Vladimir Nabokov

Magda Nachman: An Artist in Exile

By dana_dragunoiu, 20 September, 2020

The book Magda Nachman: An Artist in Exile by Lina Bernstein has just been published by Academic Studies Press.

The book contains a discussion of portraits of Vladimir and Véra Nabokov and of Vladimir’s mother by Magda Nachman (1933) and the relationship between the Nabokovs and the Nachman-Acharyas, as well as a suggestion of a possible prototype for one of the characters of Nabokov’s novel Podvig (Glory).

The book tells the story of a Russian-born artist who was swept up in the political and social turmoil of the twentieth century. She was taken from a privileged childhood in St. Petersburg at the close of the nineteenth century, studied with Léon Bakst and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin at the Zvantseva Art Academy, and participated in the dynamic symbolist/modernist artistic ferment in prerevolutionary Russia. She led a refugee's existence in the Russian countryside during the Russian Civil War, followed by marriage to a prominent Indian nationalist and emigration from Russia with her husband to the hardships of Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s. Her last stop was Bombay, where she established herself as an important and beloved artist and mentor to a new generation of modern Indian artists. 

The book is available from the publisher as well as from AmazonBarnes & Noble, or your local bookstore. 

The Russian-language version will appear in Moscow at the end of this year and will be available here from Academic Studies Press.

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