SERGEI CHEKHONIN Two lithographs with hand coloring of still lifes.
Both lithographs with hand coloring in watercolor, circa 1915-20. Both 470x375 mm; 18 1/2x14 3/4 inches, wide margins. Both an edition of 100. Both signed and numbered in pencil, lower margin. Very good impressions of these scarce lithographs.
Chekhonin (1878-1936) was born in Valdayka, between Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the son a railroad machinist who worked on the Nicholas Railroad. At the age of fifteen he had to begin earning his own living and worked as a clerk and draftsman. In 1896 he arrived in Petrograd, where he studied at the Drawing School of the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts until 1897 and at the Tenishev school until 1900, where he was a pupil of Ilya Repin.
Shortly after the 1905 Russian Revolution, with which he flirted, he turned to graphic design. At first he worked as a cartoonist in a satirical magazine (1905–06), and then began designing books, which brought him considerable success. In the 1910s, he was considered among the most important contemporary Russian book artists. He served subsequently as artistic director of the State Porcelain Factory in Leningrad in 1918–1923 and again in 1925–1927. In 1928, Chekhonin left the Soviet Union and emigrated to Paris. There he worked in the field of artistic industry and stage set design. At the end of his career, he lived in Germany, where he continued to pursue theater, porcelain and book design.
