BAKST Léon (1866-1924)

Costume design for the ballet Shéhérazade. Watercolor on paper signed lower left in Latin characters and stamped in ink: "December 1915". Folds and small accidents. H.: 50 cm - W.: 36.5 cm. Biography: Leon Bakst, born Léon Lev Samoïlovitch Rosenberg, signed his works under the pseudonym Léon Bakst, named after his grandmother. From 1883 to 1887, he studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts under Pavel Tchistiakov and K. Vetchina. Between 1893 and 1896, he studied in Paris in Jean-Léon Gérôme's studio and at the Académie Julian, a private school founded in 1866 by French painter Rodolphe Julian and Finnish painter Albert Edelfelt. He then traveled extensively, to Germany, Belgium, France, Spain and Italy, and in 1897 to North Africa, and in 1907 to Greece. From 1906 to 1909, he taught painting at the Zvantseva School in Saint Petersburg. Between 1898 and 1903, he was one of the organizers and active members of the Association du Monde de l'Art. From 1891 to 1897, he took part in exhibitions organized by the Society of Russian Watercolorists, and between 1903 and 1910 by the Union of Russian Artists, and was a life member of the Salon d'Automne. In 1914, he became a member of the Academy and one of Serge Diaghilev's principal decorators for the Russian ballet seasons. He designed sets for the Mariisky and Alexandrinsky theaters in Petersburg, for the opera, for Ida Rubinstein's troupe and for other theaters in Europe. From 1909, he lived in Paris.