Mstislav Dubujinsky

Добужинский, Мстислав Валерианович

Painter, graphic artist, designer

Born Novgorod, 2 August 1875

Died New York, 20 November 1957

Dobujinsky was born in 1875 in Novgerod. He studied in St. Petersburg as well as in France, Italy and Germany where he spent two years in Munich. In 1902 Dobujinsky joined the Mir Iskusstva [World of Art] movement and became one of its most representative members, and later on even its president. Dobujinsky showed himself equally at home in the many fields of pictorial art: - painting, drawing landscapes, portraits, compositions, decoration (panels, ceilings, interiors), graphic art (illustrations and, later posters).  From 1906 he devoted a lot of his time to teaching. Among his first pupils were the young Marc Chagall and Mane Katz, a painter of the Parisian School. After the revolution he was appointed professor of the College of Decorative Art and the Academy of Fine Arts at St. Petersburg. The period between 1918 and 1924 was Dobujinsky's most productive in the field of illustration and graphic art. At the end of 1924 he left Russia with his family, never to see his native country again. A few weeks before the outbreak of the war in 1939, Dobujinsky left for America. During the 8 years which he spent in the United States  the theatre occupied pride of place in Dobujinsky's life. He died of a heart attack in New York at the age of 82.

1907

1915

1919

1921

1922

1923

1924

1927

1928

1929

1930-31

1934

1936

1937

1940

1943-44

1945-46

1948

1950

1953-1959

1963

1973

1975

1979

1982-83

1984

1988

1992

1995

1998

2001

2007