THE KHARKOV LABORATORY 1918-1929 - James Butterwick · He was born, lived and died in Kharkov – which, until 1934, was the capital of Soviet Ukraine. In 1916 – along with Vladimir

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BORIS KOSAREV

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34 Ravenscourt Road, London W6 OUGtel +44 (0)20 8748 7320 email [email protected]

www.jamesbutterwick.com

Boris Kosarev1897-1994

THE KHARKOV LABORATORY

1918-1929

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I am delighted to introduce the work of Boris Kosarev (1897-1994) to a Western audience.

This exhibition concentrates on Kosarev’s early years, from 1918 to 1929, when he was among the leading lights of the Ukrainian Avant-Garde in his home city of Kharkov, by 1917 the nominal capital of Soviet Ukraine. The show is divided into works on paper in a variety of styles, and photography, highlighting the versatility for which the artist was known.

At the time of the 1917 revolution, Kosarev became a founding father of the avant-garde ‘Group of Seven’. Together with fellow members Vasily Ermilov and Emmanuel Mané-Katz, his stated aim was to ‘found a new culture’. The artists were swept up in the brief enthusiasm for the end of the Tsarist era. The artist’s daughter, Nadezhda Kosareva, refers to the ‘carnival epoch’ that characterised Ukraine and Kharkov in the 1920s.

The exhibition begins with a work related to Kosarev’s 1918 stay at the Sinyakova dacha, Krasnaya Polyana, outside Kharkov (hence the inclusion of three works from the period by the second of the five Sinyakova sisters, Maria). It was here, according to Liliya Brik, the lover of Futurist artist Vladimir Mayakovsky, that ‘Futurism was conceived’. It was also here that Kosarev befriended the Futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov, and illustrated his verse ‘The Wood Nymph’. As with several other pieces on display, the illustration is executed in the neo-primitivist style that derived from Ukrainian folklore.

By 1923, Kosarev was using his already well-practised technique of collage in works for the theatre. His mask designs for the play Khubeane show an interest in African Folk Art, while Kosarev also uses collage in still life and landscape. The 1920s were a period of intense experimentation for the artist, with work on Bolshevik street decorations, theatre and illustration culminating in his essays in photography.

Although he had initially tried the medium in the late 1910s, Kosarev became an active photographer in 1929, providing a unique record of the making of the classic Soviet film Earth (1930). The director, Oleksandr Dovzhenko, had met Kosarev in 1919 and invited him to be an assistant cameraman - a job Kosarev undertook while simultaneously documenting the film-making itself. Future exhibitions will be dedicated to this exceptional pictorial history.

In the meantime, visitors to the exhibition today can enjoy some of the photographs from the ‘Sorochinsky Market’ series from 1929. These distinctive records, in many cases the only original photos, show the last throes of peasant freedom under Lenin’s New Economic Policy before the brutality of collectivisation. Kosarev’s innate ability to ‘fly beneath the radar’ saved him from persecution, and his flirtation with avant-garde did not count against him in later life. He even received the coveted Stalin Prize in 1947 for his outstanding contribution to theatrical art.

I am extremely grateful to Nadia Kosareva for providing the text for the catalogue, and for her touching and intimate recollections of a much-loved father.

James Butterwick

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Design for a Magazine Cover ‘Spring’, 1922

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Although Vasily Ermilov is perhaps the best-known artist of the Ukrainian Avant-Garde, comparatively little is known about his protégé, collaborator and closest friend: Boris Kosarev (1897-1994).

Kosarev’s work was shown by James Butterwick at TEFAF Maastricht in 2017, in the exhibition From Utopia to Tragedy – Ukrainian Avant-Garde 1914-1934... the years when Kosarev enjoyed creative freedom.

He was born, lived and died in Kharkov – which, until 1934, was the capital of Soviet Ukraine. In 1916 – along with Vladimir Bobritsky, Vladimir Dyakov, Nikolai Kalmykov, Nikolai Mishchenko, Georgy Tsapok and Boleslav Tsibis – Kosarev formed the Avant-Garde association the ‘Group of Seven’ to foster a new approach to art.

‘We are only united by youth!’ they declared. ‘New art – unlike the traditional art of the realists, whose main interest is content – long ago jettisoned objectivity and became non-figurative!’

