Russian Artists in Exile: The Works of Nicholas Remizov and Mikhail Drizo of the Early Emigration Period

• In Event: New Research in Russian Visual Culture

Abstract

In this presentation, I seek to investigate the artistic practices of the early emigration period (ca. 1920s-1930s) of late Imperial Russia’s two prominent cartoonists, and contemporaries, Nicholas Remizov (1887-1975) and Mikhail Drizo (1887-1953). Gifted draftsmen, in emigration Remizov and Drizo followed seemingly divergent paths; a well-known caricaturist before the revolution, abroad Remizov found himself designing almost exclusively for live stage, while Drizo, in the 1920s and onward, continued to draw cartoons for émigré satirical journals and local newspapers in Paris. With this research, I hope to shed light on the trajectory of Drizo’s artistic practice and place both artists’ works of the period in question in a larger context of Russian émigré artists abroad, something that was explored most comprehensively in two recent publications, Andrei Tolstoy, Khudozhniki russkoi emigratsii and John E. Bowlt, (ed.) Khudozhniki russkoi emigratsii v Amerike (both: Moscow: Iskusstvo – XXI vek, 2017 and 2023 respectively). The latter volume, to which I contributed a chapter on Remizov, will also be introduced and discussed.

Author

• Oleg Minin, Bard College