Fedor Semenovich Bogorodsky

Bogorodsky was a trained acrobat and performer who had worked in the circus and the ballet. In 1928 he left the Soviet Union to spend two years studying abroad, first in Italy, where he exhibited at the Soviet Pavilion of the Venice Biennale and met and forged a lasting friendship with the writer Maxim Gorky, and then in Germany. In Berlin Bogorodsky was at the centre of Weimar café culture, by day he worked on productions for the State Opera and Music Hall and by night he was soaking up the atmosphere of the cabarets and dance halls. The present works belongs to the In the Café, Berlin series in which he recorded the circus performers, dancers and down-and-outs.

The Soviet art critic and dealer Victor Kholodkov (1948-2015) was particularly drawn to the graphic works and typographical experiments of the Russian avant-garde. He published a number of articles on the subject and contributed to exhibitions after his emigration from the Soviet Union in 1989, including the 1992 Guggenheim exhibition The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde. His extensive collection of papers and artwork relating to VKhUTEMAS was acquired by the Getty Museum in 1995 and his collection of Soviet music sheet covers is now in The Library of Congress.

The present selection of graphic works, oils and original film posters (lots 107-138) from the first half of the 20^th century is characteristic of Kholodkov’s interests in the convergence of artistic, cultural and political concerns of the period. He is known to have purchased much of his collection directly from the artists or their families; others were acquired directly from Nikolai Khardzhiev, another well-known collector of the Russian avant-garde.