THE CONSTANTINOPLE YEARS - mesher.org...Istanbul, the city of his early dreams, and what was his Constantinople heritage? We will discuss all these below. For many decades, Gritchenko’s

T H E C O N S T A N T I N O P L E Y E A R S

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Alexis Gritchenko, Golden Horn, March 1921, gouache on paper, 31.5 × 35.5 cm, signed and dated. Ömer Koç Collection.

Never and nowhere have I felt such a surge of energy and such a desire to work.

— Alexis Gritchenko, Two Years in Constantinople, 28.12.1919

Dynamocolor: Between Cubo-Futurism and Icon

Alexis Gritchenko (1883–1977) is a Ukrainian artist who took an active part in the 1910s’ avant-garde movement in the Russian Empire; later, in the 1920s, he represented École de Paris in France, and finally he was just a first-class painter who loved the sea and travelling; and also an art critic, connoisseur of the old Russian icon, and the author of a few memoirs. In the last

century, with its two world wars and revolutions, not many people had the chance to live until the age of 94. In his long life journey, his short stay in Istanbul—less than two years (November 1919–March 1921)—may seem too short, and yet it was very important. The artist’s watercolors and gouaches from the Istanbul period are especially valuable. In her recent research, Turkish art historian Ayşenur Güler has shown that thanks to Gritchenko avant-garde ideas appeared among the 1914 Generation artists, especially in İbrahim Çallı’s works, back in 1920–1921,1 and not in 1927, as it was once thought.

Why was this Ukrainian painter the first person from whom Turkish artists learned about cubism and futurism? How did he arrive at dynamocolor? How did the artist see Istanbul, the city of his early dreams, and what was his Constantinople heritage? We will discuss all these below.

For many decades, Gritchenko’s name as well as the names of other avant-garde artists who emigrated from revolutionary Russia to Western Europe (Wassily Kandinsky, Alexander Archipenko, David Burliuk, Alexandra Exter, Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, Vladimir

Baranov-Rossiné, and many others) were banned in the Soviet Union after Joseph Stalin and the ruling Communist Party established the only ‘right’ style of social realism in the 1930s. The avant-garde artists who stayed after the 1917 Revolution and initially even supported the Bolsheviks’ ideas—Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin, Vasyl Yermylov and others—were soon rejected by the new regime and forcibly forgotten in the country for almost 50 years. The floodgates were opened in 1979–1980 with the “Moscow-Paris” exhibition shown in Paris at the Centre Pompidou, then in 1980–1981, at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.2 Interest in Russian avant-garde sparked again during perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Exhibitions dedicated to this phenomenon

1 See Ayşenur Güler, “Aleksis Griçenko ve Çallı Kuşağı Sanatçıları,” Sanat Dünyamız 125 (2011): 38–49 and “Aleksis Griçenko’nun İstanbul’da İzini Sürmek,” Sanat Dünyamız 144 (2015): 4–9.

2 Paris–Moscou: 1900–1930, ed. Pontus Hulten (Paris: Centre national d’art et de culture Georges Pompidou, 1979), Exhibition catalog.

Alexis Gritchenko: Greetings to you, Istanbul!

Dr. VITA SUSAK

36 / ALEXIS GRITCHENKO - THE CONSTANTINOPLE YEARS

(from “Great Utopia” to “Amazons of the Avant-Garde”3) were organized all over the world. Nonetheless, in the early 1970s, French art historian Andrei Nakov noted:

“The history of the arts in Ukraine is still to be written. The activity of artists in Kyiv and Kharkiv was often viewed as a provincial offshoot of activities in Moscow; it remained unknown beyond a phenomenon ‘subject to influence.’ We shouldn’t forget, however, that Brothers Burliuk, Exter, and Archipenko were from Kyiv, while Tatlin, A. Shevchenko, Larionov and Malevich were from other parts of Ukraine. Such original personalities as Bogomazov and critics as Gritchenko have not yet been properly appreciated.”4

On gaining its independence in 1991, Ukraine began not only constructing its future, but also reconstructing its cultural past. Many people still associate the names of Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Archipenko (born in Kyiv), Sonia Delaunay (born in Odessa), Alexander Bogomazov (born in Kharkiv), Vladimir Baranov-Rossiné, Brothers Burliuk (born in Kherson region) exclusively with Russian avant-garde. But all these artists were born in Ukraine and grew up surrounded by the bright sun, endless steppes and rich colors of the Ukrainian countryside.5 Visual impressions are especially important for artists. The influence of folk arts (icons, embroidery, pysankas, geometric carpet ornaments), the first teachers and the art classes formed the basis on which the newest European experience was applied. Within one empire, Ukrainian and Russian avant-garde artists closely communicated with each other, yet they did not share the same cultural and historical background. The publications and exhibitions of the last decades brought the concept of Ukrainian avant-garde into the history of 20th century art.6

In the 1910s Gritchenko was no less famous among avant-garde artists in Kyiv, Moscow, and St. Petersburg than Malevich, Tatlin or Burliuk. He was a recognized expert on old Russian icons, and the cleaning of the “Vladimir Mother of God” icon began under his supervision.7 Similarly to Malevich and Kandinsky in 1918–1919, Gritchenko taught at the Free State Art Studios. The 10th state exhibition “Non-objective Art and Suprematism” at which Rodchenko and Malevich set the tone, took place in April 1919 in Moscow and a month later the 12th state exhibition “Dynamocolor and Tectonic Primitivism” was held with paintings by Alexis Gritchenko and Alexander Shevchenko as the main exponents. Gritchenko’s painting “A Gray Bridge” (1918) was bought by the Tretyakov Gallery. Gritchenko was a member of the Commission for Museums and Protection of Art Monuments

3 Bettina-Martine Wolter and Bernhart Schwenk, Die grosse Utopie: die russische Avantgarde, 1915–1932 (Frankfurt am Main: Schirn Kunsthalle, 1992), Exhibition catalog; Amazons of the Avant-Garde: Alexandra Exter, Natalia Goncharova, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, Varvara Stepanova, and Nadezhda Udaltsova, ed. John E. Bowlt, Matthew Drutt (New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2000), Exhibition catalog.

4 Andrei Nakov, Tatlin’s Dream: Russian Suprematist and Constructivist Art, 1910–1923 (London: Fischer Fine Art Ltd, 1973), 60, Exhibition catalog.

5 Jean-Claude Marcadé, “Space, Colour, Hyperbolism: Characteristics of Ukrainian Avant-Garde Art,” in Avantgarde & Ukraine, ed. Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, 41–49 (Munich: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1993), Exhibition catalog.

6 Ukrajinska Avantgarda 1910–1930, ed. Tihomir Milovac, Branka Stipančić (Zagreb: Muzej suvremene umjetnosti, 1990), Exhibition catalog; Avantgarde & Ukraine, 1993; The Phenomenon of the Ukrainian Avant-garde 1910–1935, ed. Myroslav Shkandrij (Winnipeg: The Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2001), Exhibition catalog; Myroslava M. Mudrak and Tetiana Rudenko, Staging the Ukrainian Avant-Garde of the 1910s and 1920s (New York: The Ukrainian Museum, 2015), Exhibition catalog.

7 Oleksa Hryshchenko [Gritchenko], Roky buri i natysku. Spohady mysttsia. 1908–1918 (New York: Svoboda, 1967), 86. Today the famous miracle-working “Vladimir Mother of God” icon is still kept at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. It was brought to Kyiv from Constantinople in the early 12th century, but then Prince Andrei the Pious carried it to the city of Vladimir and eventually it was named after the city. In 1918–1919, the restorer Grigory Chirikov cleaned the icon.

37 / ALEXIS GRITCHENKO: GREETINGS TO YOU, ISTANBUL!

headed by Natalia Sedova-Trotskaya, Leon Trotsky’s wife. He was commissioned to inspect the Baryatinsky collection, which had been left in the family’s mansion near Kursk. Thanks to Gritchenko’s competence and decisive action the collection was saved and handed to the State Museum Fund in the summer of 1918.8 Trotskaya offered Gritchenko the post of director of the Tretyakov Gallery, but the artist declined her offer, saying “I am not interested in position and money. Being a bureaucrat is against my nature. I want to create.”9 He valued freedom more than anything.

One of the main reasons why dynamocolor returned late to avant-garde history was not the emigration of its creator, but rather the physical annihilation of paintings by Gritchenko (over 500) which he had left in Moscow. In 1919, he locked the door of his workshop and wrote on it: “There are no weapons here! Preserve it please.”10 In the year 1920, the head of the Fine Arts Department of the People’s Commissariat of Education ordered that the artist’s paintings be used in education—they were cut in smaller pieces and given to students to use for exercises because during the years of civil war there was a shortage of everything. Gritchenko learned about this auto-da-fé in the summer of 1921, and it was a shock to him:

“The leading artists of the capital allowed a leading artist’s paintings to be butchered, even though his works hang in the Tretyakov Gallery. How am I to make sense of all this, but more important, how am I to reconcile myself to the complete disappearance of half of my life, my conscious, concrete, spiritual life?!”11

Only about 20 works survived in various Russian museums. Other works by the artist were destroyed on two more occasions. During World War II, German bombs fell on the artist’s parents’ house in Krolevets, destroying his portraits of his relatives and views of the Crimea and the Caucasus. Later, in 1952, Soviet authorities did away with artworks by formalists and nationalists at the Ukrainian Art Museum in Lviv (today the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum), including seven oil paintings and three watercolors by Gritchenko.12 The misfortunes he suffered might have broken many people, but not this lover of life. In a letter to René-Jean written in the World War II years, he stated,

“My principal is and will be: to live ever more and keep working against all odds.”13

Gritchenko’s theoretical heritage was more fortunate. Though the manuscripts in the workshop did not survive, the printed editions have been preserved. From 1913 to 1919, two monographs were published, as well as four brochures, an article in Apollon magazine, and a series of essays in Nov’ newspaper in Moscow.14 In 2016, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris held a highly successful exhibition of Sergei Shchukin

8 Vita Susak, Alexis Gritchenko. Dynamocolor (Kyiv: Rodovid, 2017), 84–85.

9 Gritchenko, Roky buri i natysku, 93.

10 Ibid., 98.

11 Alexis Gritchenko to Varvara Stepanova, 29 August 1921, f. 10, d. 2645, Otdel rukopisei Gosudarstvennoi Tret’iakovskoi Galerei, GTG [Department of Manuscripts at the State Tretyakov Gallery], Moscow.(e.n. Abbreviations f., d., od.zb. and ed. khr. used in the notes refer to the classification codes of the Soviet archival system. Respectively, they imply collection, file, group and document codes).

12 Volodymyr Arofikin ve Danuta Posats’ka, Kataloh vtrachenykh eksponativ Natsional’noho muzeiu u L’vovi [National Museum in Lviv’s lost pieces catalog] (Kyiv-Lviv: Triumf, 1996), Gritchenko: no. 45–51; 415–417.

13 Gritchenko to René-Jean, 1943, 6, IX, Lettres à René-Jean, choisies et presentées par Sylvie Maignan et Jean Bergeron (Paris: Harmattan, 2014), 75.

14 See: Bibliography on p. 67-68.


collection. The massive catalog of the exhibition includes the anthology of Russian critique regarding this corpus and excerpts from two works by Gritchenko: “On the Relationship between Russian Painting with Byzantium and the West” and “‘Crisis of Art’. Contemporary painting: On the Occasion of the Lecture of N. Berdyaev.”15

I titled my first article dedicated to the artist “The Artist’s Golgothas”16* though at that

time I did not know that Aristarkh Lentulov had painted “The Crucified Christ” with Gritchenko as a model.17 {Fig. 1} I do not think I would choose such a pompous title today, but actually art did become Gritchenko’s religion, and he served it with love and joy.

The artist-to-be was born in a small town named Krolevets, northeast of the modern state of Ukraine (at that time it was in the Chernigov Governorate of the Russian Empire), into the family of the town’s bank manager. His father died early, in heavy debt, leaving his wife and 10 children. Gritchenko’s mother managed the household finances. As a child, Alexis was greatly influenced by his grandfather who was a traveling chumak trader and journeyed to Crimea for salt. He would often sit with his grandson late into the night, telling stories of his adventures. From his grandfather, Alexis inherited a love for travel and an awe of the sea and countries ‘over the sea.’ Alexis’s mother wanted one of her sons to become a priest. Alexis, “attracted by religious ceremonies,

15 Gritchenko, “Des liens de la peinture russe avec Byzance et l’Occident. XIIIe–XXe siècles. Pensées sur la peinture française” (1913) and “La crise de l’art et la peinture contemporaine. A propos de la conférence de N. Berdiaev” (1917), in Icônes de l’art moderne. Collection Shchukine, ed. Anne Baldassari, Louis Vuitton Foundation

(Paris: Gallimard, 2016), 399–401 and 413–417, Exhibition catalog.

16 Vita Susak, “Holhofy khudozhnyka: Oleksa Hryshchenko,” Vsesvit 12 (1990): 169–174.

* e.n. According to the Bible, Golgotha is the hill just outside Jerusalem’s walls where Jesus was crucified.

