Bidspirit auction | Dobuzhinsky M.V.

Dobuzhinsky M.V. - Polovtsian Dances. Set design for the opera ”Prince Igor.”. Year: 1950. Size: 26х33. Technique: Gouache and pencil on paper. Monogram and date lower right. Variant of the stage curtain design for a production of A.P. Borodin's opera ”Prince Igor” at the Metropolitan Opera (New York, 1950). The work was acquired at the Drouot Montaigne auction ”A Collection of Works from the Collection of the Artist's Son Rostislav Dobuzhinsky.” Paris, November 23, 2005. Mstislav Valerianovich Dobuzhinsky (1875, Novgorod – 1957, New York). He studied in St. Petersburg, at the drawing school of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (1884-1885), and also (1899-1901) in Munich with A. Ashbe and in Nadbanje (Hungary) with S. Hollosha; in 1901 he studied engraving under the guidance of V.V. Mate. He has been an active member of the Mir Iskusstvo art association since 1902. He lived in St. Petersburg, in 1918-1919 in Vitebsk, in 1924-1926 and 1929-1938 in Kaunas, in 1926-1929 in Paris, in 1938-1939 in London, since 1939 mainly in New York. An adherent of the Art Nouveau style and symbolism, he turned to historical subjects and portraiture. In the 1910s. He created drawings and cartoons for the magazines Golden Fleece, World of Art, Zhupel, Apollo, Satyricon and others. He worked in book illustration, designed F.M. Dostoevsky's ”White Nights” (1923) and Y.K. Olesha's ”Three Fat Men” (1925). He was an outstanding set designer, collaborated with the Moscow Art Theater, S.P.Diaghilev's enterprise, the Leningrad Bolshoi Drama Theater, the Metropolitan Opera (New York) and many other theaters; worked in cinema. His sets and costumes were an intermediate link between modernity and the avant-garde. He left a book of memoirs (published in New York in 1976, in Moscow in 1987).