Boris Vasilyevich Sworykin
Boris Vasilievich Zvorykin ( Russian Борис Васильевич Зворыкин ; born September 19 . Jul / 1. October 1872 greg. In Moscow , † 1942 in Paris ) was a Russian painter and illustrator .
Live and act
Boris Sworykin is considered to be the most important representative of old Russian ornamental illustration, unaffected by Western traditions. He orientated himself strongly on the Russian icon painting . Many of his works are in the possession of the Metropolitan Museum in New York .
His family belonged to the Moscow upper middle class. His father Vasily was a merchant of the first guild . He belonged to the Orthodox Church, his mother Otovna Elisabeth to the Lutheran Church.
After graduating from high school, Boris attended the prestigious Moscow Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture . At first he worked for Petersburg magazines, illustrated gift books for anniversaries, calendars, and painted Christmas postcards. Created posters on the Patriotic War .
On behalf of the Tsar's court, he upgraded important diplomatic treaties to calligraphic works of art. The court also ordered decorated menus for sumptuous gala diners.
Later, Sworykin decorated the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Simferopol in the Crimea with murals and also designed the patriarch's robe.
For the Russian semi-state shipping company ROPiT he designed illustrations for advertising material (e.g. in 1914 for a booklet with ship descriptions and timetables).
He achieved his first great public success in 1903 with the illustration of the fairy tale of the gold cock . Especially around 1916 he illustrated a number of Russian folk tales from the pre-revolutionary period.
Together with architects, church leaders, art historians, writers and other artists, Sworykin founded an association in 1915 that wanted to endeavor to preserve Old Russian traditions. By 1917 it had almost 300 members, including Ivan Bilibin , Wiktor Wasnezow , Konstantin Makowski , Michail Nesterow and Nicholas Roerich . As a result of the October Revolution , the group disbanded.
Sworykin also moved in the circles around the ballet impressario Sergei Diaghilew , who founded the famous Russian ballet in 1919 .
In 1919 he worked for the Moscow Red Army magazine . His best-known work from this period, The Battle of the Red Knights with the Dark Force , has been shown in many exhibitions on the history of Soviet political poster art.
After the revolution and the ensuing civil war , Sworykin went to Paris in 1921 , with stops in Crimea , Constantinople and Egypt .
Paris
In Paris he translated the old Russian fairy tales into French and illustrated them. Jacqueline Onassis discovered his pictures and took over the editing of the book In Search of the Firebird and other fairy tales and wrote the preface to them. Sworykin painted icons for a church, and in 1935 he held an icon exhibition.
For the German porcelain factory Heinrich in Selb (today Villeroy & Boch ) Boris Sworykin designed twelve wall plates and porcelain boxes with fairy tale pictures in bright colors using gouache technique . The work was produced very elaborately. For this purpose, the motifs were broken down into 28 individual colors. Only one shade of color could be applied per day to achieve exact separation, and each color had to dry for a day before the next color could be applied.
Boris Sworykin died in 1942 in Paris, which was now occupied by German Wehrmacht soldiers.
Works
- Jacqueline Onassis: The Firebird and other Russian Fairy Tales . Illustrations. Viking Press, New York 1978, ISBN 0670315443
- Alexander Pushkin: Boris Godunov . Foreword: Peter Ustinov. Illustrations. Viking Press, New York 1982, ISBN 0-670-18198-6
- William Kuhn: Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books . Anchor Books, New York 2011, ISBN 0307744655 , pages 40, 45.
- Pavel Suchotin: The bitter onion . Drawn by Boris by Zvorykin. Heyne-Verlag, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-453-82048-7 .
- A. Pushkin: Fairy tales . Illustrated by Boris Zvorykin. Anchor ebooks 2013
Web links
- Борис Васильевич Зворыкин (Russian)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Sworykin, Boris Wassiljewitsch |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Zvorykin, Boris Vassilievich; Зворыкин, Борис Васильевич (Russian) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Russian painter and illustrator |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 1, 1872 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Moscow |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1942 |
| Place of death | Paris |