André Grabar
Encyclopedia
Medieval art
The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place, over 1000 years of art history in Europe, and at times the Middle East and North Africa...
and Byzantine art
Byzantine art
Byzantine art is the term commonly used to describe the artistic products of the Byzantine Empire from about the 5th century until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453....
. Born and raised in Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
and educated in the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
, he spent much of his career in France and the US but wrote all his papers in French. Grabar was considered one of the founders of the study of Byzantine art and icons in the twentieth century, adopting a synthetic approach embracing history, theology and interactions with the Islamic
Islamic art
Islamic art encompasses the visual arts produced from the 7th century onwards by people who lived within the territory that was inhabited by or ruled by culturally Islamic populations...
world. His son Oleg Grabar
Oleg Grabar
Oleg Grabar was a French-born art historian and archeologist, who spent most of his career in the United States, as a leading figure in the field of Islamic art and architecture.-Academic career:...
also became a noted art historian, with a special interest in Medieval Islamic art.
Life
André Grabar was born in KievKiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
on July 26, 1896.
He was educated in Kiev and at first thought of becoming an artist, joining the studio of a Kiev painter on leaving school. He decided before long that he did not have sufficient talent and turned to the study of art history instead, although he remained an amateur painter. He began his university studies in Kiev, moving to St. Petersburg (then known as Petrograd) in 1915.
While there be began to think about the connection between religious life and art, which would become his life's work. Discussing the close connection between the Orthodox faith and conservative aesthetics of the medieval creators of Byzantine icon
Icon
An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...
s, Grabar explained, "Their role can be compared to that of musical performers in our day, who do not feel that their importance is diminished by the fact that they limit their talent to the interpretation of other people's work, since each interpretation contains original nuances."
He left St. Petersburg in November 1917, a few days after the Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
s seized power in the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
. He completed his studies at Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
, Ukraine, in 1919. Grabar realized it would not be possible for him to pursue his career in what was becoming the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and he left for Sofia
Sofia
Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...
, Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
in January 1920. He spent three years surveying the medieval monuments of the country for the National Museum, often in "harsh conditions". He took many trips through the countryside, often by donkey or on foot. He moved to Strasbourg
Strasbourg
Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
in 1922, first teaching the Russian language
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
. He married Julie Ivanova (whom he had met in Bulgaria) in 1923; she was a medical doctor. He earned a Ph. D. at the University of Strasbourg
University of Strasbourg
The University of Strasbourg in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, is the largest university in France, with about 43,000 students and over 4,000 researchers....
in 1928, and taught art history there until 1937. He wrote his books in the French language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, but many of his more than 30 titles were translated into English and other languages. During many years as a professor of Byzantine archeology in Paris, he became the center of a school of young art historians, teaching at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes
École pratique des hautes études
The École pratique des hautes études is a Grand Établissement in Paris, France. It is counted among France's most prestigious research and higher education institutions....
as well as at the Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
.
He moved to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 1958, becoming a central figure at the Dumbarton Oaks
Dumbarton Oaks
Dumbarton Oaks is the conventional name for the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, situated on a historic property in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The institution is administered by the Trustees for Harvard University. Its founders, Robert Woods Bliss and his wife...
Institute of Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
. He was a research professor at Dumbarton Oaks from 1950 to 1964.
In 1961, he gave the A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery of Art
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...
in Washington, DC. They were published as the book Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins in 1968.
Grabar was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
.
He died in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
on October 3, 1990. His son Oleg Grabar
Oleg Grabar
Oleg Grabar was a French-born art historian and archeologist, who spent most of his career in the United States, as a leading figure in the field of Islamic art and architecture.-Academic career:...
(1929–2011) was also a historian of art, specializing in medieval Islamic art
Islamic art
Islamic art encompasses the visual arts produced from the 7th century onwards by people who lived within the territory that was inhabited by or ruled by culturally Islamic populations...
. He also had another son named Nicolas.
His papers are part of the Dumbarton Oaks collection.
Selected works
- La peinture religieuse en Bulgarie, Paris: P. Geuthner, 1928
- Byzantine Painting: Historical and Critical Study, Geneva: Skira, 1953
- Early Medieval Painting from the Fourth to the Eleventh Century: Mosaics and Mural Painting, New York: Skira, 1957
- Ampoules de Terre Sainte (Monza, Bobbio), Paris, C. Klincksieck, 1958. Now the standard monograph, with 61 photographs and 70 pages of commentary. (See Leroy review, below.)
- Romanesque Painting from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Century, New York: Skira, 1958
- Byzantine and Early Medieval Painting, New York: Viking Press, 1965
- The Beginnings of Christian Art, 200-395, Arts of MankindArts of MankindThe Arts of Mankind , an ambitious series of art history survey books founded in 1960 for the French publisher Gallimard by André Malraux, who edited many of the volumes...
9. London: Thames & Hudson, 1967 - Christian Iconography: a Study of its Origins, A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1961. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968
- Leroy, Jules, Review of André Grabar Les Ampoules de Terre Sainte, Syria. Archéologie, Art et histoire, Vol 36, 1959 (in French)
See also
- Christianity in the 3rd century#Early iconography
- Cross-in-squareCross-in-squareThe term cross-in-square or crossed-dome denotes the dominant architectural form of middle- and late-period Byzantine churches. The first cross-in-square churches were probably built in the late 8th century, and the form has remained in use throughout the Orthodox world until the present day...
- Monza ampullaeMonza ampullaeThe Monza ampullae form the largest collection of a specific type of Early Medieval pilgrimage ampullae or small flasks designed to hold holy oil from pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land related to the life of Jesus, that were made in Palestine, probably in the fifth to early seventh centuries...