Painting by Yulia Obolenskaya. War of kings. Puppet show. From the series "Petrushka". Italic typeface of the era
Text by Yu.L. Obolenskaya, fig. thin Yu.L. Obolenskaya and K.V. Kandaurova, facsimile of fig. and Spanish text. thin W. Nessler, print. lit. R. Bachman, Moscow. M. - Pg., edition of the Theater Department of the Commissariat of Public Education, 1918. 36 p. from ill. The price is 6 rubles. In publisher's chromolithographed cover. oblong. 25x34 cm. It is highly valued by collectors of Russian children's lithographed books. Extreme rarity!
The October Revolution had a decisive influence on the fate of art. She changed his ideological content, forms and methods of artistic influence, and finally, his audience and customer. From now on, art is actively included in the nationwide struggle for the reorganization of the world. And yet, there was no sharp break with the artistic heritage, no denial of all previous experience in the development of domestic art, because many active figures of that revolutionary era had a very strong sense of continuity with the progressive democratic aspirations of Russian social thought of the 19th century, as well as a firm conviction that the time has finally come for the realization of the best aspirations of mankind. In the early years of the Soviet regime, combat, operational forms of mass propaganda art acquired paramount importance - political posters and newspaper and magazine graphics, oratory poetry and heroic theater, mass theatrical performances and folk festive processions, murals of propaganda trains and street decoration during the days of revolutionary festivities. In such unusual forms of agitational mass art, first of all, a lively and direct response to the events of the revolution was manifested; here, according to Anatoly Lunacharsky, "there was undoubtedly a merger of young creative quests and the quest of the crowd." An important role was played here by such a fundamental initiative of the new government as the plan of monumental propaganda put forward by Ilyich in April 1918. Presenting this plan to Lunacharsky, Lenin reminded him of Tommaso Campanella's treatise, The State of the Sun, by one of the first utopian socialists of the Renaissance. It describes an ideal city, where all the walls are painted with frescoes, which
"serve for the youth as a visual lesson in natural science, history, arouse civic feeling - in a word, participate in the education and upbringing of new generations ... It seems to me, Ilyich noted, that this is far from naive and with a certain change could be assimilated by us and carried out now. I would call it monumental propaganda."
The play by Vl. Mayakovsky. 1919.
Scenery sketch.
V.V. Mayakovsky. "Mystery-Buff".
The play by Vl. Mayakovsky. 1919.
Costume design.
Great importance was attached to the design of various types of theatrical spectacles: booths with their motley and noisy program, mobile tent, arranging raeshniks with clowns, buffoons, jokers, jesters, jugglers, dancers: everyone should live a new life, everyone should involve the audience, who should take part in what is happening on the stage of these booths. A significant role in the sense of reviving the revolutionary holidays and giving them a carnival shade could be played by carousels; they were proposed to be carried out in the form of a "shop" carousel. In terms of the artistic sector of the People's Commissariat of Education, we also see a project for a political carousel based on pantomime written by Ivan Rukavishnikov together with N.M. Foregger. Such a wide program of various types of theatrical spectacles did not remain only in projects, but later received a diverse embodiment in the artistic practice of folk festivals. She helped to convincingly reveal revolutionary ideas in living concrete images, and brought convincing visualization of the stage action into the festive ritual.
After the October Socialist Revolution of 1917 in Russia, agitation plays (theatrical agitation) became the main direction in the development of the dramaturgy of the puppet theater - a symbiosis of the usual street "comedy about Petrushka" with satirical figures of the political carnival of those years. Petrushka, who changed his stupid cap for a Budyonovka, beat with his club, stabbed with a bayonet "the many-headed hydra of imperialism" -Yudenich,Denikin, Kolchak,Wrangel, Ententeand in general "World imperialism", etc. This satirical theater of social masks fully corresponded to the bloody fury and lawlessness of the new accursed days of Russia.The idea of creating a professional puppet theater was in the air, as a place where the new Russian professional drama from the revolution could be embodied. Poets, writers, artists, directors, artistic and literary circles appeared, studying the possibilities of puppet theater, setting themselves the task of creating some special puppet play for a special puppet show.The emergence of a large number of propaganda puppet plays was largely facilitated by the emerging system of state order from agitprop. The plays were written for hundreds of emerging amateur and professional propaganda puppet theaters that needed a fundamentally new repertoire that had to correspond to the new Soviet ideology. Among the first such plays was "The War of the Card Kings" by Yulia Obolenskaya and K. Kandaurov, written for the Petrushka Studio organized in Moscow (at the Theater Department of the People's Commissariat of Education).
The studio was created as a drama laboratory of a propaganda puppet theater. Newspapers of that time wrote that "the puppet theater is a spectacle of popular anger and satire, the embodiment of revolutionary thought." "The War of the Card Kings" was timed to coincide with the first anniversary of October, and its premiere took place in Moscow on November 7, 1918, at the opening of the Red Rooster art club. Subsequently, the Studio produced sets of puppets for this play, which, along with the text, were sent to amateur puppet theaters. The characters in the play were card kings who were overthrown by "twos", "threes" and "sixes". The protagonist of the play - Petrushka - led a card game - commented on the action, called on the younger cards to fight against the card kings. “We had our trump cards in our hands, but we were left in the cold,” the defeated kings exclaimed in the finale. How not to recall here a poem by Konstantin Balmont"Puppet show" (1903):
“I'm in the puppet theater. in front of me
Like shadows from swaying branches
Filled with double charm,
Crowds of puppets are changing.
Their every look is calculated and truthful,
Their every move is believable-marks.
Replacing sensitivity with agility,
They are full of dumb charm,
Their modus operandi is insightful.
Realizing all the grace of silence,
They play life, dream, love,
Without cries, without poetry and without broadcasting ...
But what matters most is like hell
Worthy of being the rule forever
The whole purpose of their actions is only beauty…”.
Yu. L. Obolenskaya. Koktebel. 1913. Photography.
Short reference: Obolenskaya, Yulia Leonidovna (1889 - 1945, Moscow) - Russian artist-painter, book illustrator. A close friend of M.A. Voloshin (since 1913), who was in long-term correspondence with him, the addressee of his poem "Dmetrius-Imperator" (1917), the author of a memoir essay about the poet, an accomplice in the painting of the Koktebel cafe "Tambourines", where the decorative design of A. Lentulov was supplemented by topical "frescoes » A.N. Tolstoy, M. Voloshin and Y. Obolenskaya. Aunt of the “last prince of cinema”, film actor, director, sound engineer L.L. Obolensky (in monasticism - monk Innokenty). She studied at the Zvantseva school in St. Petersburg (“School of Bakst and Dobuzhinsky”), where L. Bakst, M. Dobuzhinsky, K. Petrov-Vodkin were among the teachers and where A.N. Tolstoy, who soon left school on the advice of Bakst, and S.I. Dymshits, in 1907 - 1914 - the common-law wife of A.N. Tolstoy.
Yu. L. Obolenskaya. Self-portrait with windows. 1914.
Photo reproduction. GTG
Yu.L. Obolenskaya. Letter (January). 1915.
Photo reproduction. GTG
Yu.L. Obolenskaya. Toys in the landscape (Lions). 1915.
Canvas, oil. Private collection.
In 1912, Y. Obolenskaya became an exhibitor of the World of Art association, in 1917 - a full member of the Free Workshops, in 1923 - a founding member of the Zhar-Tsvet society. In 1926 - 1928 he took part in exhibitions of the Association of Graphic Artists at the Moscow House of Printing. In the 1930s, he worked as a teacher of drawing and painting at the House of Folk Art named after M. N.K. Krupskaya (Moscow), collaborates with the State Publishing House, it is possible that he occasionally fulfills design orders for the Museum of New Western Art (existed in Moscow from 1919 to 1948).
K. V. Kandaurov. 1900s Photo from the archive of K. A. Kandaurova
Yu. L. Obolenskaya. Portrait of K. V. Kandaurov. 1925.
Canvas, oil.
Short reference: Kandaurov, Konstantin Vasilyevich (1865-1930) (Moscow) - painter, graphic artist, artist of theatrical and decorative and applied arts. From a noble family. Studied at MUZhVZ (1880–1885, did not graduate). Lived in Moscow. He was married to the artist Yu. L. Obolenskaya, often worked in collaboration with her. He painted landscapes, still lifes, genre compositions; worked extensively in watercolor. Author of paintings: “Summer. Picnic" (1917), "Steppe Crimea. Sheikh Mamai" (1917), "Persian Still Life" (1918), "Puppet Theater Dolls" (1919), "Asters" (1924) and others. He was engaged in wooden sculpture: "Carousel", "At the booth" (both - 1916). In 1887–1897 he was a performer at the Bolshoi Theatre. In the 1910s he worked as a lighting designer at the Maly Theatre, in 1920–1926 he was an artist at the Maly Theatre. Designed performances: "War of the Card Kings" at the Moscow propaganda puppet theater (1918, together with Yu. The Snow Maiden by A. N. Ostrovsky at the Moscow Theater of Cooperatives (1923, together with Yu. L. Obolenskaya). He was friends with many famous representatives of the artistic life of Moscow and St. Petersburg in the first third of the twentieth century - A.N. Tolstoy, S.I. Dymshits-Tolstoy, A.N. Benois, M.V. Dobuzhinsky, A.Ya. Golovin, K.S. Petrov-Vodkin, N.N. Sapunov, S.Yu. Sudeikin, P.I. Neradovsky and others. He repeatedly visited the Crimea, where he visited M.A. Voloshin and K. F. Bogaevsky. He organized art exhibitions: "World of Art" in Moscow (1910s), paintings by V. D. Polenov from the cycle "From the Life of Christ" in favor of the wounded of the First World War (1914), "Artists of Moscow - to the victims of war" (1914), paintings and sculptures by Russian artists arranged for the benefit of the Belgians who suffered from the war (1915), the avant-garde exhibition "1915" (1915) in Moscow; "War and the Press" in Petrograd (1914) and others. He had a collection of paintings and drawings. Since 1907 - a participant in exhibitions (14th exhibition of paintings by the Moscow Association of Artists).
K.V. Kandaurov. 1900s
Photo from the archive of K. A. Kandaurova
K. V. Kandaurov visiting Voloshin.
Member and exhibitor of associations: "Jack of Diamonds" (1916), "World of Art" (1911-1917; in 1916-1917 - secretary of the society), "Fire-flower" (1924-1928). Participated in exhibitions: modern Russian painting at the Art Bureau N.E. Dobychina in Petrograd (1916); 1st and 2nd exhibitions of paintings by the professional union of painters (both - 1918), 1st and 4th exhibitions of the Moscow repository of works of contemporary art (both - 1919), 4th state exhibition of paintings (1919), exhibition in memory of the 100th anniversary of the birth of A. N. Ostrovsky (1923), the 1st traveling exhibition of painting and graphics (1929) in Moscow; 1st state exhibition of art and science in Kazan (1920); the 1st traveling exhibition of paintings in the cities of the RSFSR (1925); exhibition of contemporary art in Simferopol (1927); 3rd (1927), 4th (1928), 5th (1929) exhibitions of paintings by contemporary Russian artists in Feodosia. Creativity is represented in a number of regional collections, including the Polenovo State Museum-Estate, the Taganrog Art Museum.
Planet Koktebel
Maximilian Alexandrovich stopped me at the top and led me to the very edge of the cliff into some kind of gap between the rocks, from where the inside of the volcano rushed upwards with needles and peaks. Around were visible: in one direction - Meganom, the Crimean mountains up to AiPetri, and on the other, Bogaevsky showed me the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov. What kind were these patterned chains and the sea with clouds lying on it, and our capes, and distant shores - it's incredible.
Yu.L. Obolenskaya. From a diary in 1913.
“Nightmarily fabulous” (A. Benois) Koktebel became the beginning of the amorous story of Yulia Obolenskaya and Konstantin Kandaurov. The landscape, charged with volcanic creative power and the imagination nourished by it, prompted rhyme, image, feeling. Genius loci: fantastic reality and ideal scenery, a poetic stage for fiction, romantic plots, legendary tales that succeeded each other in bizarre dramaturgy. And the more the Koktebel dacha turned into the House of the poet, attracting new characters and cultural heroes to itself, the more the space settled down, responded, resonated to him. The laid-back everyday life of summer cottage life on ancient land near the mouth of a volcano acquired the features of an aesthetic-geographical phenomenon, a natural and cultural explosion that created the “Crimean text” of the Silver Age.
