Iacovleff, Alexander | A magnificent series of portraits of the peoples and landscape of central Asia

Iacovleff, Alexander

Dessins et Peintures d'Asie. Exécutés au cours de l'Expedition Citroen Centre-Asie. Deuxième mission Haardt Audouin-Dubreuil. Paris: Jules Meynial, 1934

Folio (387 x 279 mm). Illustrated throughout with 50 colorplates numbered 1-50, including one double-page plate. Publisher's stitched paper wrappers, within publisher's portfolio lettered in Chinese; some wear to portfolio.

One of 500 numbered copies — Iacovleff's magnificent series of portraits of the peoples and landscape of central Asia.

Alexandre Iacovleff was a Russian painter born in Saint Petersburg and educated at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. He was an active participant in the Russian art scene, particularly in his work as part of art magazine and movement Mir iskusstva, but left Russia in 1917 to begin a long period of traveling around the world.

Between 1917 and 1919, he traveled to Mongolia, China, and Japan, eventually settling in Paris in the early 1920s, and later travelling again throughout Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and America. Between 1924 and 1925, Iacovleff was the official artist of the Croisière Jaune expedition sponsored by the car maker Citroën. This nearly 20,000-mile journey by car went from Beirut, to Syria, across Afghanistan, the Himalaya Mountains, the Gobi Desert and the rest of Asia, all the way to Peking, under difficult conditions for much of the way.