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 The Samoilov Family Museum – the branch of St.Petersburg State Museum of Theatre in Music.
The exhibition presents about 50 unknown works of the artist from the collection of the State Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema of Lithuania. Among them there are sketches, theatre sets for operas, ballets and drama performances created at the Kaunas State Musical Theatre. The whole collection dedicated to M. Dobujinsky in the Lithuanian Museum contains more than 1000 items.
The art works by Mstislav Dobujinsky represent cultural relations between Lithuania and Russia. His life and creative work is a reflection of the history of two countries. M. Dobujinsky was born in a family of Lithuanian nobles. He finished gymnasium in Vilnius. During school years he was surrounded with the gothic, renaissances and baroque art monuments. Mstislav Dobujinsky spent his student years in Saint-Petersburg where he proved to be a talented architectural painter. The artist Dobujinsky in his works depicted the views of Vilnius and St.-Petersburg.
During the revolution the artist had to emigrate. Dobujinsky moved to Kaunas and while working at the State Theatre became a leader of the Lithuanian theatre set design. At the State theatre the artist designed more than 30 drama, opera and ballet performances.
The first work of Dobujinsky in the Lithuanian theatre was the opera “Queen of Spades” by P.Tchaikovsky in 1925. For this performance the artist created costumes and settings. In 1929 he worked on the set designs to the opera “Boris Godunov” by M. Mussorgsky. Dobujinsky’s theatre works of the Lithuanian period were performed with the finesse of graphic details and colour range, the features that were typical for the Mir iskusstva(World of Art) artistic movement. From 1929 Dobujinsky lived in Lithuania and participated in the cultural life of the country. He organized personal exhibitions of painting, graphics and theatre set designs.
Not only did the family origin of Dobujinsky ( the Januszkyavichus- Dobujinsky family estate is situated in Dabujay) tie him with Lithuania but also it was the interest to the Lithuanian national culture, history, folk art and ethnography and the friendship with M. K. Chiurlenis. Dobujinsky and other artists of Mir Iskusstva highly appreciated M. K. Chiurlenis and promoted his works of art. Dobujinsky was interested in Lithuanian heraldry, he worked in the fields of bookplate and applied graphics, created several Lithuanian stamps and posters.
In Lithuania the artist illustrated several books, among them the cycle of illustrations of the novel “Eugene Onegin” by A. Pushkin. A. Benois wrote an enthusiastic review on this work.
In the post-war period first students from Lithuania came to study to Moscow and St.Petersburg. They went the same way that the Dobujinsky and Chiurlenis generation had done at their time. Capitals of Russia were “windows to Europe” for post-war generation and many figures of Lithuanian culture became an integral part of the cultural life of Russia.
The exhibition was presented as a travelling exhibition and showed in Moscow, Minsk, Nizhny Novgorod and Kaliningrad.
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