17 Aristarkh Lentulov (1882–1943) is one of the founders of the Jack of Diamonds group. Gritchenko lived at his home during the winter of 1910 and spring of 1911. He wrote in his memoirs, “At that time, Aristarkh decided to paint a picture the crucified Christ for the coming exhibition. He asked me to pose right there on the sofa, where there were piles of magazines and reproductions for the future painting. He wanted to use me for drawing Christ’s head. Why did he choose me? Maybe because at that time I had a small beard, and my hair is naturally fair and curly.” Gritchenko, Roky buri i natysku, 32. Censors committee ordered the painting to be removed from the Jack of Diamonds exhibition in December 1910. The authorities did not like the expressive manner and Christ’s colored ribs. Lentulov’s painting “The Crucified Christ” is stored today in Valeri Dudakov’s private collection in Moscow.

Fig. 1Aristarkh Lentulov, The Crucified Christ, 1910, oil on canvas, 71 × 53 cm. Collection of Valery Dudakov, Russia.


songs, rites, beauty, was quite spiritual”,18 and he was sent to study at the Novhorod-Siverskyi Theological College, and later at the Chernihiv seminary. Icons entered his world from early childhood, but he discovered their artistic value later.

After his graduation from the seminary, Gritchenko was influenced by liberal ideas and decided to give up his ecclesiastical career. Religion gave way to science. Alexis studied in three universities: first in St. Petersburg at the Faculty of History and Philosophy (the fall semester of 1905); then two years at the Faculty of Science in Kyiv University (1906–1907), and later he continued his studies in Moscow University, graduating in 1913. For a long time, art remained a hobby for him, but gradually science gave way to painting.

Even while studying at the seminary Alexis tried copying icons, and in Kyiv he began attending Serhiy Svetoslavsky’s (1857–1931) private studio, where he taught the students who had been excluded from Kyiv Art School for taking part in revolutionary activities in 1905. There Gritchenko met avant-garde artists-to-be Alexander Archipenko, Sonia Lewitska, Alexander Bogomazov, and Alexandra Exter. In the summer of 1907 Alexis, together with Bogomazov and Vladimir Denisov, went on an open-air sketching tour in the Crimea. {Fig. 2} Back then, watching the moving waters of the Black Sea, he discussed with Bogomazov the ways of expressing movement in painting and the possibilities of color. Later, in Moscow, Gritchenko would publish a brochure titled “How We Teach Painting and What We Should Understand by It” (1915),19 and Bogomazov would write his tractate “Painting and the Elements” (1914), which would be published in full only many years after his death.20

In 1908, Gritchenko moved to Moscow, marking the start of a ten-year period of his life that he described later in his memoirs titled “Years of Sturm und Drang.”21* In 1909–1910, he attended Ivan Dudin and Constantine Yuon’s drawing and painting classes, where he “insistently worked on a drawing,” and then for two more years (1911–1912) he attended Pyotr Konchalovsky and Ilya

Mashkov’s drawing and painting studio. These followers of Cézanne and leaders of the Jack of Diamonds group were Gritchenko’s teachers from whom he learned the power of pure color. Gritchenko took part in two exhibitions held by the group, but soon became critical of the variegated “disorganized” colors of their paintings and followed his own path.

18 Gritchenko, L’Ukraine de mes jours bleus (Paris: La Colombe, 1957), 158.

19 Gritchenko, Kak u nas prepodaiut zhivopis’ i chto pod neiu nado razumet’, Voprosy zhivopisi, Vol. 2 (Moscow, 1915).

20 Alexander Bogomazov, Zhyvopys ta element, ed. D. Horbachov, T. and O. Popov (Kyiv: Zadumlyvyi straus, 1996).

21 Gritchenko, Roky buri i natysku.

* e.n. “Storm and Stress” is a proto-romantic movement which took its name from Friedrich Maximilian Klinger’s play “Sturm und Drang” and influenced German literature and music between 1760 and 1780. The artist must have referred to this.

Fig. 2Alexis Gritchenko in Crimea, 1907. Detail of photograph. Collection of Tetiana Popova, Ukraine.


Meanwhile museums were another important ‘school’ that Alexis attended. Gritchenko would visit St. Petersburg to study old masters in the Hermitage Museum. Sergei Shchukin’s (1854–1936) private collection in Moscow became a great discovery for him, as it did for other young avant-garde artists. He did not need to travel to Paris, for he could look at paintings by Cézanne, Gauguin, Matisse, and Picasso in Shchukin’s house, which was open to visitors. Gritchenko would often spend weekends there. He was able to become acquainted with the latest Western trends almost simulta-neously with their emergence; however, he realized that he had to travel to Paris.

His first visit to Paris took place in 1911 and lasted for four months, from July through October. He attended French courses at the Sorbonne two times a week and he spent the rest of his time in the Louvre, copying the works of the masters. He especially admired the gallery of works by Eugène Delacroix, whom he regarded as the first great French painter. He recollected:

“Once in the Louvre I accidently entered the section of decorative art when there was an exhibition of Turkish folk art, and for the first time I had a chance to see Turkish carpets, clothes, textile, and wood-engravings by national masters.”22

Alexis was greatly impressed by Auguste Pellerin’s (1853–1929) collection which included paintings by Manet, Monet, Renoir, and Cézanne. Gritchenko wrote a whole notebook of thoughts “about the balance and taste of French genius,”23 the qualities that eventually became a priority for himself. He waited for the opening of Salon d’Automne (Autumn Salon), an exhibition dominated by cubists and fauves, where he paid attention to the paintings by Derain, Matisse, and Léger. With this kind of experience, Alexis returned to Moscow. The surviving drawing “A View of Notre-Dame de Paris” that he made in the French capital shows that back in 1911 Gritchenko transferred complex spatial volumes into compositions of closely fitted planes.

His fascination with cubism continued until the beginning of World War I. He himself experimented and explained the principles of cubism to others, gave tours in Shchukin’s gallery, and in October 1913, at Klavdiya Mikhaylova’s “Art Salon” he delivered a lecture entitled “Pablo Picasso: Three Moments in His Work (Experimentation, Cubism, and Futurism.)”24 Gritchenko recalled, “In the front row of the audience I saw Shchukin, the Vesnin brothers, and Larionov. After the lecture, Larionov asked me, ‘Is it necessary to decipher all the artist’s intentions in such detail?’ There was a grain of truth in his reproach.”25 When Gritchenko published his first book Russian Painting and Its Ties with Byzantium and the West (1913), he put on its cover “Head” by Picasso from Shchukin’s collection, which many in conservative Russia perceived as an insolent challenge. {Fig. 3}

Due to his university education and general erudition, Gritchenko had confidence in his beliefs and could not be deterred by any authorities. Being ‘his own man,’ he communicated with many key persons of avant-garde. At Ilya Shkolnik’s invitation

22 Ibid., 37.

23 Ibid., 39.

24 The Graphics Department of the State Tretyakov Gallery (inv. no: P-15747) contains a poster about Gritchenko’s lecture on 27 October 1913.

25 Gritchenko, Roky buri i natysku, 62–63.


he delivered a lecture at the Union of Youth in St. Petersburg. In spring 1917 Malevich invited him to visit his studio in Nemchinovka (just outside of Moscow) and showed his suprematist works, though Alexis criticized these “color graphics.”26 Gritchenko took part in weekly art meetings at Lyubov Popova’s house and was friends with his countrymen Alexander Shevchenko and Vladimir Tatlin.

In 1912–1915, Tatlin rented a large workshop in Moscow where he worked together with Gritchenko, Alexander Vesnin, Lyubov Popova, Nadejda Udaltsova, and Robert Falk. They drew nude models, and discussed cubism, but solely as art practitioners. They did not accept the apocalyptic inter-pretations so popular among the Russian intelligentsia. In 1917 Gritchenko boldly criticized the philosopher Nikolay Berdyaev and his thoughts on the “crisis in art” caused by Picasso’s works. The artist published a brochure where he explained that the problem is not in contemporary painting itself, but in the “crisis of approach” to it:

“For entire centuries, painting was slave to the state, church, and philosophy… it was made into a preacher of social reforms and morality, it was used to argue ‘theosophical problems,’ it illustrated history and geography … Only one side remained in the shadows… that which makes a painting a painting…”27

In his lectures and publications, Gritchenko called for rejecting German influence and “learning from the French.” To the sensitive issue of foreign influence Gritchenko gave the following answer:

“The originality of a national painter is never lost due to the presence of foreign influences. The law of interrelationships among various nations’ artistic ideas can be traced throughout the few millennia of human culture. Thus did art develop in Byzantium, in Italy, in France; that is how it was and how it will be in Russia.”28

Besides cubism, futurism became widely known in Russia. Ukrainian and Russian avant-garde artists combined the two terms into one: Cubo-futurism; a name that was popular in the 1910s. Filippo Marinetti visited Moscow in February 1914 and Gritchenko listened to his lecture.29 We do not know what the “Elements of Painterly-Plastic Futurism” shown by Gritchenko at the “Contemporary Russian Painting” exhibition in Petrograd in 1916 looked like. A separate room was dedicated to 17 works by the artist.30 The futurists’ efforts to depict movement led Alexis to the idea that he should not aim to reproduce the movement of objects (in fact that cannot be achieved by the deconstruction of the form of

26 See Susak, “As for Malevich, please leave this matter between us,” [Scho do Malevycha, to proshu Vas zalyshyty tce mizh namy] Kazimir Malevich. Kyiv Aspect, ed. Tetiana Filevska (Kyiv: Rodovid, 2019), 271.

27 Gritchenko,“Krizis iskusstva” i sovremennaia zhivopis’. Po povodu lektsii N. Berdiaeva, Vol. 4 (Moscow, 1917), 6.

28 Gritchenko, O sviaziakh russkoi zhivopisi s Vizantiei i Zapadom. XIII–XX vv.; mysli zhivopistsa (Moscow, 1913), 38.


30 Sergei Makovskii,“Po povodu vystavki sovremennoi russkoi zhivopisi,” Apollon 8 (1916): 1–22.

Fig. 3Cover of Gritchenko’s book Russian Painting and Its Ties with Byzantium and the West, 1913, Moscow.


a train or airplane, nor by multiplying the number of paws of a running dog). In painting, the sense of movement could be achieved through a harmony or disharmony of ‘color forms.’ Many avant-garde artists worked on this idea; in Paris, simultaneous paintings were created by Robert and Sonia Delaunay (series “Eiffel Tower”, 1909–1912 and “Electric Prisms”, 1914); Vladimir Baranov-Rossiné chose for his abstractions a Mobius strip as a symbol of movement of space itself. In Moscow, Aristarkh Lentulov made paintings—“color dynamics” (“Basil the Blessed Cathedral”, 1913) resembling mosaics composed of large pieces of smalti. Gritchenko ‘built’ his compositions; the distribution of color masses, their repetition and combinations creating the rhythm of a work that always retained an initial motive (landscape, still life). The artist did not cross the border into pure abstraction. Lines played a constructive role in paintings of many cubists; Picasso called such works “broken mirrors.” Gritchenko hardly ever used a separate line, but employed ‘scraps of color.’ An example is his “Still Life with Agave” (1915–1918), which demonstrates the way he subdued three-dimensional objects (a jug, a plant, apples) to the law of two-dimensional space, transforming them into ‘colored shadows’ falling on the surface of the painting. {Fig. 5}

Early Italian art of the 13–14th centuries and old Russian icons of the 14–15th centuries also influenced Gritchenko’s artistic manner. Following the example of graduates of European academies, Gritchenko visited Italy in the summer of 1913, but instead of studying the antiquities and Raphael, he explored paintings by the early Italian artists Duccio, Giotto, and Cimabue. In their works he found ‘cubistic solutions’ of space. Gritchenko travelled all over the Italian peninsula, visiting 28 cities and towns. He lived in Assisi for a month, and visited the basilica to contemplate the mural paintings at different hours of the day with different levels of light. At that time, Piero della Francesca’s frescoes in Arezzo Cathedral were being restored. Scaffolding had been erected and Alexis quietly climbed up to look at the frescoes from up close. He heard someone below whisper, “Signor, it’s time to come down. We are closing.”31 In the same way the artist would later study the monuments of Istanbul, Mystras, and other places. Gritchenko could clearly see parallels between Italian early Renaissance and old Russian icon painting; both were based on the same Byzantine heritage.

Discovery of the icon as an artefact, not as a familiar attribute of the Orthodox Church, took place in the first decades of the 20th century. It was a literal discovery: Icons were collected in private and state collections, restored, stripped of the layers of darkened varnish to reveal bright decorative compositions. Large icon exhibitions were organized in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 1911 and 1913. Many avant-garde artists in Russia perceived the icon as an original tradition, in contrast to the West. Each artist saw in it something different: Natalia Goncharova made free ‘paraphrases’ of iconic plots (“Christ Pantocrator”,

“The Evangelists”, 1910-1911); Marc Chagall employed the hierarchy of figures, often repeating the composition of icons with kleima in the border (“Golgotha”, 1912); Kazimir Malevich used the symbolic meaning of icons in practice as well as in his theories (“The Black Square”, 1915). The icon as a material object made of boards joined with bars and decorated with a metal relief covering stimulated Tatlin to create counter reliefs. Alexis remained faithful to easel painting and the two-dimensional surface. The compositional and color solutions of the unknown icon painters, chiefly representa-tives of the Novgorod school, served as examples for him. Gritchenko was one of the



many avant-garde artists who turned their attention to icons in 1910s, yet one of the few artists who examined them with scientific scrutiny. He described and dated Aleksei Morozov’s private icon collection; in 1916 he visited Novgorod and Pskov, leading old Russian centers of icon painting; located close to the frontline; and in 1917, in Moscow, he published a large book entitled Ancient Rus Icon as the Art of Painting.32

With the accession to power of the Bolsheviks, ‘left-wing’ artists (as avant-garde artists were called at that time) had a short period of opportunity to apply their theories in art. In September 1918 Gritchenko was appointed professor of the first Free State Art Studios. The artist recalled being given a large room where he immediately began developing teaching methods: “I made tables of complementary colors, put together a list of basic paints, all in accordance with the principles of new painting. While I was teaching my students—there were 65 in my class—I was simultaneously painting large figure compositions.”33 His colleague Andrey Shemshurin recalled that “the students really loved Gritchenko. He was somehow able to mesmerize them (...)”34 {Fig. 4}

The term dynamocolor (Russian tsvetodinamos) first appeared in the catalog of the 7th Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture—“Free Creativity” (Svobodnoe tvorchestvo) that took place in Moscow in 1918, where 10 works by Gritchenko were shown.35 By the end of the academic year (in May 1919), the exhibition “Dynamocolor and Tectonic Primitivism” was opened, and a manifest and a catalog were published. This exhibition was the first and last of this movement. Gritchenko showed nearly 70 paintings.36 The exhibition also included works by Alexander Shevchenko and the sketches by 36 students.

In the catalog, Gritchenko published his “Dynamocolor” article in which he explained: “On the basis of tectonics and painterly construction and by means of texture,

execution, and processing, COLOR controls the action in this painting. It creates its dynamos and order. Here the large colored-plastic masses come from their encounters, ensembles, and constructions; it is from here that the invisible, real (not naturalistic) movement of color of the highest grade comes; from here comes the main driving force of TECTONICS (not composition!), which follows the transfer of movement by PAINTERLY MEANS…”37

The terms color, dynamics, dynamic construction, tectonic, texture were key terms in the language of avant-garde artists. They are widely used in the titles of works by А. Lentulov, А. Exter, О. Rozanova, L. Popova, and others, although visually each of them had different manners. “Painterly Architectonics” by Popova from 1918–1920 were intersections of planes of different colors in space. In Gritchenko’s paintings planes do not overlap, but closely fit each other in form and color. Gritchenko’s manner is also distinguished by its texture and

32 Gritchenko, Russkaia ikona kak iskusstvo zhivopisi, Voprosy zhivopisi, Vol. 3 (Moscow, 1917).

33 Gritchenko, Roky buri i natysku, 87–88.

34 Andrei Shemshurin, Vospominaniia, f. 339, d. 6, ed. khr. (document) 11, 6–7, Otdel rukopisei Rossiyskoi Gosudarstvennoi Biblioteki (Manuscript Department of the Russian State Library), Moscow.

35 7-ia vystavka kartin i skul’ptury Svobodnoe tvorchestvo [7th Exhibition of Free Creativity] (Moscow, 1918), no. 42–51, Exhibition catalog.

36 From Gritehcnko’s paintings that were displayed at the exhibition about 10 paintings have survived.

37 Tsvetodinamos i tektonicheskii primitivizm. Katalog 12-i Gosudarstvennoi vystavki (Moscow, 1919), 5, Exhibition catalog.


handling of the surface. In Popova’s works the paint is laid down either with visible traces of the brush or in thick layers, while Gritchenko’s works are characterized by small brush strokes on top, enriching the painting and making its surface feel ‘fuzzy.’ {Fig. 5}

With regard to boldness of thought, dynamocolor could not compete with Malevich’s cosmic claims, Tatlin’s planetary innovations, or Kandinsky’s spiritual quest. Dynamocolor was a formal pictorial system strictly in the framework of easel painting and aiming at the development of the ‘culture of painting.’ Gritchenko’s students were unable to carry on with his ideas and none of them became a famous artist. One reason was that in the summer of 1919 many students of the Free State Art Studios were sent to the frontline in the civil war.

After the exhibition, Gritchenko decided to leave Moscow. “In spite of all my personal successes, with every day I was increasingly

beginning to sense a spiritual trap around me (…) With each passing day, art came to serve propaganda more; it was as noisy as the bazaar. The proletariani-zation of the spirit made itself increasingly felt (…) Amid all these doubts, some internal voice told me: ‘Leave everything before it’s too late!’(…) I threw on a coat, grabbed a light suitcase, and headed for Bryansk train station…

In calamities and chaos, one person’s plans and desires mean so little. People usually jump into one of the raging streams, hoping their

Fig. 4Alexis Gritchenko (seated second from left) with students at the Free State Art Studios, 1918. Photograph: Liubov Kalenska. National Art Museum of Ukraine Archive, Kyiv.

on the right: Fig. 5Alexis Gritchenko, Still Life with Agave, 1915–1918, oil on canvas, 118 × 87 cm, signed and dated. Collection of the National Art Museum of Ukraine.


good fortune will toss them onto a nice welcoming shore. That was how one day I found myself under the minarets of Istanbul.”38

In the early 1920s, dynamocolor was still represented along with other avant-garde trends in the Moscow Museum of Painting Culture, but it was forgotten after the museum closed down. Soon afterwards, other left-wing movements were removed from the history of art in the Soviet Union. By leaving the country (temporarily as he planned at the time), Gritchenko avoided the pressure of Communist ideology, saved his principles in art, and perhaps his life.

“In this country everything is made for the painter.”39

The artist got to the Crimea with great difficulty. In Sevastopol, he managed to find a job as a cook’s assistant on a ship that was sailing for Jaffa. A surviving sketch made near the shores of Anatolia portrays two passengers wearing fez standing on the deck. This drawing is on the first page of a large ‘album’ of Gritchenko’s journey. {Fig. 6}

On 30 November 1919, Alexis came ashore in Istanbul. The first place that he stayed in this immense city was a Jewish shelter in the Pera district; he spent the winter of 1920 in the Russian hospital in Harbiye and then he moved to a Bulgarian infirmary. From March to mid-July 1920 Gritchenko lived on the Princes’ Islands, and then he stayed in a Russian flophouse in Harbiye until October. From October to December 1920, the Turkish painter İbrahim Çallı helped the artist stay in the mansard apartment in the building where his own apartment was located. Gritchenko’s last refuge in February–March 1921 was a room in a caravanserai called Lüfanet near

Şehzadebaşı Street. After receiving a Greek visa on 1 April 1921, the artist left the capital by ship.

His life in Istanbul was a constant struggle for survival: with no documents or money. He was saved by onions, but often he had nothing but these to eat. Gritchenko did not dramatize his difficulties, which faded away in the light of his joy of being in the city of his childhood dreams. At first Alexis could afford to paint only in watercolors on paper, even using a limited number of colors that he managed to get. He always considered the art of oil painting to be more important than watercolor. “What irony of fate!”40 the artist would write later, because the first works he displayed at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1921 were watercolors.

Constantinople and Istanbul—these are the names of the same city, reflecting great eras of its history.


39 Gritchenko to René-Jean, 24 October 1930, in Gritchenko, Lettres à René-Jean, 33.

40 Gritchenko, Deux ans à Constantinople. (Paris: Quatre Vents, 1930), 44.

Fig. 6Alexis Gritchenko, First Look of the Asiatic Coast, 1919, pencil on paper, 20 × 16 cm. Collection of Sophia Skrypnyk, Canada.


And both eras enriched the artist. “Istanbul Blue and Rose” was the name of Gritchenko’s first solo exhibition in Paris in 1922. Alexis chose two key colors of the Eastern capital: ‘blue,’ which was the color of the interiors of mosques and palaces, the blue ornaments of tiles on the walls; and ‘pink,’ the warm color of the sun-burnt bricks of Byzantine churches (plinthos). Domes of Turkish baths (hamams) were also pink. The critic André Levinson, who supported Gritchenko during his first years in Paris, noted that this title echoed that of a poem by Théophile Gautier, “Baiser rose, baiser bleu” (Pink Kiss, Blue Kiss), 1852:41

But the lamp was shining as if playing a game,Placing a pink kiss then a blue kiss:A fire on alabaster beneath such brilliant moonlight.

Watching this charming picture, I said, like a dreamer,Jealous of the pink and bluish reflections:

“How joyously they reflect, if only they knew their happiness!”

Gritchenko’s heritage for the years 1919–1921 can be tentatively divided into Byzantine and Turkish cycles. The artist’s favorite themes were:

• Cityscapes and landscapes, including both ‘panoramic’ views with a distant perspective, and silhouettes of minarets and Byzantine churches; and ‘fragmentally’ selected views with Byzantine walls, houses along Istanbul streets, tombstones in a Jewish cemetery;

• Views of the Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, the Sea of Marmara;• Street and port scenes (captured closely, and as a rule with several figures), street theater;

• Prayer in mosques; • Turks in coffee houses; • Dervishes;• Turkish women.

In Kievan Rus’, the Byzantine capital was called ‘Tsargorod,’ and Gritchenko liked this name meaning ‘King City’ or chief among cities, the ‘Paris of the Middle Ages.’ When he first arrived to ‘Byzantine Constantinople,’ he sought out Byzantine monuments, to see the mosaics and frescoes of the Church of the Holy Savior of Chora monastery (Kariye Mosque) made in the times of the Palaiologos dynasty in the early 14th century and opened shortly before his arrival. Although he painted Hagia Sophia many times, he could not see the grandiose mosaics at that time, because their restoration did not begin until the 1930s. The artist’s sketches and watercolors made in the first months after his arrival in Istanbul reflect the chaos of events and emotions he experienced: quick strokes, many small colored spots, the lack of certain necessary colors. He used the paints he had and made notes with his pencil about the colors that should be there. On the pale, almost monochromatic

“The Kariye (Chora) Mosque,” made on 5 December 1919, there are notes regarding the missing colors: з – зеленый (green); ор – оранжевый (orange); го – голубой (blue); сер – серый (grey). {p. 113} Many times, the artist returned to Kariye

41 André Levinson, “Gritchenko,” L’Amour de l’art (1922): 92.


Mosque, looked at the compositions through binoculars, sketched some parts of them, simplifying, highlighting the most important traits instead of copying them as his friend Dimitri (Mitia) Ismailovitch (1890–1976) did,42 commissioned by the Secretary of the American Embassy Gardiner Howland Shaw.43 Gritchenko pursued other goals: A comparison of the mosaic composition “Christ Heals the Apostle Peter’s Mother-in-Law” (Gospel of Matthew 8:14–17) and the light watercolor ‘translation’ done by Gritchenko makes for an eloquent example. It was important for him to capture the balance of color volumes, the emotion expressed in plastic ways, “not as a stencil copy of nature.”44 {p. 111}

The artist dedicated separate ‘hymns’ to Istanbul’s architecture. Massive Byzantine walls and churches presented a good opportunity for tectonic and color constructions that the founder of dynamocolor so loved. In his “Constantinople” {p. 95} the artist could unfold the distant square tower and numerous nearer buildings into flat, geometric shapes; there are no uncontrolled bright colors, no sloppiness; the whole surface is covered with ‘scars’ of minor strokes. The watercolor

“Constantinople” that Gritchenko chose as the cover for his 1964 album looks almost purely abstract… almost. Just as he did in Moscow, the artist did not cross that border, so that the walls of houses, the blue sea far away, and sacred domes can be recognized in the fragments of work. {Fig.

7} He evenly fills with color large and small planes of his watercolors, and reproduces the greatness of simplicity by minimum means. Gritchenko always admired the laconism of icon painting, and this is reflected in his composition with a view of the city where this icon painting originated.

The mosques and minarets of ‘Turkish Istanbul’ also attracted Gritchenko. In “Constantinople Skyline” he turned the abundant architecture of the megalopolis into one blue shadow. Its upper contour with ‘teeth’ and ‘shoots’ of minarets makes the silhouette of the city recognizable. {p.

280} In portraying the street, the artist sometimes submitted to the Eastern multi-coloredness, creating ‘arabesque’

watercolors. {p. 92}. Later, in Paris, Gritchenko’s watercolors would be compared to those of Raoul Dufy who visited Morocco in the mid-1920s. The artists knew one another and Gritchenko dedicated a chapter of his memoirs to Dufy, but this happened

42 Dimitri Ismailovitch // Artists of Russian émigrés: http://www.artrz.ru, date of access: 26 December 2019. Dimitri Ismailovitch (1890–1976) was born in the town of Sataniv in central Ukraine. He received higher education at the military academy in St. Petersburg, and during World War I served at General Brusilov’s headquarters. After the October Revolution, he came to Kyiv and studied at the Ukraine Academy of Art for one year. He came to Istanbul in the same year as Gritchenko, in 1919, but stayed there until 1927 and initiated the founding of the Russian-Turkish Artists’ Society. Later he travelled to New York, and eventually moved to Rio de Janeiro. He worked as a portraitist.

