Vladimir Lukianovich von Zabotin

Vladimir Lukianowitsch of Zabotin (July 7 * ^{. Jul} / 19th July  1884 ^{. Greg} in Busch Inca Niemirowskaja , Podolia Governorate , Russian Empire ; † 23. November 1967 in Karlsruhe ) was a Ukrainian - German painter .

Life

Zabotin came from the Ukraine, he was the son of noble landowners. His father, Baron Lukian Alexejwitsch Zabotin (1852-1919), was a former Cossack officer who had become a declared pacifist , his mother Maria Łukaszewicz (1863-1942) came from the Polish aristocracy and had studied in Western Europe before their marriage.

As the son of well-to-do parents, he attended boarding school in Kiev , where he graduated from high school in 1902. He then studied civil engineering at the Polytechnic Institute and the State Art School in Kiev, where Nikolai Korniliewitsch Pimonenko taught , among others . Alexander Archipenko was one of the students . After the closure of the Russian universities due to the unrest in 1905 , he emigrated to Germany because he feared reprisals as a participant on Bloody Sunday . He settled in Karlsruhe , where he first studied architecture from 1906 at the Technical University under Billing and Laeuger . In 1908/1909 he broke off his architecture studies and entered the art academy . In 1910 his lover, the Swiss singer Rösli Weidmann, had a daughter, Halina. In 1913/1914 he was a master student of Wilhelm Trübner .

The outbreak of World War I led to his internment in Donaueschingen , he was released at Trübner's intercession and settled in Karlsruhe as a freelance artist.

In 1919 he was a co-founder of the Rih group . Carl Zuckmayer writes in As if it's a piece of me : “The most comfortable studio was owned by Wladimir Zabotin, a Germanized Russian with generous hospitality. You could get vodka there, which made it easier to view his pictures, and if necessary you could sleep on a divan. Mimi, our Aspasia from Baden , got tantrums when he painted her with one eye on her navel and the other on her nose. [...] Shorn all over his head, he had let a single strand of hair grow so long that it hung down like a frond on his shoulder, and since he also used it to wash out his brush, it shimmered in the colors of exotic tropical birds. "

In 1920 the Rih group disbanded, Zabotin was a member of the Darmstadt and Baden Secession , museums bought his works and he took part in numerous exhibitions. In 1928 he married the Freiburg sculptor Heide Rosin, and his son Kostia was born.

In 1921 Volhynia was divided between Poland (western part) and Soviet Ukraine (east). The Volyn Voivodeship is re-established and his hometown became Polish.

In 1934 he was banned from exhibiting and selling by the National Socialists. In 1937 his works in museums were declared "degenerate" and confiscated by local commissions initiated by the Reich Chamber of Culture .

exile

In 1938 the stateless person who had been stateless since the end of the First World War received a Polish passport. He accepted the invitation to inherit an estate in Volhynia. Zabotin spent half a year with his brother in Horamuwka, which had been part of the Polish Ukraine since 1921. When the war broke out on September 1, 1939, as a Polish citizen, Zabotin had to leave Germany within hours; with 10 RM in his pocket, he fled via Switzerland to Italy , where his wife and son, who had been persecuted as a Jew, had been in Florence since 1935 . His work remained in the studio.

With the Hitler-Stalin Pact , Volhynia became Soviet again in September 1939 , the legacy is lost.

When Italy entered the war in June 1940, the family was arrested in separate places in Italy, and later interned in a concentration camp in Calabria . In the summer of 1943 the concentration camp was liberated by Canadian troops and the family was sent to an Allied refugee camp. In 1944 she was allowed to emigrate to the USA , where in August 1944 she was barracked again in the former army camp Fort Ontario near Oswego (New York) and had to live under depressing circumstances. In December 1945 they received American citizenship through the Truman Directive . In 1946 Zapotin went with his family to New York City , where, at over 60 years of age, he was faced with a completely new beginning.

In 1948 his wife Heide died. Zabotin, who could not gain a foothold in the USA and also did not feel at home, returned to his adopted home of Karlsruhe in 1956 .

literature

• Baden-Württemberg Biographies Volume 3, p. 470. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1994.
• Annette Ludwig : Wladimir von Zabotin 1884 - 1967 ; December 4, 1994 - January 15, 1995, District Association of Visual Artists Karlsruhe, Künstlerhaus-Galerie. Karlsruhe: District Association of Visual Artists, 1994.