Diaghilev. "Russian seasons" forever

The book publishes rare photographs, documents, sketches of costumes and scenery — invaluable evidence of art that lives beyond all boundaries.

Diaghilev dreamed of becoming a singer, composer, art critic, but undertook to compose a much more mysterious and global work — the image of future art. The ability to capture and bring to light the new, the unprecedented is the very essence of his genius.

Diaghilev's Russian Seasons established the reputation of Russian art as the most advanced, extraordinary and exciting ballet phenomenon for a hundred years ahead. A seer and a tyrant, a catcher of souls and an incorrigible loner, a visionary and a provocateur, he heard the music before the composer who composed it and saw the dance before the first step. Scheien's book is unique and interesting not only by the main character, but by the great variety of vital details of Russian and European modernism, by the drama of the relationship between the main names of music, theater and painting of the twentieth century. Indeed, during his short life, Diaghilev communicated and collaborated with Chekhov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Bakst, Benoit, Rodin, Debussy, Matisse, Picasso, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Mayakovsky, Balanchin, Coco Chanel, etc.