Akhmatova, Anna Andreevna. (1889-1966) Poet, born Anna Andreevna Gorenko in Odessa, Ukraine.  She studied in Kiev before moving to St Petersburg.  In 1910 she married Nikolai Gumilyov, and with him started the Neoclassicist Acmeist movement.  After her early collections of lyrical poems, including Evening (1912) and Beads (1914), she developed an Impressionist technique.  Following the publication of Anno Domini (1922), she was officially silenced until 1940, when she published The Willow.  Among her best-known works is Requiem.  more info

Bakst, Lev Samoilovich. (1866-1924) Graphic artist and member of the Mir Iskusstva (World Of Art) group.  He did illustrations for the journals Mir Iskusstva and Zolotoe Runo (Golden Fleece), depicting exotic settings and scenes taken from antiquity (often with erotic undertones).  He also worked with Diagilev and the Ballet Russes as a costume and set designer.  gallery

Balmont, Konstantin Dmitrievich. (1867-1942) Poet, translator, and essayist, born in Gumische, Russia.  A leading Russian Symbolist, his work was colored by the wide traveling he did during his periodic exiles.  Known for the musicality of his work, Balmont was also a polyglot and  translated works of many foreign languages into his native Russian. His best known books of verse include Let Us Be as the Sun (1903) and In the Parted Distance (1917).

Bely, Andrei. (1880-1934) Novelist, poet, and critic, born in Moscow.  A leading Symbolist writer, he early met Vladimir Solovyov, the religious philosopher, and fell under his influence.  While at Moscow University he wrote Decadent poetry which he published in Severnaya simfoniya (1902, The Northern Symphony). Serebryany golub (1910, The Silver Dove) was his first and most accessible novel, and was followed by his masterpiece Peterburg (1913--14, St. Petersburg). The autobiographical Kotik Letaev (1922) is his most original work, a stream-of-consciousness attempt to show how children become aware of what is going on in the world.  His later novels are more overtly satirical of the pre-revolutionary Russian scene but are still highly experimental.  He is regarded as one of the most important Russian writers of the 1920s.

Blok, Alexandr Alexandrovich. (1880-1921) Poet, born in St Petersburg, Russia. In 1903 he married the daughter of the famous scientist, Mendeleev.  His first book of poems, Songs about the Lady Fair (1904), was influenced by the mysticism of Solovyov.  He welcomed the 1917 Revolution and in 1918 wrote two poems, "Dvenadtsat" (The Twelve), a symbolic sequence of revolutionary themes, and "Skify" (The Scythians), an ode, inciting Europe to follow Russia.

Bryusov, Valery Yakovlevich. (1873-1924) Poet, novelist, and critic born in Moscow.  Bryusov decided at an early age that he would be a leader of the Symbolist movement, the birth of which can be traced to his publication of The Russian Symbolists in 1894.  His greatest influence was felt while he was editor of the Symbolist journal, Vesy, beginning in 1904.  In 1908 Bryusov began to break with the symbolists and began to devote himself to teaching. After the revolution, Bryusov worked for the literary establishment as a manager of several bureaucratic institutions until his death.

Dobuzhinskii, Mstislav Valerianovich. (1875-1901)  Painter and graphic artist.  Dobuzhinskii was a member of Mir Iskusstva (World of Art) and did many illustrations for the group's journal, as well as for Zolotoe Runo (Golden Fleece) and Apollon (Apollo).  Much of his work deals with urban themes (sometimes fantasmagorically), and in 1923 he did illustrations for Dostoevskii's White Nights.He also collaborated with Diagilev, doing set designs for the Ballet Russes. gallery

Gumilyov, Nikolai Sergeevich. (1886-1921) Russian poet, a leader of the Acmeist school which revolted against Symbolism.  His exotic and vivid poems include The Quiver (1915), with some fine verses of war and adventure, and The Pyre and The Pillar of Fire, which contain his best pieces.  He also wrote criticism, and translated French and English poetry. Gumilyov was shot as a counter-revolutionary.  His wife was the poet Anna Akhmatova. more info

