© 2018 Boris Zaborov
lirik210210@gmail.com

address:

Art & Design Concept
© Arkadiy Troyanker
Design Ivan Grigoriev
Producer Maria Troyanker
troyankerarkadiy@gmail.com

Music Scriabin/Zaborov,
Fuga Libera, Dialogue,
Lauerence Oldak, Piano
© Laurence Oldak
© 2015 Outhere
Programming:
No Logo Studio

Boris  Zaborov

About author

Boris Zaborov

Painter, Sculptor, Graphic Artist, Scenic and Costume Designer Chevalier of French Order of Arts and Letters, Honorary Member of the Russian Academy of Arts His works exhibited in the famous world museums: Uffizi Gallery, Albertina Museum, Hermitage Museum, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Russian Museum, Tretyakov Gallery

Boris Zaborov

AUTOBIOGRAPHY


The choice of a profession was never a problem for me.

For as long as I can remember I've been drawing. And this has been going on for almost fifty years.

...Nothing guides me better in time

and sensation than smells. That of oil paints and linen canvas means my father. This smell, which summons up a whole pageant of memories, has never ceased to be a source of emotion and of a certain anxiety for me. I owe to my father everything good in me and the fact that I became a painter. I didn’t have time to get tired of my childhood, it vanished quickly and suddenly: I was six years old when the war began.

How many cross-roads,

sometimes strange and surprising but in the last analysis lucky, has my life had to go through for me to survive? Often, it would have been easier to perish than to come through alive, it could have happened in the Nazi concentration camp where all of my mothers family disappeared. It should have happened under the fire of the Messerschmitt machine guns aiming straight at the platform of the cargo train, crammed full of refugees. It seemed inevitable when the little slow van, which was carrying my mother, her sister, my little brother and myself, plus the archives of some regional recruiting office, found itself on a cross-road facing a German tank. And later on, many a time, from illnesses due to the cold... This period is fixed in my memory as one of terrible anxiety, expectation of danger, ceaseless activity. Apparently it is so deeply footed in my consciousness that it has become a permanent part of my vision of life.

The first year after the war

my family went back to Minsk. The city had almost entirely disappeared. Every where the eye could look, unreal pictures appeared. Rubble and burnt-down areas where solitary shapes wandered around. At sunset the city became even more disturbing and enigmatic. One would have thought it was a prehistoric landscape where, against the back-ground of the twilight sky, the silhouettes of ruined buildings took on the shape of fantastic beasts.

But in time the city came back to life.

The refugees and soldiers were coming home.

In 1950, just after my junior year at school,

I enrolled in the second year of the Minsk Fine Arts School. The students, of whom there were few, had nearly all fought in the war. They were eight or ten years older than me in age and twenty years at least in experience. I felt rather ill at ease in their midst. These were my most boring and monotonous years.

In 1953, after school,

caught up in a dream of glory like the young d’Artagnan, I rushed off to St. Petersburg. I managed to get permission to take the entrance exams at the Academy of Fine Arts. But I failed. Then, however, I remained in the preparatory class, and the following year was accepted at the Academy and entered as a first year student.

Everything was so harmonious

at that time, my age, the fact that I was a student, and the city, so beautiful in its majestic splendor. On the whole, the time I spent at the Academy was like a long holiday, a time of carefree joy. The self-contained grounds on which were situated the student dormatory, the Academy garden and the main building overlooking the Neva: all this created a sensation of privilege. This sensation, as it appeared, is in no way prejudicial to a healthy psychology. We worked in spacious, well-lit rooms. According to a teaching method formulated once and for all and- transmitted intact through generations of students, we spent long hours analyzing plaster casts and molds of antique sculptures. We could hear the buzz of the life simmering beyond the iron curtainand we considered its humdrum system with slight distain.

Today I see it as a piece of miraculous luck

that, with the help of the Almighty, the destructive energy of human passions leaves little islands of peace free from its baneful attention. These are the manuscripts, the books and the archives which do not get burned; entire cultures covered with earth waiting to come to life again; villages in the North, apparendy forgotten by God, with their unique specimens of Russian wooden architecture, paintings kept safe by the disinterested love of collectors, and many other things. These are the links in the single uninterrupted chain which constitutes our culture and which is perhaps the only justification for our existence on this earth. The old system of teaching, which was maintained at the St. Petersburg School of Fine Arts, was perhaps nothing else than a small link in this chain.

