Aleksandr (Yakovlevich) Golovin

(b Moscow, 1 March 1863; d Detskoye Selo [now Pushkin], nr St Petersburg, 17 April 1930). Russian stage designer and painter. He studied architecture, then painting under Vladimir Makovsky, Vasily Polenov and Illarion Pryanishnikov at the Moscow College of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1881-90). In 1889 he attended Jacques-Emile Blanche's studio in Paris and in 1895 travelled in Italy, France and Spain. In 1897 he studied under Rapha?l Collin (b 1850) and Luc-Olivier Merson in Paris. A member of the Moscow Society of Painters from 1894, he lived in Moscow until 1901. Golovin expressed a great interest in Art Nouveau and in the search for a new national style of Russian art. Together with Yelena Polenova he devised a project in 1898 for the decoration of a Russian dining-room at the house of the painter Maria Yakunchikova, and he collaborated with Konstantin Korovin on the d?cor of the artisan section in the Russian pavilion at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. He produced sketches with Mikhail Vrubel' for maiolica panels for the Hotel Metropol' in Moscow (Floating Swans, 1900).

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