Alexander Iacovleff - the Artist and the Traveller. Th e Birth of the Image
Alexander Iacovleff (1887-1938) was born in Saint-Petersburg but is recorded in the history of art of two countries - Russia and France, though the geography of his life and work covers almost half of the world. When in the summer of 1917 Iacovleff left Petersburg he could not even imagine that he would never return to his motherland. Th e results of his artistic endeavors in the Far East he exhibited in a private Parisian gallery instead of the Russian Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. Th is is where he started his rise to the worldwide recognition. Iacovleff ’s fi rst exhibition was organized in Paris, in the Brabazanges gallery (April - May, 1920) and later in London Graft on gallery. His Neo-Academic clarity of this period fl avored with the spicy Eastern motives fully satisfi ed the needs of the Parisian art-critics. Th e recognizable plasticity of the artist’s style greatly contributed to the fi nal formation of his artistic language. In May, 1926 Iacovleff had a one-man show in the Charpantier gallery, the exhibited works illustrated Le Croisiere Noir, Andre Citroen’s expedition in Africa. In his works we see the balance between the artist’s interest to exotic and the academic imagery, the Far- Eastern and the African works kept in tune with the Art-Deco and the classical tendencies. It is important that Iacovleff ’s classicism came from Italy and Petersburg of the 1910’s and was not provoked by the artist’s ambitions to comply with the expectations of the postwar artistic reality in Europe. One can suggest that the Parisian audience viewed the Chinese albums and the African suite as the continuation of the trend of the Eastern exotism set by the Diaghilev’s ballets. But this trend was now not only artistic; it had also the documentary and ethnographical support. Two European exhibitions of 1920 and 1921, compiled of the works he did during his voyages to the countries of the Far East and the one from 1926 that illustrated his trip across Africa confi rmed Iacovleff ’s reputation as the artist-traveller.