Fraerman, Theofil Borisovich

Theofil Borisovich (Tevil Berilevich) Fraerman was born on March 2 (16), 1883 in Berdichev in the family of a handicraftsman-craftsman. Later, the family moved to Odessa.

From the age of 13 he worked as an apprentice with the owner of a paint workshop, attending Sunday courses at the Odessa Art College.

In 1898 he entered the School and studied in the workshop of Kiriyak Kostandi. Several of his student works, written in a realistic manner, are now in the collections of the Odessa Museum.

In 1903, on the advice of Kostandi, he entered the Anton Ashbe Academy in Munich, where he mastered the painting technique perfectly, but because of the academic-dry teaching style, he went on foot to Paris and settled in La ruche on Montparnasse. Soon he began working in the studio of the sculptor Aronson, translating his casts into marble. He also worked in marble in the workshop of O. Rodin. He worked at the Luxembourg Museum, took part in the organization of various exhibitions, selected exhibits for procurement.

Entering the Academy of Fine Arts (L'Ecole des beaux-arts) in 1905, he studied with the professor at the faculty of painting, Gabriel Forrieux, and in the studio of portrait painter Leon Bonn. Even before graduating from the Academy, his works, signed by Theo Fra, were exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in 1909 and were immediately acquired by collectors and benefactors.

After the next exhibition in the Autumn Salon, he was elected a full and permanent member of his jury. He also participated in the Salon d'Independents, and in other exhibitions. Periodicals noted his work as one of the best, placed their reproductions.

The Biographical Dictionary of Artists E. Benezit (E. Benezit, Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintress (...) de tous les temps (...), v. 2, Paris, 1913, p. 323 - 324) reports on it: "French school. Participant and winner of the exhibitions of the Autumn Salon."

He met with many French and Russian artists and writers, especially close friends with Henri Matisse and Anatole France. In 1914, after the outbreak of World War I, he left for London, where he stayed for 3 years. Having learned about the February Revolution in Russia, through Arkhangelsk he gets to Odessa, hoping to return to Paris after the war. September 1 (14), 1917, arrives in Odessa and actively participates in the organization of the Society of Independent Artists. Since the first exhibition of the Independents (November 1917), has been participating in the rest. Due to his mother’s illness, he cannot leave Odessa, like other “Odessa Parisians”, and after 1920, with the establishment of Soviet power, this is no longer possible. The fate of the paintings that remained in Paris and in London, remained forever unknown, except bought out from the Odessa commission store "Paris Street", somehow after many years got there. Some of the paintings painted at that time and purchased by J. Variable were exported by him to Israel (Eretz Yisrael) in 1919.

As a member of the Commission for the Protection of Monuments of Art and Antiquity TB begins to organize art museums, engaged in the selection, attribution and purchase of art, as well as the organization of exhibitions. With the opening of the Odessa State Art Museum in 1920, which was housed in the former mansion of the Count Tolstoy family at 4 Sabaneev Bridge, it became its director. After a phased museum reorganization and transfer of the complex of buildings of the former Count's estate in 1934 to the House of Scientists, he heads the department of Western painting in the museum building on ul. Pushkinskaya d.9 (until 1949, except for three years of evacuation). For some time he worked as director of the Odessa Museum of Russian and Ukrainian Art.

In 1918 he was elected a teacher at the Academy of the Society of Independents, and since 1919 he has been teaching at the Odessa Art Institute, which was renamed the Odessa Art College in 1935 (while maintaining the status of a higher educational institution). In 1920, he was elected professor-head of the department of painting, and later approved by the People's Commissariat of Education in the academic rank of professor. His scientific works: “150 years of the fine art of Odessa”, “Color in the architecture of Ukraine” (together with Professor Postel); monograph devoted to the work and pedagogical activity of K.K. Kostandi.

In 1928, he married Lydia Vladimirovna Pestryakova (1910-1981), a student of the sculpture department of the Art Institute of the Art Institute, with whom he lived for 29 years - until the end of her life.

In the mid 30s. was attacked for "formalism" and "cosmopolitanism." He was expelled from the Art Institute and restored later by order from Moscow.

Even before that, he began teaching at the Odessa Civil Engineering Institute at the Faculty of Architecture as the head of the department of drawing and graphics. Every day, working creatively, but finding himself in the “black lists” of formalists, he is forced to hide his work, preferring the unknown to the need to cheat, refusing to serve high art.

