artist Stage designer art theorist
Yakulov was born in Tiflis, Russian Empire (now Tbilisi, Georgia), on January 16, 1884. His father, lawyer Bogdan Galustovich Yakulyan, died soon after Georgy Yakulov's birth. In 1893 Yakulov's mother took her children with her and moved to Moscow. Georgy Yakulov had two older brothers A. B. Yakulov and Ya. B. Yakulov, both were lawyers.
Georgy Yakulov entered the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages (later known as the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies) in 1893. However, he was excluded from it in 1899 because of his rebellious behaviour. In 1901 he decided that he wanted to be an artist and worked for two months in the workshop of K. F. Juon, a noted Russian painter and theatre designer.
He studied painting at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (today the Surikov Art Institute in Moscow) between 1901 and 1903. He didn't manage to pass exams and was soon taken to the army. During his military service, spent partly in northeast China, Yakulov developed an appreciation of Eastern light effects and decoration. In the battle near Harbin he was wounded and soon returned to Moscow.
In 1907 Yakulov started to exhibit with the Moscow Association of Artists, the Union of Russian Artists and Mir Iskusstva. He went to Italy in 1910 and between 1912 and 1913 to Paris, where he met Sonia and Robert Delaunay. He unexpectedly discovered that his artistic ideas of light corresponded with their theory of Simultanism.
Yakulov designed the Café Pittoresque in Moscow and participated in decorative preparations for various private balls, spectacles and amateur theatrical events during 1910-1911. His career in the theatre officially started in 1918, when he produced the set design for Aleksandr Tairov’s Obmen (The exchange) at the Kamerny Theatre. Yakulov subsequently produced set designs for Tairov, Princess Brambilla (1920) and Giroflé-Girofla (1922), where he combined traditional theatrical techniques with modernist abstraction. Around this time he made friends with Anatoly Marienhof and Sergei Yesenin.
In 1919 he painted the walls of a literary cafe "Pegasus Stall". In 1925 the artist returned to Paris where he participated in the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs, and was commissioned by Diaghilev to design for the Ballets Russes production of Le Pas d’acier, which was eventually staged in 1927 at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt. He died of pneumonia a year later in Russia, leaving behind incompleted designs for Vsevolod Meyerhold’s play Misteriya-Buff.
Georgy Yakulov was a prominent painter of his time. During his lifetime, he received his recognition not only as an artist but also as a set designer. Artworks by Yakulov are represented in many public and private collections, including the Pushkin Museum, the State Tretyakov Gallery and the National Gallery of Armenia.
As for his career as a painter, Yakulov's oeuvre cannot be attributed to any particular style. He didn't belong to Cubists, Futurists or Constructivists, but at the same time used in his artworks the best features of each of the currents.
Yakulov was a member of the Leftist Federation of Painters.
Yakulov was married to Natalya Yulyevna. He was the uncle of the violin virtuoso Alexander Yakulov.
