Eugene Zotow

Eugen Zotow (born Russian Иван Григорьевич Мясоедов / Ivan Grigorievich Mjassojedow ; September 30 * ^{. Jul} / 12. October  1881 ^greg. In Kharkiv / Russian Empire , † 27 July 1953 in Buenos Aires ) was a Russian painter, draftsman, printmaker , Photographer and philosopher. During the years of exile in Liechtenstein from 1938 to 1953 he was called Eugen Zotow. He had taken the surname Zotow from his godfather Sachar Konstantinowitsch Zotow, the first name Eugen probably chosen after the meaning "well-born".

Eugen Zotow (1930)

Life

Myassojedow received his first artistic training in Poltava at the private painting school of his father, the painter Grigori Grigorjewitsch Mjassojedow . From 1896–1901 Iwan Mjassojedow studied in Moscow at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, from 1907 to 1912 he attended the painting class at the Art Academy in St. Petersburg. Three scholarships enabled him to travel to Rome, Munich, Paris and London.

The short marriage to Ljudmilla Friedmann in 1912 gave birth to their son Gregori. The lifelong relationship with the artist and dancer Malvina Vernici began around 1912. In 1915 daughter Isabella was born. The family lived on their father's estate in Pawlenki, a suburb of Poltava (Ukraine), where Ivan Mjassojedow had a house built with a studio and sports arena after his father's death (1834–1911). The Russian Revolution and the Civil War put an end to this phase of life. Around 1919 the family fled to the Crimea, then via Sevastopol and Trieste to Germany. After brief stays in Munich and Augsburg, Iwan Miassojedow arrived in Berlin with his wife and daughter in 1921 and spent a total of 13 years there. Three court cases in which he was accused of counterfeiting money in 1924 and 1932 in Berlin and 1948 in Vaduz and sentenced to prison terms minimized his artistic productivity, but did not bring it to a standstill.

Iwan Mjassojedow and Malvina Vernici left Germany in 1936 and came to Liechtenstein with a Czech passport as Eugen Zotow and Malvina Zotowa in 1938 after stays in Riga and Brussels. Here he was considered one of the first freelance artists to be an outsider. In March 1953 he and his partner left for Argentina, now again under the name Mjassojedow. Just a few months after his arrival in his new home, Ivan Myassojedow died on July 27, 1953 in Buenos Aires. His widow returned to Europe and spent the last years of her life in Liechtenstein until her death in 1972.

Artistic

Early creative period up to emigration in 1919

Presumably, no works from the creative period before 1900 have survived, because Ivan Myassojedow is said to have burned all of the artistic work he had created up to that point in 1900. The few testimonies to Myassoyedov's early work from the period between 1901 and 1919 are mainly in the Ukraine, in the art museums in Poltava, Berdyansk, Dnepropetrovsk and Odessa, as well as in St. Petersburg in the State Russian Museum and in the Scientific Museum of the Russian Academy of Arts . Miassojedow had to leave most of his artistic work behind in 1919 when he fled to Poltava. Before the Second World War, there were 67 works by Miassojedow in the Poltava Art Museum. These were lost in the course of the chaos of war and a fire in the exhibition building in 1943, except for around 20 paintings and a few graphics.

Miassojedow was shaped by a zeitgeist that was dominated by the principles of a revival of antiquity at the end of the 19th century. Nudes were taken on his father's estate near Poltava, showing Miassojedow and other models in poses and costumes of ancient gods and heroes. Active as a heavy athlete and wrestler, Mjassojedow was a supporter of the life-reforming nudist culture, as his “Manifesto on Nudity” from 1911 attests to. Miassojedow implemented the mythological theme of the "Argonauts' voyage" several times. B. in his now lost large-format thesis at the Imperial Art Academy in St. Petersburg. Other monumental paintings such as the “Camp of the Amazons” and the “Centauromachy” are also considered lost.

Sensitive portraits of his family, friends and acquaintances were created in Poltava. Portraits of his partner Malvina are based on neoclassical models from the painters Franz von Stuck , Anselm Feuerbach and Arnold Böcklin . Naturalistic views of the manor in Pawlenki, paintings and drawings of his Ukrainian homeland with wide field landscapes and small farmhouses testify to his special talents in the field of landscape painting, which should come back to life in Liechtenstein. Ivan Mjassojedow also worked as Malvinas set designer and choreographer as well as designer of her dance costumes. He painted the dome of the Poltava synagogue and worked as an illustrator for the sports magazine "Hercules", which appeared from 1912 to 1916. His anti-German war drawings appeared in the magazines “Nedelja” and “Werschniy”.

Miassojedow, in the tradition of “St. Petersburg Historicism ”, followed with his early works the neo-academic art direction and purely formally also the tendencies of Russian symbolism . In other works, decorative tendencies of Russian Art Nouveau and elements of naturalism can also be recognized.

