Boris Dmitrievich Grigoriev, 1886-1939

Boris Grigoriev’s portraits are slick satirical caricatures.  He looked to depict a generic type rather than convey the individual characteristics of a sitter; the mask rather than the face.  He particularly sought out people from the lower strata of society, peasants, prostitutes and actors whom he elevated in his art despite his critique.

His earliest attempts at painting types was his Raseya cycle of portraits based on the theme of the harvest, a project he started in 1917 in Petrograd.  This led to his most famous cycle, Faces of Russia comprising portraits of actors from the Moscow Art Theatre, executed whilst the theatre was on tour in Paris in 1923.  In this series he paints the actors dressed as characters from Russian plays and literature, or posing as peasants and rural Russian types.

His painterly style relies heavily on his training as a draughtsman and betray his other occupation as graphic artist and theatre designer.  His oils are composed around expressive, deftly and firmly drawn lines; colour is of secondary importance.  Within Russia his work can perhaps be closely compared to that of his contemporaries and fellow Mir Iskusstniki Alexander Yakovlev and Vasili Shukhaev; although in the late 20s and 30s it is clearly more strikingly indebted to that of Otto Dix and the German Neue Sachlichkeit painters.

The artist’s son Kirill called the offered lot “The Face of Germany”.  Such a painting is named in a letter from Grigoriev to Sudeikin in 1938: “I have been working for more than 300 hours.  Day in, day out for a whole month, both my head and hands working.  I also painted a man with a cello; and “The Face of Germany”. … I would send them to the Salon d’Automne, but I won’t; instead I’ll sell them and only exhibit in New York.”