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Author:

Vladimir Baranov-rossiné

Born/Dead:

Kherson (Ucrania), 1888-París, 1942

Date:

Works

Biography

Born in Kherson, in the Ukraine, in 1888, Vladimir Baranov-Rossiné would spend his life and career between Russia and Paris. After studies in Odessa and St. Petersburg, he exhibited in early avant-garde exhibitions held in Moscow and St. Petersburg, alongside Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, Alexandra Exter and the Burliuk brothers, among others. He also participated in an important exhibition in Kiev in 1908 devoted to the synthesis between painting, sculpture, poetry and music. An intense interest in the idea of a synthesis of the arts, a legacy of Russian Symbolism, would remain with Baranov-Rossiné all his life

In. 1910, he left for Paris where, aside from frequenting Russian émigré circles, he was particularly friendly with Hans Arp and Robert and Sonia Delaunay. His colourful paintings of the period show an assimilation of Cubism, Futurism and Orphism, and he exhibited regularly at the Salon des Indépendants. At the same time, he experimented with sculpture, executing two large openwork assemblage sculptures, constituted of fragments of painted metal, wood and found objects. One of these sculptures, exhibited at the 1914 Salon des Indépendants, provoked such consternation and ridicule that he later threw it into the Seine. Only the French critic, Guillaume Apollinaire, understood its radical and prescient expressive idiom, comparable to Alexander Archipenko's early "sculpto-paintings" of the same years

At. the outbreak of the World War First, Baranov-Rossiné moved to Norway where he would remain until 1917 when he went back to Russia. Between 1917 and 1925, his production was prolific; he exhibited alongside Marc Chagall, Nathan Altman, Yurii Annenkov and other representatives of the Soviet avant-garde, and he taught painting in a studio in Petrograd. At the same time, he explored his earlier interest in a synthesis of the arts, inventing a "colour-clavier" and presenting "optophonic" concerts in Moscow theatres, in which, as the piano's keys were played, the music was "translated" by coloured disks projected on a screen

Baranov-Rossiné. returned to settle in Paris in 1925. He continued to paint, in a more Surrealist manner, made a few sculptures, and experimented with materials, colours and sounds, exhibiting regularly in the Parisian Salons. His works may be found in many public collections, including those of the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1943 he was arrested in France by the Gestapo and deported. He died in the Auschwitz concentration camp (Poland)

Margit. Rowell