Victor Podgursky; Виктор Степанович Подгурский
Victor Podgoursky spent more than twenty-five years in Shanghai, working as an artist, teacher and designer. As a long-standing member of the Shanghai Art Club, he acted as the resident art critic and an instructor in life drawing and painting for the members.
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Kerchelaeva, Nina. “Vernut is zabvenia (To return from oblivion).” Klub Directorov. 12 March 1999.
Artchive.ru. "Victor Stepanovich Podgoursky." https://artchive.ru/artists/69943~Viktor_Stepanovich_Podgurskij. Accessed 1 January 2020.
Lebedeva, Tatiana, “Na perekrestke kultur: Victor Podgoursky, hudozhnik I pedagog (At the crossroads of cultures: Victor Podgoursky, artist and educator)”. Art of East Europe, vol. 2, 2014.
Knyazeva, Katya. "Victor Podgoursky. Building Russian Shanghai." https://sites.google.com/view/russianshanghai/architects/l-z/v-s-podgoursky. Accessed 11 January 2020.
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Shanghai, China (1920–1947)
Joffre Terrace, 927 Avenue Joffre, French Concession (now Huaihai Lu, Xuhui) (residence in the 1920s); 79 Rue Pere Robert (residence); 6 Avenue Dubail (now 447–479 Huaihai Zhong Lu, Xuhui Qu) Shanghai
Friedrich Schiff was an Austrian-born artist who went to Shanghai in 1930. He became known for his humorous cartoons, which were enjoyed by the colonial bourgeoisie.
Due to his Jewish origins, he was unable to return to Austria after Hitler’s annexation of Austria in 1938. He left Shanghai for Buenos Aires in 1947.
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A self-driven journalist and a self-funded publisher, Ivan Kounin created several illustrated albums focused on the life of Shanghai’s international community, which highlighted the work of Russian artists.
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An autodidact and a versatile commercial artist, Alexander Yaron applied his talent in portraiture, photography, interior design, advertising, layout and illustration. His best known projects were illustrated art magazines and books produced as part of Adcraft Studios, in tandem with Ivan Kounin.
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A stateless Russian Jew exiled in Shanghai, Emmanuel Gran rose to become the most accomplished and the most prolific of the diaspora architects. His projects included dozens of public and commercial buildings, apartments and villas in Shanghai and elsewhere in China; close to twenty of them still stand in downtown Shanghai.
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Mikhail Kichigin was Shanghai’s preeminent émigré artist in the 1930s and 1940s. He travelled extensively around China and Eastern Asia, exhibiting his work and conducting visual studies. A versatile professional and a respected art instructor, he influenced a number of young artists from the Russian diaspora.
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Combining the vocation of philanthropist with that of an artist, Thais Jaspar was equally at ease among the foreign elites and Soviet diplomats in Shanghai. Her pleasing portraiture was much in demand by her friends and clients.
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A native of Harbin and a resident of Shanghai in the 1930s and 1940s, Vera Kuznetzova was among the most accomplished female artists of the Russian diaspora. Together with Mikhail Kichigin, she travelled extensively around China and Eastern Asia, exhibiting her work and conducting visual studies.
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Vasily Zasipkin was a prolific artist and and influential teacher, much loved in the diaspora. Having lost his studio and all his work in wartime Shanghai, he started over in Singapore.
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Emma Bormann was a pioneering artist and printmaker. Her oeuvre gives witness to her extensive travels around the globe and to the agility and versatility of her artistic rendering of the urban sites she encountered.
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Ponedelink was the most influential and the longest-running art society in Shanghai. Committed to promoting awareness of Russian culture and to developing its members' taste and erudition, it published the finest art magazine of the diaspora.
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Victor Sassoon was a descendant of the Baghdadi Jewish Sassoon merchant family. He contributed significantly to a real estate boom in Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s and helped European Jews in the Shanghai Ghetto. An ambitious amateur photographer, he produced many images of people and events of the time.
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