According to a long-standing tradition

at the Academy, at the end of their second year, students went to spend the summer in Crimea to paint. It was considered that after the low northern sky of Vassilievski Island it was good for the future painter to refresh on his palette under the southern sun.

This vacation in Crimea

had little effect on my palette, but it had a decisive effect on my life.

One morning, on a path

leading to the sea, I met a young girl, beautiful, tanned and slim. Since that day, and to this day we have gone ahead together. If at that time a prophet had told me that I would leave St. Petersburg and the Academy of my own free will, I would have taken him for a madman. And yet that is what happened. The young woman was studying in Moscow, and the following fall I entered the Sourikov Art Institute in Moscow, which I left in 1961.

Studies and life in Moscow

were radically different from what they had been in St. Petersburg. In the comfortable ghetto of the Fine Arts Academy, we had grown like hot-house plants, without any real contact with the outside world. In Moscow things were completely different. Our studies were only an obligation, nothing more. Each of us was looking for his place in the sun, outside the bounds of the Institute, in the bustle of Moscow’s huge population. Later in my life I was able to appreciate this experience fully.

At the end of 1961, I went back to my native city,

Minsk, and immediately received various proposals from publishing houses to illustrate books whose titles I don’t remember. I was far from suspecting at the time that I was embarking on a road which would lead me, at the end of the 1970s, to the decision to leave my country.

I lived in a model totalitarian country,

whose pernicious ideology conditioned and penetrated all of life, and the artistic life most of all. Illustrating books remained a relatively danger-free area, hidden in the shadow of the literary text. 

My strategy was clear: to become a painter,

to create paintings. Painting brought me satisfaction but no money. Illustrating books allowed me to live but became more and more hateful to me as time went on. All my attempts to split myself in two were in vain. I accumulated despair, exasperation and finally the fear of losing myself completely. I was tortured by the idea that each hour, each day, each year thus spent was irremediably dimishing my chances of regeneration. How could I cut this « Gordian Knot»? And so, I found myself in May 1981, on the platform of the Gare du Nord in Paris.

I arrived with a passionate desire

to begin a new life, to start again from the beginning. But this city of romantic dreams was almost a desert for me. When I looked at Paris at night with its thousands of lights, I would let myself be invaded by masochistic feelings. None of those lighted windows was thinking of me, no one was even aware of my existence. I was truly alone. Not a single thread tied me to this new world. Except the mysterious thread by which every man is attached to all of humanity.

Solitude made me more aware

of the inner resonance of things. The mysterious process of the intermingling of past and present gave birth in me to the deeply nostalgic state of mind which is at the basis of my work. And so I began to work. Seven months later the contact with the Claude Bernard Gallery which was to be decisive for my life in Paris, was established. In this gallery in 1983,1 had my first individual exhibition and in the same year I received the annual prize of the city of Darmstadt in Germany. After that, this city’s museum organized an exhibition including almost all of the paintings I had done in my five years in France. Through the Claude Bernard Gallery, I was contacted by the Japanese Gallery, Art Point. And it was also at Claude Bernard that Robert Delpire saw my work for the first time. It is thanks to Robert Delpire that my first retrospective was held at the Palais de Tokyo in 1989.

Paris has long since ceased to be a desert for me.

Every day it becomes closer

to the romantic image that I had of it in my youth...

BOOKS AND CATALOGUES


2007
Philippe Bidaine, Pascal
Bonafoux «Boris Zaborov» 
Monograph. Published by Skira,
Milano

2008
Francesco Donfrancesco, Boris
Zaborov «Boris Zaborov: Ritratti
d’artista» Edizioni Moretti & Vitali,
Florence

2010
Boris Zaborov «Sequence
of Lucky Chances, or Destiny» 
Published by Vita Nova,
St. Petersburg

2010
«Boris Zaborov. Retrospective»
Catalogue for the Exhibition
at National Art Museum
of the Republic of Belarus

2014
«Boris Zaborov in the eyes
of the Contemporaries» 
Ed. d’Arte Gibralfaro, 
Verona - Moscow


BOOKS AND CATALOGUES


1985
«Zaborov. Gem lde, Aquarelle,
Zeichnungen»Catalogue published
by Mathildenhehe, 
Darmstadt

1989
«Boris Zaborov» Retrospective
Catalogue published by Palais
de Tokyo, Paris – Lausanne

1990
«Boris Zaborov» Monograph.
Published by Enrico Navarra Gallery,
Paris

1991
«Boris Zaborov» Exhibition Catalogue.
Published by Gallery K,
Paris – Amsterdam

