Margaret Bourke-White - Soviet Union

 

Archangelsk 1941, [Margaret Bourke White with her husband, author Erskine Caldwell]

All photo comments [except those in square brackets] by Margaret Bourke-White

Margaret Bourke-White was born in New York City in 1904. She became interested in photography while studying at Cornell University. After studying photography under Clarence White at Columbia University she opened a studio in Cleveland where she specialized in architectural photography. In 1929 Bourke-White was recruited as staff photographer for Fortune Magazine. She made several trips to the Soviet Union and in 1931 published Eyes on Russia. Deeply influence by the impact of the Depression, she became increasingly interested in politics. In 1936 Bourke-White joined Life Magazine and her photograph of the Fort Peck Dam appeared on its first front-cover.

Magnitogorsk 1931

Under-construction blast furnace (world's largest) at Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Industrial Complex

In 1937 Bourke-White worked with the best-selling novelist, Erskine Caldwell, on the book You Have Seen Their Faces (1937). The book was later criticised for its left-wing bias and upset whites in the Deep South with its passionate attack on racism. Bourke-White was a member of the American Artists' Congress. The group supported state-funding of the arts, fought discrimination against African American artists, and supported artists fighting against fascism in Europe. Bourke-White also subscribed to the Daily Worker and was a member of several Communist Party front organizations.

Stalingrad 1931
Closeup portrait of Russian iron puddler w. glasses parked over his brow, at the "Red October" Rolling Mills.

Bourke-White married Erskine Caldwell in 1939 and the couple were the only foreign journalists in the Soviet Union when the German Army invaded in 1941. Bourke-White and Caldwell returned to the United States where they produced another attack on social inequality, Say Is This the USA? (1942). During the Second World War Bourke-White served as a war correspondent, working for both Life Magazine and the U.S. Air Force. Bourke-White, who survived a torpedo attack while on a ship to North Africa, was with United States troops when they reached the Buchenwald Concentration CampAfter the war Bourke-White continued her interest in racial inequality by documenting Gandhi's non-violent campaign in India and apartheid in South Africa. 

Dnieiperstoi, 1931
Col. Hugh Cooper, formerly of the US Army Corps of Engineers, posing in front of Russia's Dnieper River Dam, the largest in the world for which he was the chief consultant for its construction.

The FBI had been collecting information on Bourke-White's political activities since the 1930s and in the 1950s became a target for Joe McCarthy and the Un-American Activities Committee. However, a statement reaffirming her belief in democracy and her opposition to dictatorship of the left or of the right, enabled her to avoid being cross-examined by the committee. In 1952 Bourke-White was discovered to be suffering from Parkinson's Disease. Unable to take photographs, she spent eight years writing her autobiography, Portrait of Myself (1963). Margaret Bourke-White died at Darien, Connecticut, in 1971.

Magnitogorsk 1931
 Two Russian workers running a drill press in a machine shop

 Moscow 1931
Closeup portrait of a Russian Orthodox priest

 Siberia 1931
Closeup portrait of Tovarisch Mikhail, a Siberian bricklayer

 Tiflis 1931
Closeup portrait of Stalin's mother, Ekaterina Dzhugashvili

 Moscow 1931
Russian Communist Karl B. Radek holding pipe at home

 Magnitogorsk 1931
Silhouette at twilight of gigantic sculptured rendition of a Russian robot w. hand raised in a salute next to unident. bldg

 Moscow 1931
Unident. Russian public bldg.
[Rusakov Workers' Club by Konstantin Melnikov]

 Moscow 1931
Russian men dressed in tunics standing on the steps of a Workers Club

 Moscow 1931
Unident. Russian public bldg.
[Mosselprom building]

 Siberia 1931
Russian woman grimly holding a slab of meat as other peasant women staunchly stand by

 Magnitogorsk 1931
Russian peasant riding a hay wagon in Siberia

 Moscow 1941
US envoy Harry Hopkins standing w. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin during their meeting.

Gori, 1941
Peasant home which was the birthplace of Russian Communist dictator Joseph Stalin, standing encased as a monument in magnificent marble like some sacred relic shrine, in the Socialist Soviet Republic of Georgia.

 Moscow 1941
Russian women's brigade wielding crude rakes to gather up hay harvest on a collective farm outside the capitol.