Ignatiev (Kazanskii), Ivan Vasilievich. (1892-1914) Russian poet, critic, performance artist, and a publisher; born in Petersburg; in 1910 he graduated from the Real'noe Uchilishche; soon became the successor of Igor Severianin, the founder of the Petersburg poetic movement Ego-Futurism; wrote and edited theater criticism and poems; led the 'Association of Ego-Futurism'; declared himself the "Chairman of the Aeropague"; published The Petersburg Herald, several collections of Ego-Futurism poetry: Eagles Over the Abyss (1912), The Orange Urn (1912), Glass Chains(1912), Ra in Suga ['canded rat'], The Scaffold - Eshafot (1913), and the pamphlet Ego-Futurism (1913). Obsessed with the idea of suicide, he killed himself during epilepsy attack the day after his wedding.  more info (some text written in Cyrillic, KOI-8)

Ivanov, Vyacheslav Ivanovich. (1866-1949) Poet, critic, and scholar, born in Moscow.  He became the principal theorist of the Symbolists after the publication of his first book of verse, Lodestars, in 1902.  A staunch defender of "culture," Ivanov espoused the Nitzschean idea that the artist is the summit of human hierarchy.  Having studied Classics, his verse contains many allusions to Greek and other ancient myth.  After receiving permission to leave the Soviet Union in 1924, he spent the rest of his life living and working in Italy and France.

Kandinskii, Vasillii Vasil'evich. (1866-1944) One of the most well known and influential of Russian painters.  Kandinskii was one of the originators of abstract art.  Through abstraction he wished to find a visual language comparable to that of music (many of his canvases are entitled compositions or improvisations) which would be able to reflect spiritual ideals and concerns.  Much of the painter's life was spent abroad: Munich, followed by Berlin (where he taught at the Bauhaus), and ultimately Paris.  Between Munich and Berlin, he did however spend eight years (1914-1922) in Moscow.  The style of Kandinskii's painting progressed throughout his life, from early nonabstract work, to organic and chaotic abstraction, to highly geometrical abstraction.  gallery

Khlebnikov, Velimir Vladimirovich. (1885-1922) Poet and poetic theorist.  Best known for his innovative use of language, Khlebnikov explored the possible morphological derivations of ancient Russian words, often creating his own unique, but purely Russian, vocabulary.  As a founding member of the Russian Cubo-Futurists, he participated in the publication of the well known manifesto A Slap in the Face of Public Taste with Vladimir Mayakovsky and others.  Because of the constraints of the war and revolution, he turned to more conventional writing in the dramatic poem The Nocturnal Search (1921) which will last as one of the key poems about the Russian Revolution.

Malevich, Kazimir Severinovich. (1878-1935) Painter and founder a Suprematism, a school of painting that focused on abstract geometrical patterns.  Malevich was one of the earliest and most important painters to develop a purely abstract style of painting.  In 1918 he painted a canvas entitled White on White which featured a white square barely visible on a white canvas.  Earlier Malevich had been involved with the Jack of Diamonds group, and Russian Cubists.  He died poor and unrecognized in the Soviet Union.  gallery

Mandelshtam, Osip Emilievich. (1891-1938) Poet and essayist born in Warsaw.  His early years were influenced by Vladimir Gippius, his mentor and a member of the Poet's Guild.  His first published poems appeared in 1910 and he became a central figure of the Acmeist movement.  Stone (1913), his first book of poems, dealt with the precise depiction of human culture.  A member of the group of persecuted poets and thinkers which included his good friend, Anna Akhmatova, Mandelshtam disappeared on May 1st, 1938, and was officially pronounced dead on December 27th of the same year.  Much of his work was preserved by his wife, Nadezhda Mandelshtam, until it could be published.  The autobiographical prose work The Noise of Time was published in 1923 and remains a masterpiece of the Modernist Era.  more info

Mayakovsky, Vladimir Vladimirovich. (1893-1930) Poet and playwright, born in Bagdadi, Georgia.  He began writing at an early age, and was regarded as the leader of the Futurist school.  During the Russian Revolution (1917) he emerged as the propaganda mouthpiece of the Bolsheviks.  His plays include Misteriya-Buff (1918, Mystery-Bouffe), and the satirical Klop (1929, The Bedbug) and Banya (1930, The Bath-House).  Mayakovsky also experimented widely with other media for propaganda use, most notably posters.  Toward the end of his life he was severely castigated by more orthodox Soviet writers and critics for his outspoken criticism of bureaucracy and his unconventional opinions on art, and this appears to have contributed towards his suicide.

