Dobuzhinsky Mstislav Valerianovich
Costume design. A woman in a blue dress.

Costume design. A woman in a blue dress.
Year: 1939.
Technique: Mixed media on paper.
Size: 32,5х22,5.


Dobuzhinsky Mstislav Valerianovich (1875, Novgorod – 1957, New York).

He studied in St. Petersburg at the Drawing School of the Promotion of Arts Society (1884–1885), later in Munich under A. Aschbe (1899–1901) and in Nagybanya (Austria-Hungary) under Simon Hollosy; in 1901, he studied xylography and printmaking under Basil Matthee. From 1902 on, Dobuzhinsky was an active member of World of Art. He lived in St. Petersburg, 1918 to 1919 in Vitebsk, 1924 to 1926 and 1929 to 1938 in Kaunas, 1926 to 1929 in Paris, 1938 to 1939 in London, from 1939 on mostly in New York. An adherent of art nouveau and Symbolism, he turned to historical subjects and painted portraits. In 1910s, he drew and cartooned for magazines such as Zolotoye runo, Mir iskusstva, Zhupel, Apollon, Satirikon, etc. Also, he worked in the field of book illustration, making pictures for Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s White Nights (1923) and Yury Olesha’s Three Fat Men (1925). An outstanding scene-designer, he worked for the Moscow Art Theater, Serge Diaguilev, the Leningrad Bolshoy Drama Theater, the Metropolitan Opera (New York), and many other theaters and film studios. His theatrical scenery and costumery represented an intermediate link between art nouveau and avant-garde. His memoirs were published in New York in 1976, in Moscow in 1987.