Seeing M. I. Tsvetaeva and S. Ya. Efron in Feodosia. Koktebel.
August 1913. Yu. L. Obolenskaya - far right;
ahead of her is M. M. Nachman.
“We drove in silence, occasionally talking, we saw countries of indescribable amazingness, basalt flames, stone streams, fangs of a thousand figures, castles, cathedrals, Gothic lace, Assyrian bas-reliefs. Elephants, Egyptian sphinxes, etc. - green, blue and red rocks, caves, rocks, which Maximilian Alexandrovich aptly called the victory of Samothrace, and Lev Alexandrovich (Bruni) with frozen horror - there is no strength to talk about them. We passed a gate crowned with an eagle's nest and came out onto a rocky shore, enclosed by the wall of Karadag with a sphinx and an Egyptian seated figure on the sides. Its strip is so narrow that there is nowhere to go into the surf - sheer cliffs and a circle of the sea with the flight of the "gate" - there is definitely nothing else, as if you are on another planet.
The summer of 1913 involved Obolenskaya and her friend Magda Nachman in the "adult" world of artists, organic, natural, immersed in the natural environment - without uniforms and academic hierarchy. Conversations about painting were combined with trips to sketches, walks and evening gatherings, searching for pebbles on the shore (“fernampixes”), verbal sparring and involvement in the general life of the Voloshin house. Seriousness and restraint were brought into it by F.K. Bogaevsky, a stern romantic who extracted from the landscape pleasing to the eye the sad face of Odyssian Cimmeria. Intellectual play behavior, flowing from word to image - "in the beats of rhymes and the rhythm of free lines," as Obolenskaya writes about it - from reality to masquerade and hoax was more characteristic of Voloshin. The absolute positive of the solar disk was embodied by Kanadurov. He knew how to enjoy simple things with a kind of childish spontaneity, and this made the world around him fresher and brighter. The smile did not seem to leave his face, blue eyes shone with joy:
“How good!
How wonderful!"
The banality of the description here is not a characteristic - paint. This is how Yulia Leonidovna Kandaurova perceives, and other memoirists also remembered him as a light, “sunny” person, conducive to communication. A pleasant interlocutor and a talented storyteller, Konstantin Vasilyevich is a man of the theater with the role of a “romantic hero”, and therefore melodramatic remarks, an increased emotional intensity of speech clearly appear in his letters with numerous exclamation marks. With all three, Yulia Leonidovna will be able to build relationships, be interesting in letters, finding her own themes and intonations, she will dedicate poems to everyone, starting with Voloshin, she will want to make portraits. But in the first summer, her artistic experiments were not yet too bold, they turned to the landscape, which fascinated and asked for words, remaining on the pages of the diary:
“Every morning we work on the highest of the mountains-hills, where it is infinitely difficult to climb with things, but when I got into the valley between them and saw from above the landscape, colored like precious stones, and in the sea, like fire through a green diamond, bloody capes , as if full of scarlet and crimson blood and stained with red, I became dumb. I have never seen such flowers in the Southern Crimea, except in the evening and even then not so much. And the composition! Yesterday evening we also went to draw with Bogaevsky, Voloshin and Kostantin Vasilievich on Syuyuru-Kai. After a few days: “I feel that I am already beginning to understand a possible approach to these places. I was very tormented by my helplessness. Until today, I still have no work and there was nothing to show Kontstin Vasilyevich, but now something is outlined in my thoughts. Koktebel landscapes appear in the list of Obolenskaya's works. One of them - "View of the Syuyuru-Kai" - was found in the Russian Museum. But her first real thing will be "Self-Portrait in Red", conceived in Koktebel, but completed already in St. Petersburg and then transported to Moscow to Kandaurov. In contrast to the portrait of Tsvetaeva, made by M. Nachman in August 1913, the figure is inscribed there in the landscape - swarthy creeks and the seashore marked its origin and a more complex pictorial solution. Nakhmanov's portrait is known from reproductions, but here is Obolenskaya's direct and quite professional judgment about him:
“The quietest (Koktebel nickname M. Nachman) also finished her portrait. It is good, and only the dullness of the orange folds slightly upsets me: it is not known what their significance in the composition is. Meanwhile, as if she had invested in them a clearly expressed desire for a plumb line, their role would have been clear. And it seems to me a mistake: the background color is too close to the face ... It surprises me how much poetry is accessible to painting, what satisfaction rhythm and rhyme give the listener, and the purer they are, the stronger.
So, the main features of the propaganda puppet theater are the poster grotesque, the satirical nature of the genre, the simplicity and stupidity of the plots, the significance of the characters and the ritual-deadly nature of the action.Among the string of works of the propaganda puppet theater of that time“Revolutionary Petrushka” (1918), created by director P.I. Gutman. Working on the fronts of the Civil War, he laid the foundation for a whole trend - the Red Army Petrushka. Gutman's first performance, "About Denikin the Bouncer and the Hero of the Red Army", was shown in 1919 near Tula, where there were battles between the Red Army and the White Army of General Denikin. Among other plays by Gutman, who at that time was one of the trendsetters of the genre, are “Petrushka's tribe”, “Petrushka's polka”, “Walking by faith”, etc. In “Walking by faith” it was told how Petrushka the proletarian questions Eser, Anarchist, Kadet about the tasks of their parties. As a result, all three are beaten with Petrushka's club. In propaganda puppet shows, as a rule, techniques and forms of ritual, religious theater were used. An illustration of this is the Mezhigorsk revolutionary nativity scene, (1919) created in Kyiv. directed by P.P. Gorbenko and the Harlequin Theater, created by the young G.M. Kozintsev, S.I. Yutkevich and A.Ya. Kapler (1919).
The propaganda puppet theater developed especially actively in the first decades after the revolution. The poetry of V.V. Mayakovsky, and the texts of D. Bedny (E. A. Pridvorov), which were set as an example of the literary and ideological basis of puppet plays. In 1919, numerous performances on an anti-religious theme arose. In 1920, the play "Petrukha and devastation" became widespread, where Petrushka, together with the puppet "people", fights against devastation. In 1927, the play “From Tsar to October” by S. Gorodetsky opened the theater “Red Petrushka” (“On the loan”, “Indian equality”, “Our constitution”, “Political pantomimes”, “The road of the poor”, “Class against class " and etc.). The play “The Green Serpent” (1929) opened the First State Mobile Theater of Small Forms of the Institute of Sanitary Culture under the direction of O.L. Aristova (“San-Petrushka”). Also known in the 1920s were the Moscow Puppet Theater "Cooperative Petrushka", "Osoaviakhimovsky Petrushka", etc. At the same time, there were other puppet theaters that did not set themselves political tasks. Among them is the puppet theater of A.P. Sedov ("David and Goliath", "Lipanyushka", etc.). The dolls were created by V.A. Favorsky.
In 1917, the “Petrushka Theater” opened in Moscow by famous artists N.Ya. Simonovich - Efimova and I.S. Efimov. Having studied the experience of folk puppeteers, the Efimovs enriched it with the classical repertoire, technically improved theatrical puppets themselves. The circle of their communication was made up of artists V.A. Serov, V.A. Favorsky, sculptor A.S. Golubkina, scientist and philosopher P.A. Florensky. The performances of the Efimovs enjoyed great success: “Fables of I.A. Krylov”, “Merry Petrushka”, etc. They worked with various puppet systems, and made technical and artistic adjustments to each. In the 1930s, they showed scenes from Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in the foyers of drama theaters and artistic clubs. Against the background of a blood-red backdrop, over silvery, light screens, dolls played with wide tragic gestures of unusually long arms, expressive faces that changed facial expressions when turning. The number with Big Petrushka (a doll the size of a man) and the puppet interludes of the Efimovs for N.P. were also interesting. Smirnov-Sokolsky "Thirteen Writers" (1934). Their family theater has existed for more than 20 years, influencing the aesthetics and professional skills of not only Russian, but also world puppet theater. Dozens of puppeteers from many cities of the USSR came to the Efimov Theater for practice. He became the first step towards the formation of the Russian puppet school.
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Larisa Konstantinovna Alekseeva
Grape color. Julia Obolenskaya and Konstantin Kandaurov
© L. K. Alekseeva, 2017
© I. N. Tolstoy, foreword, 2017
© AST Publishing House LLC, 2017
* * *
Under the shadow of dolls
I was born under a painting by Yulia Obolenskaya. It’s not that there weren’t other canvases in the house - there were, of all kinds and from different eras. But my numerous sisters and brothers already lived under them.
On Obolenskaya's canvas, five dolls in caps and ancient clothes were drawn standing on a dresser in a row: judging by the costumes and facial expressions, a mother with her daughters and a modestly dressed nanny. Sunday, say, a trip to visit relatives. Or the types of a serf theater, or maybe the toys of a girl from a wealthy family. To me, they seemed to be characters from some story from the time of Sukhovo-Kobylin: the heroines of his unkind comedies or the neighbors of the murdered Louise Simon-Demanche must have dressed like that.
Who painted these dolls, I didn’t know for a long time, and it didn’t occur to me to ask adults, until one day, as a teenager, wiping dust, I found a medium-sized signature: “Yu. Sheath.
And my father told me what little he remembered from family stories about Yulia Leonidovna and Konstantin Vasilyevich.
The happy reader of the proposed correspondence will learn a hundred times more - both about this dramatic love, and about the ups and downs of the relationship between poets, writers and artists of the Silver Age and its echo of the 1920s. The book is filled to the brim with the most interesting facts and details introduced into cultural circulation for the first time. It remains for me to say about the connections of our family with the heroes of the book and about one strange thematic counterpoint.
The dolls on the old canvas were not at all accidental in our apartment. Alexei Tolstoy's acquaintance with Obolenskaya took place in the well-known St. Petersburg art school Zvantseva, located in the same house on Tauride, where the famous apartment of Vyacheslav Ivanov was on the floor above. The guests of the Ivanovo "tower" now and then went down to the draftsmen, who after classes went upstairs. Yulia Obolenskaya took lessons in the same class with Tolstoy's then-wife Sofya Dymshits, and it is quite possible that the dolls were painted as a student's still life, and, perhaps, not only by Yulia Leonidovna.
The second round of communication between Tolstoy and Obolenskaya came in the summer of 1914, when they met in Koktebel in the house of Maximilian Voloshin - the very house that Tolstoy considered his second home, he fell in love with his older friend and teacher so much. Here in Koktebel, Tolstoy managed to make friends with Konstantin Kandaurov, so the springboard for the development of relations was solid.
Alexei Tolstoy was in a crisis in those months: he quarreled to the nines with literary Petersburg (which he himself was largely to blame for), his marriage to Sofya Dymshits was falling apart, a trip to Koktebel was seen by him as a saving respite, adorned with new acquaintances. , conversations and stories.
My father did not know anything about my grandfather's flirting with Yulia Leonidovna - in any case, I only learn about this from "The Color of Grapes", but I knew about the long and painful love of Alexei Nikolayevich with Margarita Kandaurova - a ballerina, niece of Konstantin Vasilyevich - I knew from a young age years, as well as the fact that Margarita Pavlovna Kandaurova, if the stars had a slightly different arrangement in the firmament of the heart, could become my grandmother. Hymen, a lover of anagrams, picked up a similar grandmother for me - Krandievskaya (k-a-n-d-r-v).
Meanwhile, the dolls above the cradle remembered their broad cultural context. The Silver Age was filled with puppetry - as if in all the arts and genres, everyone indiscriminately wished to mark themselves with their "Children's Albums". But unlike Tchaikovsky, the art of the Silver Age more and more often saw in a child not a careless child, but a disguised adult overflowing with passions, who was at a transitional stage between a person and a doll. Hence the stylized heroes of Somovskaya paintings from the supposedly 18th century, from this incredible fashion for collecting everything ethnographic and genuine, attempts to initiate a fading “people” (Talashkino), a folklore direction in clothing (greased boots, the “Russ” style, Gorky-Klyuevsky-Yesenin kosovorotki ), in the titles of publishing series and brands ("Sirin", "Alkonost", "Gamayun"), including the design of card decks. And it is no coincidence that one of the most celebrated beauties of St. Petersburg - the "goat-legged" heroine of Akhmatova's poem Olga Glebova-Sudeikina - moonlighted as a doll-maker.
