CASCANUECES || Christa Zaat

Christa Zaat



Zinaida Yevgenyevna Serebriakova (née Lanceray) (Russian painter) 1884 - 1967
Балетная уборная, Снежинки (Ballet Restroom, Snowflakes), 1923
Балет П.И.Чайковского "Щелкунчик" (Tchaikovsky Ballet "The Nutcracker")
oil on canvas
105 x 85 cm.
The State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia

The Nutcracker (Russian: Щелкунчик) is a two-act ballet, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (op. 71). The libretto is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann's story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. It was given its première at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on Sunday, December 18, 1892, on a double-bill with Tchaikovsky's opera, Iolanta.
Although the original production was not a success, the twenty-minute suite that Tchaikovsky extracted from the ballet was. However, the complete Nutcracker has enjoyed enormous popularity since the late 1960s and is now performed by countless ballet companies, primarily during the Christmas season, especially in the U.S. Major American ballet companies generate around 40 percent of their annual ticket revenues from performances of The Nutcracker.
Tchaikovsky's score has become one of his most famous compositions, in particular the pieces featured in the suite. Among other things, the score is noted for its use of the celesta, an instrument that the composer had already employed in his much lesser known symphonic ballad The Voyevoda.

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Zinaida Serebriakova was born on the estate of Neskuchnoye near Kharkov (now Kharkiv, Ukraine) into one of Russia's most refined and artistic families.
In 1900 she graduated from a women's gymnasium (equivalent to grammar school or high school), and entered the art school founded by Princess M. K. Tenisheva. She studied under Repin in 1901, and under portrait artist Osip Braz between 1903 and 1905. Between 1902–1903 she spent time in Italy, and from 1905–1906 she studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris.
In 1905, Zinaida Lanceray married her first cousin, Boris Serebriakov, the son of Evgenyi's sister, and took his surname. Serebriakov went on to become a railroad engineer.
From her youth onwards, Zinaida Serebriakova strove to express her love of the world and to show its beauty.
Broad public recognition came with Serebriakova's self-portrait At the Dressing-Table (1909, Tretyakov Gallery), first shown at a large exhibition mounted by the Union of Russian Artists in 1910.
At the outbreak of the October Revolution in 1917, Serebriakova was at her family estate of Neskuchnoye, and suddenly her whole life changed. In 1919 her husband Boris died of typhus contracted in Bolshevik jails. She was left without any income, responsible for her four children and her sick mother. All the reserves of Neskuchnoye had been plundered, so the family suffered from hunger. She had to give up oil painting in favour of the less expensive techniques of charcoal and pencil.
In the autumn of 1924, Serebriakova went to Paris, having received a commission for a large decorative mural.
In 1947, Serebriakova at last took French citizenship, and it was not until Khruschev's Thaw that the Soviet Government allowed her to resume contact with her family in the Soviet Union. In 1960, after 36 years of forced separation, her older daughter, Tatiana (Tata), was finally allowed to visit her. At this time, Tatiana was also working as an artist, painting scenery for the Moscow Art Theatre.
Zinaida Serebriakova died in Paris on 19 September 1967, at the age of 82. She is buried in Paris, at the Russian cemetery at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois.