Rostislav Doboujinsky

Eldest son of Mstislav Doboujinsky, painter and theater decorator, member of the Petersburg group "the world of art", Rostislav (Stiva) Doboujinsky is part of the second generation of Russian artists who have brilliantly developed the tradition of the Ballets Russes in Western Europe .

It was in an atmosphere of flamboyant creativity that Rostislav Doboujinsky was born in 1903 in Saint Petersburg; there, he studied the art of theatrical design with his father and began working, in the early 1920s, for the Grand Théâtre Dramatique and the Théâtre libre de la jeunesse. In 1924, the Doboujinsky family left for exile in Lithuania. The following year, Rostislav and his wife Lidia Kopniaeva, actress of the famous third workshop of the Moscow Art Theater, arrived in France. In Paris, Rostislav's career as a decorator began with a collaboration with Georges Pitoëff. In the 1930s, he founded a decoration workshop with his wife and his work for Ondine by Jean Giraudoux, created by Louis Jouvet, was noted by critics.

From the early 1950s, Doboujinsky worked for both theater and cinema, and collaborated with the most famous directors and set designers. For the cinema, in 1951, with Georges Annenkov, he created costumes and sets for Max Ophüls' film Le Plaisir. It was probably for this film that he created his first masks, which would become his “speciality” and bring him fame. In 1956, he designed the costumes for The Witches of Salem, a film by Raymond Rouleau. But theater remains his privileged domain. In 1956, he created with Sacha Pitoëff the adaptation, sets and costumes of Bas-Fonds by Gorky at the Théâtre de l'Œuvre. Nineteen designs for the costumes for this show, very marked by the Art World style, are found among the artist's papers at the Arsenal library in Paris.

In 1998, Rostislav Mstislavovich donated a large part of the family archives to the Lithuanian National Library in Vilnius; he was decorated by the Lithuanian government with the Order of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Gadiminas 4th degree.

Catechetical books illustrated by R. Dobuzhinsky

Photo Nathalie Rutschkowsky