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B oris Isaac Sheynes was born in Moscow, Russia, in 1935. His childhood was spent in a communal flat – shared by seven families – at Kuznyetsky Most, House No. 24, Apartment 12. That building was the original headquarters of the Soviet KGB, which used a system of residential flats, shopping centers and civil agencies as camouflage for a labyrinthine complex of interrogation rooms, torture-chambers and secret archives. The hideous essence of House No. 24 presented itself to view early at dawn when huge crowds of people gathered in the courtyard, waiting to find out the fate of their family members. At one time, Boris saw a dead body in an army colonel’s coat, prostrate on the sidewalk…
Boris produced his first independent artwork at age 14. He finished the Polygraphic Technical School named after Russian First Printer Ivan Fyodorov, and enrolled in the Polygraphic Institute of Moscow. He left the latter establishment before graduation because he clearly saw it was nurturing mediocrity, servility and sycophancy and was a State-funded breeding ground of slaves of the totalitarian regime’s propaganda machinery. From the get-go, his goal was to gain artistic independence. Among those members of the Russian intelligentsia who exerted a shaping influence on Sheynes’s artistic development were Iraida Ivanovna Fomina, designer of books on the history of Western architecture and musical claviers, and daughter of the eminent Russian architect Ivan Fomin; Prof. Mikhail Isaakovich Fabrikant, a Russian art historian, director of the department of graphic art of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, a leading expert on West European art, and author of Commentary on the Letters of Peter Paul Rubens and a study on the art of Francisco Goya; Vladimir Andreevich Favorsky (1886–1964), an internationally acclaimed Russian engraver and the founder of the Russian and Soviet school of graphic art and book design; Yevgeny Semyonovich Levitin, an art historian, senior adviser to the graphic art department of the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum, an organizer of art exhibitions and the author of seminal studies on West European art; Yuri Borisovich Vasiliev, an artist and a senior editor of the “Soviet Artist” publishing house; and Naum Iosifovich Tzeitlin, an artist and the author of illustrations to Jewish poetry and other literary works. It was Iraida Fomina’s recommendations, including her letter to Vasiliev, that worked a breakthrough for Boris Sheynes, then a young artist. At his deathbed, Favorski, who had monitored Boris’s first steps in his chosen calling, dictated to his secretary a letter recommending young Sheynes for admission to the Union of Artists. Levitin organized Sheynes’s 25th anniversary exhibition at the Central House of Art Workers and wrote the preface article for his catalogue, and also endeavored to procure purchases of Mr. Sheynes’s art works by Tretyakov Gallery and Pushkin Museum.
In 1954, Boris Sheynes started working as a book illustrator and designer for leading Moscow publishing companies. Overall, he had illustrated more than 100 literary works by domestic and foreign authors, and won several honorary diplomas at major international book fairs. Sheynes created illustrations and book designs for leading works of the Soviet-era poetry and prose, including “Morgenstern” (“The Morning Star”) and “Autumn Gardening,” Yiddish-language poems by Avram Gontar’, and the novels “Two Captains,” “In Front of the Mirror,” and “The Twilight Day” by renowned Soviet author Venyamin Kaverin. Among Sheynes’ most remembered accomplishments in this field are book designs for “Abandoned Cities,” a historical study exploring the mystery of ancient civilizations that sank into oblivion, and “Steps To Immortality,” a collection of photographs and remembrances of the heroism and suffering of the Soviet defenders of Moscow against the Nazi invasion in the 1940s. “Steps To Immortality” resulted in the deep gratitude of Soviet marshals, generals and World War II veterans who contributed the documentary materials published in that book.
Furthermore, at the request of Yelena Bulgakova, widow of the Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov, and the editors of the “Moskva” magazine, Boris Sheynes agreed to create illustrations for the initial publication of Bulgakov’s world-famous novel “Master and Margarita.” The magazine publication was canceled by order of the Soviet authorities. Despite that action, the illustrations came into being and were included in Sheynes’s personal exhibition at the Central House of Art Workers in 1964.
As a book designer and illustrator, Boris Sheynes had to deal with a wide array of authors, some Jewish, some Russian, some Belarus, some Kazakh. That task involved tackling the particular author’s ego and unique worldview, and finding a common language with each of them. Sheynes earned profound appreciation from all the writers he worked with.
From 1960 through 1980, Artist Sheynes focused his creative energy upon lithography and drawing – the spheres of graphic art in which he transcended his contemporaries and predecessors alike, notwithstanding the nearly impossible work conditions and unremitting obstructionism contrived by the leadership of the Union of Artists and other powerful State organizations which controlled the lives and livelihoods of the Russian artists. The Russian authorities deliberately kept the Artist on the brink of penury and starvation, and yet greedily snapped up the golden eggs he was laying for them – his precious lithographs and book illustrations – which gained prompt notice and comment at home and abroad. The major highlights of Sheynes’s artistic career were his one-man shows at the Central House of Art Workers, Moscow (1964), the State Combine for Graphic Arts, Moscow (1970), and the spectacular personal exhibition celebrating 25 years of his professional work at the Central House of Art Workers (1978). Mr. Sheynes’s participation in the Regional Art Exhibition was precluded, however, by the intervention of the Ministry of the Interior which, via its order of March 1985, forced him and his loved ones to leave the country.
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