The same ideas arose on the stage. In 1908, Alexei Tolstoy wrote one of his first plays, The Sorcerer's Daughter and the Enchanted Prince, in which dolls appeared on a par with living people. The thing was written for the theatrical cabaret by Vsevolod Meyerhold. It is remarkable as a prototype or protoplasm of the future fairy tale "The Golden Key". One detail there is striking: the puppeteer on the stage (conditional Papa Carlo) arranges the scenery and carefully seats the puppets, and then suddenly takes out a long beard with strings from his pocket and turns into an evil sorcerer - the future Karabas-Barabas. Good and he is also an evil father - the conflict is quite in the Freudian spirit.
Of course, those readers of Pinocchio are right who guess about the true roots of the tale: the wooden doll of Carlo Collodi became for Alexei Tolstoy only an excuse to settle scores with offenders from the proud and arrogant Petersburg of his youth. The Golden Key is to a large extent an autobiography, deployed by its passions in the era of the first theatrical experiences, contemporary to the apprenticeship of Yulia Obolenskaya.
It is not surprising, therefore, that in the 1925 Leningrad edition of "Walking Through the Torments" (not public, but private, author's), Alexei Tolstoy asked the artist's friend Veniamin Belkin to portray the two heroines of the novel - Katya and Dasha. Joker Belkin brought out two distinctly recognizable profiles - Akhmatova and Glebova-Sudeikina.
I can’t say with certainty who in our family supported the puppet disposition - maybe the professional puppenmeister of Lyubov Vasilievna Shaporina, a long-term friend, a neighbor in Detskoye Selo and the wife of the composer Shaporin, or something else, but my father in 1963 brought from Japan is the strangest gift for a Soviet businessman: an exquisite doll in a ceremonial kimono with a face as white as chalk. Nothing remains of those island gifts half a century later, and the doll is still like new.
Or maybe all these years in the soul of my parents there was a distinctly puppet note of portraits of Nikolai Pavlovich Akimov - the greatest storyteller-satirist, who did not miss a single opportunity to tell his models - with a corner of his mouth, a dimple on his cheek, a glare of an eyeball - a secret mockery of the frailty of life . My late sister Ekaterina studied with Akimov - I will not evaluate the success of her training, it is important that irony and satire entered her artistic thought and remained in numerous portraits and in a few carefully crafted dolls (mainly women for a teapot).
A boy who visited Koktebel in the 60s, lived in Voloshin's house, remembers with his bare feet the hot rugs of the July workshop and went "with the whole company" through Karadag to some distant village (as many generations of predecessors went), reads the correspondence between Yulia Obolenskaya and Konstantin Kandaurov special - nostalgic - eyes. The patterns of great-memory imprinted on these pages excite and stir up, if not their own, but kindred memories.
However, why not yours? What to do with such an unexpected pattern? Almost thirty years ago I was looking for a roof over my head in Paris, and I was put in touch with a French woman who opened for me a tiny apartment, long empty, consisting of a single room and a kitchen that fit in a corner closet. The apartment was exactly from the parable "How much land does a man need."
As she left, the lady said:
– I settle you here because you are Russian. I don't let anyone in here. Before you, many years ago, I also gave one Russian test. At the end of her life, she had absolutely no money, and she paid with dolls for housing with me. She died in this apartment. I have kept a few dolls since then.
“Excuse me, what was her name?”
- Olga Glebova-Sudeikina.
Ivan Tolstoy
Intention
Book promise
These letters will always be with me.
Let this be our story.
To tell a "fairy tale", or rather, to recreate the history of the relationship between two people, close and understandable to them alone, is not an easy task. There always remains the question of the legitimacy of reading other people's letters and diaries, even if they, preserved by time, fall into the field of view of the researcher. The problem of "intervention" - violation of the privacy of personal space - justified by the search for new evidence, characteristics, nuances of historical reality, is not only extremely complex, but also fraught with the danger of melodrama, the detail of the private. However, the current "time of storytellers" seems to have ceased to be embarrassed by this. The caravans of his stories and biographies are rapidly filling the current cultural space, bringing back what has been repressed or forgotten, creating new connections and points of intersection. In this cross circulation of knowledge, impressions, emotions, each new story has the right to exist.
The epistolary heritage of Yu. L. Obolenskaya and K. V. Kandaurov is a huge deposit, an array of documents barely touched by researchers, including diaries, memoirs, memoirs, correspondence with figures of literature and art of the first third of the 20th century. All this Yulia Leonidovna carefully kept, systematized, using letters and diary entries she compiled summary preparatory materials for future biographies, believing that everything important and fleeting - events, feelings, circumstances of life - is the outline of an interesting book that someday should happen. At the beginning of one of her notebooks there is an inscription: “Materials for the history of our life with K. V. Kandaurov, which I promised him to write, and we wanted to write it together (Diaries and correspondence)” 1
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If such a book were to take place, it would be another story about life in art - about a creative union surrounded by artists, poets - and about the very time in which they wandered from a beautiful past to an unknown future. Its central figure, no doubt, would be Konstantin Vasilyevich, near whom this life was filled with some kind of inexhaustible and inspiring power.
Their acquaintance took place in Koktebel near Voloshin, where in 1913 a young St. Petersburg artist appeared for the first time. For her, the events of this summer determined the whole "composition" of further history.
The meeting with Kandaurov combined love and art into one. The organizer of exhibitions, a man of theatrical habits, full of plans and stories about the theater, actors, famous painters, he immediately turned out to be a fascinating conversationalist for a new acquaintance, a mentor, a guide to the world of art, a companion on trips to sketches - to where the grapes bloomed ...
His main "gift" to Obolenskaya was Konstantin Bogaevsky, whom Kandaurov idolized and whose artistic experience, mutual friendly communication turned out to be very significant for Yulia Leonidovna. Making extracts from Kandaurov’s letters when preparing materials for his biography, she did not miss the line connecting all three: “I am still extremely happy that in my life I ran into you and Yu.L.” 2
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And, of course, the bright hero of the whole story could not but be Maximilian Voloshin, who overshadowed the ancient shores of Cimmeria with poetic glory. From the very beginning of his acquaintance, he saw in Obolenskaya not only a capable artist, but was also very interested in her literary inclinations. On this edge - poetry and art - a special friendly attraction arose, which lasted for years, noted in the diaries and correspondence of both. Obolenskaya is clearly one of those female romantic souls that the poet was fond of and fascinated by - a capable artist who succumbs to the temptation of rhyme in all the openness of movement towards ... He dedicates poems to her, gives books, watercolors, introduces Cherubina, in every possible way awakening that very spirit of freedom and creativity, real art.
“Koktebel for everyone who lived in it is a second home, for many it is a deposit of the spirit,” wrote Marina Tsvetaeva. And the more Voloshin's dacha settled in, turning into the Poet's House and attracting new characters to itself, the wider the cultural space became, which resonated with him. The laid-back everyday life of summer cottage life on ancient land near the mouth of a volcano acquired the features of an aesthetic and geographical phenomenon, a natural and cultural explosion that created the “Crimean text” of the Silver Age.
Obolenskaya is no exception, on the contrary, a vivid confirmation of Tsvetaev's thought, the figurative expression of which was her most famous work - a self-portrait in a red dress against the backdrop of the Koktebel landscape. One of her first memoirs also refers specifically to Voloshin. In 1933, at the request of his widow, Maria Stepanovna, she made extracts from her diaries about her stay in Koktebel, accompanied by a small comment 3
Cm.: Obolenskaya Yu. L. From the diary of 1913 // Memories of Maximilian Voloshin / Comp. and comment. V. P. Kupchenko and Z. D. Davydova. M., 1990. S. 302–310.
The text, although notable for chronicle accuracy, looks rather modest, leaving the memoirist herself out of portraiture. Either her inherent restraint had an effect, or the recent losses were too heavy and the time for memories had not yet come. Of course it's a pity. That is why it is worth reading these relations again, since there are plenty of written and drawn “witnesses” in the Obolenskaya archive.
As for the diaries and correspondence (about a thousand letters!) Obolenskaya and Kandaurov, covering the period from 1913 to 1930, they can really be considered a classic epistolary novel, a traditional love story that develops according to all the canons of the genre. The fate of the characters, creative and personal relationships represent the main plot in this "novel", but through it the picture of time is inevitably visible, since the contours and parameters of private life are determined by impulses coming from outside.
So, the rapid plot, which began with a meeting on the Koktebel coast, attraction-repulsion in a situation of love against the backdrop of legal marriage, human and creative unity, when a joint workshop became a home, and everyday meetings were overgrown with family life. And at the same time - some incompleteness, separateness close to each other, which will still give this union a non-family shade. There were always macro- and micro-distances in their relationship: first between Crimea, Moscow, St. Petersburg, then between Bolshaya Dmitrovka and Tverskaya, which overcame letters, meetings, friends, work...
But apart - not always apart, the attraction of the disconnected has its own strength. Therefore, a disparate archive, no matter how difficult it was to study, lured, pulled into its orbit, the unknown tuned in to the search, and the long-standing promise of the book seemed to have moved into the mind of the seeker.
“For it is not given to burn someone else's life with impunity. For there is no other life” (Marina Tsvetaeva).
Necessary. Unnecessary. Unread
I think with bitterness of the beginning searches. I have nothing - no food (whatever!), no money, no weapons - all the more sad that again all my carefully selected letters and pieces of paper will be shaken up. No one but me needs them, but I want to save them, I value them like life ...
Yu. L. Obolenskaya. From a 1920 diary
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Obolenskaya, sewing up in canvas, transfers the most dear letters and documents to the State Tretyakov Gallery, while a significant part of the archive will remain at home, in the workshop on Tverskaya Street, which will also have to be left for a while. In October 1941, she will try to hastily, at least sketch out sketches about people close to her, “to settle scores with the past,” but in those conditions it didn’t work out the way she wanted. And death really came suddenly - but after the war, in December 1945.
Obolenskaya's escheated property was received by the State Literary Museum (SLM) according to an act of a notary's office. The phrase "escheated property" always sounds piercing and tragic, conveying the emptiness behind the coffin or the punishment of unconsciousness, when no one needs the remaining fragments of earthly existence. And here behind this was a man who, all his conscious life, opposed non-existence, recording, fixing the works, days and events of his own and other people's lives, translating them into words and images. However, the time burned by the war is too harsh to be closely attentive to the destinies, and even more so to their archival remnants. And it's good that they survived.
In GLM, a huge body of documentary, printed and visual materials was processed and recorded for two years, and in the late fifties and early sixties it was significantly written off and moved. For the museum, which does not have space, the artist's escheated property turned out to be too large, it was classified as "non-core", and it was disposed of quite freely. As a result, part of the documentary collection was added to the Obolenskaya fund in the manuscript department of the Tretyakov Gallery (as the artist herself originally wanted), another migrated to the Central State Archive of Literature and Art (now RGALI), something was written off due to state of preservation and other formal “objective » reasons. So the entire archive - and these are eleven notebooks of diaries and notebooks, about two thousand letters, photographs, drawings, books - turned out to be dispersed among three well-known Moscow repositories. In addition, the materials of the artists were deposited in the Crimean collections, in particular in the Feodosia Art Gallery and the Voloshin House Museum, while the very extensive correspondence between Yulia Leonidovna and Maximilian Aleksandrovich ended up in the Pushkin House.
The fragmentation of the documentary array led to the fact that in the narrative of the Silver Age the names of Obolenskaya and Kandaurov are present only sporadically, marginally - in modest mentions, comments, footnotes. Sometimes superficial and with repeated errors, since their own "personal story" remained unread all this time.
It is even more difficult with the artistic heritage, about which little is known at all. In the storerooms of the State Museum of Fine Arts and the State Tretyakov Gallery, only a small amount of graphics by artists is kept, Obolenskaya's self-portrait in a red dress (1918) is in the Astrakhan Art Gallery, the picturesque “Koktebel. Mount Syuyuryu-Kaya" (1913) - in the Russian Museum, another Crimean landscape (1917) - in the Vologda State Historical, Architectural and Art Museum-Reserve, "Blind" (until 1925) - in the Art Museum of Yaroslavl, several works - in private hands and collections.
