A symbol of Russian poetry in one image An iconic portrait of a famous Russian poet Anna Akhmatova (who was Amadeo Modiglani's lover in one time frame) by Georges Annenkov is announced a painting of the month on www.russianartsalon.com
Young poets like Joseph Brodsky flocked to her. To them, she represented a link with the pre-Revolutionary past which had been destroyed by the Communists.
Though Akhmatova was frequently confronted with official government opposition to her work during her lifetime, she was deeply loved and lauded by the Russian people, in part because she did not abandon her country during difficult political times. Her most accomplished works, Requiem (which was not published in its entirety in Russia until 1987) and Poem Without a Hero, are reactions to the horror of the Stalinist Terror, during which time she endured artistic repression as well as tremendous personal loss.
Akhmatova also translated the works of Victor Hugo, Rabindranath Tagore, Giacomo Leopardi, and various Armenian and Korean poets, and she wrote memoirs of Symbolist writer Aleksandr Blok, the artist Amedeo Modigliani, and fellow Acmeist Osip Mandelstam. In 1964 she was awarded the Etna-Taormina prize and an honorary doctorate from Oxford University in 1965. Her journeys to Sicily and England to receive these honors were her first travels outside Russia since 1912. Two years before her death at the age of 76, Akhmatova was chosen president of the Writers' Union. Akhmatova died in Leningrad, where she had spent most of life, in 1966.
Georges Annenkov was an Academy Award-nominated Russian-French artist, active in Russia, France, Germany, and Italy, also known as Yuri Annenkov in the 'Silver Age' of Russian art.
He was born Yuri Pavlovich Annenkov on July 18, 1889, in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Kamchatka province, Russian Empire (now Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia), where his father, Pavel Annenkov, was serving his sentence in Siberian exile for his anti-Tsar activities. The Annenkovs belonged to Russian cultural elite, and were in the opposition to the Tsar's rule. Annenkov's grand uncle, also named Pavel Annenkov, was among the leading intellectuals of his time, he was the publisher of Alexander Pushkin. In 1892, Annenkov's father was forgiven by the Tsar, and young Annenkov with his parents returned to their ancestral home in St. Petersburg. There he attended the private gymnasium of Stolbtsov, then studied at the Law School of St. Petersburg University, but did not graduate. In 1909, Annenkov applied to the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, but was not accepted, because his anti-Tsar caricatures were published in Russian liberal magazines.
In the 1900s, Annenkov met the famous Russian artist Ilya Repin, who was a neighbor of the Annenkovs in the St. Petersburg suburb of Kuokkala. Repin's art made a strong impression on young Annenkov, albeit he became interested in a more experimental and avant-garde movements. In 1909-1911, in St. Petersburg, he studied at the Stieglitz School of Art, and attended the drawing class of Saveli Seidenberg, where his classmate was Marc Chagall. In 1911 - 1913 Annenkov lived in Paris and studied painting with Symbolist artists Maurice Denis and Felix Vallotton. In the summer of 1912 he lived on the Atlantic coast of France, in Bretagne, there he made a series of drawings of fish and plants for the Department of Zoology
