Nikolai Akimov. On the 125th Anniversary of His Birth

The exhibition at the Marble Palace of the Russian Museum, marking the 125th anniversary of the birth of Nikolai Akimov, an outstanding figure in 20th-century Russian culture, invites viewers to appreciate the scale of this remarkable artist’s achievement. He was the founder and director of one of the country’s most famous and beloved theatres – the Leningrad Theatre of Comedy, which now bears his name, a stage director of brilliant productions, a talented set designer who established his own unique style, one of the foremost portraitists, as well as an educator, professor, and theorist of theatrical decorative art.

The exhibition features over 230 works from the collections of the Russian Museum, the St Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music, the St Petersburg State Theatre Library, KGallery, and private collections.

The exhibition highlights the main areas of Akimov’s art: above all, his early easel works in sanguine and pencil from the 1920s and 1930s; his book illustrations; numerous portraits he worked on for decades; and studies for set and costume designs for productions at various theatres.

For Nikolai Akimov, the 1920s were a time of creating drawings for Russia’s leading publishing houses, Academia (illustrations for the collected works of Henri de Régnier and Jules Romains) and Vremya.

Nikolai Akimov is vividly represented at the solo exhibition in the Marble Palace through his famous stage designs, including early studies for costumes and sets. His long-standing friendship with the playwright Evgeny Schwartz left a deep mark on his work, yielding unique productions that have remained in the history of Russian theatre. Among them are The Naked King (1934), The Shadow (1940), The Dragon (1944), and An Ordinary Miracle (1956).

It was often said of Nikolai Akimov, the creator of a grand portrait gallery, that the artist “directed” his drawings, which, among other things, preserved for history the likenesses of famous contemporaries: playwrights, actors, directors, composers, and conductors who brought glory to Russian art. This collection of Akimov’s works provides an opportunity to trace a panoramic development of the portrait genre within the master’s art.