1995
Philippe Bidaine, Marina Bessonova,
Boris Zaborov «Zaborov»
Retrospective Catalogue.
Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
in Moscow

1996
Philippe Bidaine «Zaborov. Le Dit des Livres.
Bronzes» Grafiche Aurora Edizioni,
Verona

2000
«Boris Zaborov – Grands Formats» 
Grafiche Aurora Edizioni,
Verona

2006
Michail German, Pascal
Bonafoux, Beatrice Picon-Vallin 
«Zaborov» Monograph.
Published by Acatos,
Paris

  • Girl with a Dog, 1981

    Acrylic on canvas
    146 x 114 cm
    Collection of Robert and Lisa Sainsbury
    University of East Anglia
    Norwich



    Girl with a Dog, 1981
  • Woman and Child, 1982
    Acrylic on canvas
    100 x 81 cm
    Private collection

    Woman and Child, 1982
  • Russian family, 1984

    Acrylic on canvas
    162 x 163 cm
    Collection of D.Versano 
    Greenwich
    New-York

    Russian family, 1984
  • Young Man in an Armchair, 1984

    Acrilic on canvas
    146 x 113 cm
    Fonds Regional d’art 
    Contemporain de Basse 
    Normandie 
    France

    Young Man in an Armchair, 1984
  • On the Death Bed, 1984

    Acrylic on canvas
    210 x 280 cm
    Galerie Claude Bernard 
    Paris

    On the Death Bed, 1984
  • Girl with a Racquet, 1985

    Pencil on paper
    40 x 20 cm
    Private collection

    Girl with a Racquet, 1985
  • Yang Man in Red Waistcoat (Roma), 1986

    Acrylic on paper
    105 x 64 cm
    Private collection



    Yang Man in Red Waistcoat (Roma), 1986
  • Young Man Holding a Hat, 1986

    Pencil on primed paper
    50 x 26 cm
    Private collection

    Young Man Holding a Hat, 1986
  • Girl with a Doll, 1986
    Acrylic on canvas
    146 x 114 cm
    Collection of the artist

    Girl with a Doll, 1986
  • Couple, 1987

    Acrylic on paper
    21 x 40 cm
    Private collection
    USA



    Couple, 1987
  • Head of a Boy, 1987

    Acrylic on canvas
    30 x 35 cm
    Collection of the artist

    Head of a Boy, 1987
  • Sonnet (cinema), 1992
  • Portrait in a Molded Frame, 1987

    Mixed technique on wood panel
    122 x 92 cm
    Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris



    Portrait in a Molded Frame, 1987
  • Little Girl with a Doll in Circle, 1987

    Mixed media on canvas 

    D50 

    Basmadjian Collection, Paris



    Little Girl with a Doll in Circle, 1987
  • The Head, 1988

    The Head 1988
    Acrylic and pencil on paper
    19 x 19 cm
    Art Point Gallery Collection



    The Head, 1988
  • Family, 1988

    Acrylic and pencil on paper
    89 x 116 cm
    Forbidden Art Collection
    Art Center 
    Pasadena, USA.



    Family, 1988
  • Dialogue, 1988
    Acrylic, pencil, paper on wood.
    141 x 191 cm
    Gallery of Art Point. Tokyo, Japan
    Dialogue, 1988
  • Girls with a Doll. Slonim, 1988

    Acrylic on canvas. 
    240 х 160 cm
    1989 Retrospective. Palais de Tokyo, Paris. 
    1991 Solo exhibition. Galerie K, Paris.
    1991 Solo exhibition. Galerie K, Amsterdam. 
    1995 Retrospective. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. 
    1995 Retrospective. "Manége" St. Petersburg. 

    Girls with a Doll. Slonim, 1988
  • Woman in Landscape, 1989

    Acrylic, marouflage    
    200 х 240 сm
    Collection of the artist
    1989 Retrospective. Palais de Tokyo, Paris
    2004 Retrospective. State Russian museum,
    St. Petersburg
    2004 Retrospective. State Tretyakov Gallery
    of Russian Art, Moscow.

    Woman in Landscape, 1989
  • Book Cover, 1990

    Bronze

    45 x 26 x 4 cm.

