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Mstislav Dobuzhinsky
Mstislav Dobuzhinsky was born in Novgorod on August 2 (14), 1875. His father served in the Petersburg artillery school and retired as a major general. After the birth of Mstislav his parents separated and his mother, who was an actress, a singer and a liberal thinker left. Thus the boy was brought up by his father and mother in turn, alternately staying with one or the other. He finished a grammar school in Vilna and studied at the Imperial School of the Society for Encouragement of Arts in Petersburg (1885 — 1887), at Anton Azhbe's school and took classes from Sh. Hollosh (Munich, 1899 — 1901).
Mstislav Dobuzhinsky participated in exhibitions from 1902. He became a member of the World of Art association. His talent was first of all acclaimed by M. K. Churlyonis. The artist was the first director of the Vitebsk Art School (1919). He worked on the stage design of the Big Drama Theatre’s production in the first years of its work. He taught at private art schools in Petersburg and was a professor of the Academy of Arts in Petrograd from 1922.
With the assistance of Yu. Baltrushaytis the artist got Lithuanian citizenship and left the USSR in 1924. He worked for the Riga Theater in 1925, and N. F. Baliyev's Parisian Theater The Bat from 1926 to 1929. From 1929 Mstislav Dobuzhinsky was the art director of the Lithuanian State Theater in Kaunas. He taught at a private art school and contributed for Lithuanian publishing houses. In 1935 he moved to England with the group of the Kaunas Theater.
He was a member of the Parisian Masonic lodge Jupiter No. 536 (the Great Lodge of France).
Mstislav Dobuzhinsky lived in the USA from 1939. He gave his last interview to the Svoboda Radio correspondent Boris Orshansky two days before his death.
The artist died in New York on November 20, 1957.