They were soon joined by Ermilov, Emmanuel Mané-Katz and Alexander Gladkov to form a group known as ‘Seven + Three’ that swiftly gained strength and artistic significance, with their ‘Green Owl’ studio becoming a centre for heated artistic discussion. Two hundred copies of their illustrated album Seven + Three were produced, declaring ‘death to traditional art!’ The cover and typeface were designed by Kosarev.

Kosarev did not have to wait long to adapt this new direction to revolutionary reality – decorating theatrical processions, painting Agitprop trains, designing posters and illustrating books of ‘new’ poetry.

COSMIC KOSAREV

“ Kosarev’s approach reveals one of the

democratic aspects of the Ukrainian character –

the ability to integrate ‘the other’ into national

cultural identity. West/East, European/Asian,

Scythian/Soviet... everything, whatever the

political colouring, finds a place in Kosarev’s

creativity and his sense of himself as an artist.”

MYROSLAVA MUDRAK, PROFESSOR EMERITUS,

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

Boris Kosarev, 1918

Mask for the Play Khubeane (detail), 1923

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MARIA SINYAKOVA’S NAÏVE ADMIRER

In summer 1918, Ermilov took Kosarev with him to the Sinyakova dacha in Krasnaya Polyana, a small village south of Kharkov. The dacha was run by Maria Sinyakova, one of five sisters. Her powerful graphic works are imbued with the light of the dacha and its tumbling gardens, which she viewed as a pagan paradise.

Her Venus triptych (reprised in 1971) centres on a long-haired nude flanked by leafy branches. The side panels – featuring naked bathers, cows, horses, goats, loving couples, a mother with babe-in-arms beneath a giant flower, and a visit by the poet Dante in the bottom-right corner – are permeated with the light of Krasnaya Polyana.

‘Naïve art,’ wrote Maria, ‘fills my soul with the space granted by God for understanding beauty.’ It is hard to exaggerate her bohemian influence on the young Kosarev. His stay at Krasnaya Polyana was followed by a period of intense activity, much in the style of Sinyakova’s ‘naïve’ or ‘primitive’ pictures.

The three Sinyakova works illustrated in the pages that follow originate from the years 1914-16. One is annotated Krasnaya Polyana – Summer 1914. The third picture, on page 13, is the later version of Venus. Krasnaya Polyana became a refuge during hard times – an anthem to the joys of life.

The Sinyakova sisters were not only beautiful but highly original: cultural sophisticates with a taste for extravagance and outlandish behaviour. They were the muses of the poets and artists who constantly visited Krasnaya Polyana – like Boris Pasternak, Nikolai Aseyev and the Futurist Velimir Khlebnikov, who lyrically referred to them as a Костер Cестер

(‘Bonfire of Sisters’).

Khlebnikov and the handsome, much younger Kosarev competed for the favours of the youngest sister Vera. She preferred Kosarev, and kept his letters for the rest of her life. Kosarev, however, idolized Khlebnikov – who wrote poems for Vera and was wracked by jealousy.

To art critic Larisa Savitskaya, Khlebnikov’s poetry ‘explores the pagan myth of a life-cycle revived by the constant presence of water and constant movement. This is similar to the direct or associative presence of water and constant movement in the works of the youngest member of the Sinyakova group: Boris Kosarev.’

Krasnaya Polyana today

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Tree of Life, 1914Watercolour on paper35.4 x 22 cmAnnotated and dated Красная Поляна. Лето 1914 (Krasnaya Polyana. Summer 1914) lower centre

P R O V E N A N C EAcquired from the artist by Dmytro Horbachov, Kiev

E X H I B I T E DMaria Sinyakova – Union of Writers of Ukrainian SSR, Kiev, November 1969The Phenomenon of the Ukrainian Avant-Garde 1910-1935 – The Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2001, p. 173Praising Plahta – Proun Gallery, Moscow, 2009, p. 78 (ill.)Boris Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv 1915-1931 – Ukrainian Museum, New York, 4 December 2011 - 2 May 2012, p. 148 (ill.)Boris Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv 1915-1931 – Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema, Kiev, 17 May - 12 June 2012, p. 148 (ill.)

L I T E R A T U R EUkrainian Avant-Garde Art 1910-1930 – Kiev, Mistetstvo Publishers, 1996, no. 268 Ukrainian Modernism 1910-1930 – Kiev, National Museum of Ukrainian Art, 2006, p. 269 (ill.)

