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Lydia Nikolaevna Délectorskaya (geboren am 23. Juni 1910 in Tomsk - gestorben am 16. März 1998 in Paris) war war ab 1932 Modell und Mitarbeiterin von Henri Matisse.[1][2][3]
Leben
[Bearbeiten | Quelltext bearbeiten]Geboren in der sibirischen Stadt Tomsk als einzige Tochter eines Kinderarztes, verlor Delectorskaya mit zwölf Jahren beide Eltern, die infolge der Typhus- und Choleraepidemien während des Russischen Bürgerkriegs verstorben waren. Gemeinsam mit ihrer Tante, die sie aufzog, floh sie schließlich vor der Russischen Revolution in die chinesische Mandschurei. Lydia wollte Medizin studieren und wurde auch an der medizinischen Fakultät der Sorbonne angenommen, allerdings waren die hohen Studiengebühren für ausländische Studierende für sie unbezahlbar, so dass sie als mittellose Exilantin in Nizza strandete.[4]
Barely surviving, in 1932, she found temporary work with the Matisses, first as a studio assistant, then as a domestic help. Matisse's wife Amélie had become an invalid.[3] It was three years before the painter asked her to sit for him.[4] Lydia was 25, Matisse 65, and with Matisse having an avuncular attitude to the young woman, she wrote:
Gradually I began to adapt and feel less 'shackled,'... in the end, I even began to take an interest in his work.[4]
The first paintings Matisse made of Lydia combined the phenomenal virtuosity that had cost him so many years to perfect with his original instinctive ability to compose spontaneously in color. Matisse's son Pierre told his father that he had renewed himself as a painter with Pink Nude, for which Lydia modeled over a period of six months in 1935.
Matisse gifted valuable paintings to Delectorskaya, providing for her future.[5] He made at least 90 paintings of her (in addition to numerous drawings and sketches).[5] In turn, she donated the works to Russia's Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
Lydia Delectorskaya died aged 88, in Paris on 16 March 1998. Her grave is in the cemetery in Pavlovsk, Saint Petersburg.[5]
Zusammenarbeit mit Henri Matisse
[Bearbeiten | Quelltext bearbeiten]Together they established a collaboration that gave her a new sense of power and purpose. Taking up the duties of studio manager and factotum along with being principal model, painting became central to her life as it was of Matisse’s.[4] Biographer Hilary Spurling interviewed Delectorskaya several times observing that,
She could have run an army, she had amazing capacities. She ran the studio, she organised the models, she dealt with the dealers, sales people, the gallery... everything worked like clockwork.[6]
Her close working partnership with Matisse drew an ultimatum from his wife of 40 years, "It's her, or me!"[4] and Matisse chose his wife who left anyway in 1939.[4] After he sacked her, Delectorskaya tried to shoot herself in the chest.[3] At his request, she returned to help in the studio in Paris[3] where both were caught up among people fleeing the city after war was declared with Germany. She said,
A decision had to be made there, as to whether or not he was to take me with him.[4]
Matisse drew Delectorskaya in her traveling hood at the start of their journey through war-torn France. She was his great muse, model, manager and companion, staying by his side for the rest of his life.[3]
The couple set up in Vence when Nice turned out to be unsatisfactory. As his secretary, "Madame Lydia" made it possible for him to produce his final masterpieces in the face of his infirmity and failing health, which resulted in abstraction, a shift from oil paint on canvas to printing and paper, thus creating "a life's work" in Matisse's words. Delectorskaya also coordinated the four years of preparation and installation that went into the chapel at Vence, just outside Nice, which he flooded with blue and yellow light.
The stained glass windows in the Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence, and the colored paper cutouts (Lydia had recruited female assistants to mix gouache paint to his instruction to cover the countless sheets of paper required) "now generally agreed to be among the greatest inventions of the 20th century."[4] Now 84, Matisse died on 3 November 1954.[4] The day before, when she came to his sickbed, Matisse made a last drawing – it was of her, using a ball-point pen.[4]
An exhibition dedicated to her was held at the Matisse Museum, a tribute to the model that accompanied the last decades of his life (Lydia Delectorskaya, Matisse's muse and model, Musée Matisse, Nice. 18 June – 27 September 2010.) Delectorskaya was blonde with fair skin and Matisse called her the "ice princess". There are more than 100 drawings and sketches for which Lydia modelled, and 90 paintings;[5] among them The Pink Nude, The Romanian Blouse, Woman in a Purple Coat, Blue Eyes, and Le Rêve.[7]
Werke
[Bearbeiten | Quelltext bearbeiten]Delectorskaya authored two authoritative works. Her 1988 book l'Apparente Facilité (Apparent Ease), is her eyewitness account of Matisse's methods documenting his works from 1935 to 1939. Asked how Matisse's drawings seem to have been done in a single flourish, she said she was "a pretty good eraser".[8] Her second book, Henri Matisse: Contre vents et marées (French Edition) 1996 (in English: Against Winds and Storms), is her carefully detailed and documented account of the years of Matisse's "second life" from the early 1940s.
Weblinks
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Einzelnachweise
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- ↑ Hilary Spurling: Matisse and His Models. In: Smithsonian Magazine. Abgerufen am 16. April 2016.
- ↑ Vanessa Thorpe, John Vincent: Matisse's last muse reveals the old master. In: The Guardian. 28. Januar 2001, abgerufen am 16. April 2016.
- ↑ a b c d e Graham Watt: Lydia Delectorskaya. In: British Journal of General Practice. 60. Jahrgang, Nr. 577, 1. August 2010, S. 626–627, doi:10.3399/bjgp10X515250, PMC 2913753 (freier Volltext).
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Matisse and His Models, Hilary Spurling for Smithsonian Magazine, October 2005 Vorlage:Usurped
- ↑ a b c d Article in Beauty Will Save, "Lydia Delectorskaya Russian Muse of Matisse" [1]
- ↑ Spurling H., Matisse the Master: a life of Henri Matisse, Volume Two: 1909–1954. Penguin Books; London 2005.
- ↑ "Matisse's last muse reveals the old master," article by Vanessa Thorpe and John Vincent, Sunday 28 January 2001 for The Guardian via The Observer [2]
- ↑ "Portrait of the week:Lydia Delectorskaya, Henri Matisse (1947)", Jonathan Jones for The Guardian, Saturday 1 December 2001 [3]