Danila vassilieff biography of christopher kennedy

Though largely unrecognised for his work for much of his life, today Vassilieff is recognised as a key figure in abstract expressionism, yet he did not come from an artistic background. According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vassilieff was educated at technical school at Novocherkassk and at a military academy in St Petersburg.

While he specialized in mechanical engineering, from mid he served on the Eastern Front with a Don Cossack cavalry regiment, was captured by Communist forces and escaped via Persia and India to China. In July , Vassilieff and his then wife arrived in Queensland where they bought a sugar-farm at Yuruga, near Ingham. In the later s, he was employed on railway construction at Mataranka, Northern Territory and was naturalized in There, according to biographer Felicity St John Moore, he began to see a relationship between the modernist movement and Russian decorative art.

Vassilieff returned to Australia in October and settled in Sydney and then Melbourne. He began painting street scenes of the inner city; his early works of the later s and s were of children playing in the streets of Collingwood, Fitzroy and East Melbourne.

Current research projects include in- depth research and conservation of the work of Danila Vassilieff, conservation techniques for theatre.

The young Vassilieff was always a man of the people, a wanderer as well as an artist and a sculptor. His approach to his art could be described as complete immersion. In the words of another Australian painter Albert Tucker, "he was a rich and sombre presence who carried with him the odour of Byzantium and Caucasian steppes". Vassilieff also joined the Contemporary Art Society focussing on what he described as the 'gut' response and 'message'.

1 November: First US hydrogen bomb explosion.

In , he oversaw the building of, and became foundation art teacher at, Clive and Janet Nield's experimental Koornong School in Warrandyte on the outskirts of Melbourne. If Vassilieff could ever be said to have settled it was in Warrandyte where he built his house and studio, Stonygrad. She was a year-old lecturer and a divorcee, who had bought Stonygrad from him — and was active politically; they separated in In his later life, Vassilieff explored the theme of conflict between the sexes in his paintings and sculptures.