From the first days of World War II, he actively participated in the preservation and preparation for the evacuation of museum valuables in the city of Ufa, the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, where he worked in the museum funds of the People's Commissariat of Ukraine, supervising the systematization of exhibits. Despite the complete absence of conditions for creativity in the evacuation, his portraits and landscapes of this time were exhibited at art exhibitions in Ufa.

Returning from evacuation in 1944, T.B. he began teaching again at the Odessa Civil Engineering Institute and part-time at the Odessa Art College, as part-time head of the department of Western art in the Museum, immediately began to restore it. In 1947 he was awarded a medal for this activity. In 1949, after the prohibition of combining jobs, he left his job at the Art School and the Museum, before which he managed to organize the first exhibition in Ukraine by Niko Pirosmanishvili.

In 1951, due to an exacerbated heart disease, he retired. In the last years of his life, he created a series of gouache “Household Pictures of the West”, as always imbued with the “Parisian spirit” and marked by a restrained and subtle color. But, as before, only a few close friends can see them - in order to avoid new persecution. January 7, 1957 Theofil Borisovich died.

The first posthumous personal exhibition was opened in Kiev by the Union of Artists of the Ukrainian SSR in May 1957 (in the short period of the "thaw"). The second - in July of that year in Odessa. Many paintings were acquired by museums in Kiev, Odessa, Kharkov, Nikolaev, Poltava, Lviv, Donetsk, Zaporozhye. The Ministry of Culture of the USSR accepted a number of works for sale for export. Some of the works were in private collections and exhibited at a personal exhibition in Odessa art gallery on the centenary of his birth.

In March 1992, the works of TB were exhibited at the University of Baltimore (USA). Fraerman. Eight paintings from the collection of Y. Peremen along with the works of other "Odessa Parisians" in 2010 were purchased at Sotheby's .

• 1909 - 1914 , Paris Autumn Salons (Salons d'Automne)
  • Salon Independent
  • Champs Elysees Salon
  • Salon on the Champ de Mars
  • exhibitions of comedians
  • exhibition of decorators (panels)
• 1917 - 1919 , Odessa : exhibitions of the Society of Independent Artists
• April 1920 , Tel Aviv , Israel : exhibition of Odessa Parisians in the Y. Peremen Gallery
• 1927 , Kiev : republican exhibition
• 1928 , Kiev: All-Ukrainian exhibition
• 1932 , Lviv : exhibition of modern Ukrainian graphics
• 1936 , Israel : exhibition "Odessa Parisians" from the collection of J. Peremen
• 1943 , Ufa : art exhibition
• 1944 , Kiev: exhibition of works by Ukrainian artists
• 1947 , Odessa: an exhibition of Odessa artists, dedicated to the XXX Godrvschina VOSR
• May 1957 , Kiev: personal posthumous exhibition (87 works)
• July 1957, Odessa : personal posthumous exhibition at the Odessa Art Gallery
• 1957, Odessa: exhibition of the work of the Independents in the premises of the newspaper Komsomolskaya Spark
• 1974 , Moscow : exhibition of paintings from private collections
• 1976 , Odessa: exhibition of pre-revolutionary and Soviet painting from private collections
• 1983 , Odessa: personal exhibition on the centenary of his birthday in the Odessa Art Gallery, paintings from various museums of Ukraine and from private collections)
• 1992 , Baltimore , USA : personal exhibition at the university
• 2002 , Tel Aviv, Israel: exhibition "Odessa Parisians" in the Art Museum
• May 6, 2006 , Ramat Gan , Israel: at the Museum of Russian Art. Zeitlins
• April 2010 , Kiev: exhibition of “Odessa Parisians” from the collection of J. Peremen (before the Sotheby's auction)

Correspondence students (1945-1951)

• Trooper Lesya . Fraerman Theofil Borisovich // Encyclopedia of the Russian avant-garde : Fine Arts. Architecture / Compiled by V. I. Rakitin , A. D. Sarabyanov ; Scientific editor A.D. Sarabyanov. - M .: RA, Global Expert & Service Team, 2013. - T. II: Biographies. L — I. - S. 491-492 . - ISBN 978-5-902801-11-5 .