MA RI A S INYAKOVA ( 1 890-1984)

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Carousel, 1916Watercolour on paper35.4 x 22 cm


E X H I B I T E DMaria Sinyakova – Union of Writers of Ukrainian SSR, Kiev, November 1969Ukrainian Avant-Garde – Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art, 16 December 1990 - 24 February 1991, no. 174, p. 132 (ill.)The Phenomenon of the Ukrainian Avant-Garde 1910-1935 – The Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2001, p. 174 (ill.)Ukrainian Modernism 1910-1930 – Kiev, National Museum of Ukrainian Art, 2006, p. 271 (ill.)Praising Plahta – Proun Gallery, Moscow, 2009, p. 72 (ill.)Boris Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv 1915-1931 – Ukrainian Museum, New York, 4 December 2011 - 2 May 2012, p. 149 (ill.)Boris Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv 1915-1931 – Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema, Kiev, 17 May - 12 June 2012, p. 149 (ill.)

L I T E R A T U R EUkrainian Art from Bronze Age to Contemporary Times – Rodovid, 2016 (ill.)


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Venus, 1971Watercolour on paper36 x 28 cmVersion of the work painted in the 1920sSigned М. Синякова lower right


E X H I B I T E DPostponed Futures – GRAD Gallery, London, 26 April - 24 June 2017, p. 6 (ill.)

C O M P A R I T I V E L I T E R A T U R EUSA-Russia: On the Crossroads of Cultures – Tretyakov Gallery Magazine, Moscow, 2005 (ill.)Ukrainian Modernism 1910-1930 – Kiev, National Museum of Ukrainian Art, 2006, p. 273 (ill.)Praising Plahta – Proun Gallery, Moscow, 2009, p. 62 (ill.)Encyclopedia of the Russian Avant-Garde – Moscow 2014, Volume II, p. 393 (ill.)


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RURAL IDYLL

‘Naïve’ works have a significant place in Kosarev’s œuvre.

To illustrate Khlebnikov’s poem Vila & Leshy, Kosarev portrayed water and figures moving in a (vicious) circle: a mysterious ritual dance among the willow-trees sees four fantastic creatures – hermaphrodites and wood-sprites – spiral drunkenly down into a forest pool, flanked by a dove and a snoozing hound.

Three Hamlets, Two Villages (1921) and Village Pastoral (1927) are hymns to sincere, simple-hearted, unsophisticated emotion: odes to the rural image of Adam and Eve as keepers of the Earth and procreators of the human race. These compositions are divided up into small scenes, like icons, yet possess overall unity of meaning. The bottom row features scenes of carnal love – symbolized by the presence of a phallus in Three Hamlets, Two Villages. The middle row portrays the fruit of such love: the harvest. Top-right we find a cow in front of giant flowers; top-left we see a dove flying over a fish with a tree of life on its back – Slavic symbols of the origins of life.

In another ‘naïve’ work, Коммуналка (Communal Flat) (1921), the proletarian ‘heroes’ are treated with irony. There is nothing individual about their personalities: this is the new, ‘real’ proletarian form of collective co-existence. The naked maidens of Krasnaya Polyana have been encaged in a communal apartment. They do not fit. Kosarev portrays the subjects as grotesque rather than heroic.

There was something ‘diabolical’ about proletarian Futurist art. Kosarev liked to quote the words of the Russian émigré writer Roman Gul: ‘I could see that the beautiful Lady-Revolution had a pig’s snout instead of a face beneath her red hat.’

One watercolour-gouache by Kosarev is dedicated to Pavel Kuznetsov, leader of the Symbolist artists’ group ‘The Blue Rose’. Kosarev paid close attention to the plant-world, which helped link reality and artificiality, and is a key feature of the Ukrainian Avant-Garde. Kosarev could easily transform delicately delineated flowers or leaves into constructed geometric or abstract forms, then present them wrapped in a bow, like a bouquet. Futurist fonts, stylized tulips and ‘floral’ motifs became constant elements of his graphic approach. His design for the cover of the magazine Весна (Spring) involves a title half-obscured by intertwining branches of blossom, tied with a whimsical serpentine ribbon. Two white birds circle around, evoking the cycle of life.

Dedicated to Pavel Kuznetsov (detail), 1921

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Illustration to Khlebnikov’s ‘The Wood Nymph’, 1918Gouache and watercolour on paper21 x 26 cm

P R O V E N A N C EThe artist, KharkovNadezhda Kosareva, the artist’s daughter, Munich

E X H I B I T E DBoris Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv 1915-1931 – Ukrainian Museum, New York, 4 December 2011 - 2 May 2012, p. 145 (ill.)Boris Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv 1915-1931 – Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema, Kiev, 17 May - 12 June 2012, p. 145 (ill.)Boris Kosarev – Ukrpoligraphservice, Kiev, 1998, p. 12 (ill.)

