Alexandra Grinevsky’s 1929 illustrations for Valery Larbaud’s “Deux Artistes Lyriques.”
From the collection of Richard Sica:
somewhat cropped due to distortion in the scan
I want to thank Richard Sica for sharing these rare works by Alexandra Grinevsky (St. Petersburg, 1899 – Paris, 1976). Grinevsky illustrated only a handful of books, among them a 1930 edition of Paludes by Gide (first published in 1895) and translations of L’archidiable Belphégor by Machiavelli (1930), Taras Bulba by Gogol (1931), and Wuthering Heights by Brontë (1947).
Richard gives some background:
Alexandra Grinevsky was a stage actress when she married Alexeieff. According to a chapter in G. Bendazzi’s Alexeieff: Itinerary of a Master, she took up etching when Alexeieff was hospitalized with a collapsed lung. Alexeieff was sought out by Claire Parker after she had seen his illustrations in a Paris bookstore. She came to stay with them and he had an affair with her. Of course this resulted in his divorce from Grinevsky. The interesting thing is their aquatint etching styles are almost identical begging the question of who influenced who.
You’ll see what Richard means when you compare these works to those covered in Alexeieff’s Fall.
