Nikolai Vladimirovich Remisoff

The collection of Akim Tamirov, USA

Illustrated in Balieff's Chauve Souris programme, 1922

The sheet appears sound and the colours are fresh. Held in a modern wood frame and behind perspex; unexamined out of frame.
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Nikolai Remisoff began his career as a political cartoonist and caricaturist for the magazine Strely, and later for the influential journal Satiricon which he co-founded in 1908, so it was essentially as a self-taught artist that he entered the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in 1910. Here he became associated with the World of Art group but continued to publish satirical drawings under his nom de plume Re-Mi until the political climate grew too dangerous under Bolshevik rule and he was forced to emigrate. With both parents actors in the Russian Imperial Theatre, Remisoff had been exposed to the world of the stage from an early age and when he arrived in Paris in 1920 he joined Sudeikin as principal designer in Nikita Balieff's theatre company Chauve-Souris, The Bat.

The Chauve-Souris was a unique manifestation of Russian cabaret that had begun in the Moscow Art Theatre and rapidly acquired a devoted audience in Europe and New York, where it led to a mania for all things Russian – Elizabeth Arden chose Remisoff to design her newest beauty salon, and the covers of Vanity Fair and Vogue were frequently his creations. His fantastically colourful sets were carefully designed to propagate this myth of Old Russia, 'a barbaric nation consisting of samovars, bears, merchants and peasants in high leather boots...' (J.Bowlt The Salon Album of Vera Sudeikin-Stravinsky, 1995).

The Brothers Zaitsev was successfully performed in Paris, London and New York in 1921-22 and the set designs were described as 'triumphant' by one reviewer in the newspaper Intranzigent (8 September, 1921). Remisoff sketched amusing caricatures of each actor in the production for a 1922 edition of Vanity Fair. It has been suggested that the figure with the glasses reading the paper at the table may depict Remisoff himself.