L I T E R A T U R EBoris Kosarev, 1920s: From Painting to Theatre-Movies-Photography – Rodovid, Kharkov, 2009, p. 20 (ill.)

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Dedicated to Pavel Kuznetsov, 1921Gouache and watercolour on paper26 x 22 cm


E X H I B I T E DBoris Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv 1915-1931 – Ukrainian Museum, New York, 4 December 2011 - 2 May 2012, p. 112 (ill.)Boris Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv 1915-1931 – Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema, Kiev, 17 May - 12 June 2012, p. 112 (ill.)Boris Kosarev – Ukrpoligraphservice, Kiev, 1998 (no. 65)


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Three Hamlets, Two Villages, 1921Watercolour on paper24 x 19 cmSigned and dated Б.K. 1921 lower right


E X H I B I T E DBoris Kosarev. Modernist Kharkiv 1915-1931 – Ukrainian Museum, New York, 4 December 2011 - 2 May 2012, p.136 (ill.)Boris Kosarev. Modernist Kharkiv 1915-1931 – Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema, Kiev, 17 May - 12 June 2012, p.136 (ill.)Boris Kosarev – Ukrpoligraphservice, Kiev, 1998, p. 8 (ill.)Postponed Futures – GRAD Gallery, London, 26 April – 24 June 2017, p. 44 (ill.)

L I T E R A T U R EBoris Kosarev, 1920s: From Painting to Theatre-Movies-Photography – Rodovid, Kharkov, 2009, p. 104 (ill.)Boris Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv, View of Earth – National Centre of Oleksandr Dovzhenko, 2011, p. 151 (ill., fragment)Encyclopaedia of Russian Avant-Garde – Moscow, 2013, Part I, p. 497 (ill.)

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Communal Flat, 1921Pencil on paper22 x 22.5 cm


E X H I B I T E DBoris Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv 1915-1931 – Ukrainian Museum, New York, 4 December 2011 - 2 May 2012, p. 141 (ill.)Boris Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv 1915-1931 – Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema, Kiev, 17 May - 12 June 2012, p. 141 (ill.)

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Design for a Magazine Cover ‘Spring’, 1922Watercolour on paper28 x 22 cm



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Village Pastoral, 1927Pencil on paper26 x 22 cmSigned and dated Б.K. 1927 lower right


E X H I B I T E DBoris Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv 1915-1931 – Ukrainian Museum, New York, 4 December 2011 - 2 May 2012, p. 133 (ill.)Boris Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv 1915-1931 – Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema, Kiev, 17 May - 12 June 2012, p. 133 (ill.)Boris Kosarev – Ukrpoligraphservice, Kiev, 1998, p. 10 (ill.)Postponed Futures – GRAD Gallery, London, 26 April - 24 June 2017, p. 44 (ill.)


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CARNIVAL KHARKOV

Back in Kharkov, the 1920s would have had something of a ‘carnival’ mood. The winds of freedom whirled inside Kosarev’s head, even if the monotonous colours of everyday life hardly conjured up the fun of the fair. It was a time of greys and blacks, dust and dirt... with red banners fluttering everywhere.

Despite struggling against cold and hunger, Boris Kosarev and his friend Ermilov created their own studio at the top of a run-down building. It was dubbed the ‘Loft’ and would serve them for the rest of their days. It included a large-windowed attic and two tiny kitchens. Ermilov lived and worked here all his life, but Kosarev lived elsewhere with his family, and only came to the ‘Loft’ to work. The two artists shared many projects – sometimes working in tandem, sometimes in competition. They and their friendship managed to survive despite the harsh Soviet environment.

They played with form and used all kinds of materials – from paper and cardboard to metal, foil, collage and fabric. The use of collage marked the start of Kosarev’s ‘experimental’ period. He moved from abstraction to more condensed imagery – a transition from painting to a simpler, flatter form of composition. Given the spartan materials available, it was the energy of colour that burst through.

ABSTRACTION & COLLAGE

After exploring Futurism, Cubo-Futurism and Constructivism, and the contrast between straight lines and curves, a transformation took place in Kosarev’s work – from objective to non-objective, i.e. towards abstraction. This evolution can be seen in his surviving Suprematist still-lifes.