43 Nadia Podzemskaia, “A propos des copies d’art byzantin à Istanbul: les artistes russes émigrés et l’Institut Byzantin d’Amérique,” Histoire de l’art 44 (June 1999): 127–128.

44 Gritchenko, Deux ans à Constantinople, 194.

Fig. 7Alexis Gritchenko, Constantinople, 1921. Cover of the Gritchenko monograph. Paris, 1964.


after he had left Istanbul. It is fair to make a comparison between the two artists in order to highlight their differences, which is exactly what Waldemar-George did in the proper time:

“(…) Gritchenko’s art sometimes resembles that of Raoul Dufy, but unlike the latter, who lacks harmony and is often too decorative, Gritchenko remains deeply painterly and delicate. Although a certain lack of solidity can be observed in some of his landscapes, we see views of our own country depicted from a new angle by a curious and attentive eye; in this respect alone Gritchenko is a powerful artist who should be remembered.”45

Dufy used deep, intense color as a background, and he drew the composition on it with quick and gentle strokes of his brush, while Gritchenko’s works consisted of colored planes complementing each other, as pieces of a puzzle. Unlike Dufy, Gritchenko found many geometric (cubic) motifs in the architecture of Istanbul. He had a delicate feeling of color. Many of his watercolors (“Hamal in front of the Red House”, “Men in Mosque”, “The Baklava Seller”, “Kafedji (Coffee House Owner)”) {p. 79, 298, 255, 230} contain a light red that the artist called “the color of crushed strawberries” (fraise écrasée).46 He also liked the green color of water (“Golden Horn”, “Street Scene, Istanbul”) {p. 34, 81} and he skillfully varied more than fifty shades of gray (“Walls and Cypress”, “Ketyb in Hagia Sophia”, “Narghile (fumeur)”). {p. 105, 123, 233}

Turkish fezs, often add bright accents to his works or even form the central focus of attention (“Istanbul Café”, “Four Men in Fezes”, “Praying Crowd”, “Homeless Person [The Istanbul Kid]”) {p. 223, 222, 290, 243}:

“The thing that always gets me excited is the fezs that get blown off like a moving carpet (…) ‘The fez!’ It defines the lifestyle of Tsargorod. It can be a lonely cylinder or a flattened sphere or square growing distinctly out of a turban or in a group—it’s ubiquitous.”47

He liked to watch praying Turks and the still poses of a group or an individual—a state of detachment from all vanity. The audacity with which Gritchenko simplified the unbelievably complex Eastern ornaments, encapsulating them in a precise color, reviving with several quick zigzags of a fine brush is striking. In the painting “Prayer Time” all the exquisite patterns of the mosque walls merge in one blue background, woven of numerous shades from dark blue to almost white, sparkling with multitudes of small strokes. {p. 293} A profile silhouette of a sitting person and two tilted columns are the main elements of this laconic composition. Metaphysics, minimalism, and elegance of color bring to mind a parallel with the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, who also constructed his ‘simple’ works on the most delicate nuances of color. We can only speak of parallels, as the Ukrainian traveler and the Italian ‘homebird’ never crossed paths. Gritchenko kept returning to this ‘praying’ motif: he repeated it on the frontispiece of his small album “Constantinople”,48 {Fig. 8} and at the end of his life he even simplified it more for the lithograph “Hamal in Prayer”, 1975 {p. 295}. The artist devoted many sketches and watercolors to Turkish coffee houses, expressing conversations, capturing the mood of people in poses (“Turks in Coffee House”, “Card Players”) {p. 216, 219}. Even when he depicted a person in close-up, he did not give them

45 Waldemar-George, “A la Galerie Percier, Alexis Gritchenko,” Partisans (June 1924).


47 Ibid., 167.

48 This small album is preserved in the Natcionalnyi Khudozhnii Muzei Ukrainy, NKhMU (The National Art Museum of Ukraine) Archive (F. 74), under the title “Oleksa Hryshchenko” in Kyiv.


features, leaving an empty oval instead. Thus Gritchenko expressed his respect to the Muslim religion and at the same time challenged himself to create a completed p. by mere form and color (“Hamal [Porter Turk]”, “Mullah at the Café”). {p. 254, 235} In the few portrait sketches where he fixed the features of a face (“On the Boat to Prinkipo: A Soldier [Marmara]”, “Untitled [Man with Glasses]”) {p. 252, 239}, he managed to capture the character.

Visits to dervish ceremonies with İbrahim Çallı became another challenge for Gritchenko—by means of color and form to reproduce the dynamos, the movement of a dervish. When comparing the sketch made on the spot {p. 205} with the completed watercolor {Fig. 9}, we can see how the artist deliberately placed the dancers somewhat diagonally, strengthened the rhythm with various positions of their feet, and raised and lowered hands. The swing of hands, folds of clothes and hairs of the black beard create the rhythm in Gritchenko’s

“Whirling Dervish” {p. 130}; enhanced by the rhythm of the balustrade, the bars on the window, and the checkered robe of one of the persons on the far side. The background color of crushed strawberries draws the eye, and a stroke of tender blue (the second person’s robe) pops out as an accent for the whole composition.

Gritchenko as a man and as an artist was especially attracted to Turkish women, their graceful silhouettes, alluring with their light step and tantalizing with the folds of their black dresses. {p. 285} A small sketch of a seated woman wearing a hijab {p. 246} was made quickly, as the artist apparently did not want her to notice him. Portraying a woman, especially by a foreigner, was unthinkable in traditional Turkish society. He got this opportunity when he entered the circle of artists of the 1914 Generation who were receptive to European art. İbrahim Çallı’s wife Münire posed for him. The location of her portrait is unknown, but the following description might enable it to be found:

“Münire sat in Eastern fashion on a round cushion. Her veil falls across her face (...) The colors—black, green, coconut, pink, and white sprinkled with navy,

orange, and red—go together well in one painting. It is hard for me to step back from the great canvas, which is poorly lit, and this is hindering me (7 September 1920).”49

Namık İsmail’s sister Ulviye also acted as a model for Gritchenko. The delicate silhouette in “Turkish Woman” wrapped in a hijab may belong to her or to “timid, modest, round-faced”

Hale, Namık’s female disciple whom Gritchenko met at his home.50 {p. 320} The face in the portrait is just an ochre spot formed by a ‘twinkling’ of strokes. The rhythm of these strokes, here a little lighter, and here a little darker, gives an unmistaken impression that it is an image of a young woman looking directly at the artist. This portrait, built out of several color planes, follows the principles of dynamocolor. In contrast, “Turkish Woman in Çarşaf”, with its abundance of color nuances, resembles an Eastern carpet. {p. 186)


50 Ibid., 171. Hale Asaf (1905 Istanbul–1938 Paris) became a famous Turkish female artist.

Fig. 8Alexis Gritchenko, Prayer Time. Headpiece in the album Constantinople with 46 small drawings, p. 6. National Art Museum of Ukraine Archive, Kyiv.

51

Fig. 9Alexis Gritchenko, The Dervishes, 1920. Deux ans à Constantinople. Paris: Quatre Vents, 1930.


The painting depicts Ulviye.51 She had received a European education, lived in Berlin and Hamburg for one and a half years, dreamed of studying at a conservatory, and told the foreign artist of her dream, admitting that such a career was unthinkable for a woman in Turkey at that time. The portrait describes a woman of the East, whose face is hidden, but at the same time one can see in her a European woman of the early 20th century: she is wearing a black hat with a veil and pondering, with a cup of coffee in front of her. With exquisite painterliness the artist has expressed this duality of Ulviye’s situation. After coming to Paris, Gritchenko returned to ‘European’ portraits with faces, as he did in “Portrait of a Turkish Woman” in 1924, where he depicted an emancipated woman. This painting is currently preserved in the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow. Later he would mainly paint portraits of his own wife, the French woman Lilas de Maubeuge; whom he married in 1927. The couple lived on the French Riviera. The long pinceau (long brush)* manner that had become the hallmark of the School of Paris would affect Gritchenko’s style too; as a result, he would depart from strict structures of dynamocolor, drawing towards more textured, expressive compositions.

In Istanbul, Gritchenko remained faithful to his nature as explorer. The poet Ruşen took him to the Evkaf Museum that had opened back in 1914,52 and the artist was greatly surprised to discover the collection of Persian miniatures:

“The Persian miniatures are related to us. In general, their art system developed in a different direction from the icon system, but they have points of intersection. They have their source in the Byzantine Empire (…) The same sphere and identical conceptual goal are found in both: that which is thoroughly decorative and abstractly beautiful. (...) The Evkaf Museum and the Kariye Mosque are two exceptional places in Constantinople in which the artist speaks as a creator: one on the walls with colorful smalti cubes, and the other on paper with the help of a tiny brush.”53 {Fig. 10}

Alexis explained to his Turkish friends the advantages of “thoroughly decorative and abstractly beautiful” local art. Using French and broken

51 Ibid., 169. In the catalog of the Alexis Gritchenko Foundation (1963) “Turkish Woman in a Çarşaf” is dated 1923; possibly the artist completed the portrait in Paris.

* e.n. Long pinceau (long brush) is an expressive manner of oil painting with the long, twisty traces of brush in the texture of picture’s surface. It was very popular in the international artistic milieu in 1920–1930s in the French capital. The work by Chaim Soutine became one of the most striking examples.

52 The full name of this museum was the Evkaf-ı İslâmiye Müzesi, renamed the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art in 1923.


Fig. 10Kişverî, Divan, 15th–16th centuries. Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation (SVIKV), IAE ŞR 61, 64a.


Turkish, he tried to convince them that Raphael and Michelangelo could not be good examples for contemporary art, especially in Istanbul. Speaking to the female students of the academy (İnas Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi) and at nights in coffee houses, Gritchenko talked of new Western concepts and advised them to take inspiration from the “living Turkish color” —the folk paintings, tombstones, Persian miniatures. “Gritchenko came to the Turkish capital as an outcast, with only one overcoat, but intellectually he had a significant baggage”54 and this was appreciated by İbrahim Çallı, Namık

İsmail, and the people around them. They needed to demonstrate a free thinking and firm position in order to support and even pursue the ideas of a poor immigrant from Soviet Russia, rather than a visiting Western artist with a good reputation. Alexis generously shared his knowledge with his Turkish friends, who in turn helped him, purchasing his works. It must be emphasized that in a short period of time Gritchenko managed to find contacts and survive in an enormous foreign city, during a time of war.

His meeting with the American archaeologist Thomas Whittemore (1871–1950) was a fortunate event in his life. {Fig. 11} Gritchenko dedicated a whole chapter to the famous Byzantologist in his memoirs, My Encounters and Conversations with French Artists, where he describes this encounter in detail. In the late winter of 1921, some people found Alexis in the former Russian hospital in Harbiye and invited him to the Pera Palace Hotel to show his watercolors to Whittemore, who was associated with the founding of the Byzantine Institute of America in Boston (1929) and the Byzantine Library in Paris (1930). In the early 1930s Whittemore received President Atatürk’s consent to turn the Hagia Sophia mosque into a museum, and there he uncovered its unique mosaics. He could have heard about Gritchenko from Dimitri Ismailovitch. On the appointed day, Gritchenko

came to the hotel and laid out his watercolors on the carpet in the large room for the professor to look at. Whittemore examined them carefully, setting aside the ones he liked. Then he asked the price and his secretary counted the number of paintings: “(...) there were sixty-six in all. The price in dollars was handed me in style on a silver tray.”55

It was certainly no accident that Whittemore was able to appreciate Gritchenko’s works. Back in the 1900s, thanks to two American collectors, brother and sister Leo and Gertrude Stein, who moved in Paris’s avant-garde circles, Whittemore had been introduced to Henri Matisse. During a trip to Moscow in 1908, at Matisse’s

54 Gritchenko, Moï roky v Tsarhorodi (Munich; Paris: Dniprova khvylia, 1961), 6.

55 Gritchenko, My Encounters with French Artists: Memoirs of an Artist (New York: Alexis Gritchenko Foundation, 1968), 20.

Fig. 11Thomas Whittemore. Photo after the drawing by Alexander Jakovleff, 1937. National Art Museum of Ukraine Archive, Kyiv.


suggestion he saw not only the collections of icons, but also Shchukin’s collection.56 As in the case of Matisse and Gritchenko, Whittemore’s story proves that the new French art assisted in understanding the artistic value of the Byzantine heritage.

During that meeting at the hotel, the American professor asked Gritchenko about his plans and encouraged him in his desire to see the ancient and Byzantine relics of Greece. He paid for the artist’s voyage by ship to the Greek port of Piraeus. Thomas Whittemore’s interest in Gritchenko’s art continued in subsequent years. In November 1928, before he had become a member of the prestigious American club of artists and literati, The Century Association, he exhibited Gritchenko’s watercolors from his collection at the club’s premises on the 7th Avenue in New York.57 Their final encounter took place at the Byzantine library in Paris, in 1948. Gritchenko arrived to give the professor a copy of his recently published monograph. He found Whittemore in his office and gave him the book: “(...) He looked through it, got up and without a word shook me warmly by the hand. That was our last meeting.”58 Whittemore returned the mosaics of Hagia Sophia to the world and was one of the first people to appreciate the work of Alexis Gritchenko.

