Анисфельд, Борис Израилевич

Graphic artist

Born Bieltsy, (Besarabia) 2 October 1879

Died Waterford (Conn.), 4 December 1973

Boris Anisfeld was born to a Russian father and a Jewish mother. His father was a landed proprietor of means, possessing a large estate. In 1895 Anisfeld left Bieltsy to study for five years at the Odessa School of Art. His principal teachers there were Ladzhiriskii and Kostandi, the latter a specialist in portraiture and figure-painting. His success in Odessa allowed him to qualify for admission to the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, which he attended from 1901 to 1909. At the Academy, Anisfeld studied with Repin, Kovalevskii (a specialist in battle pictures), and Kardovskii (a teacher of genre painting and portraiture). In 1904 he married Frieda Glaeserman, whose parents owned a ceramic factory in Vitebsk. Anisfeld joined from 1906 to 1917 the Mir Iskusstva group and the Union of Russian Artists. He participated in the first Izdebskii International Salon in 1910. He started to work as a stage designer in 1907. In 1918 he emigrated via Japan to the USA. He worked for the Metropolitan Opera and Chicago Opera and from 1928 onwards as a teacher Chicago Art Institute.

1911

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