Of roses, porcelain, and other floral subjects - selected work of Alexander Golovin

Circa 1910-20.

Golovin is another of the amazing "Silver Age" Russian artists who is still not well enough known in the West. The breadth of his oeuvre is impressive: portraits, stage design, costume design, still-lifes, quite magical landscapes. I love his vigorous but still refined brushwork, the harmonic elegance of his palette - oh, the sumptuous greens and pinks.... In the group featured here, I've focused on his floral still-lifes and examples of the way flowers insinuate themselves into so much of his work: woven into fabric, painted onto porcelain, or just the heavy clusters of his particularly vivid, nearly muscular roses.

Umbriyskaya Valley, circa 1910s.

Alexander Yakovlevich Golovin (1 March 1/17February 1863, Moscow – 17 April 1930, Detskoye Selo), Russian artist and stage designer. He initially studied architecture, but later switched to painting and went on to attend the Académie Colarossi in Paris. After completing his studies, due to financial difficulties he found work as an interior painter and decorator; he also tried his hand at, among other creative ventures, furniture design. In 1900 he contributed to the design of the Russian Empire pavilion at the Paris World's Fair, and in the following year he moved to Saint Petersburg. It was here that he came into his own as a stage designer, adept at cohesively combining elements of symbolism, modernism, and historicism. He designed important opera, ballet, and theatrical productions for the likes of Stanislavski, Meyerhold, and Diaghilev; perhaps most memorably, he designed the original 1910 Diaghilev production of Stravinsky's L'Oiseau de feu ballet.

Detail of above.

After the Revolution of 1917, Golovin found less and less work in the theater and focused more on painting and graphic illustration. He died in Tsarskoe Selo (called Detskoye Selo during the Soviet period) a month after his sixty-seventh birthday.

 Maria Troyanova, 1916.

Phloxes, 1911.

Art scholar Erich F. Gollerbakh, 1923.

Detail of above.

Still-Life with Porcelain and flowers, 1915.

Singer Valentina (Euphrosyne) Ivanovna Cuza, circa 1910s.

Circa 1910s.

Self-portrait, 1912.

Self-portrait, 1927.

1910.

ND.

Spanish Woman on a Balcony, 1911. From about 1906 the artist completed several paintings of "Spanish" women, most of them rather odd
looking, some with even a rather sinister aspect. Frankly, they often look most like men dressed up as stereotypical gypsy temptresses.

Detail of above.

A Spanish Woman in Green, 1906-07.

Spanish Woman, 1907-08.

Spanish Woman, 1908.

Still-Life with Porcelain Vases and Flowers, ND.

The tenor Dmitri Smirnov as the Chevalier des Grieux in Massenet's Manon, 1909.

Theatrical director Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold, 1917.

Euphemia Pavlovna Nosova, 1916.

Detail of above.

Finnish Girl, 1908.

1915.

Marina Erastovna Makovskaya, 1912.

Girl and Porcelain, "Frosya", 1916.

Self-portrait, 1927.

Woman with a Black Hat, circa 1910s.

Detail of above. I think these roses are magnificent.

The bright, rough edge - selected paintings of Boris Grigoriev

Self-portrait, 1916.

Boris Dmitrievich Grigoriev (11 July 1886, Rybinsk – 7 February 1939, Cagnes-sur-Mer), Russian painter, graphic artist, and writer. He studied at the Stroganov Art School from 1903 to 1907, then went on to study at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg until 1912. He had begun exhibiting his work in 1909 as a member of the Union of Impressionists group, and became a member of the World of Art movement in 1913; in that same year, he wrote a novel, Young Rays. The artist lived for a time in Paris, where he attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and, after his return to Saint Petersburg in 1913, he became part of the Bohemian scene in St. Petersburg and was close to many of the artists and writers of the time, such as Sergei Sudeikin, Velimir Khlebnikov, and the great poet Anna Akhmatova. Grigoriev was also interested in the Russian peasantry, the countryside and village life, and from 1916 to 1918 he created a series of paintings and graphic works inspired by the strength and poverty of the Russian peasant. Leaving Russia after the Revolution, he thereafter traveled and spent much time in Western Europe, the United States, and Central and South America. He also focused much of his time on his poetry. Grigoriev died in a suburb of Nice at the age of fifty-two.

Portrait of a Woman, circa 1930.

Yakov L'vovich Izrailevich, circa 1916.

The poetess Anna Sergeievna Sergeieva, 1921.

Detail of above.

The photographer Miron Ambramovich Sherling, 1916.

Woman in a Hat, 1919.

Portrait of Madame Barthelemy with a Green Fan, ND (circa late 1920s to early 1930s).

Detail of above.

Solomon Illich Mollo, 1917.

Boy in Sailor Suit (John Goldsmith?), circa 1923-24.

Detail of above.

Vignette From a Fair in Guingamp, Bretagne, 1914.

Sergei Rachmaninov, 1931.

Princess Salomea Nikolaievna Andronikova, 1921. (Actually, her patronymic was Ivanovna but she just didn't like the sound of it....)

Poverty, 1925.

The actor Nikolai Podgorny as Peter Trofimov in Chekov's "The Cherry Orchard", circa 1920s.

Patricio Edwards, 1928.

Woman in Red (the artist wrote in pencil on the stretcher: "à cher madame A. Roméo. Boris Grigoriev Santiago [Chile] 1936", 1936.

Art collector Alexander Alexandrovich Korovin, 1916.

Selma Alexander, circa 1933.

Detail of above.

Portrait of the Artist's Son, Kirill, 1920.

Kirill, the Artist's Son, 1931.

The Artist's Son, 1931. Interesting to compare these last two very contrasting paintings, apparently done in the same year; could
the former be how the artist saw his young son, and the latter a reflection of how the sixteen year old boy wanted to see himself?

Gypsy and Prostitute, 1917.

In the Circus, 1918.

Childhood, 1916.

Probably his best known work, the famous double portrait of director, actor, and theatrical producer Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold, 1916.

Detail of above.