But if you believe that manuscripts do not burn, and ideas are able to grow through time, then the disappearance of paintings without a trace is even less likely. This means that the opening of Obolenskaya the artist will certainly take place.
"Deus conservat omnia" 4
God saves everything lat.).
Artist writing
... Often there is a need to pour oneself into something: some kind of joy, anxiety, expectation, a fleeting impression. It is impossible for all this running life to have time to write big things, and it does not fit into them ...
The case of Obolenskaya is exceptional in that the memoirist, witness and contemporary really overshadows the painter. Yulia Leonidovna belongs to a rare category of artists - writers and rhymers, that is, literary gifted. A wide circle of communication and fluency in word and pen (in a diary - often with a pencil), the habit of fixing the smallest events and details of life in a letter, diary entry, notebook, in fact, created that colossal array of documents that had to be mastered as something whole, denoting its contours and internal connections. And the fact that he is thoroughly saturated with the "living water" of feelings that have not lost their strength only made him attractive. If it were not for people, would we be fascinated by history?
At the same time, Obolenskaya's epistolary is a "visual" text, with all the characteristics that are unique for such a text. Her notes are similar to drawings, sketches, when initials flash instead of names, thoughts are thrown in passing, phrases are brought to a hint to herself, and in order to read them, you need a habit of conditional language and fluent handwriting. But in this pictorial manner - the tenacious gaze of the artist, for whom the detail, detail, trifle is more important than anything else. To begin with, examples from the diary of 1919, entry dated February 28:
"TO. brought pictures, made new prints<атки>, and I pis<ала>P<ортре>m. He also brought milk and 2 potatoes<елины>and 1 onion, cooked, and we ate and drank milk. There was a feast for the whole world" 5
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Three phrases - and a full-fledged plot, which seems familiar from the works of Petrov-Vodkin or Shterenberg.
"Vech<ером>White's report. They hobbled along the terrible road in the middle of the street in single file along the icy ledges (between the former rails) on the sides - lakes. Fast<оянно>having failed<ались>legs. Trot<уар>obstruction<им>‹…› AB. cheat<ал>path cult<уры>- the history of the formation of the "I" - generic, personal and collective (as now) dove steps inside us and a thunderstorm outside" 6
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And again, sketchily - the content of the report, but carefully and intently - the road along the icy ledges, which becomes the image of the "paths of culture" that Andrei Bely spoke about. “Thoughts walking like doves govern the world” (F. Nietzsche).
According to the Koktebel diary of 1913, one can trace the number of sunny, cloudy or rainy days, meet descriptions of landscapes at different times of the day, sometimes a bird’s wing or a grape flower attracts the author’s attention no less than talk about art or poetry. In other words, descriptiveness, detail, color content of the text are the originality of Obolenskaya's memoirs. She passes the content through the eye, verbalizes the image, which for her as an artist is self-sufficient in conveying meaning.
And more. An impression that gets into a notebook is remembered more vividly and turns out to be able to turn into an independent image, a sign of subsequent events, to penetrate into painting. In the record of the first days of the memorable Koktebel summer we read: “Returning, we passed through the 2nd spring, overgrown with greenery. A shady oasis that smelled of southern Crimea. I discovered that they smelled like vine flowers, and I picked them. Its subtle noble, but heady aroma is better than any roses. He excites some extraordinary dream. It is not all my soul, not all that it lacks. We were drunk with joy, plucking and carrying these twigs. It was warm, the sea was blue, the earth was light underfoot, faces were burning from the wind, and the fabulous aroma of flowering grapes was circling around. 7
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"The color of grapes" - an extraordinary feeling, a premonition of happiness - will become the title of one of Obolenskaya's paintings and a symbol of sent down love, perceived as a miracle. It could not have been otherwise, since it was about the vine with all the variety of metaphors inherent in it.
Italic typeface of the era
Postal prose from the archive of Yu.L. Obolenskaya
The pages of the century are louder
Separate truths and falsehoods.
We are the helmsman of this book
Live cursive font.
B. Pasternak, 1936
The archive of the artist Yulia Leonidovna Obolenskaya (1889-1945) is a rich material for the researcher: letters, diaries, visual materials. Among the recipients of her correspondence are both well-known contemporaries (Maximilian Voloshin, Vladislav Khodasevich, Konstantin Bogaevsky, Nikolai Tyrsa, Korney Chukovsky, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin and others), as well as her closest artist friends. The names of these artists, due to the circumstances, are becoming known only now, but they lived and worked within the culture of modernism and were an integral part of it.
We publish the correspondence of 1916–1919 between Obolenskaya and her two closest school friends E.N. Zvantseva: Natalia Petrovna Grekova (1887–1956, Paris) and Magda Maksimilianovna Nakhman (1889–1951, Bombay)*. This selection is a natural continuation of our previous publication: Obolenskaya's report on the art school of Zvantseva 1 - and is of particular interest due to the time of writing the letters. From the mosaic of everyday life against the backdrop of the events of the First World War, the revolutions of 1917, the Civil War and the Red Terror, a reliable picture of the era, replete with little-known details, emerges.
Obolenskaya, Nachman and Grekova met in the spring of 1906 in painting classes at the Society for the Mutual Aid of Russian Artists. According to Obolenskaya, the group of novice artists to which they belonged was not satisfied with the unsystematic method of teaching painting that prevailed in St. Petersburg. In the process of searching for teachers, several people decided to get acquainted with the school of Elizaveta Nikolaevna Zvantseva 2 , who moved from Moscow to St. Petersburg in 1906 and invited Lev Bakst 3 as a leader and ideologist. At Bakst's lessons, their "eyes were opened" and gained "the joy of a new vision", and they could no longer return to the old one 4 .
During the period of study with Bakst, Obolenskaya cannot remember "a single quarrel or misunderstanding between comrades." But even by the standards of their close company, the three friends shared an unusual trust and closeness 5 .
In 1910, after leaving for Paris, Bakst handed over the leadership of the school to Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin 6 . With his arrival, a split occurred among the students, but the girlfriends remained at school for another three years, and the influence of Petrov-Vodkin in their surviving paintings is undeniable.
The correspondence of the artists began in the summer of 1908 as a continuation of winter conversations “about everything” and a discussion of summer work, which was based on Bakst's principle - every day a sketch. “Bakst said: whoever does not work 6 hours a day is a lazy person” (Obolenskaya). We start publishing from 1916. By this time, the female correspondents had turned from students into independent artists, participating in serious exhibitions in the capitals, and they felt, in the words of Nachman and Obolenskaya, that the “fun craft of painting” was already in their hands. They are closely acquainted with the artistic youth of Moscow and St. Petersburg, largely due to their friendship with Maximilian Voloshin, which began with the trip of Obolenskaya and Nakhman to Koktebel in 1913 7 . Voloshin connected with each other many remarkable contemporaries, whose talent at that time was only coming into force. These acquaintances later turned out to be central for both artists and significantly influenced their lives during the period of wars and revolutions. (Additional interest to the correspondence is given by the fact that their social circle, in addition to artists, includes Voloshin, Tsvetaeva and Efron, Khodasevich, Mandelstam, A.N. Tolstoy.)
Girlfriends perceive the First World War with some detachment, and this does not look like myopia, but like a conscious choice. They write about anxiety for friends leaving for the front, about the oppressive atmosphere and communication difficulties, about cramped circumstances and looking for work - however, until the October Revolution, everyday difficulties and the military situation itself are perceived by them as temporary obstacles to creative work.
After the February Revolution, in letters, along with the previous themes, the theme of survival, physical and spiritual, appears and then begins to dominate. When dangers and hardships become commonplace, and reports of the death of acquaintances become the norm, friends serve each other as a constant source of support, moral and often material. As before, all three cannot imagine their future without painting. But the question is becoming more and more acute: how to remain an artist in the world that is collapsing around them? Each artist solves this problem in her own way, but at the same time based on the principles that they worked out together in their youth. (I recall how in Bakst's lessons they once learned to solve a general, purely pictorial problem "in accordance with their individuality.") Here is an excerpt from a letter Grekova wrote in the summer of 1918, during a series of forced transfers:
When for some reason I fail to work, I completely become limp. I usually lock myself in my room and work. Gotta use it while you can. Somehow, in a moment of doubt and discouragement, I came across a letter from K.S. , he writes: “As far as I know you, you have nothing else to do except painting, i.e. your whole life pushes in and around you, and in order to express it outside of you, lies in the salvation and “realism” of your - (our) life. That you have the right and should do this, and that you can create a “living” picture in this guarantee ... ”, etc. These words comfort me greatly. And it often comes to mind whether I have the right to paint, especially at a time when it is so difficult for everyone to live. But now, it seems, it is necessary to prove that these words of K.S. are correct.
In September of the same year, Nachman, who found herself in a remote province, cut off from the outside world, wrote to Obolenskaya:
On the one hand, fate, on the other, chance, and through chance, we must creatively embody fate. It's time to understand that you can't change the facts, but what you need to use to the end, what you get. It was all this that became especially clear to me over the summer ...
And another letter from the same place, a year later:
... I absolutely selfishly want one thing: the conditions of life possible for work, and I will accept them, wherever they come from, I will accept them without hesitation. And let anyone who wants, with whatever "rights", judge and condemn me, I know too clearly what is needed.
To which Obolenskaya answers her:
How do you compare yourself to<...>? You have every minute creativity of every moment of your life, you, Rai, Felitsa, Lermontova with her super-unfortunate fate 8 . At<...>there is no creativity, despite the degree of intelligence and all kinds of qualities. It is not the circumstances that decide the value and necessity of the life lived, but this creative force that plays with external values.
In essence, the artists are united by their attitude to the terrible years of Russia as a tragic event that befell their generation, against which one must be able to "creatively embody fate." It is not clear where the boundary between fate and chance is, we all draw it in different ways. But such a position in relation to one's time promotes inner clarity and independence - both from external circumstances and from the ideology that dominates in their environment.
However, it gradually turns out that the prospects for the future are different for them: partly due to the fault of the case, partly because of the peculiarities of character, but largely due to origin and family ties. It is sad and instructive to follow from the letters how this difference, without affecting their careful attitude towards each other, gradually forms an attitude towards what is happening, and after a couple of years it will separate them to different countries and make further communication impossible.
Natalya Grekova - daughter of a Cossack general, her brothers - officers of the Don Army; mother, daughters-in-law and a brood of young nephews need her support. Her reaction to the events of the Civil War is courageous fatalism, she has no doubt that she must share the fate of the family, and emigrate with her a week before the evacuation of Wrangel's army from the Crimea in the fall of 1920.
For Yulia Obolenskaya, the question of leaving Moscow is not worth it: her closest friend, K.V. Kandaurov, is apolitical, but firmly rooted in Russia, and separation from him is unthinkable for her. In her letters to her friends, vividly and accurately describing devastation, famine, arbitrariness, she simultaneously seeks - and finds - an excuse for them. In the summer of 1920, after the death of several friends, in a letter that casually mentions the troubles regarding the release from arrest of a close acquaintance (later shot), she writes, admiring the dances of children during a demonstration: “... can a person built on rhythm to be internally and externally rude and clumsy? That's what it means - proletarian culture (many people ask this question with annoyance or with irony), that's all the same what it means. No, such a state is not criminal.”
Magda Nakhman, thrown into remote Russian villages in 1919, deprived of the right to leave there 9 and moral support from her family, without opportunities for work, which is the meaning of her life (“It’s as if my hand and fingers were cut off with an ax, some kind of terrible hopelessness ”), turns out to be the most internally free in directing his future. At the same time, she is more burdened than others by his uncertainty.
By the end of the Civil War, Grekova ended up in Constantinople, Nachman in Berlin, and Obolenskaya remained in Moscow. Their correspondence continued, we know this from the memoirs of Obolenskaya herself, but subsequently she probably destroyed the letters from abroad. In any case, no such letters were found in her archive.