Istanbul became the place of the artist’s greatest trials and at the same time of his artistic flourishing. Many years later, in a letter to Hordynsky, he admitted:

“So, honestly speaking, despite the fascination with ancient Greece, after Tsargorod, the historical value of my pictures and watercolors from Mycenae, Crete, and all the holy streets of Greece decreased by 80%. Why? Was it because of the romanticism of the Ottoman capital?”59

Two years in that city had an impact on his entire future.

Gritchenko’s Constantinople at Exhibitions, in Memoirs and in Collections

In the fall of 1921, Alexis Gritchenko travelled by ship from Greece to Marseille with 14 chests of watercolors, gouaches and 50 francs in his pocket. {Fig. 12} Thanks to a letter of recommendation, the secretary of the Salon d’Automne accepted the works he submitted and passed them onto the jury, who selected 12 of his 24 watercolors. This was unusual, since as a rule they accepted only two works.60 On the day of the exhibition preview, the artist Jean Marchand introduced Gritchenko to Fernand Léger:

“He took me amiably by the arm and led me to Léger’s room. ‘Here is your Constantinople’, he said smiling, and then called, ‘Léger, Léger…’ The cubist was standing in front of his huge composition talking to some friends. Marchand introduced me with the words, ‘here is Gritchenko, the author of these gouaches.’

56 Rémi Labrusse and Nadia Podzemskaia, “Naissance d’une vocation: aux sources de la carrière byzantine de Thomas Whittemore,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 54 (2000): 53.

57 Thomas Whittemore, Papers, Box no. 100 (Gritchenko file), The Committee for the Education of Russian Youth in Exile, Bakhmeteff Archive, Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York.

58 Gritchenko, My Encounters with French Artists, 23.

59 Gritchenko to Hordynsky, 18 July 1958, f. 74, od. zb. 103, NKhMU, Kyiv.

60 These figures are recorded by the artist in his memoirs: Gritchenko, Moï zustrichi ta rozmovy z frantsuz’kymy mysttsiamy (New York: Svoboda, 1964), 5. It is interesting that all 24 pieces are included in the catalog for the 1921 Salon d’Automne: No. 1000–1016, Spirit of the East (compositions from Turkey), 17 paintings; No. 1017–1023, Spirit of the East, seven drawings, Salon d’Automne, 1921.


‘Ah, I liked them so much that I put them next to me,’ replied Léger.”61

Gritchenko made another important acquaintance during the Salon d’Automne, that of the art critic René-Jean (1879–1951), marking the start of a friendship that lasted for years. Beginning with Gritchenko’s first solo exhibition in 1922, René-Jean published articles about the artist in newspapers and catalogs, and wrote the text for a monograph on Gritchenko that was published in Paris in 1948.62

André Levinson (1887–1933), the erudite critic and ballet expert, had noticed Gritchenko back in pre-war St. Petersburg.63 They developed a friendly relationship in Paris, and Levinson suggested doing an exhibition of his Istanbul watercolors in the Povoltzky Gallery. A former Kyivan, Jacques Povoltzky owned a bookstore at 13 rue Bonaparte right by the National School of Fine Arts, where he would exhibit the work of young artists. The “Istanbul Blue and Rose” exhibition opened on 11 February 1922, with 22 oil paintings and gouaches, and 50 watercolors. {Fig. 13} The catalog contained a foreword written by Levinson and the well-known Orientalist writer, Claude Farrère,64 who agreed to write not so much because he understood Gritchenko’s work, but because he loved Istanbul. Gritchenko lightheartedly recalled how “more often than not he held the painting

upside down, and wanted to know what they represented—a ship, or St. Sophia?”65 Farrère’s text resembles an Eastern ornament, woven of words of praise:

“One thing is certain: I, an old Turk, among old Turks, looked at the 72 different works on display here, one by one, and, inevitably I recognized my splendid beloved capital. The Turkish sun is embodied there;—the Turkish sky too. (...) Gritchenko knew how to capture in flight the slightest vibrations of gold and blue, and to cast them in the raw onto his paper. (...) Do not make the mistake of going to him and demanding what these pink patches are, what these green spots are, if they are men, animals, trees or anything else... It’s about light and shade. What he depicts relates to the hour of the day, whether it is four o’clock in the afternoon, or three hours earlier; it is the night that is falling or the day that is dawning; and what it is really about is not the minarets of Süleymaniye Mosque, but their shades of color

61 Gritchenko, My Encounters with French Artists (1968), 45.

62 René-Jean, Comœdia, 19 February 1922, 3, Alexis Gritchenko: Sa Vie Son Œuvre, textes de René-Jean, Paul Fierens (Paris: Quatre Vents, 1948).


64 Claude Farrère (1876–1957) was a French author, historian, naval officer, a winner of the Goncourt Prize (1905) and a Knight of the Order of the Legion of Honor. He was interested in Turkey and visited many times. He wrote adventure and detective stories.


Fig. 12Alexis Gritchenko, 1921, photograph. National Art Museum of Ukraine Archive, Kyiv.


and the violet flame the setting sun sometimes lays upon their copper cones. A point, that is all.”66

The name of the popular writer helped. The preview was packed with people, including the wife of the Turkish ambassador and Farrère with his wife. Gritchenko spent his last pennies on frames but did not sell a single work. A month after the opening, the artist was invited to visit the Turkish ambassadress’ home:

“On rue Victor Hugo I was received in a veritable Arabian Nights palace amid a splendor of Oriental carpets, yataghans on the walls and palms in ornamental vases. With the languor of a Pierre Loti heroine, the lady leafed through the paintings I hoped to sell, murmured about her beloved Istanbul, enquired after my Turkish colleagues Namyk and Çali, and suddenly pointed with a plump little hand through the open window: ‘I will give you a piece of good advice. Right across the street is my hairdresser. Show him your pictures. He is sure to buy some.’”67

“Still this was the beginning of the Parisian career of a Ukrainian vagabond.”68 The influential critics Louis Vauxcelles (1870–1943) and Waldemar-George (1893–1970) visited

the exhibition. The March issue of the journal L’Amour de l’аrt, published by Vauxcelles, contained an article about the exhibition by Levinson:

“Gritchenko has an intuitive understanding of the things of the East; but he transposes his spontaneous and acute emotion over the rules of easel painting, so submitting his Slavic sensitivity to discipline. Faced with the bewildering complexity of Constantinople, Gritchenko has decided to make a choice.”69 Waldemar-George also chimed in with a brief but apt observation:

“Among the Russian painters who live in Paris, he may be the only one who practices easel painting with true understanding. Mr. Gritchenko relieves, liberates color from its own bodily weight distributing it without regard for the natural limits that give it form. He seems to organize his compositions according to the quantities of color they are required to contain.”70

Apparently, the success of the exhibition gave Gritchenko the idea of publishing his Istanbul watercolors and memoirs in book form. The artist’s diaries from the period

66 C. Farrère and A. Levinson, “Preface,” Constantinople Bleu et Rose. Peintures et aquarelles d’Alexis Gritchenko (Paris: Galerie Povoltzki, 1922), Exhibition catalog.


68 Ibid., 12.

69 Farrère and Levinson, “Preface,” Constantinople Bleu et Rose, 92.

70 W. George, Les Cahiers idéalistes, Album with Materials about A. Gritchenko’s Work Pasted in (1922–1977): 4, March 1922, f. 74, od. zb. 2, NKhMU, Kyiv.

Fig. 13Constantinople Bleu et Rose, cover of the catalog exhibition at the Povoltzky Gallery. Paris, 1922.Collection of the National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kyiv.


between 1919 to 1945 are held in the National Art Museum in Kyiv; these are old, worn out notepads and notebooks filled with rapidly executed, barely legible handwriting. Possibly in the future, researchers will have enough patience to decipher these records and add new details to Gritchenko’s biography. Using these notes, the artist worked on the text for four years, writing in Russian. A large amount of money was needed to translate the manuscript into French, prepare high quality illustrations and buy good quality paper. Again chance came to his aid. The Ukrainian artist had luck with some rich Americans. In 1922, when Alexis was away from Paris, touring Greece and the island of Crete, Dr. Albert Barnes (1872–1951), the same man who had discovered Chaim Soutine, purchased 14 works from Gritchenko’s Greek cycle from Leopold Zborowski. This enhanced Gritchenko’s prestige among the artists of Montparnasse. In 1927 the collector Joseph John Kerrigan (1886–1952) came to Paris. The critic René-Jean cooperated with Kerrigan and invited the “respected American maecenas” to look at Gritchenko’s watercolors of Istanbul. Gritchenko had taken a day off with toothache and had no intention of getting out of bed, but René-Jean persuaded him to come to Galerie Van Leer, where the exhibition of his seascapes and still lifes had just closed. The artist put his watercolors in a folder and went to the gallery, where he had an experience similar to that which happened before, in the Pera Palace Hotel:

“At exactly two o’clock, Kerrigan appeared on the threshold of the gallery, a typical American patron from New York. Tall, chic, satisfied, but I didn’t know with what. (…) I calmly spread out my watercolors on the floor, one after another, and Kerrigan walked carefully between them. He bent down and made a selection. He counted them and said to his wife in English, ‘Thirty. Now let the artist himself choose another ten for me.’”71

Gritchenko chose the 10 best and stated the price. Kerrigan pulled a good stack of thousand-franc notes from his pocket, counted out the necessary sum and paid him right away. Alexis could start working on the publication of his book. In letters to René-Jean he described all the difficulties: he changed translators twice, and later his French wife helped him clarify some difficult parts of the text. Gritchenko was extraor-dinarily demanding when it came to the quality of the printed illustrations, to ensure that they reflected the nuances of watercolor technique. Daniel Jacomet, whose father had invented the technique of pochoir, worked on the stereotypes for almost two years.

“Infinite times I went to Auteuil to keep an eye on the work,” the artist recalled. “I told them precisely which paints and tones to use for each watercolor.”72 The Parisian Druet Gallery organized publicity for the works from his Istanbul period and the future book. In April 1928, 80 works were shown there (18 oil paintings and 62 watercolors). A catalog with an announcement about the forthcoming book was printed.73 The Druet Gallery organized another exhibition in June 1929. Finally in 1930 the book titled Deux ans à Constantinople came into the world at the Quatre Vents publishing house. Each of the 305 copies had 40 color reproductions, and the first 25 copies were printed on royal Japanese paper. Gritchenko sent a copy to René-Jean with the following letter:

“Permit me to offer you, as testimony of his deep affection, my son Two Years in Constantinople. The birth was very painful, but what a joy for an artist who left his homeland like a vagabond to see his dream

71 Gritchenko, My Encounters with French Artists (1964),1–72.

72 Ibid., 77.

73 Constantinople, peintures et aquarelles par Gritchenko Galerie Druet: Du 16 au 27 avril 1968 (Paris: Galerie Druet, 1928), Exhibition catalog.


come true; to present in a luxury edition these small watercolors on which I worked with my hands swollen by cold and on an empty stomach.

This book is neither a literary work nor a scientific one. It is simply a piece of my life. I relate day by day my discovery of Constantinople, this city which has haunted me like a ghost since my childhood. I discovered there, without guides, without books, the Byzantine soul which still throbs through the lattices of Istanbul. Alas, that too disappears! These pages are the last witnesses to this Turkish life so beautiful, so captivating, so colorful. Despite its transforma-tions and current modernization, despite the difficulties that humanity is going through, Constantinople will always be enchanting for the artist and the poet.”74

Gritchenko had no children, so this publication became his “son.” He dedicated the book to his wife with the following inscription: “To Lilas Lavelaine de Maubeuge, with whom the Ukrainian vagabond arrived at the land of happiness, 28 July 1927.” The book was noticed and many critics responded with high appreciation of its quality. René-Jean summarized his long essay in Paris journal Comœdia with the words, “Gritchenko owes his talent as a watercolor artist to Istanbul.”75 Raymond Escholier wrote about being perplexed by what captivates him the most in this book: “An amazing stoicism, or deep knowledge, or the piercing sensuality of the writing, or the forty watercolors so precisely reproduced by Jacomet, so brilliant and light, as though they were drawn with butterfly wings.”76 Paul Fierens praised the French translation, giving credit to the author’s French wife.77 And a critic from Marseille, Charles Géniaux, remarked, “Not hiding his fascination with Delacroix, Gritchenko has modestly called the book ‘An Artist’s Diary’, although his remarkable introduction far exceeds, in its breadth of thought and culture, simple notes in a diary.”78 A review of the book appeared even in faraway Lviv, in the journal Mystetstvo published by the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists (ANUM).79 In 1937 a copy of the book was purchased by National Library’s Cabinet of Prints in Paris. The book also found its way into Atatürk’s personal library. A Ukrainian translation entitled My Years in Tsargorod appeared more than 30 years later. It was published in Munich by the immigrant publishing house Dniprova Khvylia, in 1961.80 The book was more modest, without illustrations, and the text was abridged in places and did not follow the structure of the French edition. For the cover, Gritchenko used his gouache “Homeless Person (The Istanbul Kid)” which he had found among his old works in his dépôt in Paris.81 {p. 243} Sviatoslav Hordynsky wrote the foreword and added a map of Istanbul as a guide for readers. It was important to Gritchenko that his countrymen read the book, as he wrote in a letter to Sviatoslav Hordynsky.82 But the book was available only to

74 Gritchenko to René-Jean, 24 October 1930, in Gritchenko, Lettres à René-Jean, 2014, 33.

75 René-Jean, “La vie romanesque d’un artiste russe à Constantinople de 1919 à 1921,” Comœdia, 27 November 1930.

76 Raymond Escholier, “Constantinople vue par un peintre russe,” Dépêche de Toulouse, 27 November 1930.

77 Paul Fierens, “Gritchenko. Deux ans à Constantinople,” Candide, 5 February 1931.

78 Charles Géniaux, “Turbans et casquettes,” Le petit marseillais, 23 December 1930.

79 “Rezenzia paryzhanyna” [Review by a Parisian], Mystetstvo, Lviv, 1 (1932): 29–30.