Merezhkovsky, Dmitry Sergeevich. (1865-1941) Novelist, critic, and poet, born in St Petersburg, Russia.  He studied at university there, then became a writer, producing the historical trilogy, Khristos i Antikhrist (1896-1905), Christ and Antichrist, The Death of the Gods , The Forerunner , Peter and Alexis, and books on Tolstoy, Ibsen, and Gogol . He opposed the Revolution in 1917, and fled to Paris in 1919 with his wife, Zinaida Nikolayevna Hippius (1870-1945), also a poet, novelist, and critic.

Nesterov, Mikxail Vasil'evich. (1862-1942) Artist who early on exhibited with the perdvizhniki (Wanderers), a group committed to socially minded, realistic art focusing mostly on peasant themes.  However, Nesterov's work eventually turned more inward and to spiritual concerns; his canvases became more symbolic and two dimensional, his colors lightened.  In Soviet times he worked mainly as a portraitist and landscape painter.  gallery

Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich. (1890-1960) Lyric poet, novelist, and translator, born in Moscow.  He studied law and musical composition, then switched to philosophy.  He wrote autobiographical and political poetry, and some outstanding short stories, some of which were collected in Zhenya Luver's Childhood (1924).  Unable to publish his own poetry during the years under Stalin, he became the official translator into Russian of Shakespeare, Verlaine, and Goethe. He caused a political earthquake with his first novel, Dr. Zhivago , which was banned in the Soviet Union, but became an international success after its publication in Italy in 1957.  A fragmentary, poet's novel, it describes with intense feeling the Russian revolution as it impinged upon one individual.  Expelled by the Soviet Writers' Union, he had to take the unprecedented step of refusing the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature. more info

Petrov-Vodkin, Kuzma Sergeevich. (1878-1936) Symbolist painter and member of Mir Iskusstva (World of Art).  His painting is distinctive for its vibrant color (primarily red and blue), and is informed by a familiarization with Eastern Orthodox  iconography; an excellent representative canvas is his Bathing the Red Horse (1912).  His portraits are well known, in particular his portrait of the poet Anna Akhmatova (1922).  In addition to painting he also wrote short stories, novellas, plays, essays and theoretical articles, as well as an autobiography, My Story.  gallery

Sologub, Fyodor Kuzmich. (1863-1927) Symbolist poet, short story writer, dramatist, and novelist, born in St. Petersburg.  His poetry is metaphysical, often set in exotic locales and time periods, with little autobiographical information. Sologub's poetry often is pessimistic, portraying children as innocent symbols of perfection that usually die.  He is most famous for his satire of the Russian provincial life in The Petty Demon (1908).  After the Revolution, he became more optimistic, although much of his work was not published due to its philosophies which ran counter to Socialist Realism.  more info

Solovyov, Vladimir Sergeevich. (1853-1900) Philosopher, theologian, and poet, born in Moscow.  Educated at his Orthodox home, he took his doctorate at Moscow.  He proposed a universal Christianity which would unite the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and attempted a synthesis of religious philosophy with science.  His main works include The Crisis of Western Philosophy: Against the Positivists (1874) and The Meaning of Love (1894).

Tsvetaeva, Marina Ivanovna. (1892-1941) Poet. more info

Vrubel', Mixail Aleksandrovich. (1856-1910) An early symbolist painter with a highly individualized style.  Vrubel' scorned the civic painting of his time and sought at first to establish the superiority of form, and later the importance of spiritual and philosophical issues in art.  He is most known for a series of  monumental canvases depicting the demon (The Demon Seated, The Flying Demon, and The Demon Cast Down), who is usually interpreted as a solitary Nietzschean hero.  Much of his work uses Russian Folklore to convey his concerns, and often deal with metamorphoses, or the overlap of different worlds in nature.  Toward the end of his life the painter was afflicted by mental illness and near blindness; his last work was a charcoal portrait of the poet and Symbolist organizer Valery Bryusov.  gallery