Dobuzhinsky, Mstislav
Mstislav Dobuzhinsky was born in Novgorod, one of the oldest historic Russian cities, situated 200 kilometres to the south from Saint Petersburg, in 1875. His abilities to draw were noticed by his parents at the age of four and Mstislav was sent to study at the Drawing School of the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in 1885-1887. Following his father’s wishes, Dobuzhinsky read Law at Saint Petersburg University from 1895 to 1899 but never gave up his desire to become an artist.
After failing to enrol into the Imperial Academy of Arts Mstislav briefly attended the Drawing School again but after a few months started to take lessons at the private school Nikolai Dmitrjeff-Orenburgsky (1838-1898) and then at the studio of Lev Dmitriev-Kavkazski (1849-1916) where he leant to work from nature till 1899. He frequented the Hermitage Museum to look at the Old Masters while also admiring the works of Ilya Repin (1844-1930), Vasily Surikov (1848-1916) and Mikhail Nesterov (1862-1942).
Dobuzhinsky’s determination to become an artist was growing and, upon his graduation in law with the first-class degree, he moved to Munich and attended the art schools of Anton Ažbe (1962-1905) and Simon Hollósy (1857-1918) learning about and following new trends in art from 1899 to 1901. Upon his return to Saint Petersburg in 1901 Mstislav took lessons in engraving at the studio of Professor Vasily Mate (1856-1918) and life drawing classes at the studio of Pavel Kovalevski (1843-1903), famous Russian battle painter. He started to work as a caricaturist and an illustrator and was noticed by Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929), the editor of the World of Art magazine, and Alexander Benois (1870-1960).
Dobuzhinsky was invited to join World of Art, the most influential art group in Saint Petersburg, and started to participate in its exhibitions mainly with his works on paper from 1902. His reputation in Russia gradually growing and he started to show his works at the Salon in Paris and Secession in Berlin from 1906. His works were shown at the International Exhibition in Munich in 1909 establishing his international fame too. From 1909 to 1917 Mstislav worked as one of the principal theatre and costume designers at the Moscow Art Theatre and contributed to several Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes productions in Paris adding to his international recognition for his distinctive, close to symbolism, style.
He was an active member of various state art committees after 1917 and became the Keeper of the Hermitage Museum in 1918. Dobuzhinsky was appointed the first director of the famous art school in Vitebsk superseded by Marc Chagall (1887-1985) in 1919. He continued to work as an artistic director and theatre designer for numerous stage productions including operas and plays in Saint Petersburg and as a book illustrator and engraver and became a professor of the Academy of Arts in 1922.
From 1924 to 1925 and from 1929 to 1935 Dobuzhinsky lived in Lithuania where he was an art director of the Lithuanian State Theatre designing sets for almost 40 stage productions and had his art school from 1930 to 1933. In 1926 to 1929 he taught at École Nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs and worked a theatre designer in Paris. Dobuzhinsky emigrated to England in 1935 and moved to the USA in 1939. He worked at the Theatre-studio of M. Chekhov, Metropolitan Opera in New York, other American theatres and in cinema.
After the war, Dobuzhinsky travelled and worked on designing sets for theatre plays in many European capitals. He is considered one of the major artists that emerged from the Silver Age of Russian art (1898 -1918) and his works are present in the world most important public and private art collections.
