Daniel Solojoff

Son of André Afanasievitch Solojoff, military doctor and state adviser and Elisabeth Pétrovna Albanskaya, Daniel Solojoff studied in St Petersburg in 1910, then, fleeing the revolution with his family, he continued his studies in Kerch at the Alexander gymnasium.

He evacuated with his family to the kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes via Constantinople, to then settle in Bessarabia where he finished the Russian gymnasium in Kishinev. He learned fine arts from Academician D. V. Chibnev, took violin lessons from F. K. Grigoriev. From 1928 he worked as a retoucher. In 1931 he married Elisabeth Simmelidi, from Kertch (she would become a Russian philologist and teacher) and lived in Braila in Romania. In 1944, he was deported with his wife to a forced labor camp in Germany.

From 1945 to 1960, he settled in Lyon with the help of his aunt. His pictorial work in oil, watercolor and gouache includes landscapes, portraits, circus scenes, religious themes. From 1955, he began a parallel career as an illustrator which resulted in numerous works including "the epistles of Saint Paul", "Tarass Boulba" by N. Gogol, "The flowers of evil", "the spleen and the ideal” by Baudelaire, “Wisdom” by Verlaine, The Bible, etc. He edited some of his books himself. Many of his illustrations have not been published. From 1960, he lives in Paris.

From 1954 to 58 he participated in the Salon of the Lyon Society of Fine Arts where he successively won a bronze medal, then silver and finally gold in 1958. The Lyon Museum acquired some of his works (1960). He exhibited in Lyon in 1949, 1952, 1954, 1958, at the Galerie Katia Granoff every year from 1956 to 1968, in Le Havre in 1957, in Montpellier in 1958, 1976, in Rotterdam in 1958, in Cannes in 1961, in Zurich in 1968, in New York in 1968 and 1973, in Los Angeles in 1970, in Palm-Beach in 1969 and 1970. Also in Karlsruhe in 1970, in Bad-Teinach in 1972 and Pforzheim in 1974. In 1972 his works were exhibited at the Salon d'Automne among the remarkable paintings by Russian painters from the French collections.

He is Professor Honoris Causa in Humanistic Disciplines of “Inter-american University of Humanistic Studies”, USA and received a Diplome d’Onore di Benemerito Sostenitore Dell’Arte et della Cultura Europea con Medaglia d’Oro in Italy.

Reproductions of his works were exhibited in 1991 at the House of Scientists of the Academgorodok of Siberia, in 1995 some works were presented at the Tretyakov Gallery as part of the exhibition “They took Russia with them…” (from the collection of R. Guerra).

He also published a few collections of poetry, he contributed from 1990 to the Russian almanac "Encounters" in Florida. A recognized bibliophile, he collected editions of classics of Russian literature. A collection of short stories by N. V. Gogol “Village Evenings near the Dikanka” featuring his illustrations was published in Moscow in 2005.

Watercolor by Dan Solojoff - The Cossack dancing with an angel

DR Auteur inconnu