Boris Dmitrievich Grigoriev, 1886-1939

The Eric and Solome Estorick Collection, London

Grosvenor Gallery, London

Aspects of Russian Experimental Art 1900-1925, Grosvenor Gallery, 24 October – 18 November 1967, No. 35, unillustrated

“Portraits of souls, cosmic stylizations.  Beneath the impression of a chance characteristic feature of a face, he sees the eternal, permanent, physiognomy of the chance model, it is not an episodic visage but, so to say, its astral essence.”

(A. Shaikevich: Mir Borisa Grigorieva (in A. Tolstoy et al. Boris Grigoriev, Berlin n.d. [1918])

With both Shukhaev and Yakovlev, Boris Grigoriev belonged to the second World of Art Society which was established in 1910 and was active until 1924, the core of this group being a generation of younger St. Petersburg artists who wished to distance themselves from the more reactionary elements of the first World of Art group of whose 1909-1910 exhibition Benois wrote a highly critical review: “…considerable amount of ballast at the present exhibition, works superfluous and cumbersome, tasteless and dead”.  This second generation more radical in its approach and Grigoriev’s fellow exhibitors included Bogaevsky, Serebriakova, Stelletsky, Tarkhov, Chekonin, and Yakovlev, with Nicholas Roerich being the first chairman.  The new society was broader in the scope than the earlier World of Art and attracted the attention of many of the avant-garde artists, with amongst others with Lissitzky, Kandinsky, Chagall, and Altmann, all exhibiting their work.

John Bowlt says of this second World of Art group that: “They maintained the traditions of the original World of Art and, above all, regarded line as the most expressive visual element… .  ….line was the dominant force and, in its intense emotional value, sometimes brought to mind the later German Expressionists such as Otto Dix and George Grosz,” and Grigoriev himself stated that “line encloses all the weight of form within its angles and dispenses with all the immaterial…Line is the creator’s swiftest and most intimate medium of expression.”

Woman in Top Hat certainly suggests a German influence, not just in technique and composition but also in subject matter, perhaps emphasized by the time Grigoriev spent living in Germany, when he settled in Berlin after having left Russia in 1919.  The date of the offered work indicates a strong possibility that it was actually painted during the artist’s time in Weimar Germany.

Grigoriev was influenced by the carnival and cabaret throughout his career, and many of his works incorporate these motifs. Grigoriev also continued with the strong erotic tradition established by the first generation members of the World of Art, Bakst and Somov in particular, this interest being strongly apparent in Intimité, his album of drawings from 1912-14 when he lived in Paris.  Published in Petrograd in 1918, it contains images of brothels and prostitutes.

The portrait appears to relate more readily with Grigoriev’s earlier rather than his later work and there is some opinion that it lacks the severity of style apparent in other works of the same period and that the composition is rather simple or plain compared with other contemporaneous works.  It may be that the canvas remained partially incomplete.  It should however be compared with his celebrated 1916 portrait of Vsevelod Meyerhold in the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

Grigoriev moved to Paris in 1921, where he exhibited at the Artistes Russes exhibition at the Galerie La Boëtie, alongside Shukhaev and Yakovlev.  In 1927 he built a house in Cagnes-sur-Mer.  He held various academic posts throughout his career, in 1928 was Professor at the Academy of Arts in Santiago, Chile, and in 1935 was Dean of the New York School of Applied Arts.  He died in Cagnes-sur-Mer in 1939.