80 The text was translated from French into Russian by Marta Kalitovskaia and edited by Igor Kostetsky.

81 From the late 1920s to 1972, Gritchenko had a small mansard-dépôt in Paris, on des Beaux Arts street, on the sixth floor; he stored there his Constantinople works and other paintings that he had brought from travels for exhibitions. Gritchenko to Hordynsky, 30 October 1972, f. 74, od. zb. 280, NKhMU, Kyiv.

82 Gritchenko to Hordynsky, 5 March 1958, NKhMU.


the Ukrainian diaspora in Western Europe and in America. Its publication in Soviet Ukraine was impossible, just like any other book or exhibition of works by the emigrant artist. For that reason, in 1963, Gritchenko established his foundation at the Ukrainian Institute in New York and sent some of his works and his archive from Vence83 in order to “hand all this material to the museums of Ukraine—when they become free and have place for all aspects of Ukrainian art.”84 Even in view of the Khrushchev Thaw*, this plan seemed unlikely, as nobody could foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ukraine gained independence in 1991, and in 2006 the works and archive materials of the Gritchenko Foundation were transported from New York to Kyiv and handed to the National Art Museum of Ukraine.

The artist created the foundation with the help of Sviatoslav Hordynsky (1906–1993), an artist and an art historian, as well as a connoisseur of the icon and Byzantine heritage. Hordynsky had been born in Lviv, and after World War II emigrated to the USA. He and Gritchenko first met in Paris in 1930, at the exhibition of Gritchenko’s Istanbul watercolors at the Druet Gallery. They became friends, and their long friendship had a practical aspect, too, since Hordynsky helped sell the artist’s works to the Ukrainian diaspora in America and Canada. Their correspondence85 reveals how Gritchenko’s watercolors gradually increased in value: right after the war they could be purchased for 25 dollars; later rising to 40 dollars; and in the 1960s to 200-300 dollars. Owning Gritchenko’s works was prestigious among the Ukrainian emigrants, and the works sold steadily.

One of the main collectors was Volodymyr Semchyshyn (1906–1969) who lived in Oslo, Norway. He began collecting Gritchenko’s works in the late 1940s, and by the mid-1960s he owned over 300.86 Semchyshyn was going to organize an exhibition of the artist’s work in Kyiv, but illness and death frustrated his plans. Almost nothing is known about William Semcesen, as Volodymyr Semchyshyn called himself, and there are even more questions regarding the fate of his collection after it was inherited by his French wife and two sons, Roman and Yuri. Not only Ukrainians appreciated Gritchenko’s art. In 1923 the famous Parisian art dealer and collector Paul Guillaume, bought 10 paintings by Gritchenko (from the Paris cycle). The French artist Paul Signac liked the landscape painting “Banks of the Seine”, which he purchased at auction at the Hôtel Drouot and hung on the wall of his house.87 Gritchenko’s Istanbul and Greek periods were especially popular among the lovers of avant-garde. The Barnes Foundation near Philadelphia, where Gritchenko’s works were exhibited from the early 1920s, was the place to which students from the University of Pennsylvania who were studying European art were regularly sent for internships.88 Two of them, Richard J.

83 After his marriage, from the late 1920s on, the artist lived with his wife in the French Riviera, first in Cagnes-sur-mer and then after 1960 lived in Vence.

84 Fundatsiia Oleksy Hryshchenka (New York: Ukrainian Institute of America, 1963), Exhibition catalog.

* e.n. The term refers to the period from 1953 to 1964 when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were relaxed, and millions of Soviet political prisoners were released due to Nikita Khrushchev’s policies of de-Stalinization and peaceful coexistence with other nations.

85 Hordynsky kept all the letters he received from Gritchenko from 1931 to 1976, and donated them to the Foundation. Today they are stored in NKhMU Archive, f. 74 classification.

86 Gritchenko to Hordynsky, 14 March 1969, f. 74, od. zb. 230, NKhMU.


88 The Barnes Foundation was located in Merion near Philadelphia until 2012; now it is open in a new building, in the center of Philadelphia. https://www.barnesfoundation.org/about


Wattenmaker and Matthew Phillips, were taken with Gritchenko’s work. Wattenmaker twice visited the artist in France (1964, 1968). {Fig. 14} In the early 1970s, when he was director of the Ontario Art Gallery, he bought a small painting from the Greek period for the collection. Wattenmaker later became director of the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Matthew Phillips first saw Gritchenko’s works in 1950 and could not immediately understand their intimate beauty when compared to bright works by French colorists in the Barnes’ collection. In time, however, Phillips came to appreciate Gritchenko’s work: “For me Gritchenko means a refined, delicate and creative addition to cubism.”89 In 1964, as a lecturer at Bard College in Kingston near New York, he organized an exhibition of Gritchenko’s works dating from 1919 to 1923, consisting of 59 watercolors, drawings and gouaches. In the foreword to the catalog Phillips advised students that they could learn a lot from this master artist, whom Phillips believed had a special place among the cubists:

“Gritchenko’s contribution to Cubism is as valid and perhaps more personal than that of Gris, Gleizes, Delaunay, or La Fresnaye. He is warmer and more varied than Léger, less stylized than Metzinger, Severini, or Picabia. (…) He is never theoretical or doctrinaire. While many painted from the head, he worked from hand and eye.”90 After the show at Bard College closed, Gritchenko’s works were exhibited at the Community Art Gallery in Philadelphia, again thanks to Matthew Phillips’s efforts. Half of the 100 works that were exhibited belonged to the Gritchenko Foundation in New

89 Alexis Gritchenko: Sa Vie Son Œuvre, textes de Raymond Charmet, Paul Fierens, Sviatoslav Hordynsky et d’autres (Paris: Quatre Vents, 1964), 43.

90 Matthew Phillips, “Introduction,” in Gritchenko, William Cooper Procter Art Center (New York: Bard College, 1964), Exhibition catalog.

Fig. 14Alexis Gritchenko, 1964. Photo by Richard J. Wattenmaker. National Art Museum of Ukraine Archive, Kyiv.


York, and the other half was for sale. The artist and his wife flew in for the opening. They entered the exhibition hall to the applause of about 300 people. Few masters have experienced such success: all the works were sold an hour before the official opening.91

The last major exhibition of Gritchenko’s Istanbul and Greek works (1919–1923) again took place in the United States, at the Peter Deitsch Gallery in New York in April 1966. The gallerist and art dealer, Peter Deitsch (1925–1970) specialized in printed graphic art by European masters of the 19th and 20th centuries, displaying paintings by Redon, Matisse, Bonnard and Dubuffet. He was able to gather 97 works by Gritchenko for the exhibition: four oil paintings, 11 gouaches, 64 watercolors, and 18 drawings. Some of the works were from the Alexis Gritchenko Foundation, and the rest was from private collections. The picture “Saltimbanques Turcs” (1920), which was reproduced in the modest catalog, was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art. {Fig. 15} The director of the Guggenheim Museum was interested in the painting “Red (Pink) House” (1920), which belonged to the foundation, and Gritchenko informed Hordynsky about it.92 The artist agreed to sell it for a low price, but for unknown reasons the plan fell through, and in the early 1970s this painting was purchased by a New Yorker collector of Gritchenko’s works, Ilarion Cholhan.93 The watercolor version of this composition belongs to the Ömer Koç Collection in Istanbul. {p. 79} In 1971, a year after Peter Deitsch’s death, the McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia organized a sales exhibition of Gritchenko’s works (about 35) from his collection. Just as had happened in 1964, all the works were sold before the opening of the exhibition.94 In the early 1960s the artist attempted to learn the fate of his works in the collections of Thomas Whittemore and Joseph Kerrigan, who had passed away. He asked the Fogg Art Museum (one of the Harvard Art Museums) in Boston, which had acquired part of Whittemore’s collection, but his 66 watercolors were not there.95 Neither were they found in the Byzantine Library in Paris, nor the Byzantine Institute at Dumbarton Oaks. Kerrigan had owned 44 works by Gritchenko, including at least eight of the watercolors reproduced in Two Years in Constantinople. The location of this collection could not be traced either. The artist never returned to Istanbul, but this city was in his heart for the rest of his life. In 1975 a series of colored lithographs of the artist’s watercolors from the 1920s were published (in a limited edition of 200 copies) under his supervision. Gritchenko chose six subjects, and three of which were related to Istanbul: “Hamal at Prayer”, “Carriers of the Golden Horn”, and “Leaving Eyoub”. {Fig. 16} The lithographs were displayed close to the original works at the Edmonton Art Gallery in the exhibition “Alexis Gritchenko, Works from the 1920s,” in 1976.96 This exhibition in Canada was the last to be held during Gritchenko’s lifetime.

91 Petro Andrusiv, “Mysttsi proshchaiut’ 1964 rik,” Ameryka, 6 February 1965, f. 74, od. zb. 189, NKhMU.

92 Gritchenko to Hordynsky, 18 July 1966, f. 74, od. zb. 192, NKhMU.

93 Gritchenko to Hordynsky, 29 May 1972, f. 74, od. zb. 279, NKhMU.

94 “Cherhovyi velykyi uspich O. Hryshchenka,” Ukrainske slovo, 19 December 1971.

95 Gritchenko to Hordynsky, 11 June 1964, f. 74, od. zb. 166, NKhMU.

96 Alexis Gritchenko: Works from the 1920s, curator Lelde Muehlenbachs (Edmonton: The Edmonton Art Gallery, 1976), Exhibition catalog.

62

on the right: Fig. 16Alexis Gritchenko, Leaving Eyoub, lithograph, 40 × 30 cm. Printed in 1975 after work from the 1920s. Ed. 71/200. Collection of Eduard Dymshyts, Ukraine.

Fig. 15Alexis Gritchenko, Saltimbanques Turcs (Turkish Acrobats [Bear Dancing]), 1920, pencil on paper, 29.6 × 31.5 cm. Given anonymously. Acc. no.: 235.1968. New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). © 2020. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence, © Photo SCALA, Florence.

63


According to figures given in the Catalog of the Main Works compiled by Gritchenko himself when he was almost 90 years old, in less than two years in Istanbul, he created about 650 works: 400 watercolors and gouaches, 140 drawings and 10 oil paintings.97 However Gritchenko appears to have been mistaken in the total, since the numbers 400+140+10 come to a total of 550, not 650. Yet the question of whether he made all his Turkish works in Istanbul does make sense. If we compare his first watercolors painted with a limited number of colors and with brief penciled notes, such as “Bridge over the Golden Horn (Old Bridge)”, “Porters”, “Galata” {p. 27, 262,

3} and his finished works, such as “Walls of Constantinople”, “Narghile (fumeur)”, “Prayer at the Rüstem Pasha Mosque” {p. 99, 233, 289}, it becomes obvious that they

were created under different conditions. Only when Gritchenko had enough means to buy colors and paper—and after his meeting with Whittemore he could even afford Finnish cardboard—he started to paint his watercolors and gouaches based on the numerous sketches that he had made on the streets of Istanbul. He completed them on the Princes’ Islands, in the attic of the house where İbrahim Çallı lived, in his room in the Lüfanet caravanserai—and all of them were in the 14 chests that he took to Marseille. But there is reason to believe that later Gritchenko repeated, or rather made variations of some compositions—first in Greece, and then in France.

Adamantios Adamantiou (1875–1937), the first director of the Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens, wanted to show his gratitude to Gritchenko for helping him systematize his Byzantine collection, so he sent a letter of recommendation to his teacher, the Byzantologist Professor Charles Diehl, asking if he would assist to obtain a French visa. In his letter, Adamantiou wrote about the successful exhibition and sale of Gritchenko’s work at the Parnassos Society in Athens in the summer of 1921, and added:

“He has a strong desire to go to Paris in order to organize an exhibition among your artistic circles. He has all his works, so he is selling only copies of his works and keeps the prototypes for museums in his home country.”98

Possibly, Gritchenko used these “prototypes” while preparing Two Years in Constantinople for publication. A comparison of “Hagia Sophia” {p. 121} from Kerrigan’s collection99 with “Hagia Sophia” from the Ömer Koç Collection {p. 119} clearly shows that these two works are variations of the same composition. During World War II, the artist and his wife had to find a way to survive, so he wrote in a letter to René-Jean at the end of 1939: “I work on my watercolors with a hot water bottle in the pocket to warm my fingers. This is Constantinople.”100 Later he added: “In December we sent watercolors to my old clients in America. For some watercolors, I received 3,000 francs.”101 Gritchenko did not specify which subjects he was referring to—Istanbul, Greece, or others. During his numerous travels, including his visits to Spain, he again continued to paint in watercolor. When mentioning Istanbul, the artist referred to the hard conditions he was obliged to work under.