Few of his abstract compositions survive. Their geometric clarity reveals a Malevich sense of architectural form. Almost all Kosarev’s Suprematist compositions are on squared paper with a circle in the middle: only pure form remains.

Kosarev’s surviving collages are simple and laconic, reflecting the paucity of materials available (often just cardboard or coloured paper). Yet he managed to turn these shortages to his advantage. Take Drying Linen (1921) – a small, expressive composition where the syncopated rhythm of patches of vivid colour suggest a gathering storm. Other surviving collages were reduced to a simple combination of compositional balance and planes of colour.

His Guitar (1923) was conceived as a collage, but ended up using watercolour as well. Both Kosarev and Ermilov worked on different guitar compositions at the same time, the latter using wood and paint. They were inspired by Picasso’s handling of the subject, and silently jousted over their interpretations of their hero’s work.

The following year, Kosarev designed brightly-coloured costumes and actors’ make-up for the play Khubeane (about an African tribe’s struggles against foreign exploitation). They zing with visual panache. As Myroslava Mudrak observes: ‘The search for different, exotic cultures puts Kosarev’s art on a par with the Primitivism to be found in the Avant-Garde.’

Boris Kosarev in the Loft, 1917-18Photo from the production of R. Pobedimsky’s play Khubeane, 1923

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Drying Linen, 1921Collage on cardboard22 x 21 cm


E X H I B I T E DBoris Kosarev – Ukrpoligraphservice, Kiev, 1998, p. 14 (ill.)


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Suprematist Still Life, 1921Gouache and collage on cardboard28 x 22 cmSigned and dated 13.XI.21 Б.K. lower left




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Suprematist Composition, 1921Collage on cardboard22 x 21 cm


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Still Life with a Glass, 1921Collage on cardboard22 x 21 cm


E X H I B I T E DBoris Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv 1915-1931 – Ukrainian Museum, New York, 4 December 2011 - 2 May 2012, p. 165 (ill.)Boris Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv 1915-1931 – Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema, Kiev, 17 May - 12 June 2012 p. 165 (ill.)Boris Kosarev – Ukrpoligraphservice, Kiev, 1998, p. 14 (ill.)

L I T E R A T U R EBoris Kosarev, 1920s: From Painting to Theatre-Movies-Photography, – Rodovid, Kharkov, 2009, p. 150 (ill.)

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Still Life with a Ball, 1922Collage on cardboard22 x 21 cm




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Summer Flowers, 192osCollage on cardboard22 x 21 cm




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Guitar, 1923Watercolour and collage on paper38 x 31 cmSigned and dated Б.K. 1923 lower right


E X H I B I T E DBoris Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv 1915-1931 – Ukrainian Museum, New York, 4 December 2011 - 2 May 2012, p. 177 (ill.)Boris Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv 1915-1931, – Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema, Kiev, 17 May - 12 June 2012, p. 177 (ill.)Boris Kosarev – Ukrpoligraphservice, Kiev, 1998 (no. 87)Postponed Futures – GRAD Gallery, London, 26 April – 24 June 2017, p.47 (ill.)


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Mask for the Play Khubeane, 1923Collage on cardboard22 x 21 cm


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C O M P A R A T I V E L I T E R A T U R EBoris Kosarev, 1920s: From Painting to Theatre-Movies-Photography – Rodovid, Kharkov, 2009, p. 60 (ill.)

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Poster for Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s film Earth, 1930

ODESSA ENCOUNTER

Kosarev’s fate could have been very different. In summer 1919, at the height of the Russian Civil War, he left Kharkov with Denikin’s White Army for Odessa in southern Ukraine. His next port of call – as for many members of that army – could have been Crimea, Constantinople, Greece or New York. But Kosarev stayed put. He could not forget Futurist Kharkov and the wondrous utopia of the Ukrainian Avant-Garde.

In Odessa he was ‘mocked for everything I did as an artist by those new connoisseurs: Red Army soldiers.’ In 1919 he designed two posters with hands swollen from the cold (they even trembled in summer, despite his wearing a coat). ‘When I brought these posters to the ROSTA telegraph agency, they were rejected. The soldiers laughed at them. As I was shuffling out, a pale man in rounded glasses stopped me by the door and offered me a job. It was Isaac Babel*. He saved me from starvation.’

FROM CANVAS TO CAMERA

Kosarev first met his fellow-Ukrainian Oleksandr Dovzhenko at the ‘Green Owl’ studio in 1919, when Kosarev’s works made an indelible impression on the future film director. In 1928, when he was preparing to shoot his masterpiece Земля (Earth), Dovzhenko contacted Kosarev and invited him to join his team.