    Collection of the artist



    Book Cover, 1990
  • Man Wearing a Cap, 1990

    Acrylic on paper
    90 x 120 cm
    Chagall Museum
    Vitebsk, Belarus

    Man Wearing a Cap, 1990
  • Self - Portrait with a Nude and a Cat, 1992
    Acrylic and pencil on canvas.
    200 x 220 cm
    Collection of Mr and Mme Gastaldo 
    Grenoble



    Self - Portrait with a Nude and a Cat, 1992
  • Little girl and Mannequines, 1992

    Acrylic and pencil on canvas
    130 x 170 cm
    Roger Tomashini Collection
    Grenoble



    Little girl and Mannequines, 1992
  • Girl in Space, 1993

    Acrylic on canvas
    220 x 200 cm
    the Collection of Robert and Lisa Sainsbury
    University of East Anglia 
    Norwich

    Girl in Space, 1993
  • Couple with a Broken Doll, 1993
    Acrylic and pencil on canvas 
    83 x 210 cm
    Collection of Jacques Szulevicz
    Paris
    Couple with a Broken Doll, 1993
  • Man with Potted Flowers, 1993
    Acrylic on canvas. 170 x 130 cm
    1995 Retrospective. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.
    1995 Retrospective. "Manége" St. Petersburg.
    2002 36th international contemporary art contest in Monte-Carlo. Monaco national museum. 
    2004 Retrospective. State Russian museum, St. Petersburg.
    2010 Retrospective. The National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus, Minsk.
    2014 Solo exhibition. Galerie Vallois, New York.
    Man with Potted Flowers, 1993
  • Woman with dog, 1993
    Acrylic on canvas
    146 x 114 cm
    Private Collection
    Belgium

    Woman with dog, 1993
  • Family Portrait, 1995

    Acrylic on canvas
    63 x 200 cm
    Collection of the artist

    Family Portrait, 1995
  • The Artist and his Model, 1998
    Acrylic on canvas, 63 х 200 
    Uffizi Gallery, Florence
    2002 36th international contemporary art contest in Monte-Carlo.
    Monaco national museum. Award.
    2004 Self -portraits of the XX century. French Senate's Musee du Luxembourg. Catalogue 2004-05 Self -portraits of the XX century,
    Uffizi gallery, Florence
    2008 Single painting exhibition. Uffizi gallery, Florence
    2010 Self-portraits from Uffizi gallery collection.
    Seiji Togo Memorial Sompo Japan Museum of Art.
    2011 Self-portraits from Uffizi gallery collection.
    National museum of art - Osaka, Japan.
    The Artist and his Model, 1998
  • Bible, 1999
    Bronze. Relief
    21 х 31 х 5 сm 
    Edition of 5 
    2002 Galerie Vallois, Paris 
    2004 Retrospective. State Russian museum, St.-Petersburg
    2004 Retrospective. State Tretyakov Gallery of Russian Art, Moscow
    Bible, 1999
  • Head of a Boy in a Bandage, 2000

    Acrylic on paper

    20 x 20 cm

    Private collection



    Head of a Boy in a Bandage, 2000
  • Girl With Beret, 2001

    Acrylic on paper
    24 x 25 cm
    Private collection
    Maya Polsky Gallery,
    Chicago

    Girl With Beret, 2001
  • Balthus, 2001

    Acrylic on mounted paper    
    114 х 146 сm
    Collection of the artist
    2002 36th international contemporary art contest in Monte-Carlo. Monaco national museum. Award.
    2004 Solo exhibition. Gallery Officina D'Arte, Verona.  

    Balthus, 2001
  • Promenade, 2001
    Acrylic on canvas    
    130 х 170 сm
    2004 Retrospective. State Russian museum, St. Petersburg. Catalogue
    2004 Retrospective. State Tretyakov Gallery of Russian Art, Moscow. Catalogue
    2010 Retrospective. The National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus, Minsk. Catalogue
    Promenade, 2001
  • Small Relief, 2002

    Bronze
    19 х 22 х 5 сm
    2002 Solo exhibition. Galerie Vallois, Paris
    2004 Retrospective. State Russian museum, St.-Petersburg. Catalogue
    2004 Retrospective. State Tretyakov Gallery of Russian Art, Moscow.    Catalogue
    2006-07 Solo exhibition «Eternal Book»
    Musée de la Monnaie, Paris. Short film
    Small Relief, 2002
  • A book with an Oval, 2002

