Alex Klevitsky

EXCLUSIVE PUBLICATIONS

Alex Klevitsky
“...Elegy for Yakovlev”

№3 2006 (12)

Boris Grigoriev's letter from my collection, published here for the first time, was written just two weeks after Alexander Yakovlev's death. The letter was addressed to Vladimir Bashkirov, a collector and arts patron who knew both artists well. Full of grief for the loss of a friend and a great artist, the letter sheds an additional light on the events described by the American collector and art scholar Martin Birnbaum in his book “Jacovleff and Other Artists”: “Several days later ... what was left from his once gorgeous body destroyed by a malignant tumour was decaying under a cover of scarlet peonies in the Russian church full of incense and chanting, as well as the subdued weeping of many of his friends. His last wish – to have his ashes scattered over the emerald-green waters of his beloved Capri – could not be fulfilled ...”