 Moscow 1941
Russian kindergarten boys clad in miniature caps w. red stars, aiming toy rifles, barricaded behind classroom furniture, while playing war game.

Kislovodsk 1941
Russian reading a book on park bench. 

 Near Moscow 1941
Russian women's brigade members leaning out open windows of house, criss-crossed w. tape to keep them fr. breaking during air raid, on grounds of collective farm nr. nr. Moscow.

 Moscow 1941
Locomotive named Stalin is studied by students at the Locomotive Laboratory of the Technical Institute as top instructors (L) wearing enameled red decorative pins, lecture on its mechanics.

 Moscow 1941
Students fr. a variety of races incl. Tartar, Turkman, Armenian, Jewish & German, listening to lecture in Greek history at the Moscow University in a country where there are more Nordics than in Germany.

 Moscow 1941
Russian post-grad students in economics & philosophy, hard at work on their respective theses at the Lenin Library, one of the largest in the world.

 Russia 1941
Russian woman using an abacus to calculate numbers in business.

 Moscow 1941
All-Union Council of Evangelists & Baptists Pres. Orlav, onetime atheist and psycho-neurologist student, at altar administering communion, at reformist church used by Baptists.

Moscow 1941
Reception room at the Communist Party daily newpaper PRAVDA where women are writing letters of complaint which they will submit, re insufficient housing & too much red tape on their job & an unpublished genius reading the newpaper wants his works published. 

Moscow 1941
Russian who during working hours is a chef in a large restaurant, enjoying a Cowboy cocktail consisting of an egg yolk, gin, apricot liqueur, benedictine & a peppery liqueur at the Cocktail Hall, the only cocktail bar in the city. 

Moscow 1941
Commuters moving along arched Metro subway platform complete w. mosaic inlaided designs between light fixtures & the ceiling, representing airplanes, Kremlin Towers etc. in station at Mayakovsky Square. 

Moscow, July 26, 1941
Overall of central Moscow w. antiaircraft gunners dotting sky over Red Square w. exploding shells w. spires of Kremlin silhouetted by German Luftwaffe flare. 

Moscow 1941
Exhausted Russian city workers occupying a bomb shelter during air raid drill at typical apartment house after a hard day's work. 

 Vyazma, 1941
German airmen (L-R) Josef Trocha, Walther Rasek, & Rudolph Tause, shot down over Russia & now being interrogated by American correspondents near the Russian front.

 Moscow 1941
German soldier Rolf Helmudt lying in a Russian hospital after being wounded in action at the front.

 Russia 1941
Portrait of two Russian infantrymen marching in formation

Boris Kustodiev

Boris Kustodiev, Self-Portrait, 1912

Boris Kustodiev was born in Astrakhan into the family of a professor of philosophy. His father died young, and all financial and material burdens fell on his mother's shoulders. The Kustodiev family rented a small wing in a rich merchant's house. It was there that the boy's first impressions were formed of the way of life of the provincial merchant class. Kustodiev later wrote, "The whole tenor of the rich and plentiful merchant way of life was there right under my nose. It was like something out of an Ostrovsky play." He retained these childhood observations for years, recreating them later in oils and water-colours.

 Boris Kustodiev, The Merchant's Wife, 1918

Between 1893 and 1896, Boris studied in theological seminary and took private art lessons in Astrakhan from Pavel Vlasov, a pupil of Vasily Perov. Subsequently, from 1896 to 1903, he attended Ilya Repin’s studio at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. When Repin was commissioned to paint a large-scale canvas to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the State Council, he invited Kustodiev to be his assistant. The painting was extremely complex and involved a great deal of hard work. Together with his teacher, Kustodiev made portrait studies for the painting, and then executed the right-hand side of the final work. Also at this time, Kustodiev made a series of portraits of his spiritual comrades including the artist Ivan Bilibin .

Boris Kustodiev, Beauty, 1915

In 1903, Kustodiev married Julia Proshinskaya. One year later He visited France and Spain on a grant from the Imperial Academy of Arts. Also in 1904, he attended the private studio of René Ménard in Paris. After that he traveled to Spain, then, in 1907, to Italy, and in 1909 he visited Austria and Germany. The Russian Revolution of 1905, which shook the foundations of society, evoked Kustodiev's vivid response. He contributed to the satirical journals Zhupel (Bugbear) and Adskaya Pochta (Hell's Mail). At that time, he first met the artists of Mir Iskusstva (World of Art), a group of progressive Russian artists. He joined their association in 1910 and subsequently took part in all their exhibitions.

