Youri P. Georges Annenkov

A PAIR OF COSTUME DESIGNS BY YURI PAVLOVICH ANNENKOV (RUSSIAN 1889-1974) comprising tuxedoed women and men````s costumes for August and Isabella each pencil, pen and ink and watercolor, heightened with silver paint each 56.5 x 37 cm (22 1/4 x 14 1/2 in.) each titled and signed in Latin G. Annenkov, also with initials, on arches paper Sotheby````s, London, December 2, 2004, Lot 110

LOT 177 PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF DIMITRI TIOMKIN YURI PAVLOVICH ANNENKOV 1889-1974 A GROUP OF SIX STAGE DESIGNS FOR A PRODUCTION OF NIKOLAI GOGOL'S THE NOSE, INCLUDING A SCROLLING PANORAMA Quantity: 6 signed in Latin, titled in French and variously inscribed watercolour, gouache, ink over pencil on paper image size of largest: 36.5 by 109.8cm, 14 1/4 by 43 1/4 in.

ANNENKOV, GEORGES (1889–1974) Costume Designs for Max Ophüls's Film "Lola Montès", four works , each signed, three with initials, variously inscribed and one dated 1955. Pencil, ink and gouache on paper, one heightened with gold, the largest measuring 53.5 by 29.5 cm and the smallest 45.5 by 18.5 cm (image sizes). Comment1 Provenance: Anonymous sale; Russian Pictures, Works of Art and Icons , Sotheby's Olympia, 20 May 2005, lots 91 and 92. Acquired at the above sale by the present owner. Private collection, USA.

ANNENKOV, GEORGES (1889-1974) Maison rose signed. Oil and mixed media on canvas, 81.5 by 100 cm. Comment1 Painted in the 1920s. Provenance: Private collection, Europe. Authenticity certificate from the experts N. Aleksandrova and T. Zelyukina. Exhibited: Sovremennoe frantsuzskoe iskusstvo , The State Museum of New Western Art, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, 1928 (label on the reverse). Literature: Exhibition catalogue, Sovremennoe frantsuzskoe iskusstvo , Moscow, 1928, p. 55, No. 131, listed with incorrect measurements. Maison rose is a marvellous work which is very characteristic of Georges Annenkov’’’’s early years in Paris. As is the case with most of this artist’’’’s landscapes of the late 1920s, it portrays a very real corner of Paris or the suburbs of Paris. In the process of transferring his plein-air sketch to canvas however, Annenkov transformed a genre scene glimpsed in the street, with its staffage figure and a poster pillar, into the portrait of a single house – the pink house – which is lent a Classical air by its stone parapet and stands out as a localised patch of colour against the melancholy, monochrome grey-blue of a Paris day. Annenkov left Soviet Russia in 1924, already an established artist, to present his portrait of Trotsky at the opening of the Soviet pavilion at the Venice Biennale. But he did not return home, choosing instead to become a “Russian Parisian”. The artist was to spend the greater part of his life in France, working successfully for both stage and screen, and painting a large number of still lifes, landscapes and portraits. It was here that he developed his trademark style which gained him celebrity in Parisian artistic circles and which found expression in the splendid series of views of Paris, including the present lot. Even Annenkov’’’’s earliest Paris landscapes were two-dimensional, decorative and divested of the dynamic that had characterised his Russian period. As a general rule they feature a muted palette, large patches of colour accentuating individual areas of the composition and, at the same time, a graphic quality, with strong contour lines which frequently do not coincide with the colour blocks of the buildings or the cursorily painted tree-tops. At the turn of the decade however, the artist’’’’s style became even freer and more fluid and his houses lost even the most nominal sense of materiality, apparently floating in a sea of colour. At that time, their outlines acquired a life of their own, subject only to the necessity of constructing the compositional skeleton. The motif of the pink house recurred throughout Annenkov’’’’s work of the late 1920s – sometimes vividly, sometimes more softly picked out in colour against a landscape of a more subdued palette. One notable example is a work of the same title from the collection of René Guerra, an eminent collector of Russian émigré art.

YURI PAVLOVICH ANNENKOV 1889-1974 Two Costume Designs for Cagliostro of Gregory Ratov: Woman in a Black Hat and Zöraida Gouache and crayon on paper, 42,5 x 32,5 cm. (2) Annenkov was born in Petropavlovsk in Siberia, the son of a political exile. He studied in St. Petersburg between 1908-11, and then in Paris under Maurice Denis and Felix Valotton. Annenkov returned to Russia in 1913, and lived in Moscow and St. Petersburg until his emigration to France in 1924. He acquired fame for his illustrations of Alexander Blok's epic poem The Twelve. Annenkov worked for the theatre and cinema and is also known for his portraits, in ink and oil. He died in Paris.