97 Gritchenko, Manuscript, Kataloh-pokazhchyk pryntsypovykh rechei. Kataloh osnovnykh tvoriv O. Hryshchenka, 1974, f. 74, od. zb. 4, p. 2–3, NKhMU.

98 Adamantiou to Charles Diehl, 2 July 1921. A copy of the letter is preserved in the NKhMU archive: Album with Materials about A. Gritchenko’s Work Pasted in (1922–1977), f. 74, od. zb. 2, p. 8, NKhMU.

99 Gritchenko, Deux ans à Constantinople, fig. 2.

100 Gritchenko to René-Jean, 19 December 1939, in Gritchenko, Lettres à René-Jean, 2014, 66.

101 Gritchenko to René-Jean, 16 March 1940, in Gritchenko, Lettres à René-Jean, 2014, 67.


“With my hands, swollen with cold, I work on my watercolors by my bed” he recorded in his diary in early February 1920, while staying at the Russian hospital in Istanbul.102 From the late 1940s, a new generation of collectors in the Ukrainian diaspora and elsewhere started being interested in the artist’s Istanbul and Greek works. Gritchenko was parting with the works stored in his Paris mansard and was not making new variations. In Istanbul, as a rule, Gritchenko signed his works “A.Gr.” in Cyrillic (А. Гр.), along with the date: the year in Arabic numbers and the month in Latin numerals. Only after moving to France did he begin writing his signature in Latin script. In the 1950s–early 1960s, the artist travelled a lot and worked productively; his favorite places being Peyrat le Château near Limoges, the Basque country and Tuscany. These abounded with subjects for new landscapes and still life paintings. In 1956, Gritchenko wrote to Sviatoslav Hordynsky:

“(…) on Saturday morning I came across several interesting gouaches from Tsargorod in my workshop. We need to literally dig through our things here in order to find something. I would love to add these works to the gouaches that I sent to your wife.”103

In 1970 the artist asked Hordynsky to send his relatives an Istanbul drawing as a gift and added in the letter that “the watercolors are almost finished.”104

In his catalog, Gritchenko marked the oil paintings that he had made in Istanbul with the number 10. The list can be recreated according to the artist’s notes and the catalogs of the exhibitions:

1. Rain over the Hagia Sophia, 1920, oil on canvas, 71.5 × 75 cm, signed and dated. Collection of the National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kyiv.2. Turkish Woman, 1920, oil on canvas, 73.5 × 55.5 cm, signed and dated. Collection of the National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kyiv.3. Turkish Woman in Çarşaf, 1920–1923, oil on canvas, 99.5 × 76.5 cm. Collection of the National Art Museum of Ukraine in Kyiv.4. Prayer Time, Constantinople, 1920, oil on canvas, 94 × 80.5 cm. Ömer Koç Collection, formerly in the collection of W. Semcesen, Oslo.5. The Rose Gate, Istanbul, 1920, oil on canvas, 75 × 88 cm. Exhibited at Grimaldi Castle, Cagnes-sur-Mer, 1960, cat. no: 2; formerly in the collection of W. Semcesen, Oslo. 6. Turkish Woman, 1921, oil on canvas, 73.5 × 55.5 cm. Themistokl and Orysia Wirsta Collection, Paris. 7. The Red (Pink) House, 1920, oil on canvas, 88 × 66 cm. Formerly in the collection of Ilarion Cholhan, New York. Commemorative Exhibition, Alexis Gritchenko Foundation, Ukrainian Institute of America, New York, 1983. {Fig. 17}

8. Portrait of Münire, location unknown.9. Le Grand Bazar. Exhibited at Gallery Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, 1957, cat. no: 3. Private collection, location unknown.10. Turcs in a Café. Exhibited at Gallery Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, 1957, cat. no: 4. Private collection, location unknown.


103 Gritchenko to Hordynsky, 7 August 1956, f. 74, od. zb. 90, NKhMU.

104 Gritchenko to Hordynsky, 2 February 1970, f. 74, od. zb. 242, NKhMU.


The comprehensive list (catalogue raisonné) of watercolors and gouaches requires much more searching to uncover traces of Whittemore’s, Kerrigan’s, Semcesen’s and Cholhan’s main collections. In 2001 Alexis Gritchenko’s works were also presented at an exhibition of Ukrainian artists in Paris organized by the Ukrainian Embassy in the UNESCO building. There the French financier Michel Lièvre Markovitch discovered the artist and started collecting his works, and later he initiated and sponsored the publication of a large monograph about Gritchenko. The book was published in Ukrainian and English by Rodovid Press in Kyiv, in 2017.105

A century later, Gritchenko has ‘returned’ to Istanbul, with an exhibition of his works with the support of the Vehbi Koç Foundation, and his memoirs Two Years in Constantinople has been translated and published in Turkish. Now the artist could repeat what he had said long ago:

“(...) I convey my deep gratitude to all my friends in Constantinople who have relieved my suffering and shared my happiness. Greetings to hamals and dervishes, to

chudjouks [children] and the mysterious kyz [girls]...”106

Hopefully this exhibition and catalog give a broader view of Alexis Gritchenko’s art and enable recognition of his role in early 20th century avant-garde.

105 Susak, Alexis Gritchenko. Dynamocolor.


Fig. 17Alexis Gritchenko, The Red (Pink) House, 1920, oil on canvas, 88 x 66 cm. Reproduced in the catalog of Commemorative Exhibition. Gritchenko in The Ukrainian Institute of America, New York, 1983.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Archival Sources

Album with Materials about A. Gritchenko’s Work Pasted in (1922–1977). F. 74, od. zb. 2. Natcionalnyi Khudozhnii Muzei Ukrainy, NKhMU [The National Art Museum of Ukraine] Archive, Kyiv.

Alexis Gritchenko to Varvara Stepanova (copy of letter), 29 August 1921. F. 10, d. 2645. Otdel rukopisei Gosudarstvennoi Tret’iakovskoi Galerei, GTG [Department of Manuscripts at the State Tretyakov Gallery], Moscow.

O. Hryshchenko [Alexis Gritchenko], manuscript, 1974. Kataloh-pokazhchyk pryntsypovykh rechei [Catalog-Index of Fundamental Things]. Kataloh osnovnykh tvoriv O. Hryshchenka. F. 74, od. zb. 4. NKhMU Archive, Kyiv.

“Oleksa Hryshchenko” [Alexis Gritchenko]. F. 74. NKhMU Archive, Kyiv.

Shemshurin, Andrei. Vospominaniia [Memoirs]. F. 339, d. 6, ed. khr. 11. Otdel rukopisei Rossiyskoi Gosudarstvennoi Biblioteki, RGB [Manuscript Department of the Russian State Library], Moscow.

Thomas Whittemore. Papers. Box 100 (Gritchenko file). The Committee for the Education of Russian Youth in Exile (CERYE). Bakhmeteff Archive (BAR), Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York.

Publications (in Russian and Ukrainian)

7-ia vystavka kartin i skul’ptury Svobodnoe tvorchestvo [7th exhibition of paintings and sculpture of Free Creativity]. Moscow, 1918. Exhibition catalog.

Arofikin, Volodymyr and Danuta Posats’ka. Kataloh vtrachenykh eksponativ Natsional’noho muzeiu u L’vovi [Catalog of the National Museum in Lviv’s lost pieces]. Kyiv; Lviv: Triumf, 1996.

Bohomazov, Alexander. Zhyvopys ta element [Painting and Elements], ed. D. Horbachov, T. and S. Popov. Kyiv: Zadumlyvyi Straus, 1996.

Fundatsiia Oleksy Hryshchenka [Alexis Gritchenko Foundation]. New York: Ukrainian Institute of America, 1963. Exhibition catalog.

Gritchenko, Alexis. Kak u nas prepodaiut zhivopis’ i chto pod neiu nado razumet’ [How we teach painting and what we should understand by it]. Voprosy zhivopisi [Matters of painting], Vol. 2. Moscow, 1915.

___ “Krizis iskusstva” i sovremennaia zhivopis’. Po povodu lektsii N. Berdiaeva [“Crisis in art” and contemporary painting. On N. Berdiaev’s lecture]. Voprosy zhivopisi, Vol. 4. Moscow, 1917.

___ Moï roky v Tsarhorodi [My years in Tsargorod]. Munich; Paris: Dniprova Khvylia, 1961.

___ Moï zustrichi ta rozmovy z frantsuz’kymy mysttsiamy [My encounters and conversations with French artists]. New York: Svoboda, 1964.

___ O sviaziakh russkoi zhivopisi s Vizantiei i Zapadom. XIII–XX vv.; mysli zhivopistsa [Russian painting and its ties with Byzantium and the West]. Moscow, 1913.

___ Roky buri i natysku. Spohady mysttsia. 1908–1918 [Years of Sturm und Drang: An artist’s recollections, 1908–1918]. New York: Svoboda, 1967.

___ Russkaia ikona kak iskusstvo zhivopisi [Ancient Rus Icon as the Art of Painting]. Voprosy zhivopisi, Vol. 3. Moscow, 1917.

Makovskii, Sergei. “Po povodu vystavki sovremennoi russkoi zhivopisi” [On the occasion of the exhibition of contemporary Russian painting]. Apollon 8 (1916): 1–22.

“Rezenzia paryzhanyna” [Review by a Parisian]. Mystetstvo, Lviv, 1 (1932): 29–30.

Susak, Vita. “Holhofy khudozhnyka: Oleksa Hryshchenko” [An artist’s Golgothas: Alexis Gritchenko]. Kyiv, Vsesvit 12 (1990): 169–174.

___ “Tsaregradskie akvareli A. Grishchenko” [A. Gritchenko’s Istanbul watercolors]. Pinakoteka, 8–9 (1999): 80–82.

Tsvetodinamos i tektonicheskii primitivizm.Katalog 12-i Gosudarstvennoi vystavki [Dynamocolor and tectonic primitivism. Catalog of the 12th state exhibition]. Moscow, 1919. Exhibition catalog.

Velikaia utopiia. Russkii i sovetskii avangard. 1915–1932 [The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915–1932]. GTG, GRM, Moscow, 1993. Exhibition catalog.

Publications (In other languages)

Alexis Gritchenko: Works from the 1920s. Curator Lelde Muehlenbachs. Edmonton: The Edmonton Art Gallery, 1976. Exhibition catalog.

Alexis Gritchenko, Commemorative Exhibition. New York: The Ukrainian Institute of America, 2004. Exhibition catalog.

Amazons of the Avant-Garde: Alexandra Exter, Natalia Goncharova, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, Varvara Stepanova, and Nadezhda Udaltsova, ed. John E. Bowlt and Matthew Drutt. New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2000.

Avantgarde und die Ukraine [Avantgarde & Ukraine]. ed. Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker. The Villa Stuck, Munich: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1993. Exhibition catalog.

Constantinople, peintures et aquarelles par Gritchenko. Paris: Galerie Druet, 1928. Exhibition catalog.

Devoluy, John. “Chez Bernheim Jeune Alexis Gritchenko.” Connaissance des Arts 11 (1957): 116–117.

Die grosse Utopie: die russische Avantgarde, 1915–1932. ed. Bettina-Martine Wolter, Bernhart Schwenk. Frankfurt am Main: Schirn Kunsthalle, 1992. Exhibition catalog.

Escholier, Raymond. “Constantinople vue par un peintre russe.” Dépêche de Toulouse, 27 November 1930.

Farrère, C. and A. Levinson. Constantinople Bleu et Rose. Peintures et aquarelles d’Alexis Gritchenko. Paris: Galerie Povolozki, 1922. Exhibition catalog.

Fierens, Paul. “Gritchenko. Deux ans à Constantinople.” Candide, 5 February 1931.

Géniaux, Charles. “Turbans et casquettes.” Le petit marseillais, 23 December 1930.

Gritchenko, Alexis. Deux ans à Constantinople. Journal d’un peintre. Paris: Quatre Vents, 1930.

___ “Lettres à René-Jean,” choisies et présentées par Sylvie Maignan et Jean Bergeron. Paris: Harmattan, 2014.

___ L’Ukraine de mes jours bleus. Paris: La Colombe, 1957.

___ My Encounters with French Artists: Memoirs of an Artist. New York: Alexis Gritchenko Foundation, 1968.

___ Sa Vie Son Œuvre, texte inédit de René-Jean, suivi d’une note de Paul Fierens. Paris: Quatre Vents, 1948.

___ Sa Vie Son Œuvre, textes de Raymond Charmet, Paul Fierens, Sviatoslav Hordynsky et d’autres. Paris: Quatre Vents, 1964.

Güler, Ayşenur. “Aleksis Griçenko’nun İstanbul’da İzini Sürmek.” Sanat Dünyamız 144 (2015): 4–9.

