Boris Anisfeld

Boris Izrailevich Anisfeld (1878–1973) was a Russian-American painter and theater designer.

1878 - October 2. Boris Izrailevich (Srulevich) Anisfeld is born in Bieltsy, in the Bessarabia Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Moldova), into the family of Srul Ruvinovich Anisfeld, an estate manager, and Gitlya Istkovna Anisfeld. Until he is seventeen, the future artist lives in his parents’ home. He learns German and French.

1885 - Anisfeld learns to play the violin, and begins to take up drawing.

1895 - Anisfeld enters the Odessa Drawing School, where he studies with K. K. Kostandi, at that time the leading teacher of portraiture and figure painting in Odessa. He meets V. A. Izdebsky, S. L. Abugov, and D. D. Burliuk.

1900 - Anisfeld enters the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. His first teacher is P. O. Kovalevsky, a painter of battle pictures.

1901 - Due to poor health (according to a medical certificate), Anisfeld takes a leave of absence, and spends the summer in Odessa.

1902 - Anisfeld transfers to I. A. Repin’s class, which Repin’s assistant D. N. Kardovsky directs after 1903. (In 1907, Kardovsky becomes a teacher of genre and portrait painting). Anisfeld takes a room on the Petersburg Side, at Bolshaya Spasskaya Street, number 15, apt. 23. He shares the room with A. I. Savinov, who also studying with Kardovsky.

1903 - The Academy’s Advisory Council denies Anisfeld a one-time grant of financial aid. Yet twice - in March and December - his sketches are praised.

1904 - The Council decides to give Anisfeld a one-time grant. With the understanding of the Academy that he will apply himself to his art studies, Anisfeld spends the summer traveling around Russia-and also every summer thereafter, until 1909. In December, he marries Frieda Glaeserman, the daughter of a Pskov merchant. She, apparently, had been taking art lessons with Anisfeld.

1905 - The artist and critic I. E. Grabar ‘discovers’ the young painter, and introduces him to S. P. Diaghilev. Anisfeld joins a circle of artists who are close to The World of Art group. That summer, he and his wife travel along the Neva and the Western Dvina, and then via the Dnepr to Crimea, where they spend some time in Gurzuf, and meet Maxim Gorky.

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