Aleksandr Yakovlev

Aleksandr Yakovlev, an ethnic Russian, studied from 1905-13 at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. In 1913 he was allowed to study abroad and went to Italy and Spain, returning to Russia in 1915, where he exhibited as a member of the Mir Iskusstva group. From 1917-19 he travelled to Mongolia, China, and Japan before he went to Paris after the October Revolution and obtained French citizenship in the late 1920s. Yakovlev is listed as Russian in the 1924 entry lists, but later became a Knight of the Legion of Honor. In 1928 he had his final major exhibition in the Soviet Union.

In the 1920s and early 1930s, he traveled for the Citroën car company, first to large parts of Africa and on a second trip to the Middle and Far East. He then taught for three years at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. Yakovlev spent the last year of his life in Paris and on the island of Capri until he died during an unsuccessful operation. He was married to the singer and actress Bella Zhensheva (1893–1929).

Yakovlev’s paintings ranged from Renaissance to Primitivism and were later completed with African influences and exotic paintings. His red chalk drawings are also numerous. The title of the submitted work is missing in the Official Report and appears only in an early edition of the catalog as Wrestler at a Fair.