist. Stage sets, stage costumes.
Symbolism, Futurism, Constructivism.
Groups: Golubaya Roza (Blue Rose), Bubnovy Valet (Jack of Diamonds).
A student at the school of fine art in Kiev, Aleksandra Exter exhibited for the first time with the
Between 1903 and 1914, Exter travelled extensively between Paris, Rome, Genoa, and Florence. The artist however spent long periods in Paris beginning as early as 1908. While in Paris, Exter joined the Cubist circle. In 1908, she married her cousin Nicolai Eugenovitch Exter, a wealthy lawyer. In Paris, she met Picasso, Apollinaire, and Max Jacob and came under the influence of first Herve Léger and then Sonia and Robert Delaunay....
Belgian, 20th – 21st century, male.
Born 14 December 1958, in Antwerp.
Draughtsman, watercolourist, installation artist, performance artist, director, scenographer, film writer.
Jan Fabre attended the art academy and the arts and crafts institute in Antwerp. He is a visual artist, but also a choreographer, dancer and playwright (his first play was written in ...
Belgian, 20th century, female.
Born 1904, in Brussels; died 1985.
Painter, draughtswoman. Figures, scenes with figures. Stage costumes.
Symbolism.
Suzanne Fabry was a student of Isidore de Rudder, Jean Delville and Constant Montald at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.
She took part in collective exhibitions: in ...
Hungarian, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 1877, in Budapest; died 1928.
Painter, draughtsman, decorative designer. Patterns (fabrics), stage costumes, posters.
Geza Farago was initially a fabric designer in a cotton fabric factory, then went to Paris where he was apprenticed as a painter, draughtsman and decorator in several workshops, notably at the Académie Colarossi....
