WILL KYIV OUTDO MOSCOW IN COMPETITION FOR THE PRINCELY COLLECTION?

We have a rare chance to acquire, and make it a museum, the world- famous collection of theatrical painting executed by Prince Nikita Lobanov-Rostovsky, a descendent of Kyiv’s Riurik Dynasty.

The collection consists of a thousand first-rate works, the pictorial witnesses of long bygone shows many of which were put on by world-class theater producers, such as Diaghilev, Meyerhold, or our compatriot Tairov. The artists whose works the prince collects represent the Silver Age of the early twentieth century. They came back from Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, and Armenia. Lobanov-Rostovsky could have said about himself as Catherine II once did, “I am a prince unintentionally, but my calling is as a collector.” Since the 1950s, he has traveled almost all over the world, meeting early twentieth century artists, their relatives, and friends. Guided by his taste (impeccable, as it turned out), he would buy the then unknown and now famous idols rather than the auction favorites. He would discover the greatness of his fatherland’s culture for himself and the West. He says, “ I had a way of denying stereotyped sweeping accusations of the communist threat, missiles, and Gulag with one phrase: ‘Look at the pictures in my house. Here is my Fatherland — wise, kind, talented, and beautiful.”

Delving deep into Russian history, Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky found that many things had taken root in Kyiv. He comes here, visits the sister of great Malevych, finds the house of Exter, and buys sketches by Bohomazov only to give them to the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Moreover, he comes to know that it is in Kyiv that the wonderful scenographic school of Alexandra Exter existed, worthy of admiration for its impact and quality. The school combined the austerity of modern French style and the riot of colors typical of Ukrainian folk art. It is Exter and her followers who brought cubofuturism from Kyiv to the theater stage (not only Ukrainian but also Russian, German, and French). Their works enriched the prince’s collection, which he calls his Ukrainica. “I was shocked,” he admits, “to see so many world-class pieces of art in Kyiv.” All this was hidden so far from human sight that few could guess about the great past of Ukrainian scenography. These works, Prince Nikita notes, would not lose out, if juxtaposed to those of French masters Picasso or Braque; they would their extraordinary quality alone would assure them victory.

Like the works the prince keeps, he also failed to avoid Stalinist persecutions. He was born in exile in Bulgaria, where his parents had fled from Lenin’s Red Terror. “We were fugitives guilty of but one thing, our aristocratic origin.” In 1946, father, mother, and 11-year-old Nikita were put into solitary confinement. “Each of us had our own cell, as if we were some sort of elite,” Prince Nikita sadly jokes. Then slave labor in the quarries. “I had my clothes worn out. What helped me was the convict’s resourcefulness. I made three holes in a sack and pulled it over me... Exile is no enviable existence. God forbid you to live in exile.”

Lobanov-Rostovsky’s collection has become a cultural phenomenon of global scale. There is no other private collection of this level in the world. This unique ensemble should be preserved intact. “Our collection reflects a stratum of overall Russian culture, with its unmatched achievements both in Russia and in exile. I learned that the government of Moscow expressed a desire to acquire our collection. I have devoted all my life to this, and it would be an honor for me to see it in a metropolitan museum.”

The collector also agrees that his collection could become a museum in Kyiv. To do this, Kyivans should link private capital with government guarantees. The collection could be exhibited, for example, in an old mansion on Moskovska Street (now a branch of the Kyiv History Museum), accompanied by detailed information about the collectors (Nina and Nikita Lobanov- Rostovsky), the painters, including the Ukrainians who are, as it was mentioned above, adequately represented in the collection, and the theater producers and productions. And, since this collection is in demand the world over, the money spent on buying it would return quite fast. The owner has already received invitations to exhibit the collection in Paris and Madrid.

By force of unfavorable historical circumstances, our city has lost many artistic treasures, such as works by that most famous Ukrainian Kazymir Malevych, Scythian gold, paintings by the Ukrainian Picasso Oleksandr Bohomazov, and the mosaics of St. Michael’s Golden Domed Cathedral. I can only wish this will not happen to the theatrical collection gleaned by the indefatigable descendent of Prince Volodymyr the Great.

PS. Ukrainian figures of culture have addressed an open letter on Nikita Lobanov-Rostovsky’s collection to Deputy Premier Mykola Zhulynsky, Minister of Culture Bohdan Stupka, and Kyiv Mayor Oleksandr Omelchenko. The letter in part reads:

“Over the past few years, the Moscow mayor’s office has been negotiating the purchase of this collection for the Russian Modern Art Museum. Now, as the owner reports, these talks have been frozen on his initiative.

“According to Nikita Lobanov- Rostovsky, he does not object to his collection being acquired by and permanently exhibited in Kyiv.

“Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky’s collection consists of works by the most outstanding painters of the Russian Empire and the USSR, among which there are quite a few Ukrainian world-class artists, such as Malevych, Petrytsky, Meller, Bohomazov, Exter, Khvostenko-Khvostov, Andriyenko- Nechytailo, Tatlin, Larionov, Chelishchev, Tyshler, and Rabynovych.

The avant-garde is undoubtedly the core of the collection. But the art schools of the previous epoch (the turn of the twentieth century) — symbolism, impressionism, national realism, and secession — have been outshone by the first-grade names and works of Wrubel, Korovin, Baxt, Benoit, and Bilibin.

“The items have been collected for many decades in various countries: Britain, France, the US, Germany, Greece, Russia, and Ukraine.

“...The genus of Lobanov- Rostovsky, dating back to Volodymyr the Great of the Riurik Dynasty, has always been linked to Ukraine. Yakiv Lobanov-Rostovsky was Ukraine’s governor-general in the early nineteenth century. Nikita Lobanov-Rostovsky himself gives generous gifts to Ukrainian museums: he donated our Kobzar’s watercolor landscape to the Shevchenko Museum and Repin’s study, A Cossack, as well as Exter’s fifteen theatrical sketches, to the National Fine Arts Museum. He will further enrich the museums of Kyiv and consult with them about Ukrainian art at international auctions.

“The acquisition of Nikita Lobanov-Rostovsky’s collection would raise the creative and official prestige of our city and Ukraine by several points.”

THE DAY’S REFERENCE

Nikita Dmitrievich Lobanov-Rostovsky was born January 6, 1935, in Sofia. A US citizen, he graduated from Oxford University as with a master’s degree in geology in 1958, Columbia University in New York with a master’s economic geology in 1960, and New York University with a master’s in bank accounting in 1962. He worked as a geologist prospecting for oil in Argentina, then made a career at prestigious American banks and was an advisor to De Beers Ltd. (extraction and sales of diamonds) until 1997. He is a member of the American Association of Oil Geologists and the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Oil Engineering. An active public figure, he is a life member of the Board of Trustees at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), member of the Cyril and Methodius Foundation Union (Sofia), board of directors of the Institute of Modern Russian Culture (Los Angeles), the Association of American Russian-Born Scientists (New York),and Collectors’ Society (Moscow). He has also authored of a number of scholarly publications, among which one should note the books, Russian Painters and Theater (1969), Financing Trade (1980), and Banking (1982). He lives in Great Britain.