Middle and late creative period in exile 1919 to 1953

In exile, Ivan Mjassojedow painted pictures that nostalgically evoked Russia at the turn of the century before the Russian Revolution and recalled ancient ways of life for him. Scenes from Cossack life and images with Ukrainian folk customs were metaphors for freedom, a return to better times. His little-known drawings with allegorical demon and horror scenarios, sheets of a group of around 150 works that recall his experiences during the Russian Revolution and his farewell to Poltava convey a different world. Miassojedov's small-format oil paintings, in which he captures the gaze from his cell in Luckau prison , are also among the lesser-known testimonies to his artistic oeuvre.

In Berlin Miassojedow designed dance costumes, backdrops, posters and choreographies for Malvina Vernici's planned dance performances, which could only be realized to a limited extent. Preliminary drawings, templates and finished fabrics are preserved in his estate and in private ownership. He earned his living with portraits and poster designs for films. He himself appeared as an actor in the role of a boyar in the Ufa film "Gadgets of an Empress". In his views from the Berlin zoo, he draws on Art Nouveau and the symbolist-decorative tendencies of “ Mir Iskusstwa ” (world of art). His animal studies found their way into the advertisement for the film "Trader Horn" by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He made commissioned portraits for the Berlin middle and upper classes, of which only a few are known today or are only documented using photographs. In their mood and clear, sober description, these portraits of the Berlin era are close to the New Objectivity and the realism of the twenties.

Zotow created further portraits in Liechtenstein for the few wealthy local citizens, the immigrants from Germany and for the Princely House of Liechtenstein . His technically brilliant still lifes with flowers and atmospheric landscapes are evidence of high technical skill and virtuoso control of color. On behalf of the government of the Principality of Liechtenstein, he designed several stamp series. The last commissioned work by the government was "Etchings from the 11 municipalities of the Principality of Liechtenstein."

Eugen Zotow rejected the tendency towards the abstract. He was a traditionalist at the core of his artistic soul.

Exhibitions

Ivan Mjassojedow participated from 1897 in the annual student exhibitions of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and in 1903 in the exhibition of the Peredwischniki (society of traveling artistic exhibitions) in St. Petersburg. His participation in exhibitions at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg is documented for 1908 to 1911, with interruptions until 1916. In 1912 Miassojedow organized an exhibition in Poltava in which he showed his own works and works by his father, who died in 1911, as well as local artists. Nothing is known about exhibitions in Berlin.

Solo exhibitions in Liechtenstein: 1940 in the Engländerbau in Vaduz and 1952 in the old Vaduz secondary school. Posthumously: 1986 in the Liechtenstein National Museum Vaduz : “The Princely House and Liechtenstein in the Work of Prof. Eugen Zotow”; 1997 State Art Collection in Vaduz and 1998 Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow : Retrospective “Iwan Mjassojedow / Eugen Zotow. Traces of an Exile ”, conceived by the Prof. Eugen Zotow-Ivan Miassojedow Foundation.

Prof. Eugen Zotow-Ivan Miassojedoff Foundation

The artist's memory and the care of his estate with paintings, graphics, drawings, photos and written documents, which he bought from his heirs, are preserved by the Prof. Eugen Zotow-Ivan Miassojedoff Foundation , established in 1992 and based in Vaduz (FL). The commitment of the Liechtenstein collector Adulf Peter Goop was pioneering . It is thanks to him that Iwan Mjassojedow / Eugen Zotow gained importance posthumously.

The estate owned by the Prof. Eugen Zotow-Ivan Miassojedoff Foundation includes around 3500 artistic works, including paintings, pastels, watercolors, drawings and prints. The collection also includes photographs and written certificates.

literature

• Ivan Miassojedow - Eugen Zotow 1881–1953. Traces of an exile. Edited by the Liechtenstein State Art Collection and Prof. Eugen Zotow-Iwan Miassojedow-Stiftung Vaduz. Benteli, Bern 1997. With bibliography. ISBN 3-7165-1079-3 (later Russian edition 1998)
• Götz Schneider: Eugen Zotow. Postage stamp designers and engravers. Published by the Postal Museum in the Principality of Liechtenstein , Vaduz 1997
• Kornelia Pfeiffer: Eugen Zotow. Monsters, Demons and Madonnas, in: Bodensee-Hefte, Jg. 47, 1997, H. 6. P. 10-13
• Regina Erbentraut: Career and Fate of an Emigrant. The Odyssey of the painter Ivan Mjasoedov - Eugen Zotow, in Karl Schlögel Hg .: Russian emigration in Germany 1918 to 1941. Life in the European civil war. Oldenbourg Akademie, Munich 1995 ISBN 3050028017 pp. 175-194
• Cornelia Herrmann, Rita Kieber-Beck: «My soul is not in its place» . In: Liechtensteinische Trachtenvereinigung (Ed.): EinTracht . Advent, No. 58 , 2011, p. 13–28 ( eliechtensteinensia.li ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Eugen Zotow in the catalog of the German National Library