Boris Anisfeld depicts here his wife Frida Anisfeld (née Glyaserman). Lady in Green is a rare example of a portrait in Boris Anisfeld’s oeuvre. The portrait painted in the artist’s studio in St Petersburg shows a young woman with a tragic fate; many years later, suffering from depression, Frida committed suicide. Creating a concentrated female image immersed in her inner thoughts, Anisfeld unwittingly predicts the future. The dissonance between the intense tones and the psychological characteristics introduces a note of tension and drama.

Anisfeld Boris

Anisfeld, Boris (Ber) Israelevich
1879, Beltsy, Bessarabia — 1973, Chicago
Painter, graphic artist, sculptor, theatrical designer, teacher. Studied under Gennady Ladyzhensky and Kiriak Kostandi at the Odessa School of Art (1895–1900) and under Ilya Repin and Dmitry Kardovsky at the Higher School of Art, Imperial Academy of Arts (1900–1909). Member of the Salon d’Automne in Paris (1906) and the World of Art (1911). Contributed to the exhibitions of the Union of Russian Artists (1906–1910), World of Art (1906, 1911–1917), International Exhibition in Venice (1907), Exhibitions of Russian Art in Paris (1906) and Berlin (1906), Secession in Vienna (1908), etc. Theatrical designer from 1907. For Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes designed the Rimsky-Korsakov’s ballet