Now, a century later, the names of these artists are being rediscovered. The works of Obolenskaya and Nachman were presented at the recent Petrov-Vodkin Circle exhibition at the State Russian Museum, others are preserved in provincial museums and in private collections in Russia and India, where Magda Nachman spent the last 14 years of her life. The fate of Grekova's paintings is still unknown, but, as can be seen from her letters, she worked productively until 1919 in unusually difficult conditions, and her teacher Petrov-Vodkin had a high opinion of her talent.
In addition to well-known names, the letters of the artists mention their friends from the Zvantseva school: Nadezhda Lermontova, Raisa Kotovich-Borisyak, Sergei Kalmykov, Evgenia Kaplan, Sergei Kolesnikov, Nadezhda Lyubavina, Favsta Shikhmanova, Alexander Siloti, Maria Pets. Many of these artists are also now rediscovering. This makes the publication of letters especially timely.
All three friends are widely educated even by the standards of their era and, in addition to professional vigilance, have the ability to put an impression into words, which is rare for a painter. Time deprived them of the opportunity to work in full force, and most of what they created did not reach us and, perhaps, was lost forever - but it is difficult to wish for the best chroniclers for the time.
Yulia Leonidovna Obolenskaya 10 was born in St. Petersburg in the family of Leonid Yegorovich Obolensky (1845–1906), a well-known St. Petersburg writer and journalist, editor and publisher of the Russian Wealth magazine, and Ekaterina Ivanovna Obolenskaya (?–1935). Yulia's older brother, Leonid (1873–1930), a lawyer by education, joined the RSDLP(m) in 1915, joined the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution and became one of the first Soviet diplomats.
Obolenskaya began to write poetry early, but painting turned out to be her vocation. She remained at the Zvantseva school until 1913. This summer, at Voloshin's dacha in Koktebel, she met KV Kandaurov, who became her life companion 11 . At the same time, her friendship and correspondence with Voloshin began.
In 1916, Obolenskaya moved from Petrograd to Moscow to be in the same city with her loved one. Although K.V. Kandaurov reciprocated her feelings, at the same time he felt responsible for his wife and was not ready to part with her. An attempt to settle three together in one apartment failed 12, and as a result, Obolenskaya rented an apartment with her family and equipped a common workshop for friends there, which Kandaurov visited almost daily. Joint painting classes brought great joy to both, and in a sense, Kandaurov became Obolenskaya's "student". From that time until the death of Kandaurov in 1930, they did not part.
Obolenskaya and Kandaurov traveled a lot to their favorite south, spent part of the summer in Koktebel. The artist brought interesting works (some of them are kept in the pictorial fund of the State Literary Museum). Later, in 1918-1920, they both worked as stage designers, worked for the puppet theater as artists and screenwriters.
By 1923, Obolenskaya's scenographic work was on the wane. The puppet theater she worked for closes. At the same time, she and Kandaurov created the Zhar-Tsvet exhibition association, which included mainly former members of the World of Art. Five exhibitions were organized, but in 1929 the association broke up. In the 1930s, Obolenskaya taught and engaged in book illustration.
A few years after Kandaurov's death, Obolenskaya experienced another spiritual attachment, as difficult as the first, which also inspired her work 13 .
In the autumn of 1941, before being evacuated from Moscow, Obolenskaya sorted her archive and gave part of it to the Tretyakov Gallery. Unfortunately, the history of the Obolenskaya archive, like her own fate, has become a reflection of her time. In 1945, at the time of Obolenskaya's death, her heirs were serving their terms in various camps in Russia, so the archive was divided into parts. Her papers were first taken to the State Literary Museum, and not to the Tretyakov Gallery (where the artist gave part of her archive back in 1926 and hoped to place the rest there), and in 1957 the archive was distributed among several repositories. Part was deposited in the RGALI, part - in the Tretyakov Gallery, part ended up in the Pushkin House in Leningrad. Some of the documents that belonged to Obolenskaya are kept in the Voloshin House in Crimea. Of course, with such a spread, there were some losses, and something was written off as a state of preservation or for “formalism” 14 .
The ashes of Obolenskaya are buried in the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow, in the same niche with Kandaurov.
Magda Maksimilianovna Nachman 15 was the sixth, penultimate child of a sworn attorney Maximilian Yulianovich Nachman, originally from a Jewish family in Riga, and Clara Alexandrovna von Reder, from the Russified German nobles. (According to the laws of the Russian Empire, marriage between a Jew and a Lutheran was allowed on the condition that children be raised in the Christian faith.) The family was well provided for: his father served as a legal adviser in the oil corporation of the Nobel brothers in St. Petersburg.
Nachman graduated from the gymnasium with a silver medal and had the right (and even thought) to become a volunteer at St. Petersburg University. But her talent and passion for art led her to a different decision. In the spring of 1906, like Obolenskaya, she began attending painting classes at the Society for the Mutual Aid of Russian Artists, and then moved with her to the Zvantseva school.
Nachman's early letters show that, with a tender and caring attitude towards her loved ones and a sense of responsibility for her mother (her father apparently died before 1908), she actively seeks new acquaintances outside the family with people of a more creative fold, preferring one-on-one communication or in a narrow circle - she is not drawn to noisy companies (not without reason in the summer of 1913 in the Koktebel community she received the nickname "quietest"). Books occupy her no less than people, and in a letter she can devote many pages to translating, say, an article by Oscar Wilde that struck her (apparently, she was one of the few friends among her friends who spoke English), retelling Goethe's diaries or discussing new Russian poets.
Nachman moved from Petrograd to Moscow almost simultaneously with Obolenskaya. The next few years of her life are closely connected with the Efron family: Elizaveta, Vera and Sergey, the husband of Marina Tsvetaeva. There is an extensive research and memoir literature about the Efrons; here we only want to give a context for understanding the letters 16 .
The Efrons and the Tsvetaeva sisters, Marina and Anastasia, met and became close in 1911 in Koktebel thanks to M. Voloshin: “One of Max’s life callings was to bring people together, create meetings and destinies” (Marina Tsvetaeva, Living about Living, 1932). Subsequently, they always remained welcome guests in Koktebel, and the nickname received there as "mutts" (which is repeatedly mentioned in letters) followed their company for many years. Before the First World War, the Efrons belonged to artistic bohemia, and their way of life was appropriate. All three played in the theater, with varying degrees of professionalism. In 1916, Sergei Efron was drafted into the army and graduated from the ensign school, and with the outbreak of the Civil War he joined the White movement.
In 1913, again thanks to Voloshin, Efronov and Marina Tsvetaeva met Nakhman and Obolenskaya. Letters from an earlier period show that after they met, they maintained friendly relations, although they lived in different cities.
Having left Petrograd in the summer of 1916, Nachman rented an apartment in Sivtsevo Vrazhka and invited Vera Efron to move in together. This is the most cloudless period of her friendship with the Efrons, and their social circles at this time essentially coincide. In letters to Vera, Marina Tsvetaeva and Sergei Efron send their regards to Magda Maximilianovna. In the fall, before Sergei left for the military school, Nachman completed work on his large portrait 17 .
Magda Nachman's romance with Boris Griftsov also dates back to this time. We can only guess how their relationship developed: the first mention of a connection with Griftsov appears in a 1917 letter from Bakhchisarai, where Magda went for the summer (or rather, fled) after breaking up with him. From subsequent letters, it is clear how much trauma this story inflicted on her.
Soon after the Bolsheviks came to power, relations among the intelligentsia escalated: ideological differences, superimposed on the terrible situation and nervous tension of the first post-revolutionary years, led to breaks between good friends. This also affected the inner circle of both artists. The Efron sisters considered support for the new regime unacceptable, especially since Sergei Efron was in the Volunteer Army at that time. When in 1918 Obolenskaya and Nakhman, who needed money, took part in the decoration of Moscow for the May Day holidays, this caused outrage, which grew into a boycott. The boycott was joined by Magda Nakhman's apartment neighbors, as well as Mikhail Feldshtein, another member of the gibberish company, who by that time had actually become the husband of Vera Efron.
In the correspondence of girlfriends in 1918-1919, this story is mentioned many times, but without details and explanation of the reasons. In a letter to Voloshin dated May 20 / June 2, 1918, Obolenskaya tells about the boycott in more detail:
I don’t see any idiots, they are boycotting us for some participation in decorating the city on May 1st. Marg also wanted to help you, but she didn't have time, so it seems they don't touch her. Magda Max, who painted stars and ornaments, especially got it: Vera and Lilya have not spoken to her for a month, and guests bypass her<...>. It seems that Mikhail Solom 19 was seriously offended by me for the same reason, because despite my requests (through Eva Ad, who came to explain to me) - to call me - he stubbornly does not make himself felt. Borisyak, on this occasion, offers an essay on the topic "Bolshevism and Russian ornament."
Joking aside, I will be very sad if Serezha, who God knows where is now 20, is set against me and Seryozha.
What the organizers of the boycott considered a betrayal and a moral compromise, the artists saw as an opportunity to earn a living not by day labor in a random office, but by holding brushes in their hands: sometimes ornaments and stars are just ornaments and stars, and do not express any ideology of the performers 21.
A few months later, the relations of both artists with the Efron company were generally restored, and the positions of the participants in the conflict did not affect their subsequent behavior in any way: the sisters Efron and Feldstein remained in Russia and were forced to somehow adapt to the new order, and Nachman left in 1922. country. A few months before her emigration, she writes a letter to E. Efron, which ends very tenderly:
I would love to see you, but I don't know when I can. Do not be angry with me, do not think that I have forgotten you. My life becomes terribly fantastic. Someday we'll talk to you about it. I am not calling you now. When "the times and dates will come" 22 - we will see each other. Until then, believe that I love you.
Another important moment in Russian history is the emergence of communal apartments in 1918 and their evolution towards Soviet communal apartments. The published correspondence reflects many aspects of this process.
In 1918, at least 10 people lived in the apartment occupied by the Obolenskaya family. The apartment in Merzlyakovsky Lane, where Magda Nachman and Vera Efron were renting rooms at that time, was also unusually densely populated.
Nevertheless, at first the owner of the apartment (“responsible tenant”) had the right to choose his neighbors himself, and some of the communal apartments that arose at first were partly friendly communities: relatives and acquaintances were invited as neighbors, who, with luck, gradually became, as it were, family members. By 1918, the Obolenskys' apartment on Tverskaya-Yamskaya 24 had become such a kindred union. Nachman and Grekova send greetings to its residents at the end of the letter and inquire about their health.
One of the "household members" of the Obolenskys, Mikhail Isaev 25, came to them on the advice of residents of another communal apartment located in a house on Patriarch's Ponds and also populated by relatives and mutual friends. Their names are often found in correspondence, and they themselves play a prominent role in the lives of friends 26 .
In Obolenskaya's letters there are many complaints about the difference of interests, friction and the severity of communal life. But next to her lived two recklessly beloved people who understood and supported her in everything, and this both gave strength and seemed to justify the conditions, often leaving no opportunity for work. In December 1919 she writes to Nachman:
We start all sorts of artels, in one (book and art shop) you are also registered, but everything stalls, probably from cold and hunger. Vera Isaeva called yesterday for a name day<...>. I didn't have the strength to go there. You feel hungry all the time - but don't think I'm complaining. Vice versa. I imagine with horror that I would find myself in ideal conditions and there would be no K.V. and mothers - then nothing would be better. And now I want the best because of them mainly 27 .
The communal life of Nachman, who did not have such support, developed much more dramatically in 1918-1919. This concerned not only her personally: other serious conflicts in the same apartment are known, for example, from the correspondence of the Tsvetaeva family. Subsequently, the participants agreed that the conflicts were the result of painful external circumstances: “I believe the virgins that quarrels came from common causes, at home I literally observe the same thing,” Obolenskaya writes six months later. But the soft, tactful Magda organically cannot stand the scenes, and in March 1919, finding herself without work, she threw everything in the apartment - paints, paintings, books - and went to Ivanovo-Voznesensk, where her acquaintances promised her a place as an artist.
The attempt was unsuccessful. There was nowhere to return to Moscow and nothing. Magda had to leave for a while to the village of Likino to stay with her sister Erna and enter the service in the office of the Likino forestry 28 . By autumn, it turned out that special permits were required to move around the country, and she found herself locked in a village, cut off from communication and deprived of the opportunity to paint. During this period, Julia is her moral support and main connection with the world. “Your so-called “senile talkativeness,” Magda writes to her, is my only invaluable source of information about the outside world. Thanks to you, I know that people walk, live, breathe in this world.
