ARTISTS OF RUSSIAN ABROAD IN LIVRE D’ARTISTE EDITIONS

Yeltsin Center in conjunction with the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin presents an exhibition of leading world artists who, for one reason or another, left Russia at one time and created significant works in the genre of livre d’artiste. The exhibition features twenty-eight editions of the livre d’artiste of the fifteen major artists: Alexander Alekseev, Yuri Annenkov, Natalia Goncharova, Sonya Delaunay, Leon Zack, Maxim Cantor, Andrei Lansky, Ivan Lebedev, Victor Pivovarov, Serge Polyakov, Ivan Puni, Leopold Survage, Konstantin Tereshkovich, Osip Zadkin and Marc Chagall. The basis of the exhibition consists of publications from the collections of collectors George Gens and Boris Fridman.

The founder of the livre d’artiste genre is the legendary Ambroise Vollard, who, pursuing purely marketing goals, at the very beginning of the last century conceived the publication of popular for his time literary texts with original printed graphics of the artists whose works he sold. His undertaking was taken up with great enthusiasm and inspired many artists, poets and writers, printers and book designers, printers and publishers to create outstanding works of art - publications livre d’artiste. This lesson has become a favorite way of joint creativity and communication inhabiting the French capital in the first decades of the last century, masters of art from different countries. Russian immigrants who created a significant number of magnificent editions of the livre d’artiste did not stand aside from this. The exhibition is dedicated to this direction of their creative activity.

The exposition opens with three editions of the outstanding graphic art of the last century by Alexander Alekseev. Together with the series of etchings already familiar to the Russian audience for “The Brothers Karamazov” by Fyodor Dostoevsky and “A Word about Igor’s Regiment”, the exposition for the first time in Russia presents a masterly executed series of etchings for “Hoffmann’s Tales”. Also on display is a series of illustrations by Yuri Annenkov to the "Bad Joke" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. In the section devoted to the works of Natalia Goncharova, her artistic versions of “Words about Igor’s Regiment” and “Tales of Tsar Saltan” by Alexander Pushkin are presented. Of great interest is also one of the best works of Sonya Delaunay in the livre d’artiste genre, “Rhythms and Colors,” with Jacques Damas’s text and the virtuoso work of a typographer, demonstrated for the first time in Russia. The most colorful work on display is perhaps the series of lithographs by Andrei Lansky to the text of the Book of Genesis. The combination of abstract images with handwritten text inscribed in them creates a completely unexpected perception of the biblical text.

The exposition includes the rare work of Serge Polyakov with colored etchings using the Aquatine technique “Parmenides. Dialogue of Plato. " In this series of illustrations, the artist has completely preserved the style of his paintings. Unusual is a copy of the book of Jacques de Beziers “On the Three Knights and a Shirt” with woodcuts of Ivan Lebedev, fully prepared in Paris and published in 1916 by the Zerna publishing house in Moscow. This is actually the only Russian edition of livre d’artiste during the heyday of this genre in France. Konstantin Tereshkovich is represented on display by a colorful series of color lithographs for Leo Tolstoy’s “Hadji Murad”. Fans of black-and-white printed graphics can enjoy masterfully executed series of etchings and lithographs by such masters as Leon Zach, Ivan Puni, Leopold Survaz to literary texts by Jean Cocteau, Jacques Prevert and other authors. For many, it will be a surprise to work in the genre of livre d’artiste by the sculptor Osip Zadkine. The publication of a series of his etchings, along with the calligrams of Guillaume Apoliner, is one of the most interesting design works in the exposition.

A very representative section of the exposition with the works of Marc Chagall. First of all, this is an outstanding series of etchings for the "Dead Souls" by Nikolai Gogol and the "Bible". The history of these publications is interesting. So, having created by order of Vollard an extensive series of etchings for Gogol’s poem in the mid-twenties, the publication was not completed in 1948 until the end. A series of color woodcuts of Chagall, shown for the first time in Russia, to his poems of different periods deserves special attention. This is the only case of the artist in the technique of woodcut. Despite the fact that the series was created by Chagall in 1968, the work was done in the style of the works of the master of the twenties of the last century, one of the best in the artist’s work.

