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Paris and New-York of Sergey Sudejkin

St. Petersburg, Moscow, Tbilisi, Paris, New-York and Chicago journalists wrote about him. In the East and West he was called the most typical Russian artist. Western masters imitated his pastorals, made scenery and costumes for the performances in ⌠Sudejkin■ style, painted offices and private houses basing on the images created by him.

Painting on a theme of the theatrical performance ⌠Romance by Glinka■. France. 1921 [zoom (48k)]

The fate of many Russian masters after 1917 was cruel toward them, but not toward the favourite of the audience and managers. Sudejkin who accompanied cabaret "The Bat" of Nikita Baliev when it was on tour in Kiev, suddenly finds himself in Tbilisi. He creates the partnership "Blue horns" along with poets and artists that constantly organized different kinds of provoking actions in the tavern "Chimerion" that was painted with demonic and erotic motives. The performances, parties, poets▓ disputes and competitions of artists ≈ everything ceased to exist, as Sudejkin always rushed forward, this time to Paris. There the paths of Nikita Baliev and his best artist Sudejkin crossed again. The posters in the "national" style appeared in the streets of different European countries, where "The Bat" was on tour. On the tiny boards of the "minor stage" the artist remained a great master, showing to Europeans Russia of various kinds ≈ urban, bourgeois, merchants▓ with its fairs, solders, girls, daughters of the age suitable for marriage and ancient traditions, kept after the revolution as if at the theatre. For the performances the artist uses Russian popular prints and old porcelain, farcical scenes and compositions of tapestry, wooden Russian toy and lace patterns. All this proved the deep knowledge of everyday life by the artist. But the popularity demanded sacrifices and artist participated in the decoration of the performances of a number of different companies of Russian emigrants and French theatres, using not only Russian themes, but also Eastern and Western, organically passing from epoch to epoch. In 1921 the master takes part in magnificent parade of Russian art that was placed in some halls of Autumn Salon. French contemporaries of Sudejkin imitate his images, and his canvas "Moscow brides" is purchased by French government for the State Museum ≈ Luxembourg Palace.

Suddenly this favourite of fortune made up his mind to leave for the USA. One of the researchers of the work of Russian master overseas told the following story. Before the departure from France the farewell dinner was organized in his honour. After it Diaghilev, walking along the embankment of Seine, addressing Sudejkin, angrily said:

≈ I don▓t understand how you with your talent, your culture have suddenly decided to go to the USA ≈ the country without culture, and, in the end┘ the country without history!

≈ We will unite and create the history together! ≈ answered Sudejkin.

Master started to live in the USA in 1923 and in spite of the fact that thin threads connected him with Europe he was to take new heights in his creative work. In 1923 Americans saw "Russian painting" of the arrived artist surrounded by canvases by Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Modigliani, Soutin, Savely Sorin, Mary Lorensen in "New Gallery" on Madison Avenue. Yes, this wasn▓t an implicit acknowledgement of talent, as it happened in Paris, in London, but theatre, even American theatre, couldn▓t but take into account the wonderful gift of the emigrant from Russia. Russian images were exotics, a performance that wasn▓t very close, but funny. Sudejkin wasn▓t content with this type of a dialogue, he rapidly searches for a new theme that would become his own and the new approach to the surrounding reality. The writer Alexey Tolstoy who met the artist in Paris noted that he was categorically not satisfied with the present epoch and was interested only in the past, historic subjects, and in particular cases, ethnographic ones. The artist found such subjects in the USA, having become the first artist of black culture. The first painting "Night club in Harlem" out of the series of "black" paintings is stored in the private collection in New-York. The fashion for "black series" was so huge that the collectors came from Switzerland for "American masterpieces". Sudejkin liked to paint black women, especially those who possessed femininity and ardour.

The sketch to the scenery for the performance ⌠Tea-drinking with the car■. France. 1921 [zoom (65k)]

They always wore something light-rose, green or violet in his paintings. His friends, smiling over the chosen range of colours got the answer: "I see them this way!"

Some people say that the drastic change in the creative interests of an artist was done by G. Gershwin▓s opera "Porgy and Bess" on the theme of which he also wrote a number of paintings and even portraits, others see the similarity with Jazz music in his black series that master could endlessly listen to in Night clubs. There are testimonies of his meetings with Duke Ellington and he, in his turn, saw the paintings by the Russian master. The interest toward the national characters and Negro culture was realized by him ten years before American authors and what is even more important, black authors such as Melvin Grey and John Hardric. Music, costumes, dances and relationship with them caused aristocratic response in him that made him to work without orders, by inspiration. The other series of works created overseas was "Americana" ≈ genre painting with the scenes of everyday life and leisure of bohemia. Among the works of the kind is the famous painting "Sixpence for a dance" in which the tradition to purchase any girl who came to entertain herself for one dance is being ridiculed. At the first sight the scene in the dancing is simple and without pretension. But the feeling of the forthcoming event is subtly transmitted by the figures of bright well-dressed girls and in the images of cunning gentlemen searching for company and calculating their opportunities. In this search for subjects and images Sudejkin went to the most unexpected and non-artistic places. For instance, making scenery for "Porgy and Bess" he lived for some time in Charleston, South Carolina and spent a number of hours in Negro slums. This was noted by the journalists who gave the following response. The local newspaper of August 16, 1935, gave the headline "■Perfection■ ≈ thus Russian artist exclaims when he sees a Negro▓s hug". Inhabitants of neighbour quarters came and crowded around his tripod discussing what they saw and not letting him work. He decided to get rid of them. He came for sketches with the pockets full of coins and gave them to the most importunate ones so that they went away from his easel. The money was spent at the very that moment in the hazardous game "crap-game" ≈ dice, but the process itself gave the opportunity to draw ardour, fight, passion.

Life constantly reminded artist of successes and perfection. Suddenly he found the customers for the decoration of the night club "Caucasus" in New-York and then (in 1924) "The basement of the fallen angels". The successful decorations for theatrical plays draw the attention of the heads of company "Steinwein" toward him that ordered him a decorative panel "Divine Spring" on the theme of the ballet by Igor Stravinsky. Then other orders in Russian decorative style followed ≈ "Petrushka" (1943), "Scheherazade" (1944).

The sketch to the performance ⌠Clock■ for N. Baliev. France. 1921 [zoom (95k)]

Among the hundreds of Russian artists-emigrants dispersed throughout different countries after 1917 there were the most successful ones who joint the alien artistic movements and because of that fact were recognized. The creative work of some of them, who didn▓t want to adjust, became less and less intensive; these artists forever remained the masters of pre-revolutionary Russia. Only some of them found interest for themselves in foreign culture and at the same time held the banner of traditions. An established critic of history of art from France Denis Roche wrote like that: "Sudejkin is a real purely Russian and only Russian artist. He knows Moscow and old Moscow Russia very well. Sudejkin fully understands┘ all Eastern motives in Russian life: Persia, Georgia, Armenia and gypsies. He absorbed all sweet heavenly felicities of East. Even in Mahomet▓s paradise he couldn▓t learn anything new┘".