Magda was saved from Likin's imprisonment by the "theatrical fever", which began after the revolution, lasted several years and covered all of Russia, from the capitals to the outback. The management of theaters was transferred to the People's Commissariat of Education, thereby emphasizing the educational role of the theater - it was now called upon to educate a new person with a new ideology. On the other hand, theatrical figures perceived such an attitude of the authorities as the permission of innovation and experiment; in addition, during this hungry time, the theater could feed everyone involved in productions: directors, actors, artists, etc.
In 1919, Magda Nakhman was able to move to another village, Ust-Dolyssy, Vitebsk province, together with Lilya Efron, already in a professional capacity: Lilya became the director of the folk theater created there, and Magda became a theater artist. We hope to soon publish correspondence from this period as well.
A year later, Nachman managed to return to Moscow and settle with Obolenskaya. This put an end to her communal ordeals and, to our chagrin, their systematic correspondence.
In 1921, Nachman met the Indian nationalist M.P.T. in Moscow. Acharia (1887-1954), who came to Soviet Russia with several like-minded Hindus in the hope of supporting the Bolsheviks in the fight against British colonial rule. In 1922 Magda married him. By this time, Acharya realized that he was not going along with the Bolsheviks. In autumn they managed to leave Russia for Berlin. In Berlin, Nachman worked a lot, exhibited, and British intelligence, who followed her husband, reported that Magda was engaged exclusively in art. Her most famous work of this period is a portrait of Vladimir Nabokov (1933), with whose family she was friends. But after Hitler came to power, Nachman and Acharya had to leave Germany. They first moved to Switzerland, where Nachman's sister Adel lived, and then with considerable difficulty obtained British passports and sailed to Bombay.
Magda Nachman died in Bombay in 1951, four hours before the opening of her solo exhibition. A few days after her death, memories of her literally splashed out on the pages of the periodical press. They show that the "great little lady" has taken its rightful place in the artistic world of Bombay 29 . Here is an excerpt from an article by the art critic Rudy von Leyden in one of the central Indian newspapers, the Times of India (13.II.1951. We give the English text in our translation):
The great little lady of the Bombay art world is gone. As an artist, she died "in harness". Anyone who takes one of her paintings away from this exhibition will take away a part of that affable, generous and tragic figure that was Magda Nachman. One of the countless persecuted in Europe, she instinctively understood those who stand on the sidelines while life passes by, and wrote them not with pity, but with a sympathetic recognition of the tragedy and dignity of ordinary, poor people.
The younger generation of Bombay artists found in her a devoted friend and understanding critic.<...>She welcomed and encouraged those who were looking for new horizons. They will remember her cordiality and the courage with which she went through life, far from affectionate towards her.
Little is known about the fate of the third artist. Natalya Petrovna Grekova is a little older than Nachman and Obolenskaya. She is the daughter of General Pyotr Petrovich Grekov from the nobility of the Don Cossack Region, a participant in the Russian-Turkish war. Before the First World War, she lived most of the year in St. Petersburg, and spent the summer at the family estate in the Saratov province, on the farm Mishkina Pristan. Despite the difficulties of the journey - a day on horseback from the nearest railway station - in the summer, acquaintances from St. Petersburg came there, including school friends who came "to study". In the summer of 1914, Sergei Kalmykov visited the Grekovs, who also studied with Petrov-Vodkin at the Zvantseva school and later (unfortunately, posthumously) became widely known 30 .
In 1912, Grekova, in letters to Obolenskaya, describes in detail the two months that Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin spent in their village, in particular, his phased work on the painting Bathing the Red Horse. The memory of this summer is "Portrait of a Cossack Woman", which Petrov-Vodkin painted with Natalia. Subsequently, Grekova recognized only Petrov-Vodkin's influence on herself, while for Nachman and Obolenskaya, Bakst remained a favorite teacher for life.
With the outbreak of war, Grekova's younger brothers, graduates of the officers' school in Novocherkassk, go to the front, mother and daughter-in-law with children need help, and Natalya spends the winter with them on the estate, occasionally going to Petrograd and Moscow. It is hard for her to be isolated from urban cultural life, the existence of “abandoned wives and mothers in the woman’s kingdom”, for whom her creative interests remain sealed. Nachman, who visited her in the summer of 1915 and continued to correspond with Obolenskaya, sympathetically mentions this in almost every letter (apparently, recalling her personal experience of living in the circle of relatives in the village in the summer). But this is not yet the “final cut off from the world” that will be discussed in the letters of Grekova and Nachman during the Civil War.
In 1918, the Grekovs' estate was first confiscated, then their dachas near Petrograd, and for the next two years the family led a nomadic life. An attempt to get to the south (in order to meet with his father and two brothers who joined the White Army) failed, the elder brother - the only man in the family with a not quite military profession - wanders around the country almost at random in search of work, and Natalya, her mother and daughters-in-law with children follow him, sometimes go hungry, sometimes barter for food the remnants of property, and in the summer of 1919 they find themselves on the line of the Southern Front in the midst of hostilities. In the end, as a result of a chain of chance meetings, miraculous finds and deliverances, the whole family came together, and no one died from hunger, typhus and shootings that fell to their lot.
Grekova in these two years is experiencing an unexpected spiritual and creative upsurge: “For the first time in my life I experience such joy from work, but the fullness of life.”
She takes every opportunity to work - in particular, she spent a very productive autumn of 1918 in Pavlovsk near Petrograd, fulfilling orders for the Obolenskaya theater studio and collaborating with K.S. Petrov-Vodkin and Nadezhda Lermontova 31 . In the summer of 1919, finding herself in one of the epicenters of the Civil War (their family lives in a detached carriage near Balashov), she looks at her surroundings with fearlessness and interest and writes to Obolenskaya: “... now that the famine has passed, I want to work, but I don’t know will there be a possibility.<...>It’s strange, I haven’t worked for so long, but it seems that if I just start, I’ll do everything I want. Her letters from this period are extraordinary and are best read rather than recounted. (It is no less surprising that they sometimes reached the addressees!)
The trail of Natalya Grekova is lost in Constantinople; Kandaurov's archive preserved one of her letters from there to Magda Nakhman. In the Internet chronicles of the Grekovs-Rovinskys, it is reported that she emigrated to France with the family of her older brother and was buried in the "cemetery of Russian emigrants" Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois.
The work on the correspondence was initiated by V.A. Schweitzer, the biographer of Marina Tsvetaeva. Among the members of the Koktebel community there were the names of young artists Nachman and Obolenskaya. Although at first these artists were interested in Victoria Alexandrovna only as peripheral figures in Tsvetaeva's life, after reading their letters, she realized that the correspondence was of great research interest, and the authors themselves were worthy of attention. We are grateful to Victoria Alexandrovna for handing over to us the archival materials and notes she collected.
The entire corpus of letters in the archive from 1916 to November 1919 is about forty items; 32 letters are published here. Many of them are undated, pieces have been torn off for censorship reasons or have been lost. Based on cross-references, we managed to establish dating almost everywhere with an accuracy of up to a month (information is given in angle brackets).
Letters are given in chronological order using modern spelling and punctuation. All dates after 1918, unless otherwise noted, are given in the new style.
Archive mail addresses:
RGALI. Yu.L. Obolenskaya Foundation (2080). Op. 1. Unit 45. Letters from M.M.Nakhman to Yu.L.Obolenskaya;
RGALI. F. 2080. Op. 1. Unit 1. Letters from Yu.L. Obolenskaya to M.M. Nakhman;
RGALI. F. 2080. Op.1. Unit 24. Letters from N.P. Grekova to Yu.L. Obolenskaya;
RGALI. F. 2080. Op. 1. Unit 5. Letter from Yu.L. Obolenskaya to N.P. Grekova.
Notes:
1 See: Bernstein L., Neklyudova E.L.S. Bakst and his students: the history of one experiment // Toronto Slavic Quarterly. 2011. No. 37. P. 175–208; Yulia Obolenskaya. At the Zvantseva school under the guidance of L. Bakst and M. Dobuzhinsky / Publ., comment. and after. L. Bernstein, E. Neklyudova // Ibid. pp. 209–242.
2 Elizaveta Nikolaevna Zvantseva (1864-1921, Moscow) - artist, student of Repin, founder of an art school in Moscow (1899), then in St. Petersburg (1906-1917). In 1906–1910 The head of the school was Lev Bakst. Together with him, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky taught at the school (drawing class). In 1910, Bakst was replaced by K.S. Petrov-Vodkin.
3 Lev Samoilovich Bakst (Rosenberg; 1866-1924, Paris) - artist, art theorist, one of the founders of the World of Art association. Subsequently, Bakst became famous as an outstanding stage designer and designer in Diaghilev's productions of the Russian Ballet in Paris.
4 Julia Obolenskaya. At the Zvantseva school under the direction of L. Bakst and M. Dobuzhinsky. pp. 209–242.
5 The fourth in their "quartet" was the artist Varvara Petrovna Klimovich-Toper (?–1914), who died early. Her posthumous exhibition took place in 1914.
6 Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin (1878–1939, Leningrad) - artist, teacher, art theorist; led the Zvantseva school from 1910 after Bakst's departure. Judging by the letters of the artists, the relationship between the teacher and the students was uneven, but his authority and influence on them are indisputable.
8 Here Obolenskaya lists the names of familiar artists who are mentioned in the letters. The cuts made by the publishers in the article hide the names of other acquaintances, reviews of which may seem unfair out of context. When publishing letters in the continuation of the collection, all gaps will be restored.
9 Having started her service in the office of the Likinskoye forestry, M. Nakhman became liable for military service and did not have the right to travel anywhere without the permission of the authorities.
10 Yu.L. Obolenskaya is dedicated to Doc. story by L.K. Alekseeva The color of grapes (Toronto Slavic Quarterly. 2009. No. 29; 2010. No. 32; 2011. No. 35; 2012. No. 41; 2013. No. 43). Book published: M .: AST, 2017.
11 Konstantin Vasilyevich Kandaurov (1865-1930, Moscow) - artist, theater worker, organizer of art exhibitions. Voloshin called him "Moscow Diaghilev".
12 Kandaurov's wife - Anna Vladimirovna (nee Popova; 1877–1962). For more on the relationships within this triangle, see op. op. L. Alekseeva (note 10 above).
13 In 1935, M. Gorky invited Obolenskaya to illustrate a collection of memoirs of participants in the civil war in Central Asia. She reluctantly agreed. In the editorial office, she was met by one of the authors of the collection, Fyodor Ivanovich Kolesov (1891–1940), the organizer of the struggle for Soviet power in Turkestan, the leader of the failed campaign against Bukhara in 1918. His story and his whole appearance made such a strong impression on Obolenskaya that she I thought: “... if he passes by, then you can’t live anymore” (from Obolenskaya’s letter to Zh.G. Bogaevskaya). According to her, she "grew wings" and she seized on Gorky's proposal, starting to work with Kolesov on both illustrations and text. Kolesov had a wife and a daughter. Obolenskaya took a liking to this family and continued to support her daughter even after the death of Kolesov.
14 L. Alekseeva describes in detail the history of the Obolenskaya archive. See: Grape Color // Toronto Slavic Quarterly. 2009. No. 29.
16 Efrons: Elizaveta Yakovlevna (Lilya) (1885–1976, Moscow), Vera Yakovlevna (1888–1945, Urzhumsky district) and Sergei Yakovlevich (1893–1941, shot).
17 The portrait has not survived. In 1937, it was confiscated during the arrest of A.I. Tsvetaeva, in whose room it hung. A photograph of Anastasia Ivanovna has been preserved against the background of the wall of her room hung with paintings: above all - a large portrait of Sergei, lying in a deck chair.
18 Boris Alexandrovich Griftsov (1885–1950, Moscow) - literary historian, art critic, translator. One of the organizers of the Writers' Book Store in Moscow in 1918–1920. B 1914–1916 Griftsov taught art history at Khalyutina's drama courses and rented one of the rooms in the "turnaround" on Malaya Molchanovka, where the Efron sisters lived at that time. A few years earlier he had separated from his first wife; his story "Useless Memories" (1915) was written in the wake of a divorce. Nachman mentions Griftsov for the first time in a letter in 1916, even before he moved, but closer communication began in Moscow when they were in the same company.