The exposition also includes the work of two immigrants from Russia currently living abroad: Maxim Kantor and Viktor Pivovarov. A series of illustrations by Cantor to the tragedy of Wolfgang Goethe “Faust” is a voluminous, deep work of the artist, completed by him only last year. “Long-necked creature” by Viktor Pivovarov is a characteristic work of a prominent representative of Moscow conceptualism in the 1970s.

The exhibition is accompanied by an edition containing a description and graphic works from all the publications livre d’artiste exhibited at the exhibition. The catalog section of the publication is preceded by an introductory text by the exhibition curator and two articles by artists and exhibitors - Maxim Kantor and Viktor Pivovarov. The publication was prepared with the support of LANIT.

An educational program is also planned - round tables, meetings with the curator, thematic evenings.

Exhibition curator, collector Boris Fridman:

To make an exhibition of publications livre d’artiste with the work of artists - immigrants from Russia - was my old dream. For more than fifteen years now, I have been collecting livre d’artiste publications, and it has become quite obvious to me that the process of creating livre d’artiste publications, which arose at the beginning of the last century in France, has not received a permanent residence permit in our country. But, at the same time, domestic artists, for one reason or another, resettled in Western countries, were actively involved in the creation of works of this genre.

Presenting in one exposition space the work of fifteen great masters who worked in a variety of styles turned out to be difficult, but interesting and fascinating. The exhibition clearly shows how much and fruitfully the artists of the Russian foreign countries worked in the genre of livre d’artiste. Such an extensive exposition was prepared by us for the first time, and a number of publications have not yet been exhibited in Russian museums. I hope that this exhibition will inspire contemporary Russian artists to create new editions of livre d’artiste and will contribute to the development of this trend in our country.

Director of the Pushkin Museum. A. S. Pushkina Marina Loshak:

The A. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts continues the tradition of displaying graphic works by outstanding artists and sculptors in the livre d’artiste (“artist’s book”). The exhibition is part of our extensive program of cooperation with museums in various cities of the country.

The exhibition “Artists of Russian Abroad in the Livre d’artiste Publications” first brought together in this context fifteen artists of Russian origin who had a significant influence on the development of world art: Marc Chagall, Natalia Goncharova, Sonya Delone, Alexander Alekseev, Andrei Lansky and others. Representing the most diverse areas of art, these masters with great enthusiasm worked in the genre of livre d’artiste, creating unique series of original printed graphics.

We are sincerely grateful to our fellow collectors who provided unique livre d’artiste editions and took an active part in preparing the exhibition. I hope that the work done by all participants in the project will attract the lively attention of the widest audience.

Executive Director of the Presidential Center B. N. Yeltsin Alexander Drozdov:

This exhibition has, perhaps, one and only drawback: the viewer will not be able to flip through to the last page of each of the artist’s precious books. But more than two hundred graphic works of fifteen authors will allow you to fully enjoy the variety of shades of this direction in art.

The peculiarity of the collection, presented in the Yeltsin Center’s art gallery, is that it is filled with the works of Russian artists who left Russia at one time. Their names sounded back in the twentieth century, and they still sound today. This circle also includes contemporary authors working in the genre of livre d’artiste.

For the first time, the Yeltsin Center Gallery acquaints the Urals with a unique collection of this level in collaboration with the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin. For a very young gallery space, this is doubly honorable and responsible. The art gallery, however, has sufficient creative and technical potential to carry out large-scale projects in the spirit of the educational mission of the Yeltsin Center. We hope that the opening of the exhibition “Artists of the Russian Abroad in the Livre d’artiste Publications” will be the beginning of a fruitful cooperation with the Pushkin Museum.