The film was a hymn to the Earth and to union with Nature – and to the union between men and women as guardians of the human race. Dovzhenko saw these very themes in Kosarev’s works, which he used as story-board. Kosarev also worked as assistant cameraman, and made a wonderful photo-reportage called Moments from the Filming of Earth (following up with his photographic series on ‘Sorochintsy Market’ the same year).

It was still impossible to predict the tragedies that would occur in the early 1930s, as the Soviet regime grew more and more inflexible. Stalinist repression cost the lives of many of Kosarev’s most gifted compatriots. His existence became a balancing act between creativity and the need to espouse State collective values. Politics and ideology left him cold, but he kept silent.

VIRTUOSO ARTIST

Boris Kosarev’s long life was full of discoveries and creative experiment. His drawings, paintings and collages were not intended for exhibition. They were his laboratory. The ‘Loft’ studio he helped build in 1920 burned down on 23 March 1994. Many priceless drawings, collages and letters went up in flames. That same day, in his Kharkov apartment, Kosarev breathed his last.

As Dmytro Horbachov eloquently put it: ‘Boris Kosarev was a virtuoso artist. He was and remains one of the finest and most expressive masters of the Ukrainian Avant-Garde.’

I am grateful to James Butterwick for helping to keep my father’s memory alive.

Nadia Kosareva

*Isaac Babel (1894-1940) Soviet writer.

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Scenes from the series ‘Sorochinsky Market’ (1929)Gelatin Silver prints, various sizes, each approx. 4 x 4.5 cm

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Framing:FA Pollak70 Rosebery AvenueLondon EC 1R 4RR Tel: 0207 837 6161

Photography:Hugh Kelly6 Minchenden CrescentLondon N14 7ELTel: 0208 886 3172 Oil restorer:Paola CamussoUnit 33, Craft Central21 Clerkenwell GreenLondon EC1R 0DXTel: 0207 607 8154

Paper restorer: Rosemary Stone9 Bounds Green RoadLondon N22 8HETel: 07815 910045

B O R I S KO S A R E VK H A R KO V 1 8 9 7 – 1 9 9 4

Boris Kosarev – studied at the Kharkov Arts Institute from 1915 to 1918. Towards the end of his course he became a

member of the Cubo-Futurist ‘Group of Seven’, contributing to joint exhibitions and the album Seven + Three. He

spent summer 1918 at the Sinyakova dacha in Krasnaya Polyana, meeting the Futurist poet, Velimir Khlebnikov.

The influence of Maria Sinyakova and Ukrainian folklore is evident in his drawings Three Hamlets, Two Villages and

Village Pastoral. Kosarev moved to Odessa in 1920 but returned to Kharkov in 1921 and subsequently concentrated

on theatre and cinema, designing sets for Mikhail Lossovsky’s adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Star-Child in 1922, and assisting director Oleksandr Dovzhenko on the

Soviet classic Earth in 1930 (an album of Kosarev’s superlative photographs of the filming, which took place near Poltava,

was recently published by the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Centre in Kiev). Kosarev was evacuated to

Pavlodar, Kazakhstan, during World War II; landed a Stalin Prize in 1947; and taught in Lvov 1948/9. His final decades

were spent back in his native Kharkov where in 1985, aged 88, he gave a rare interview to mark the 100th

anniversary of Khlebnikov’s birth.

BIOGRAPHY First published in 2018 by James Butterwick

WWW.JAMESBUTTERWICK.COM

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electrical, mechanical

or otherwise, without first seeking the permission of the

copyright owners and the publishers.

All images in this catalogue are protected by copyright

and should not be reproduced without permission of

the copyright holder. Details of the copyright holder to

be obtained from James Butterwick.

© 2018 James Butterwick

Director: Natasha Butterwick

Editorial Consultant: Simon Hewitt, Tom Horan

Stand: Anna Kuznetsova

Catalogue: Katya Belyaeva

Design and production by Footprint Innovations Ltd

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

With special thanks to: Beatrice Gimpel,

Jan Fischer, Dmitry Didorenko, Valery Kopiika,

Tanya Khoptinskaya and Nadezhda Kosareva

58

Documents

THE KHARKOV LABORATORY 1918-1929 - James Butterwick · He was born, lived and died in Kharkov – which, until 1934, was the capital of Soviet Ukraine. In 1916 – along with Vladimir