Marking Ivan Bilibin’s anniversary: he took longer to find his calling

16 August 2021 marks the 145th anniversary of the birth of the Russian artist, book illustrator and theater designer Ivan Bilibin.

The electronic collections of the Presidential Library contain numerous postcards with illustrations by Bilibin for fairy tales familiar from childhood - The Tale of Tsar Saltan and The Tale of the Golden Cockerel, as well as unique editions designed by him or with his participation: Onega epics, recorded by A. F. Hilferding in the summer of 1871, the multivolume The History of Russian Art by Igor Grabar, Pictures on Russian history, published under the general editorship [and explanatory text] of S. A. Knyazkov, Calendar of the Russian revolution to mark the 300- anniversary of the royal dynasty Chronicle and obverse collection of the House of Romanov. Izbornik, the pages of which are decorated with colored headpieces, drop caps, endings, photolithographs, is ranked among the masterpieces of typographic art.

Ivan Bilibin did not find his calling immediately. “In 1896 he graduated from high school with a silver medal, and in 1900 he graduated from the full legal course of St. Petersburg University”, - says the preface to the historical calendar Ivan Bilibin – a Singer of Russian Life, published by the Presidential Library on the occasion of the 140th anniversary of his birth. But simultaneously with acquiring knowledge in jurisprudence, Bilibin attended the school of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, then studied in Munich, in the workshop of Anton Ashbe, under the guidance of Ilya Repin he graduated from the Higher Art School of the Academy of Arts.

Since the beginning of the 1900s, Bilibin collaborated with the art and literary illustrated magazine World of Art, and in 1904, after the artist's trip to the Vologda and Arkhangelsk provinces, his article Folk Art of the Russian North appeared on the pages of this publication. It is available it in the electronic reading room at Senate Square, 3 and in any of the more than 1,200 centers of remote access to the Presidential Library’s collections.

The unique "Bilibin" style is easily recognizable by verified compositions, folklore motifs, craving for ornament, a combination of decorative and visual arts, creating the feeling of a single, stylistically verified magical world in which the fairy tale merges with the images of Russian antiquity and nature.

The artist not only illustrated the text, but also created decorative elements, ornaments, developed various fonts, headpieces, and drop caps. Each book edition designed by Bilibin turned into a genuine work of art.

Since 1907, Ivan Bilibin taught at the school of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, in which he once studied himself. Among his students were many future famous artists, with whom he shared not only his skill, but also his concern. Thus, the collections of the Presidential Library provide a digitized letter, where Bilibin appeals to the organizer of art exhibitions and publisher Sergei Makovetsky: “If, perhaps, you have any graphic work, then I ask you to pay attention to the work of Mr. I. Mozalevsky , my student. <...> He is especially good at fabrics from the foliage of trees". Ivan Mozalevsky later became a famous Soviet graphic artist, painter and art critic.

Bilibin was also widely known as a theater artist. Before the revolution in Russia, in St. Petersburg, from 1925 in Paris, and after 1936 - in the USSR, in Leningrad, he created sketches of costumes and scenery for the operas by Alexander Borodin Prince Igor, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov The Tale of Tsar Saltan and The Golden Cockerel, Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Firebird. Some of these sketches are presented in the aforementioned calendar Ivan Bilibin – a Singer of Russian Life.

The personal exhibition of Bilibin, for which he was preparing in 1941, did not take place as the Great Patriotic War began. According to the calendar of the Presidential Library, “...he refuses the proposal of the People's Commissar of Education to evacuate from besieged Leningrad to the deep rear. “They don't flee from the besieged fortress, they defend it”, - his answer was. Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin died of hunger in the very first winter of the siege and was buried in the common grave of professors of the Academy of Arts near the Smolensk cemetery.