Date: 24.08.2018
For the 200th anniversary of the birth of the author Ivan Turgenev, the Russian State Art Library (RSAL) presented the exhibition ‘The World of Poetry by Ivan Turgenev in Etchings by Boris Diodorov.’
Boris Diodorov, a long-time reader of RSAL, Professor of the Moscow State University of Printing Arts, began creating in 1988 a series of etchings for Ivan Turgenev’s collection of selected poems Songs of the Soul. Boris Diodorov has a special relationship with Ivan Turgenev’s work. For five years he worked on the illustrations using the technique of two-colour etching, which complemented Turgenev’s romantic poetry amazingly well.
It is not by chance that the well-known publishing house Vita Nova, which specialises in the production of small-print run collectable editions of literature, having decided in 2015 to print Turgenev’s poetic work, turned specifically to Diodorov. Thus, the book Ivan Turgenev. Poetic Works. Poetry. Poems in Prose was presented at the exhibition.
Boris Diodorov—a laureate of all major Russian and foreign awards in book illustration—is an artist who has illustrated many Russian and international classics. His work has decorated over 300 books published in a variety of countries. Boris Diodorov’s personal exhibitions have been held in various cities of the world: Moscow; Tokyo; Berlin; Copenhagen; Washington, D.C.; and New York. His works are in the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the Leo Tolstoy State Museum, the Ivan Turgenev State Literary Museum, and in private collections in Russia and abroad.
At the exhibition in RSAL, visitors had the rare opportunity to see Boris Diodorov’s original etchings for Turgenev’s poetry, his etching tools, and the zinc plates used for printing. The exhibition was complemented by beautifully illustrated publications from RSAL’s collections.