    Bronze
    29,5 x 22 x 25,5 cm
    Gallery Vallois, Paris

    A book with an Oval, 2002
  • Bronze Frame, 2002

    Bronze
    29,5 x 22 x 25,5 cm
    Galerie Vallois, Paris



    Bronze Frame, 2002
  • Book with Scissors, 2002

    Bronze 

    21 х 16,5 х 9 сm 

    2004 Retrospective. State Russian museum, St.-Petersburg. Catalogue
    2004 Retrospective. State Tretyakov Gallery of Russian Art, Moscow. Catalogue
    2014 Solo exhibition. Galerie Vallois, New York. Catalogue
    Book with Scissors, 2002
  • A book with an Oval, 2002

    Bronze
    29,5 x 23 x 5,5
    Collection of the artist



    A book with an Oval, 2002
  • A boy in Tubeteika, 2003

    Acrylic on paper
    19,5 x 19 cm
    Private collection

    A boy in Tubeteika, 2003
  • Boy's Head, 2003

    Acrylic on paper
    19,5 x 19,5 cm
    Private collection

    Boy's Head, 2003
  • Katia, 2003

    Acrylic on paper
    19,5 x 19 cm
    Private collection

    Katia, 2003
  • Man's Head, 2003

    Acrylic on paper
    19,5 x 19 cm
    Private collection



    Man's Head, 2003
  • Woman with a Headscarf, 2003

    Acrylic on paper
    19,5 x 19 cm
    Private collection



    Woman with a Headscarf, 2003
  • Personage, 2003

    Acrylic on paper
    19,5 x 19
    Private collection



    Personage, 2003
  • Little Book with Oval, 2003

    Bronze 
    17,5 x 21 x 4,5
    Collection of the artist

    Little Book with Oval, 2003
  • Head of the Old Jew, 2003

    Acryllic on paper
    19 x 19 cm
    Collection of the artist



    Head of the Old Jew, 2003
  • Infanta, 2003

    Pencil, charcoal, watercolour on canvas    
    114 х 146 сm
    The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
    2004 Retrospective. State Russian museum, St. Petersburg
    2004 Retrospective. State Tretyakov Gallery of Russian Art, Moscow
    2010 Retrospective. The National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus, Minsk.

    Infanta, 2003
  • Family, 2003

    Acrylic on canvas
    230 х 340 сm
    2004 Retrospective. State Russian museum, St. Petersburg.  
    2004 Retrospective. State Tretyakov Gallery of Russian Art, Moscow. 
    2010 Retrospective. The National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus, Minsk.

    Family, 2003
  • Architect, 2003

    Acrylic on canvas    

    146 х 114 сm

    Private collection

    2004 Retrospective. State Russian museum, St. Petersburg. 

    2004 Retrospective. State Tretyakov Gallery of Russian Art, Moscow. 

    2010 Retrospective. The National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus, Minsk. 

    Architect, 2003
  • Green Boy with Flower, 2006

    Acrylic on canvas    
    116 х 89 сm
    Private Collection



    Green Boy with Flower, 2006
  • Black Woman, 2006

    Acrylic and pencil on canvas
    146 x 114 cm
    Collection of the artist
    Black Woman, 2006
  • Monument "Writing and the Book", 2007

    Bronze    
    Height – 4,5 m
    Public space of the Institute of Technology "Technion" in Haifa

    Monument "Writing and the Book", 2007
  • Conversation, 2009

    Pencil, watercolour on canvas    
    89 х 116 сm
    Collection of Boris and Maria Gorovater, Moscow

    Conversation, 2009
  • Girl riding a Dog, 2010

    Acrylic on canvas    
    146 х 114 сm
    Collection of Boris
    and Maria Gorovater
    Moscow
    2010 Retrospective
    The National Art Museum
    of the Republic of Belarus,
    Minsk

    Girl riding a Dog, 2010
  • Young Man in a Cap, 2012

    Acrylic on canvas

    116 x 89 cm

    Private collection

    Young Man in a Cap, 2012
  • The Dog, 2012

    Acrylic on canvas
    130 x 162 cm
    Private collection


    The Dog, 2012
  • Old Testament, 2013
    86 x 58 x 17 cm
    Unique specimen
    Collection of the artist

    Old Testament, 2013
  • Self-portrait, 2013

    Acrylic on canvas
    50 x 40 cm
    private collection

    Self-portrait, 2013
  • Old Woman in a Coif, 2014

    Acrylic on paper
    22 x 20 cm
    Collection of the artist



    Old Woman in a Coif, 2014
  • Boy by the Table (Homage to Irving Penn), 2015

    Acrylic on canvas    
    114 х 146 сm
    Collection of the artist

    Boy by the Table (Homage to Irving Penn), 2015