Boris Kustodiev, Portrait of Fyodor Chaliapin, 1921

In 1905, Kustodiev first turned to book illustrating, a genre in which he worked throughout his entire life. He illustrated many works of classical Russian literature, including Gogol's Dead Souls, Lermontov's The Lay of Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, and Tolstoy's How the Devil Stole the Peasants Hunk of Bread. In 1909, he was elected into the Imperial Academy of Arts. He continued to work intensively, but a grave illness - tuberculosis of the spine - required urgent attention. On the advice of his doctors he went to Switzerland, where he spent a year undergoing treatment in a private clinic.

Boris Kustodiev, Fair, 1906

In 1916, Kustodiev became paraplegic. "Now my whole world is my room", he wrote. His colourful paintings and joyful genre pieces do not reveal his physical suffering, and on the contrary give the impression of a carefree life. His Maslenitsa was all painted from his memories. He meticulously restored his own childhood in the busy city on the Volga banks:

Boris Kustodiev, Maslenitsa, 1919

In the first years after the Russian Revolution of 1917 Kustodiev worked  in various fields. Contemporary themes became the basis for his work, being embodied in drawings for calendars and book covers, and in illustrations and sketches of street decorations, as well as some portraits (Portrait of Countess Grabowska). His covers for the journals The Red Cornfield and Red Panorama attracted attention. Kustodiev also worked in lithography, illustrating works by Nekrasov. His illustrations were landmarks in the history of Russian book designing, so well did they correspond to the literary images.

Boris Kustodiev, The Bolshevik, 1920

Kustodiev was also interested in designing stage scenery. He first started work in the theatre in 1911, when he designed the sets for Alexandr Ostrovskv's An Ardent Heart. Such was his success that further orders came pouring in. In 1913, he designed the sets and costumes for The Death of Pazukhin at the Moscow Art Theatre. His talent in this sphere was especially apparent in his work for Ostrovsky's plays; It's a Family Affair, A Stroke of Luck, Wolves and Sheep, and The Storm. The milieu of Ostrovsky's plays - provincial life and the world of the merchant class - was close to his own genre paintings, and he worked easily and quickly on the stage sets.

Boris Kustodiev, Russian Venus, 1925

In 1923, Kustodiev joined the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia. He continued to paint, make engravings, illustrate books, and design for the theater up until his death on May 28, 1927, in Leningrad.

Lasar Segall - The Eternal Wanderers

 Lasar Segall (right) and Conrad Felixmüller (left) in Segall`s Dresden studio, 1919

Lasar Segall (1891-1957) was born in the Jewish ghetto of Vilnius, Lithuania, which at that time was part of Imperial Russia. He was the son of a Torah scribe. Segall moved to Berlin at the age of 15 and studied at the Akademie der Künste from 1906 to 1909. He then continued his studies at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. Frustrated with the academic school of painting there, he left for Dresden in 1910 where he worked in the Meisterschule Art Academy as a teacher.

 Lasar Segall, Self-Portrait, 1927

During his tenure at the Meisterschule, Segall became acquainted with Otto Dix and George Grosz. In 1912 he  painted a series of works in an insane asylum. Later that year, he moved to São Paulo, Brazil, where three of his siblings were already living, but returned to Dresden in 1914. In 1919, Segall founded the Dresden Secession Group together with Conrad Felixmüller and Otto Dix. 

Lasar Segall, Die Krankenstube (The Sickness Room), 1921

During the early 1920s, Segall illustrated a book by the poet Theodor Däubler (Ed. Fritz Gurlitt of Jewish Art and Culture), published the album  of lithographs Bübüe and the Erinnerung an Wilna - 1917 (Memoir of Vilna - 1917) with etchings. He also exhibited in many important German museums and galleries.

