Bakst L.S., (1866-1924), artist

Categories / Art/Fine Arts/Personalia
BAKST (Rosenberg) Lev Samoilovich (1866-1924), painter, graphic artist, and stage designer. He was an irregular student at the Academy of Arts in 1883-87 and private academies in Paris in 1890s. He became a member of the Academy of Arts in 1914. He was a founding member of an association and a designer of a magazine, both named World of Art. In his works, he embodied the major principles of the cultural aesthetic movement connected with the association. He painted landscapes, portraits, genre pictures, and decorative panels, including A. N. Benois painted in 1898, Supper painted in 1902, Portrait of S. P. Diaghilev and his Nanny painted in 1906, and Terror Antiquus painted in 1908, all the pictures are exhibited in the State Russian Museum. He painted for St. Petersburg’s magazines such as Russia’s Art Treasures, Apollo, Satirikon, etc. He became renowned in Europe as a stage designer developing the creative concept of picturesque theatre as a synthetic art by combining decorative components with elements of dynamic dance and pantomime. He was a designer for Hermitage Theatre ballets such as A. Fevre’s Heart of the Marquise (1902) and J. Beyer’s Fairy of Dolls (1903), the action shifted to St. Petersburg’s Gostiny Dvor of the mid-19th century, and tragedies for the Alexandrinsky Theatre such as Euripides’s Hippolytus (1902) and Sophocles’ Oedipus in Colonus (1904). He was manager and a teacher at E. N. Zvantseva’s Drawing and Painting School in 1906-10. He was a stage painter of ballet performances for the Russian Seasons Abroad in 1909 and the chief designer of S. P. Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. He also staged the following ballets: A. S. Arensky’s Cleopatra (1909), N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade (1910), M. Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe (1912), Peter Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty (1921), etc. He cooperated with companies of A. P. Pavlova and I. L. Rubinstein and worked for the Paris Opera. He also published articles and gave lectures on art and theatre costumes. He lived at 24 Kirochnaya Street in St. Petersburg and in Paris from 1910. After converting to Judaism he lost his residence permit for St. Petersburg and was ordered to leave as he came to the capital in 1912. He visited St. Petersburg in January 1914 for the last time. He died in Paris.

Reference: Пружан И. Н. Лев Самойлович Бакст. Л., 1975; Голынец С. В. Л. С. Бакст, 1866-1924. Л., 1981.

O. L. Leikind, D. Y. Severyukhin. Abamelik-Lazarev Semen Semenovich
Arensky Anton Stepanovich
Bakst Leon (real name Lev Samoilovich Rosenberg)
Bayer J.
Benois Alexander Nikolaevich
Dyagilev Sergey Pavlovich
Euripides
Fevre A.
Pavlova A.I.
Ravel Maurice
Rimsky-Korsakov Nikolay Andreevich
Rubinstein Ida Lvovna
Sophocles
Tchaikovsky Peter Ilyich
Zvantseva Elizaveta Nikolaevna
Kirochnaya St./Saint Petersburg, city, house 14
Пружан И. Н. Лев Самойлович Бакст. Л., 1975
Голынец С. В. Л. С. Бакст, 1866-1924. Л., 1981 World of Art, Association
Mir Iskusstva (World of Art), journal
Russian Museum, State
Khudozhestvennye Sokrovishcha Rossii (The Art Treasures of Russia), album
Apollon (Apollo), journal
Satirikon, journal
Hermitage Theatre
Alexandrinsky Theatre