André Grabar

André Grabar ( Andrei Nikolajewitsch Grabar , Russian Андрей Николаевич Грабар ; born July 26, 1896 in Kiev ; † October 3, 1990 in Paris ) was a French art historian and Byzantinist of Ukrainian origin .

Grabar went to school in Kiev and studied there from 1915 at the Vladimir University and then at the University of Petrograd with Nikodim Pavlovich Kondakov and his students Dmitri Wlassewitsch Ainalov (DV Ainalov) and Jakow Ivanovich Smirnov (1869-1918). In 1919 he completed his studies, which were interrupted by the October Revolution , in Odessa and went to Bulgaria in 1920 . There he cataloged the medieval monuments in Bulgaria for the director of the Archaeological Museum in Sofia Bogdan Filow , for which he was on the road for three years. He then went to Strasbourg in 1922 as a Russian teacher , where he met the archaeologist Paul Perdrizet (1870-1938), received his doctorate in 1928 and taught art history at the university as Maitre de Conferences. In 1937 he succeeded Gabriel Millet on the chair of Christian archeology at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris, where he taught until 1966 (later on the chair of Byzantine art and archeology). He was also professor of Byzantine art and archeology at the Collège de France from 1946 to 1966 . He also regularly attended the conferences of the Dumbarton Oaks Institute at Harvard University , where he was professor from 1950 to 1964.

In his studies of medieval art, he also included philosophy, history and theology and pursued connections to the Islamic world. He wrote widely available books on Byzantine art and icons.

He was the founder of the Cahiers Archéologiques , which he edited with Jean Hubert.

Grabar received numerous honors, for example he became a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1955, a member of the British Academy in 1957, a member of the Order Pour le Mérite in 1963, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1968 and a foreign member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 1969 Sciences .

In 1923 he married the Bulgarian medical student Julie Ivanova († 1977), with whom he had two sons. He is the brother of Pierre Grabar . His son Oleg Grabar (1929–2011) was also an art historian specializing in medieval Islamic art.

Fonts (selection)

He wrote his books mainly in French, but the following are mostly English or German translations.

La peinture religieuse en Bulgarie , Paris 1928
Byzantine painting. Historical and Critical Study , Geneva, Skira 1953
with Carl Nordenfalk: Early medieval painting from the fourth to the eleventh century: Mosaics and Mural Painting , New York, Skira 1957
with Carl Nordenfalk: Romanesque painting from the eleventh to the thirteenth century , New York, Skira 1958
Christian Iconography. A study of its Origins , Princeton University Press 1968 (from the AW Mellon Lectures, National Gallery of Arts, Washington DC, 1961)
Medieval Art of Eastern Europe , Baden-Baden, Holle 1968
with Manoles Chatzedakes Byzantine and Early Medieval Painting , Viking Press 1965
Byzantium: from the death of Theodosius to the Rise of Islam , Thames and Hudson 1966 (also as The Golden Age of Justinian , New York 1967)
The Beginnings of Christian Art 200-395 , Thames and Hudson 1967 (Arts of Mankind, Volume 9)

Individual evidence

^ Author of The hellenistic origins of byzantine art , Rutgers University Press 1961 (first published in Saint Petersburg in 1900/1901).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Grabar, André
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Грабар, Андрей Николаевич (Russian); Grabar, Andrei Nikolajewitsch
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	French art historian and Byzantinist
DATE OF BIRTH	July 26, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH	Kiev
DATE OF DEATH	3rd October 1990
Place of death	Paris

[1] Author of The hellenistic origins of byzantine art , Rutgers University Press 1961 (first published in Saint Petersburg in 1900/1901).