Background
Alexandre Jacovleff was born on June 13, 1887 in Saint Petersburg, into the family of Yevgeniy Iacovleff and Sofia Kuzmina.
Александр Яковлев
designer etcher painter draughtsman
Alexandre Jacovleff was born on June 13, 1887 in Saint Petersburg, into the family of Yevgeniy Iacovleff and Sofia Kuzmina.
Between 1905 and 1913 Alexandre studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts under Kardovsky.
During his studying he started working for the art magazines Apollon, Satiricon, Niva, New Satiricon. Jacovleff's large group portrait "On Academic Dacha" was exhibited at the Baltic Exhibition in Malmö in 1912, and received praise from the critics present. In 1913, Jackovleff received the rank of an Artist and a scholarship to study abroad for his paintings "Bathing" and "In Banya." He also composed his famous work "In The Day Shining" the same year. After that he later went to Italy and Spain together with Vasiliy Shukhaev. There they painted their double self-portrait as Harlequin and Pierrot. Another important work of that period was "Violinist" painted in 1915.
In 1915, Jacovleff returned to Petrograd. That same year his works were shown at a Mir Iskusstva exhibition and caused mixed reactions. While some critics praised them, the Academy of Arts rejected his paintings. Jackovleff painted a lot of Sanguine drawings including the Shalyapin portrait. He frescoed Firsanov's mansion in Moscow, and the artistic cabaret Prival Komediantov in Petrograd. He also lectured on Women's Architect Courses and organized his own artistic movement, St. Luke Guild of Painters.
In the summer of 1917, Jacovleff received a scholarship to study in the Far East. Moreover, he traveled to Mongolia, China and Japan during 1917 – 1919. Subsequently he settled in Paris and became a naturalized French citizen. Between 1924 and 1925 he took part in an expedition to the Sahara desert and Equatorial Africa organized by Citroën. His African paintings were a big success and as a result Jacovleff was awarded the Legion of Honor by the French government in 1926. In 1928, Jacovleff organized a large personal exhibition in Moscow.
Between 1931 and 1932, he was the artistic adviser of another Citroën expedition, this time across Asia. He travelled through Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Mongolia and China, and created a number of orientalist paintings. From 1934 to 1937, Jackovleff was the director of the Painting Department of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He spent the last months of his life in Paris, where he died in 1938, after an unsuccessful surgery.
Alexandre Jacovleff was devoted to the artistic traditions of Neoclassicism.
Alexandre was married to the actress Bella Shensheva, but they divorced. Their only child died.