19 Mikhail Solomonovich Feldshtein (1884–1938, shot) - lawyer, jurist, publicist, son of the writer R.M. Khin-Goldovskaya. Since 1918 - the civil husband of Vera Efron. The first arrest was in 1920. In 1922 he was arrested a second time and sentenced to deportation abroad on a “philosophical ship”, but he obtained permission to stay in Moscow so as not to part with his wife (in 1921 their son Konstantin was born). Eva (Eva) Adolfovna Feldshtein (1886–1964) - artist, M.S. Feldshtein's first wife.
20 This letter from Obolenskaya is cited in note. to Voloshin's letter: Voloshin M. Sobr. op. T. 12. Letters 1918-1924. M.: Ellis Luck, 2013. P. 131. Letter 41, Yu.L. Obolenskaya, June 2/15, 1918. The date of Obolenskaya's letter is also mentioned there.
21 Remarkable is the reaction to the story of Obolenskaya Voloshin, who by that time had already witnessed the terror in the Crimea of 1917–1918: from events<...>Here, where one had to deal casually with murderers, robbers, and rapists, and among them to meet courageous and noble characters, this could not have occurred directly to one's head. On the contrary, it was necessary - it was necessary to be with the Bolsheviks all the time (and not only to decorate the city), but in order to soften and weaken the sharpness of political intolerances. If there weren’t a number of people, both on the right and on the left, who did this, Feodosia could not escape a bloodbath of several hundred people, as in other cities ”(Ibid.).
22 “He said to them, It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed in his own power” (Acts 1:7).
23 Merzlyakovsky lane, 16/29. Responsible tenant of an apartment in 1918–1920. (perhaps longer) was Vasilisa Aleksandrovna (Asya) Zhukovskaya (1892–1959), a good friend of Efronov and Marina Tsvetaeva. Magda Nakhman settled there after returning from Bakhchisaray in September 1917. In addition to her and Vera Efron, Zhukovskaya's mother and several other mutual acquaintances lived there. Between themselves, Nachman and Obolenskaya called this company "virgins" or "bachelorette party."
24 Obolenskaya with her mother, Ekaterina Ivanovna, and her mother's civil husband, Fyodor Konstantinovich Radetsky, rented a large apartment at 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya, 26/8. They were joined by the family of Sergei, Radetsky's brother. From time to time Yulia's brother Leonid and his children lived here. A few more friends occupied other rooms. And Kandaurov came there almost every day. Nakhman will settle on Tverskaya-Yamskaya in 1920 and two years later he will leave to emigrate from there.
25 Mikhail Mikhailovich Isaev (1880–1950) - lawyer, specialist in criminal law, until 1918 - assistant professor at St. Petersburg University. At the end of 1918, his family with three children moved to Mstera in the Vladimir province, and he himself lived in Moscow for a long time, renting one of the rooms in Obolenskaya's apartment, and participated in many undertakings at the same time. Obviously, Magda and M.M. there was a comic flirting, which was reflected in the letters, especially at the end of 1919 and the beginning of 1920. Subsequently, he became a judge of the Supreme Court of the USSR.
26 There was a house on Patriarch's Ponds where the families of the Kotovich sisters lived: the artist Raisa Kotovich-Borisyak, who also studied at the Zvantseva school, her husband, cellist Andrey Borisyak, her sister Vera with her husband Leonid Isaev, and their children. In addition, the ex-wife of S.Yu. Kopelman V.E. Beklemesheva and their son lived here. "Patriarch" often supplied Obolenskaya and Nakhman with work. For example, Leonid Isaev, an epidemiologist, ordered posters for medical institutions from artists, and in 1921 Obolenskaya and Kandaurov went with him on a research expedition to Central Asia as poster artists. Mikhail Isaev, who settled with the Obolenskys, was the brother of Leonid Isaev.
28 Likino (Tyurmerovka) - a village on the territory of a large forestry at the estate of Muromtsevo in the Vladimir province. Likino and its inhabitants are often mentioned in letters. Magda's son-in-law Alexei Knorre, the husband of her sister Erna (1880–1945), worked there for many years. There was also the central office of the forestry. Alexei's grandfather, K.F. Tyurmer, was the creator of this forestry, and hence the second name of the village came from. Before the revolution, a private railway line from the Volosataya station approached Likino, laid at the expense of the owner of the estate; in 1919 the railway communication stopped.
29 "The great little lady of the Bombay art world" was how Nachman was called in the newspapers even before her death.
30 Sergei Ivanovich Kalmykov (1891-1967, Alma-Ata) - artist, studied at the Zvantseva school. Around 1918 he left for Orenburg, and then moved to Alma-Ata; worked as a stage designer, was known for his eccentric behavior, painted a lot from life on the streets and died in poverty. He is mentioned in several books, in particular, there is a chapter about him in Yuri Dombrovsky's wonderful novel The Keeper of Antiquities. In 2002, the first international edition of his work was published. Recently, Kalmykov's "book" Unusual paragraphs, compiled from his manuscripts, was published in Orenburg.
31 Nadezhda Vladimirovna Lermontova (1885-1921, Petrograd) - artist, stage designer, illustrator, participant in numerous exhibitions. By all accounts, the most talented student of Bakst in the Zvantseva school. In recent years, despite a serious illness, she worked a lot. In her first post-revolutionary letter to Obolenskaya, she wrote: “I succumbed to illness and have not worked since September, and now it is difficult to start, and not only because of her, but also from the general deplorable and chaotic state of the country. Therefore, I advise you not to leave your brushes and pencil for a minute, otherwise the sea of our present shapeless, shapeless, stateless - immoral and meaningless Russian life will overwhelm ”(RGALI. F. 2080. Op. 1. Unit xp 40, L. 42–43, November 20, 1917). Died of tuberculosis.
To return the forgotten names of the artists of the first half of the 20th century is the goal of the project conceived at the Grabar Art Research and Restoration Center. The first event within its framework is an exhibition of graphics by Yulia Obolenskaya. The Tretyakov Gallery and the Literary Museum also participated in its organization.
Sheets of graphics in the exhibition space were accidental. They were supposed to serve not as an object of art, but as an experimental base for restorers. The legacy of the artist Yulia Obolenskaya came to the Grabar Center in 1959 from the State Literary Museum as "escheated property". It was assumed that restorers would test new techniques on this old paper. But the masters were so impressed by the artistic level of the works that they decided to keep them in the fund. Almost 60 years later, it was completely restored.
“Each of the sheets had damage typical of old papers: yellowing, wrinkling, dustiness. Many of them were incorrectly mounted on silicate glue. It was neutralized, replenished,” notes Olga Temerina, an artist-restorer of the restoration workshop of graphics, rare books and documents on paper at the All-Russian Art Research and Restoration Center named after Grabar.
Julia Obolenskaya is the daughter of the well-known writer and journalist in St. Petersburg Leonid Obolensky. In 1907 she became a student of the Zvantseva art school. She studied with Bakst, Dobuzhinsky, Petrov-Vodkin. She considered the latter to be her main mentor. In some of her works, she even tried to imitate him.
Most of the exhibition is occupied by portraits of Konstantin Kandaurov. With the "Moscow Diaghilev", as he was called, Obolenskaya met in Koktebel in 1913. Then together they visited Central Asia. The exhibition presents sketches of this journey.
“The central work came to us under the title Sitting Soldiers. But when we conducted an art history analysis, we realized that this was a sketch for the painting by Yulia Obolenskaya, which is stored in the Yaroslavl Art Museum - "Blind". In her diaries, she wrote that in 1924 she painted blind men in Central Asia, ”comments Evgenia Savinkina, researcher at the restoration workshop of graphics, rare books and documents on paper at the Grabar All-Russian Art Research and Restoration Center.
Obolenskaya worked in different techniques and genres - painting, graphics, book illustration. She made theatrical scenery, wrote poetry. Her life was full of inspiration and creativity when Kandaurov was next to her. After his death, she no longer wrote for the soul. The Grabar Center will return all the restored canvases of the artist to the collections of the State Literary Museum.
M., 1912
Catalog of the exhibition of paintings "World of Art". 1st ed. St. Petersburg, 1913
Catalog of the exhibition of paintings "World of Art". M., 1913
Yu.L. Obolenskaya. (St. Petersburg. Basseinaya 25, apt. 11). No. 234. Landscape. No. 235. Landscape with houses. No. 236. Cucumbers // Catalog of the IV Art Exhibition of paintings. Northern Circle of Fine Arts Lovers. Vologda, N[asledniko] Printing House in A.V. Belyakova, 1913, p.13
Dobychina N.E. (organizer of the exhibition), Shukhaeva E.N. (secretary), Shukhaev V.I. (thin. covers). Exhibition of paintings in favor of the Infirmary of artists. Catalog. Pg., Art Bureau N.E. Dobychina, 1914
Yu.L. Obolenskaya. Nos. 111–126 // Painting Exhibition: 1915: [Catalogue]. - M .: Art Salon (B. Dmitrovka, 11); Type of. etc. I.S. Kolomiets and Co. (Moscow. Tel. 2-14-81), , p.12. – 237 №№. – Region ., titus .
Yu.L. Obolenskaya. Nos. 352–356// Catalog of the exhibition of paintings "World of Art": / Commissioner for Moscow K.V. Kandaurov (tel. 4-48-83); Tel. Exhibitions 2-61-65 (Bolshoy Dmitrovka, 11). - M., 1915, S.18b. – Region ., titus . – .
Yu.L. Obolenskaya. Nos. 180–181 // Catalog of the Exhibition of Paintings. - Pg. ; Artistic-Graphical Atelier and Printing M. Pivovarsky and Ts. Typographer (Petrograd, Mokhovaya, 8. Tel. 88-75), 1916, p.14. – Ed.2; 280 No.; Above: World of Art; Tel. Exhibitions 213-42 (Field of Mars, 7); Allowed by military censorship 26 Feb. 1916 - Region ., titus .
Yulia Obolenskaya. Nos. 247–257// Catalog Exhibition of paintings / World of Art. - Pg. ; Ts. Typographer (Liteiny pr., d. No. 58), 1917, p. 19–20 . – Ed.2. - Region ., titus .
Yulia Obolenskaya. №№ 343–345 // Catalog of the exhibition of paintings "The World of Art". - M.; Type of. Journal. Avtomobilist (Moscow. Tel. 2-11-26), 1917, p.19. – 24 s. - Region ., titus .
V. Ivanov. According to exhibitions ["World of Art"] // L.G. Munstein (Lolo) (ed.). Ramp and Life. No. 1. M.; Ed.: Moscow, Bogoslovsky per. (corner Bol. Dmitrovka), d.1. Tel. 2-58-25; Type of. and zinc gr. M.I. Smirnov under firms. Moscow Leaf. Vozdvizhenka, Vagankovsky lane, 5; 25 k., January 1, 1917, p. 8 – 9 (incl. ill. c.7) (Region ., illustration: Yu. Obolenskaya. In the workshop (p. 7). K. Kandaurov. At the booth (p. 8). B. Kustodiev. Girl on the Volga (p. 8). N. Yasinsky. Sculpture (p.9))
E.S. Kruglikov. Aleksandrinskaya sq. 9. Tel. 3 - 57. Silhouettes. No. 155. Y. Obolenskaya // Catalog of the exhibition of paintings "World of Art". 2nd ed. Pg., 1917, p.13
War of kings. From the series "Petrushka". Puppet theater Obolenskaya [–] Kandaurova. [M.-Pg.], Theatrical Department of the People's Commissariat of Education, 6 rubles, 1918 (Text by Yu.L. Obolenskaya, drawings by Artists Yu.L. Obolenskaya and K.V. Kandaurov, facsimile of drawings and text in Spanish. Art by W. Nessler, printed literature by R. Bachman, Moscow) ( Region ., back , ill ., ill ., ill ., ill ., ill ., ill .)
