Léon Bakst

Bakst, self-portrait

Léon Bakst ( Russian Лев Самойлович Бакст , Lew Samoilowitsch Bakst , originally Лейб-Хаим Израилевич Розенберг / body-Chaim Israilevich Rosenberg ; * April 27 ^{. Jul} / 9. May 1866 ^greg. In Grodno ; † 27. December 1924 in Rueil-Malmaison ) was a Russian-French painter , set designer, and costume designer .

Life

Bakst began studying art at the Imperial Russian Academy in his hometown in 1883 , although he left it prematurely because of a dispute over one of his Madonna pictures. In 1893 Bakst left Russia and moved to Paris , where he was tutored by a Finnish painter.

There he met a group of young artists around Alexander Benua , Sergej Djagilew and Valentin Serow , who together founded the magazine Mir Iskusstwa ( World of Art ) in 1898 . He repeatedly visited St. Petersburg and from 1906 headed the art school of Jelisaveta Swanzewa . His student was Marc Chagall , who attended this school 1908-1910.

Although Bakst always found new inspiration on his travels, he grew tired of painting and turned to the illustration of magazines as well as colorful, oriental-inspired costume design and stage decoration.

His work for the theater began in the 1902/03 season with stage decorations for the Hermitage Theater and the Mariinsky Theater . From 1909 he worked with Dyagilev and played a major role in founding the Ballets Russes . Bakst's costume designs for the ballets Scheherazade (1910), Der Feuervogel (1910) and Josephs Legende (1914) made Bakst internationally known. He processed suggestions from archaic Greece, the Orient, the Viennese Biedermeier period and Balzac's Paris into his own decorative art, rich in colors and shapes. From 1912 he lived in Paris.

Souper, 1910
Figurine for the ballet " The Firebird " by Igor Stravinsky
Vaslav Nijinsky in the ballet L'Après-midi d'un Faune after Claude Debussy , 1912
Figurine for the ballet "Le dieu bleu" by Reynaldo Hahn

literature

André Levinsohn: Ballets Russes. The art of Léon Bakst (= The bibliophile paperbacks. 666). Harenberg Edition, Dortmund 1992, ISBN 3-88379-666-2 .
Horst Schumacher: Bakst, Leon . In: Manfred Brauneck, Wolfgang Beck (ed.): Theater Lexikon 2. Actors and directors, stage managers, dramaturges and stage designers . Rowohlt's encyclopedia published by Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag. Reinbek near Hamburg, August 2007, ISBN 978 3 499 55650 0 , p. 33 f.

Individual evidence

^ Susan Tumarkin Goodman (ed.): Russian Jewish artists in a century of change, 1890–1990. Prestel, Munich et al. 1995, ISBN 3-7913-1601-X , p. 71, (exhibition at The Jewish Museum, New York, September 21, 1995 - January 28, 1996).

Web links

Commons : Léon Bakst - collection of images, videos and audio files

Information about the artist and his works (Russian)
Chronological landmarks in the life of Leon Bakst 1866-1924 (English)
Biography , manual of history (Russian)
Biography , encyclopedia Panorama (Russian)
Biography , Central Council of Jewish Resource (Russian)
Biography , Kompjuart (Russian)
Biography , Digital Education Resource (Russian)
Biography , Le peintre Léon Bakst nous a quitté il ya 80 ans (French)
Léon Bakst in the catalog of the Cologne Art Library

personal data
SURNAME	Bakst, Léon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Bakst, Lev Samoilowitsch; Бакст, Лев Самойлович (Russian spelling)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Russian-French painter and set designer
DATE OF BIRTH	May 9, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH	Grodno
DATE OF DEATH	December 27, 1924
Place of death	Paris

[1] Susan Tumarkin Goodman (ed.): Russian Jewish artists in a century of change, 1890–1990. Prestel, Munich et al. 1995, ISBN 3-7913-1601-X , p. 71, (exhibition at The Jewish Museum, New York, September 21, 1995 - January 28, 1996).