Lev Borisovich Katzenelson
Lev Borisovich Katzenelson was born in 1923 into a fine St. Petersburg family known for outstanding cultural figures.
His grandfather, Lev Israelievich Katzenelson (1847 – 1916 or 1917), M.D., was a physician, medical historian, writer, and Talmudist scholar, who headed the Courses of Oriental Studies in St. Petersburg after the death of their founder, Baron David Günzburg.
His father, Boris Lvovich (1881 – 1942), studied at St. Petersburg University and later graduated from the Polytechnische Schule München. He was an electrical engineer by specialty and mastered several languages (all major European languages and ancient ones). He worked as a translator of technical texts, as an editor, and later in the Public Library. His mother, Ida Solomonovna (1883 – 1944), graduated from the University of Berlin and was a famous pediatrician. Lev Borisovich's parents met in Berlin and married in Geneva. In 1919 they returned from Germany and lived in Petrograd, later Leningrad.
The family occupied a large apartment on Rubinstein Street and were friends with a wide circle of Petersburg intellectuals. Lev and his brother Mikhail early began to be interested in art. They read a lot, staged plays, and published a magazine for a domestic circle. Later Lev Borisovich often recalled with what tenderness and attention his mother, a famous pediatrician, who published extensively on pediatrics, treated her patients. This atmosphere of sensitivity and care, as well as boundless trust in people and the desire to see the best in them, most likely formed the amazing character of Lev Katsenelson. His talent for drawing and thoughtful interest in painting led him to become one of the first students of the Artistic High School at the Academy of Arts.
In the fall of 1939 there was an event, the scale of which Lev Katsenelson was able to comprehend immediately. He met Pavel Nikolayevich Filonov and soon became his student. He described this meeting as follows: "I was young, and the purity of youth gave me the purity of instant insight. Yes, before me was a great master of the Renaissance, of Renaissance depth, of Renaissance strength, of Renaissance intelligence, of Renaissance passion, miraculously transferred to the 20th century. There was a high joy in the fact that he exists now. I had no doubts that this was the great master, neither at that moment of my discovery nor afterward. I knew with inescapable conviction that Filonov was similar in power and spirit only to the masters of the great line of titans of the Renaissance". Back then many were afraid to go to Filonov, already from the early 1930s he was in the grey zone, did not exhibit, and did not receive state commissions. At that time, not everyone understood the power of his genius. It is all the more surprising that already at such a young age Lev Katzenelson saw with piercing clarity and courage what others would discover much later, only after the death of the master. Their conversations about creativity, the Russian avant-garde, and analytical art were for Lev Borisovich a fresh stream, which was so badly lacking in the academic art education of that time.
When the war broke out, his brother Mikhail volunteered. Soon he himself also went to the front as a volunteer. Mikhail died at the very beginning of the war. Lev survived. He was wounded three times and was awarded the Order of Military Glory. During the war, his mother and father died. His mother survived the Blockade thanks to the help of her patients. Until the last minute, she helped children and died at the end of the war due to heart failure.
Having returned home after the war, Lev Katsenelson, despite the loss of his family and injuries, finds the strength to continue his studies at the Academy of Arts. However, he fails to finish the course: the state campaign to "fight against cosmopolitism" that unfolded in the post-war years and the coinciding tightening of the screws against all possible modernist "deviations" in art left him no chance.
Of the entire apartment, he is left with only one room. This room with two arched windows at 38 Rubinstein Street would soon become a famous and sacred address in the Leningrad art world, where those interested in art would seek to go.
Starting from that moment, from the post-war decade, for more than thirty years Lev Borisovich Katzenelson was an active and energetic collector and educator. He taught and organized exhibitions, helped young artists, and advised museums. Hundreds of people who came to him, thanks to his collection, began to understand what living art really looks like. With sincere warmth and tact, Lev Borisovich opened to the guests a magical land where every artist is seen as a special world, unlike anyone. That is what makes it beautiful.
In addition to the “permanent display”, which consisted of paintings by contemporary artists, carefully and lovingly selected by Lev Katsenelson, there were special cabinets with folders. These capacious albums of graphics provided if not a complete then at least a comprehensive idea of the artist's oeuvre and his creative path. On the spine of the folder, there was a small drawing with the artist’s name, made in the spirit and style of his work and executed by Lev Katzenelson himself in the form of a virtuoso miniature. On the first page, there was a portrait photograph and the artist's autograph or letter. Then, framed by a mat of white Whatman paper, there were sheets of graphics. It must be said that many folders contained both reproductions and pages of book graphics; for Lev Borisovich, this difference was less important than creating a complete, comprehensive idea of the artist.
When Lev Katzenelson showed these folders to his guests and visitors, they not only learned new things about the artists, but also often discovered completely new names, and these discoveries had an inspiring effect on many.
These acquaintances were so impressive that many specialists, museum curators, and art historians were inspired by visits to the collection. Often the result was new publications, even monographic ones. Lev Borisovich selflessly invested all his talent as an editor and collector, all his encyclopedic knowledge and taste in art into that work. His monograph folders, in essence, were the first and only “samizdat” collections of the Russian Museum that had no equal. Whether it was Tyshler or Zamirailo, Sternberg or Kabakov – only he could talk about the artist like that.
He was well acquainted with Mikhail Zoshchenko and helped artists Alexander Arefiev, Vladimir Shagin, Richard Vasmi, and Mikhail Shemyakin. The latter wrote him enthusiastic letters and passed on albums and exhibition catalogs through Vladimir Vysotsky. Often in complex ethical issues related to the life of the intelligentsia of that time, Lev Katsenelson was turned to for advice as a wise arbiter and a person with an impeccable moral compass. It is difficult to imagine someone who has at least some connection to the fine arts of Leningrad at that time and has not heard the name of Lev Borisovich Katzenelson.
The Ex Libris, designed by the remarkable artist Eduard Budogosky, depicts a bearded man with a large folder in his hands, walking along the grating of one of the St. Petersburg canals. This slightly limping, swift gait and this man with beautiful and intelligent eyes and a huge folder in his hands became an invariable attribute of the urban landscape of the second half of the twentieth century, just like the treasured room on Rubinstein Street. Himself a talented artist and writer, he devoted his entire life to worthy – and he had very high criteria for those “criteria” – to present the art of those artists whose work should not perish under the ruins of decaying culture.