Obolenskaya, Yu. and Kandaurov, K. No. 128. "Snow Maiden". Oil // Catalog of the 4th State Exhibition of Paintings. 1918 - 1919 Prechistinka, 19. Tel. 1-66-13. M., V.Ts.V.B. [All-Russian Central Exhibition Bureau] Department of Fine Arts Nar. com. on education, Typography of T-va Kushnereva, 1919, p.10
Obolenskaya, Yu.L. No. 121. War of kings. Aqua. No. 122. Mushroom war. Pace. No. 123. The Scarlet Flower. Pace. Nos. 124 - 127. Golden Cockerel. Pace. // Catalog of the IV-th State exhibition of paintings. 1918 - 1919 Prechistinka, 19. Tel. 1-66-13. M., V.Ts.V.B. [All-Russian Central Exhibition Bureau] Department of Fine Arts Nar. com. on education, Typography of T-va Kushnereva, 1919, p.10
Yulia Obolenskaya. (Moscow, 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya, 26). Nos. 199 - 220. [incl. No. 199. Portrait (Samarkand). No. 200. Water carriers (Bukhara). No. 202. Turkmen market. No. 206. In the Kyrgyz steppe. No. 207. Teahouse (Samarkand). Drawings: No. 208. Bazaar in Merv. Nos. 209, 210. Tashkent. Nos. 211, 212. Bukhara. Nos. 214, 215. Samarkand. No. 218. Sart] // Moscow Society of Artists "Fire-Tsvet". Catalog of the exhibition of paintings. M., 1924, p.10 - 11
Obolenskaya Julia. (1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya, 26). №№ 250 - 256 // Moscow Society of Artists "Fire-Tsvet". Catalog of the exhibition of paintings in 1925 [Moscow], Type. TsUP VSNKh, p.11
Obolenskaya Julia. (1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya 26). No. 72. Pushkin. No. 73. Gogol. (Linoleum). No. 74. Dostoevsky. No. 75. Nekrasov. No. 76. Block. No. 77. Mashkop. (Bukhara). // Moscow Society of Artists "Zhar-Tsvet". Catalog of the exhibition of paintings in 1926. II edition of the Central House of Scientists "TSEKUBU". [Moscow], 3rd Printing House of the State Publishing House of the SSR of Armenia, p.5
Yu.L. Obolenskaya. Monument to Pushkin in Moscow // Krasnaya Niva. Issue 6. M., February 7, 1926; The price in Moscow, the provinces and at the station. railway - 20 k.; region
A. Polkanov. Catalog of the exhibition of contemporary art (painting and graphics). Simferopol, Edition of the Central Museum of Taurida, 1927
Obolenskaya Yulia Leonidovna No. 136– 139 // Russian drawing for ten years of the October Revolution: Catalog of acquisitions of the Gallery: 1917–1927 / inst. Art.: A.V. Bakushinsky. – M.: State Tretyakov Gallery; 1st Model type. Gosizdat, 1928, p. 55– 56. – Region . , titus . - 1,000 copies, 1 rub. 25 kop.
Obolenskaya, Yu.M. No. 151. Children (Orphanage named after Dzerzhinsky) // Exhibition of works of art for the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution: January 1928: [Catalog; 230 No.]. - M .: Exhibition Committee; type of. under the Administration of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and STO (Moscow, Malaya Dmitrovka, 18), 1928, p.13. - 2,000 copies.– Region . , titus .
Obolenskaya Julia. (1st Tversk-Yamskaya, 26). №№ 206 – 214 // Prof. A.A. Sidorov (inst. Art.). Exhibition of paintings by the Society of Artists "Zhar-Tsvet". [Catalog]. M., Edition of the Island of Artists "Fire-Color", 1928, p.38
The fourth exhibition of paintings by contemporary Russian artists. Feodosia, Aivazovsky State Gallery and Archaeological Museum, 1928
Christian Brinton (foreword), P. Novitsky (introduction). Exhibition of contemporary art of Soviet Russia: painting, graphic, sculpture. Grand Central Palace, New York, February, 1929. , Amtorg Trading Corporation, 1929
Grafiek en Boekkunst uit de Sovjet-Unie. Tentoonstelling Stedelijk Museum. Amsterdam, 21.4 – 13.5.29. – : Genootschap Nederland Nieuwrusland, . -Boekomslag; Ill.: A. Dejneka. Uit' Eerste Mei", kinderboek; demonstration; – Ssolowejtschik. Uit het albumRevolutiejaren»; – J. Pimenoff. Teekening; – W. Lebedew. Uit' Ijswafels”, kinderboek.
V. Martovsky. Among the swamps and lakes of the Nizhny Novgorod region. [Story]. Rice. and cover by Y. Obolenskaya. M., worker of education; type of. "Beep". Moscow, st. Stankevich, 7; Reading room of the Soviet school. 3rd year ed. No. 36 - 37; 10,000 copies, 25 kopecks, 1929 ( Region ., back , titus ., ill .)
Obolenskaya Yu. (1st Tverskaya Yamskaya, 26). No. 110. Drawings // Exhibition of paintings by the Society of Artists "Fire-Tsvet". Exhibition catalog 1929 [g.]. M., Edition of the Island of Artists "Fire-Color", 1929, p.9
Obolenskaya Yu.L. Moscow, 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya, 26, apt. 8. No. 90. Bukhara weavers. No. 91. At the loom. No. 92. / Society of Artists "Zhar-Tsvet" // Ign. Khvoynik (inst. Art.), I.M. Zykov (comp.). The first traveling exhibition of painting and graphics. [Catalog. M.], Narkompros - Glaviskusstvo, Edition of the Glaviskusstvo; Printing house of RIO VTsSPS. Moscow, Krutitsky Val, 18; 3,000 copies, 15 kopecks, 1929 (... during the existence of the People's Commissariat of Education, only once, in 1925, a traveling exhibition was undertaken, which visited a number of cities in the Volga region ... over 30,000 people visited the exhibition in 3 months ... Arrangement of the first traveling exhibition Glaviskusstvo The People's Commissariat of Education lays the foundation for practical work to serve the provincial audience ... begins to pay off the cultural debt of the center in relation to places ... p.4, 3), p.18
Obolenskaya Yu.L. No. 51. Children, m. Drawings: No. 97. Bonfire of pioneers. Nos. 98, 99. In the courtyard of the orphanage. No. 100. Turkmen woman with children. No. 101. Kyrgyz woman with children // Ign. Ephedra (inst. Art.), K. Kozlova (designed), Yu. Pimenov (drawings). Children in art. Catalog of the exhibition of painting, drawing, film-photo, polygraphy and sculpture on the theme: Life and life of the children of the Soviet Union. Glaviskusstvo N.K.P. - Gathering of pioneers. M., [Main Art of the People's Commissariat of Education]; Mospoligraf - 10th printing house "Dawn of Communism", [Moscow], Chistye Prudy, 8; 5,000 copies, 1929, p.11, 14
The fifth exhibition of paintings and drawings by contemporary Russian artists. Feodosia, Aivazovsky State Gallery and Archaeological Museum, 1929
Y. Obolenskaya. At the silk-winding factory in Bukhara (Fig., p.3); Y. Sytin. Scorpions. Story. Rice. Y. Obolenskaya (p. 4 - 6, ill ., ill ., ill ., ill , ill .) // Krasnaya Niva. Issue 16. M., News of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, 15 copies, April 14, 1929 (Region: I. Mazel. Evening in the village (From the ethnographic series "Turkmenistan"), 1929)
Obolenskaya Yu.L. No. 159. Grape pickers in the Trud commune. Aqua. No. 160. Grape bearer. Ink. No. 161. Grape harvest at the farm. Ink. No. 162. Load of grapes. Ink / Graphics, drawing, watercolor. Agricultural construction // Second traveling exhibition: Paintings and drawings: Modern social topics: Intro. article Ign. Ephedra: [Catalog: 175 No.]. - M .: Glaviskusstvo; school FZU them. Ilyich "Mospoligraph", 1930, p.29. - In the title: Narkompros. Glaviskusstvo; 3,000 copies, 15 kop.– Region ., titus .
Obolenskaya, Yu.L. (1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya, 26, apt. 8. Tel. 3-71-21). No. 76. In the courtyard of the orphanage named after F.E. Dzerzhinsky in Feodosia. 1929 // Catalog of the exhibition "Socialist construction in Soviet art":: From 14 December. 1930 to 14 Jan. 1931: Moscow; Kuznetsky Most, 11 / vst. Art.: Yu. Slavinsky. - M .: VKT "Artist"; Type of. gas. "Pravda" (Moscow, Tverskaya, 48), , p. 36– 37. - In the overhead: All-Russian Cooperative Partnership "Artist"; 1,000 copies - Region .: P.Ya. Peacocks; titus .
O. Gul [pseudo, R. Bogrova (Rozovskaya)]. The stones are singing. Persian novels. Hood. Y. Obolenskaya. M., Soviet writer; Type-lithography them. Vorovsky. [Moscow], st. Dzerzhinsky, 18; 7,250 copies, 2 r. 50 k., per. 50 k., 1934 ( Region ., titus ., frontispiece )
Obolenskaya, Yulia Leonidovna, b. 1899 - Moscow. No. 603. Camel (1926, State Tretyakov Gallery). No. 604. Drawings from the Harvesting Campaign series (1932) / Exhibition catalogue. Graphics // Bubnov A.S. (Chairman of the Government Commission of the exhibition, inst. Art.). (Jury members: L.A. Bruni, E.A. Katsman, V.V. Lebedev, D.I. Mitrokhin, I.I. Nivinsky, A.D. Chegodaev, A.M. Efros and others). Artists of the RSFSR for the XV years (1917 - 1933). Painting. Sculpture. Poster. Caricature. Frost Ivanovich. Drawings by Yu. Obolenskaya. [Story]. M.-L., Detgiz of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR; Children's book factory of the Detgiz People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR. Moscow, Suschevsky Val, 49; 50,000 copies, 1 ruble, 1944 ( Region ., titus ., ill ., ill .)
L. Tolstoy. Stories [for children]. Drawings by Yu. Obolenskaya. M.-L., Detgiz; Children's book factory of the Detgiz People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR. Moscow, Suschevsky Val, 49; 30,000 copies, 2nd edition, 1944 (School library for non-Russian schools) ( Region ., titus ., ill ., ill ., ill ., ill ., ill ., ill ., ill .,
Galushkina A.S., Smirnov I.A. (scientific ed.), etc. Exhibitions of Soviet fine arts. 1941 - 1947 Directory. T.3. M., Soviet artist, 1973
Obolenskaya Yu.L. Memories of M. Voloshin. M., 1990
Severyukhin D.Ya., Leykind O.L. The golden age of art associations in Russia and the USSR. Directory. St. Petersburg, Chernyshev Publishing House, 1992
Matthew Cullerne Bown. A Dictionary of Twentieth Century Russian And Soviet Painters. 1900 - 1980s. London, Izomar Limited, 1998
Kiryanov G.N. (inst. Art.). Obolenskaya Yulia Leonidovna Materials for the biography of K.V. Kandaurova. Drafts. Fragments from memoirs // Vorobyova N.N. (responsible ed.). A.N. Tolstoy. New materials and research (early A.N. Tolstoy and his literary environment). Collection. M., Institute of World Literature. A.M. Gorky RAS, 2002, pp. 201 - 210
Obolenskaya Julia // Semenikhin V., Verlinskaya N. (ed.). Fomin D., Piggot E. (articles). Children's illustrated book in the history of Russia. 1881 - 1939. In 2 volumes. M., Uley, 2009, V.1, p.254 - 255
A.V. Krusanov. Russian avant-garde. 1907 - 1932. (Historical review in 3 volumes). V.1 (in 2 books). Fighting decade. 1907 - 1916/1917. M., New Literary Review, 2010,
Yu.L. Obolenskaya. Painter, graphic artist, memoirist, poetess. Daughter of L.E. Obolensky (pseudonym - M. Krasov), writer, philosopher, editor and publisher of the journal "Russian Wealth" // V. Lenyashin (scientific editor of the volume). Painting. First half of the twentieth century. Russian Museum. Catalog. T.12. N - R. SPb., Palace Editions, Russian Museum, Almanac (Issue 404), 5,000 copies, 2013, p.31 ( Region ., titus .)