Georges Wakhévitch
Georges Wakhévitch ( Russian Жорж Леонидович Вакевич ; born August 18, 1907 in Odessa , Russian Empire , today Ukraine ; † February 11, 1984 in Paris ) was a Russian-born, French film architect , set designer , costume designer , painter and book illustrator .
Live and act
The son of a marine engineer grew up in Paris since 1921 and attended the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs there after graduating from school . In 1927 Wakhévitch began his career as a set designer. Up until his death he set up an abundance of theater plays. Guest performances have taken him to the operas of Berlin , Vienna , Paris, La Scala in Milan , London's Covent Garden and stages in Buenos Aires , Rio de Janeiro , Genoa , Venice and Rome . Between 1966 and 1976 Georges Wakhévitch designed decorations and costumes for Herbert von Karajan's Salzburg Easter Festival . A number of productions were also included in the program of the Salzburg Festival in summer.
Parallel to his theater work, Wakhévitch also worked for film from 1931, initially in a subordinate role. Until 1935 he was mostly employed as the second film architect, most recently at Jacques Feyder's German-French collaboration, a Flemish moral image “ The Wise Women ”. He then rose to co-chief architect and was involved in a number of classics of pre-war French films such as Jean Renoir's The Great Illusion . During the German occupation, Wakhévitch mostly carried out the designs of his underground Jewish colleague Alexandre Trauner , around 1942 for Marcel Carné's The Night with the Devil and the following year for Children of Olympus .
Until the early 1970s, Georges Wakhévitch continued to work continuously in both theater and film. During this time, he designed the film sets for a wealth of dignified, high-level entertainment productions by well-known directors such as Yves Allégret , Christian-Jaque , Jean Cocteau , Jean Delannoy , Gérard Oury , Julien Duvivier , Nicholas Ray , René Clair , Terence Young , Édouard Molinaro , Peter Brook and even Herbert von Karajan . "His decors were conventional, but at the same time betrayed a high degree of spatial feeling and a sense of visual abundance."
Wakhévitch has also made a name for himself as a landscape painter, his works have been exhibited in Paris (1954 and 1969), Casablanca (1960), Geneva (1970) and Saint-Tropez (1975). As a book illustrator, he designed the editions of Federico García Lorca (1967) and William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Macbeth (1969). In 1982 Wakhévitch was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts .
Movies
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literature
- Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 8: T - Z. David Tomlinson - Theo Zwierski. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 228.
Web links
- Georges Wakhévitch in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 8: T - Z. David Tomlinson - Theo Zwierski. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 228.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wakhévitch, Georges |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Вакевич, Жорж Леонидович (Russian) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Russian-Ukrainian-French film architect and set designer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 18, 1907 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Odessa , Russian Empire |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 11, 1984 |
| Place of death | Paris , France |