The Presidential Library will digitize the works of “the singer of Russian life” Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin

The Presidential Library is actively negotiating with the Ivangorod Museum of Art a future digitization and adding into the electronic stock the family collection of the famous illustrator Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin. August 16, 2017, will mark the 141st anniversary of the Russian artist. The collection of the museum includes more than 100 paintings, graphics and the art-n-crafts works of I. Bilibin in person and his third wife — also an artist, graphic designer and the famous china were painter and author of the best samples of Soviet porcelain — A. V. Schekatihina-Pototskaya.

A calendar designed for the 140th anniversary of Ivan Bilibin became a result of joint work with the Ivangorod Museum of Art. It included the most famous illustrations for Russian fairy tales, as well as the sketches created by the artist for various theatrical productions. In particular, the calendar presents sketches of costumes and scenery for the operas “Prince Igor” by A. P. Borodin and “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, “The Firebird” ballet by I. F. Stravinsky.

Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin actually might not to become a well-known artist: in due time he successfully graduated from the full course of legal studies in St. Petersburg University. However, at the same time he studied painting at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists, then in Munich in classes of the artist A. Ashbe, and after all for another six years he was a student of I. Y. Repin.

From the very beginning, it was something special in Bilibin's works that was making them easily recognizable — a pattern and decorativeness that create the feeling of a single, stylistically adjusted magical world in which the fairy tale merges with the images of Russian antiquity and nature. The artist widely used engraving, cheap popular print, was a true connoisseur of Russian costume and studied everything that created national color.

The greatest fame I. Y. Bilibin received as a theatrical artist and illustrator of Russian fairy tales. From 1899 to 1902 he illustrates a series of six fairy tales, including The Tale of Tsar Saltan and The Tale of the Golden Cockerel. It was Bilibin who created the children's book as a work of art: in addition to illustrating the text he also invented decorative elements, ornaments, developed fonts, illuminations, and decorative drop caps — initial letters.

Apart from the digital copies of the postcards with the most famous artist’s fairy-tale illustrations, there are also other artist’s works on the Presidential Library website. Among these are designed by Bilibin publications including some truly unique. The latter include the Annalistic and Illuminated Anthology of the House of the Romanovs, prepared in honor of the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the reign of the dynasty. Today, this edition is recognized as a masterpiece of typographic art: the pages of the anthology are decorated with colorful headpieces, illuminations, vignettes, endings, and color photoengraving works.

The life of the “singer of Russian life,” the unique artist, illustrator, the graphic modernist closed in besieged Leningrad in 1942. He was buried in the mass grave of professors of the Academy of Arts near the Smolensk cemetery.