One of the few landscapes painted in oil by Dobuzhinsky, this is still a typical work by the melancholy poet of St. Petersburg. The view from above intensifies the expressive volumes and outlines of the conglomeration of absurd constructions filling the courtyard at the foot of the gigantic tenement block, and the fragile, bare branches of the trees in the wretched garden, hemmed in by the blank walls of the buildings.

Dobuzhinsky Mstislav

Dobuzhinsky, Mstislav Valerianovich
1875, Novgorod — 1957, New York
Graphic artist, painter, theatrical designer, teacher, landscapist. Studied at St Petersburg university (1895–1899). Studied at Lev Dmitriev-Kavkazsky’s School of Painting in St Petersburg (1890s) and at the schools of Anton Ažbe and Simon Hollosy in Munich (1899–1901). Contributed to exhibitions (from 1902). Designed for theatres in St Petersburg and Moscow and Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (from 1907). Taught at Elizaveta Zvantseva’s school of painting and drawing in St Petersburg (1906–1910) and the Petrograd State Free Art Studios/ VKHUTEIN (1918–1923). Emigrated (1924). Designed for theatres in Riga, Paris, Kaunas (1929–1935) and New York.