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Boris Dmitrievich Grigoriev
Description
- Boris Dmitrievich Grigoriev
- Two Portfolios containing 58 drawings and gouaches for Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, 1916-1932
- most signed Boris Grigoriev (lower left, lower right, or upper right); three signed with artist's initials (lower right)
- gouache, watercolor, charcoal and/or graphite on paper
- average size: 11 1/2 by 17 in.
- 29.2 by 43.2 cm 50 illustrated
Provenance
Israel Perlstein (acquired possibly from the above circa 1933)
Thence by descent
Exhibited
Literature
Marie Sterner, Drawings in Color by Grigoriev for Dostoievsky's 'Brothers Karamazov,' New York, 1933, illustrated
"Grigoriev Drawings To Be Shown," New York Herald-Tribune, 8 November 1933
"For Settlement Benefit - Grigoriev Sketches to Be Shown to Aid Mulberry House," New York Times, 12 November 1933
"Grigoriev's Drawings in Color...," New York Times, 13 November 1933
"'Brothers Karamazov,'" New York Times, New York, 14 November 1933
"Why Should Grigoriev Be an Expatriate?," The Art Digest, New York, 15 November 1933, vol. VIII, no. 4, pp. 3, 21, 29, illustrated p. 21
"Mrs. Harold Sands...," New York Sun, 16 November 1933
"Drawing Individual Idiom," New York Post, 18 November 1933
"Boris Grigoriev," Art News, 18 November 1933
"Boris Grigoriev's Success," New York Sun, New York, 18 November 1933, illustrated
Rita Wellman, One-Man Shows and Others, Parnassus, New York, November 1933, vol. V, no. VI, p. 13, illustrated pp. 25-26, 29
"Grigoriev's Masterly Drawings in Color for a Dostoievsky Classic," Town and Country, December 1933, p. 28
Tamara Galeyeva, Grigoriev, St. Petersburg: Zolotoi Vek, 2007, pp. 188 and 454
Catalogue Note
Grigoriev painted these fifty eight images over the course of sixteen years--thirteen years longer than it took Dostoevsky to pen The Brothers Karamazov. The gouaches were meant to be published as illustrations, and when they were exhibited at the Marie Sterner Gallery in New York in 1933, no one could have guessed that their publication would never be realized. The exhibition was a clear success, receiving rave reviews, and yet the timing was poor; it was the middle of the Great Depression, funding was scarce and the project was deemed impractical. The works were eventually sold into a private collection, where they disappeared for the greater part of a century.
These illustrations are amongst the most important achievements of Grigoriev's career. Drawing from the motifs of his Rasseya and Faces of Russia cycles, he infuses his subjects with an entire canon of human emotions, exposing the sorrows and evils of their souls. Meanwhile, he remains true to Dostoevsky's narrative, translating the tragedy of the literary masterpiece into a unique and visual language.