___ “Aleksis Griçenko ve Çallı Kuşağı Sanatçıları.” Sanat Dünyamız 125 (2011): 38–49.


Icônes de l’art moderne. Collection Shchukine. ed. Anne Baldassari. Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris: Gallimard, 2016.

Labrusse, Rémi and Nadia Podzemskaia. “Naissance d’une vocation: aux sources de la carrière byzantine de Thomas Whittemore.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 54 (2000): 43–69.

Levinson A. “Gritchenko.” L’Amour de l’art (1922), 92.

Marcadé, Jean-Claude. “Space, Colour, Hyperbolism: Characteristics of Ukrainian Avant-Garde Art.” In Avantgarde und die Ukraine [Avantgarde & Ukraine], 41–49.

Nakov, Andrei. Tatlin’s Dream: Russian Suprematist and Constructivist Art 1910–1923. London: Fischer Fine Art Ltd, 1973. Exhibition catalog.

Paris-Moscou: 1900–1930. ed. Pontus Hulten. Paris: Centre national d’art et de culture Georges Pompidou, 1979. Exhibition catalog.

Phillips, Matthew. “Introduction.” In Gritchenko. New York: William Cooper Procter Art Center, Bard College, 1964. Exhibition catalog.

Podzemskaia, Nadia. “A propos des copies d’art byzantin à Istanbul: les artistes russes émigrés et l’Institut byzantin d’Amérique.” Histoire de l’art 44 (June 1999): 123–140.

René-Jean. “La vie romanesque d’un artiste russe à Constantinople de 1919 à 1921.” Comœdia, 27 November 1930.

___ “Preface.” Alexis Gritchenko. Paris: Galerie Parvillée, (25 April– 19 May) 1945. Exhibition catalog.

Staging the Ukrainian Avant-Garde of the 1910s and 1920s. ed. Myroslava M. Mudrak and Tetiana Rudenko (curators). New York: The Ukrainian Museum, 2015. Exhibition catalog.

Susak, Vita. Alexis Gritchenko. Dynamocolor. Kyiv: Rodovid, 2017.

___ “As for Malevich, please leave this matter between us.” [Scho do Malevycha, to proshu Vas zalyshyty tce mizh namy]. In Kazimir Malevich. The Kyiv Aspect., ed. Tetiana Filevska, 264–277. Kyiv: Rodovid, 2019.

The Phenomenon of the Ukrainian Avant-garde 1910–1935. ed. Myroslav Shkandrij. Winnipeg: The Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2001. Exhibition catalog.

Ukrajinska Avantgarda 1910–1930. ed. Tihomir Milovac and Branka Stipančić. Zagreb: Muzej suvremene umjetnosti, 1990. Exhibition catalog.

Waldemar-George. “A la Galerie Percier, Alexis Gritchenko.” Partisans, July 1924.

69

Alexis Gritchenko, Istanbul Blue and Rose, October 1920, watercolor and pencil on paper, 29 × 25 cm, signed and dated. Ömer Koç Collection.

70

Alexis Gritchenko, Untitled, March 1921, watercolor and pencil on paper, 14 × 17 cm, signed and dated. Ömer Koç Collection.

71

Alexis Gritchenko, Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 16.5 × 13.5 cm, signed. Ömer Koç Collection.

72

Alexis Gritchenko, Istanbul, April 1920, pencil on paper, 20.5 × 27 cm, signed and dated. Collection of Tsvenhrosh Family, Ukraine.

73

Alexis Gritchenko, Landscape with Domes, October 1920, watercolor and pencil on paper, 16.5 × 19 cm, signed and dated. Collection of the National Art Museum of Ukraine.

74

Alexis Gritchenko, Istanbul. Deux ans à Constantinople. Paris: Quatre Vents, 1930.

75

Alexis Gritchenko, Landscape of Istanbul. Deux ans à Constantinople. Paris: Quatre Vents, 1930.

76

Alexis Gritchenko, Turks (Stamboul), December 1920, watercolor and pencil on paper, 24 × 18.4 cm, signed and dated. Collection of the Ukrainian Museum, New York, USA.

77

Alexis Gritchenko, Village Scene Near Tower, October 1920, watercolor and pencil on paper, 25.5 × 17.5 cm, signed and dated. The Wil Farrow Collection, USA.

78

Alexis Gritchenko, Hamal in front of the Red House, December 1919, watercolor and pencil on paper, 29 × 23 cm, signed and dated. Ömer Koç Collection.

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80

Alexis Gritchenko, Stamboul, 1920, pencil on paper, 22 × 15.5 cm, signed and dated. Collection of Larissa Hordynsky, USA.

81

Alexis Gritchenko, Street Scene, Istanbul, October 1920, watercolor and pencil on paper, 23 × 25 cm, signed and dated. Collection of Larissa Hordynsky, USA.

82

Alexis Gritchenko, Turkish City, December 1920, watercolor and pencil on paper, 19.5 × 23 cm, signed and dated. Ömer Koç Collection.

83

Alexis Gritchenko, Street in Eyüp, November 1920, watercolor and pencil on paper, 31 × 24.5 cm, signed and dated. Ömer Koç Collection.

84

Alexis Gritchenko, Streets of Stamboul, September 1920, pencil on paper, 18.5 × 17 cm, signed and dated. Collection of Gizella Lopusanszky and Alexander Demko, USA.

85

Alexis Gritchenko, Evkaf (?)[Islamic Foundations Museum], October 1920, pencil on paper, 35.5 × 25 cm, signed and dated. Ömer Koç Collection.

86

Alexis Gritchenko, Untitled, April 1920, pencil on paper, 22 × 15 cm, signed and dated. The Wil Farrow Collection, USA.

87

Alexis Gritchenko, Eyüp. Deux ans à Constantinople. Paris: Quatre Vents, 1930.

88

Alexis Gritchenko, Untitled (Camel), January 1921, watercolor and pencil on paper, 25.5 × 20 cm, signed and dated. Collection of the Ukrainian Museum, New York, USA.

89

Alexis Gritchenko, Camels in Repose (Fatih), 1919, pencil on paper, 11.5 × 20.5 cm, signed and dated. The Wil Farrow Collection, USA.

90

Alexis Gritchenko, Bazaar, March 1921, pencil, gouache and oil on cardboard, 37.5 × 33.5 cm, signed and dated. Ömer Koç Collection.

92

Alexis Gritchenko, The Grand Bazaar, watercolor and pencil on paper, 30.5 × 22.5 cm, signed. Collection of the National Art Museum of Ukraine.

93

Alexis Gritchenko, Bazaar. Deux ans à Constantinople. Paris: Quatre Vents, 1930.

94

Alexis Gritchenko, Constantinople, March 1921, gouache and pencil on cardboard, 40 × 35 cm, signed and dated. Ömer Koç Collection.

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Alexis Gritchenko, Untitled, October 1920, watercolor on paper, 17.5 × 14.5 cm, signed and dated. Collection of Larissa Hordynsky, USA.

97

Alexis Gritchenko, Walls of Constantinople, October 1920, watercolor on paper, 22 × 25 cm, signed and dated. AM 3402 D Gift of the artist in 1965. Centre Pompidou, Paris Mnam/Cci, France.

98

Alexis Gritchenko, Walls of Constantinople, October 1920, watercolor on paper, 31 × 37 cm, signed and dated. Collection of Tsvenhrosh Family, Ukraine.

August 20, 1920

“I’m settled, again, in Kharbie, at the hospital

where I felt like I was dying last winter. I was there

alone for several days and now there are three of us in

the same room. The atmosphere is unbearable. With

joy, I left for the fortifications. How many unforgettable

impressions, how many thoughts are triggered by this

walk! Here, there are no barriers; you don’t feel the

presence of committees of scholars, you don’t hear the

guides, you don’t see tourists, you don’t know any

obstacles or limits ... It’s not like in Europe, in Italy. I take

each step according to my will, my desire, sometimes

purely instinctive. This is the painter’s place.”

—Alexis Gritchenko. Deux ans à Constantinople

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Alexis Gritchenko, Walls of Constantinople (The Byzantine Walls), August 1920, watercolor and pencil on paper, 21 × 34 cm, signed and dated. Collection of the National Art Museum of Ukraine.

101

Alexis Gritchenko, Small Figures and a Gate of the City Walls (Yedikule Gate), December 1920, pencil on paper, 18.5 × 13.5 cm, signed and dated. Collection of Larissa Hordynsky, USA.

102

Alexis Gritchenko, Walls of Constantinople, 1921, watercolor and pencil on paper, 22.5 × 25 cm, signed and dated. Collection of the National Art Museum of Ukraine.

103

Alexis Gritchenko, The Rumeli Fortress, 1920, pencil on paper, 16 × 21 cm, dated. Collection of Larissa Hordynsky, USA.

104

Alexis Gritchenko, Untitled, October 1920, pencil on paper, 24.5 × 21 cm, signed and dated. Ömer Koç Collection.

105

Alexis Gritchenko, Walls and Cypress, March 1921, watercolor and pencil on paper, 24.5 × 30 cm, signed and dated. Collection of the National Art Museum of Ukraine.

106

Alexis Gritchenko, Untitled, October 1920, pencil on paper, 25 × 19 cm, signed and dated. Ömer Koç Collection.

Alexis Gritchenko, Yedikule, October 1920, pencil on paper, 18.5 × 30 cm, signed and dated. Ömer Koç Collection.

Alexis Gritchenko, Untitled, October 1920, pencil on paper, 13 × 22.5 cm, signed and dated. Ömer Koç Collection.

108

Alexis Gritchenko, Byzantine Walls. Deux ans à Constantinople. Paris: Quatre Vents, 1930.

109

Alexis Gritchenko, On the Byzantine Walls. Deux ans à Constantinople. Paris: Quatre Vents, 1930.

110

Alexis Gritchenko, The Kariye (Chora) Mosque. Deux ans à Constantinople. Paris: Quatre Vents, 1930.

111

Alexis Gritchenko, Fragment of a Mosaic in the Kariye (Chora) Mosque, June 1920, watercolor on paper, 24 × 28 cm, signed and dated. Collection of Gizella Lopusanszky and Alexander Demko, USA.

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Alexis Gritchenko, The Kariye (Chora) Mosque, December 1919, watercolor and pencil on paper, 14.2 × 20.5 cm, signed and dated. Collection of the National Art Museum of Ukraine.

114

Alexis Gritchenko, Hagia Sophia, View from the Sea, September 1920, pencil on paper, 18 × 29.5 cm, signed and dated. Collection of Hordynsky Caillat, France.

115

January 1, 1920

“Once again, I am at the Hagia Sophia. Once again,

my impressions overwhelm me. Architecture is often

compared to music. In these terms the architecture of

the Hagia Sophia has surpassed all else. What wonderful

oratorios are heard here! Only here can you feel the

genius of Byzantine art in all its reality and understand

the very reason for its influence throughout the world.

This unity, this plenitude, this enthusiasm of thought,

this extraordinary power embodying it, this ability to

combine the materials and to realize thus the miracles of

divine wisdom, all that is suggested by those two words:

Hagia Sophia!”

—Alexis Gritchenko. Deux ans à Constantinople

116

Alexis Gritchenko, Rain over Hagia Sophia, May 1920, pencil on paper, 20 × 23.5 cm, signed and dated. Collection of Gizella Lopusanszky and Alexander Demko, USA.

117

Alexis Gritchenko, Rain over Hagia Sophia, 1920, oil on canvas, 71.5 × 77 cm, signed and dated. Collection of the National Art Museum of Ukraine.

118

Alexis Gritchenko, Hagia Sophia, 1920, watercolor and pencil on paper, 26 × 20.5 cm, signed. Ömer Koç Collection.

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Alexis Gritchenko, Interior of Hagia Sophia, September 1920, pencil on paper, 28.5 × 18.5 cm. AM 3401 D. Gift of the artist in 1965. Centre Pompidou, Paris Mnam/Cci France.

121

Alexis Gritchenko, Hagia Sophia. Deux ans à Constantinople. Paris: Quatre Vents, 1930.

122

Alexis Gritchenko, Interior Decoration Detail from the Hagia Sophia, March 1921, pencil on paper, 25 × 18 cm, signed and dated. Ömer Koç Collection.

123

Alexis Gritchenko, Ketyb in Hagia Sophia, 1920, watercolor and pencil on paper, 20.5 × 18 cm, signed and dated. Collection of Dr. Luba Zuk, Canada.

124

Alexis Gritchenko, Hagia Sophia, August 1921. Deux ans à Constantinople.Paris: Quatre Vents, 1930.

125

Alexis Gritchenko, Turks in Hagia Sophia. Deux ans à Constantinople. Paris: Quatre Vents, 1930.

126

Alexis Gritchenko, Byzantine Church Converted Into a Mosque, March 1920, watercolor and pencil on paper, 26 × 25 cm, signed and dated. Collection of the National Art Museum of Ukraine.

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Alexis Gritchenko, The Little Hagia Sophia. Deux ans à Constantinople. Paris: Quatre Vents, 1930.

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Documents

THE CONSTANTINOPLE YEARS - mesher.org...Istanbul, the city of his early dreams, and what was his Constantinople heritage? We will discuss all these below. For many decades, Gritchenko’s