Andrey Avinoff | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 14 February 1884 |
| Died | 16 July 1949 (aged 65) New York City, US |
| Resting place | Locust Valley Cemetery, Locust Valley, New York, U.S. |
| Alma mater | University of Pittsburgh |
| Occupation | Museum Director (Carnegie Museum of Natural History) |
| Known for | |
| Relatives | Elizabeth Shoumatoff (sister), Alex Shoumatoff (grandnephew) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | |
Andrey Avinoff (14 February 1884 – 16 July 1949) was an internationally-known artist, lepidopterist, museum director, professor, bibliophile and iconographer, who served as the director of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh from 1926 to 1945.
Throughout his life he engaged with prominent thinkers, explorers, authors, scientists, and educators throughout the world. Perhaps more than any other Russian émigré of his period, he epitomized the cultural sophistication of pre-revolutionary Russia. He has been firmly established by curatorial experts as one of the most important artists in America from the Russian Silver Age of Art, Mir iskusstva (World of Art).[1][2][3] In an age of specialization, Avinoff brought an interdisciplinary approach to a broad range of fields, demonstrating the connections between culture, nature, spirituality, and art history.
Avinoff amassed the largest collection of Asiatic butterflies in the world discovering several new species of butterflies in Central Asia, including one named after him, the Parnassius maharaja Avinoff.[4] Avinoff was a generation older than the famed Russian-born novelist Vladimir Nabokov, himself a distinguished lepidopterist. In his novel Dar ("The Gift"), Nabokov based the character Konstantin Godunov-Cherdyntsev, his formidable Central Asian butterfly collector, partially on Avinoff. According to Kurt Johnson and Steve Coates's book Nabokov's Blues (1999), Avinoff was one of the first people Nabokov contacted when he came to the United States.[5]
Lecturing as an adjunct professor in the departments of fine arts and biology at the University of Pittsburgh, Avinoff was renowned as an expert on decorative arts, Persian art, nature motifs, and Russian iconography. His book collection, the largest compendium of Russian decorative arts volumes outside of Russia, is now housed at the Hillwood Museum in Washington, D.C. It provided the basis for 'The Icon and the Axe' (1966), a comprehensive study of Russian culture by James H. Billington, then Librarian of Congress.
Avinoff became known as the leading botanical painter of the day. He illustrated numerous books and folios and was called "one of the greatest American flower painters of the 20th century" by John Walker, then director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Walker acquired two of Avinoff's watercolor paintings for the National Gallery collection, Emergence (c. 1948, watercolor, ink, and pencil on paperboard) and Tulips (Disintegration) (c. 1949, watercolor and pencil on paperboard).
From 1947 on Avinoff maintained a close friendship with the biologist and sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, based in part on their similar entomological interests; Kinsey's early scientific work was with gall wasps. Until Avinoff's death, the two collaborated on several projects, including an unpublished study on the sexuality of individuals in the arts.
- ^ Kennedy, Janet (1977). The "Mir Iskusstva" Group and Russian Art, 1898–1912. Garland. ISBN 9780824027025.
- ^ Bowlt, John E. (2020). Moscow and St. Petersburg in Russia's Silver Age. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0500295649.
- ^ Lippincott, Louise (March 2011). Andrey Avinoff: In Pursuit of Beauty. Carnegie Museum Of Art Press. pp. 60, 63, 68. ISBN 978-0880390538.
- ^ Lippincott, Louise (March 2011). Andrey Avinoff: In Pursuit of Beauty. Carnegie Museum Of Art Press. p. 21. ISBN 978-0880390538.
- ^ Johnson, Kurt; Coates, Steven L. (1 October 2000). Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius. Cambridge, MA: Zoland Books. p. 294. ISBN 978-1581950090. accessed 6 March 2022