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Lot Essay
In the 1920s Boris Grigoriev’s portraits attracted much praise in Europe and America. His numerous images of key Russian cultural figures proved to be a different facet of the key Russian theme in his work, which had previously provoked such significant and original interpretations.
His portrait of Lev Shestov (Lev Isaakovich Schwarzman), painted in the spring of 1922 in Paris when the Russian existentialist philosopher had just begun to be recognised in France, became one of Grigoriev’s most important and best known works. Shestov’s appearance in Paris was compared by his contemporaries to the ‘fall of a lonely meteor into a circle of well-known masters of the time’; in 1921 when the philosopher settled in France none of his books had yet been translated into French. Boris Schlozer (1881-1969), the music critic and writer who also wrote about Grigoriev on more than one occasion, became the key translator of Shestov’s works.
On 22 March 1922 Shestov wrote to his relatives F. and G. Lovitskii: 'A well-known artist (Grigoriev) has begun to paint my portrait, which will be exhibited 15 April.’ (N. Baranova-Shestova, Zhizh’ L’va Shestovaa. Po perepiske i vospominaniiam sovremennikov [The life of Lev Shestov: In correspondence and the recollections of his contemporaries], Paris, 1983, vol. I., p. 234.). The public likely saw the portrait slightly later, between 20 May-5 June 1922, at the artist’s solo exhibition in his Paris Studio (11, Rue des Sablons), and then in the magazine ‘Jar-ptitza’ (1922, no. 8, p. 7).
Grigoriev’s contemporaries appreciated the artist’s approach to his models and saw in his images 'portraits of the soul, spacial stylisation’ in which 'under the influence of random characteristic of the face, [Grigoriev] sees the eternal, not the mortal, not episodic appearance of random models, but their astral essence’. (A. Shaikevich, Mir Borisa Grigorieva [The World of Boris Grigoriev], Berlin, 1922).
Grigoriev’s portrait of Lev Shestov is arguably the finest image in the iconography of the philosopher, whose appearance was also captured by such other well-known masters as L. Pasternak (1921), S. Sorin (1922), R. Falk (1935), the sculptor V. Domogatsky (1917) and the photographer L. Shumov (1928). Unsurprisingly, the present work was included in the artist's most important exhibitions, a full list of which appears above.
We are grateful to Dr Tamara Galeeva, Senior Lecturer at the Ural State University, Ekaterinburg, for providing this catalogue note.
His portrait of Lev Shestov (Lev Isaakovich Schwarzman), painted in the spring of 1922 in Paris when the Russian existentialist philosopher had just begun to be recognised in France, became one of Grigoriev’s most important and best known works. Shestov’s appearance in Paris was compared by his contemporaries to the ‘fall of a lonely meteor into a circle of well-known masters of the time’; in 1921 when the philosopher settled in France none of his books had yet been translated into French. Boris Schlozer (1881-1969), the music critic and writer who also wrote about Grigoriev on more than one occasion, became the key translator of Shestov’s works.
On 22 March 1922 Shestov wrote to his relatives F. and G. Lovitskii: 'A well-known artist (Grigoriev) has begun to paint my portrait, which will be exhibited 15 April.’ (N. Baranova-Shestova, Zhizh’ L’va Shestovaa. Po perepiske i vospominaniiam sovremennikov [The life of Lev Shestov: In correspondence and the recollections of his contemporaries], Paris, 1983, vol. I., p. 234.). The public likely saw the portrait slightly later, between 20 May-5 June 1922, at the artist’s solo exhibition in his Paris Studio (11, Rue des Sablons), and then in the magazine ‘Jar-ptitza’ (1922, no. 8, p. 7).
Grigoriev’s contemporaries appreciated the artist’s approach to his models and saw in his images 'portraits of the soul, spacial stylisation’ in which 'under the influence of random characteristic of the face, [Grigoriev] sees the eternal, not the mortal, not episodic appearance of random models, but their astral essence’. (A. Shaikevich, Mir Borisa Grigorieva [The World of Boris Grigoriev], Berlin, 1922).
Grigoriev’s portrait of Lev Shestov is arguably the finest image in the iconography of the philosopher, whose appearance was also captured by such other well-known masters as L. Pasternak (1921), S. Sorin (1922), R. Falk (1935), the sculptor V. Domogatsky (1917) and the photographer L. Shumov (1928). Unsurprisingly, the present work was included in the artist's most important exhibitions, a full list of which appears above.
We are grateful to Dr Tamara Galeeva, Senior Lecturer at the Ural State University, Ekaterinburg, for providing this catalogue note.