 Lasar Segall, The Eternal Wanderers, 1919

 

In 1923, Segall finally moved to São Paulo, Brazil, where he was to become a notable figure in Modern Art circles. Shortly after Segall's return to São Paulo he obtained Brazilian citizenship along with his first wife, Margarete Quack. Segall exhibited in the 1923 Semana de Arte Moderna in São Paulo, and established his reputation as one of Brazil's outstanding modern artists during that time, like Candido Portinari and Emiliano Di Cavalcanti. Segall's preferred subject matters now became the Brazilian countryside, mulattoes, favelas, and prostitutes. Due to the harsh and extreme nature of his portrayals and his depiction of human suffering, Segall's artwork was not generally accepted in Brazil. 

 Lasar Segall, Pogrom, 1937

Segall frequently travelled to Paris and Germany for his own personal exhibitions. In 1932, he founded an organization known as Sociedade Pro-Arte Moderna (SPAM). SPAM's central idea was to serve as a link between artists, intellectuals, collectors and the public. But due to disagreements with anti-semitic Integralist members (Brazilian Fascists), the group soon fell apart. Back in Germany, Segall's work was now considered "degenerate" and and could no longer be shown in exhibitions. Segall created one of his most famous artworks in 1939, known as Navio de emigrantes (Ship of Emigrants). A ship is overcrowded with emigrant passengers. Their solemn faces and lack of expression  show the brutal reality of emigrants and their depressing voyage to a new life.

 Lasar Segall, Ship of Emigrants, 1939

Lasar Segall died in 1957. Ten years later his São Paulo home was transformed into a public museum, the Museu Lasar Segall. You can see many more of his works on the Museum's website.

Pavel Tchelitchew

 George Platt Lyne, Pavel Tchelitchew, 1948

Pavel Tchelitchew (1898-1957) was born to an aristocratic family and was raised in Moscow until the Revolution in 1918 forced his family to flee to Kiev. While in Kiev, Tchelitchew attended classes at the Kiev Academy under the direction of Alexandra Exter. While the civil war carried on, he made street posters and stage sets for local theaters. 

 Pavel Tchelitchew, Deposition (Feral Benga), 1938

By 1920 he was in Odessa, escaping the advancing Red armies. He went on to Berlin via Istanbul. There he met Allen Tanner, an American pianist, and became his lover. Under the influence of constructivism, Tchelitchew continued designing for small theatre productions. Over the course of the next few years, he reached his theatrical peak with set and costume designs for plays at the Königsgrätzerstrasse Theatre, ballets at the Russian Romantic Theatre, and the opera Le Coq d’Or at the Berlin Staatsopera. Also in Berlin, he met Serge Diaghilev, with whom he continued to collaborate for many years.

Pavel Tchelitchew, Portrait Edalzhi Dinsho, 1940

In 1923, Tchelitchew uprooted himself again, this time moving to Paris where he began his first serious easel paintings. The turning point of his career came in 1925 when he exhibited at the Salon d’Automne. His work aroused the interest of Gertrude Stein and he soon became her intimate and protégé. Tchelitchew's American debut was in a group show of drawings at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1930. In 1934 he moved to New York with his new lover, writer and critic Charles Henri Ford, and exhibited in the Julien Levy Gallery. He and Ford, best known for his editorship of the Surrealist magazine View were at the center of a social world of wealthy homosexuals, such as Lincoln Kirstein, for whom he also designed ballets. 

 Pavel Tchelitchew, Phenomena, 1936 

Phenomena, the first painting of a projected series of three major works, aroused violent reactions because of its lurid color and characterization of persons then still alive (including a self-portrait and images of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas). The most prominent of the nude male figures in this painting is Nicholas Magallanes, a favorite model, who later became a famous dancer. 

 Pavel Tchelitchew, Hide and Seek, 1942

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, he continued designing sets for ballets, most notably those in association with George Balanchine and Igor Stravinsky. His most noted painting, Hide and Seek (above), a strikingly red painting of an enormous tree composed of human body parts, was completed in 1942 and was immediately acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where he also had a large retrospective the same year.

Pavel Tchelitchew, Head, 1950

In 1943 he began his first “interior landscapes”, noted for their display of a body’s interior workings while simultaneously depicting its external features. By 1950 his images were composed completely of rhythmic spiraled lines with all volumes entirely transparent; he felt that they approached the fourth dimension. Throughout his professional career Tchelitchew exhibited frequently in London, Paris, Rome and points all over the United States. Tchelitchew lived mainly in Italy from 1949 and died 1957 in Rome. You can see more of his works in my Flickr set.