[3] The future artist was born in Tiflis, in the Armenian family of the famous lawyer Bogdan Galustovich Yakulov (Yakulyan): George was the youngest, ninth child, a darling and a favorite of his parents.

[10] The artist consolidated his creative success by participating in the exhibition "Wreath" (1907) a variety of graphic and painting works ("Man of the Crowd", "Roosters", "Sukhum under the Snow", "Hermitage Garden", "Arab Symphony" etc.

[16] In 1908[15] he made a trip to Italy (visiting Venice, Padua, Florence, Siena and Rome),[17] in 1911-1913 he spent a long time in Paris (where he met and communicated with R. Delaunay),[18][19] in 1913 he took part in the Autumn salon "Storm" in Berlin.

[22][18] On January 1, 1914, together with the "Budelians" A. Lurie and B. Livshits, he wrote the manifesto "We and the West", released shortly in three languages (Russian, French and Italian) and then reprinted by G. Apollinaire in the Mercure de France.

[33] Retrofitting the high hall of the former Passage of San Galli on Kuznetsky Most, (commissioned by N. Filippov, one of the heirs of the famous moscow baker) was not only a more ambitious project, but also of particular professional complexity.

[34] In the design of the cafe "Pittoresk" G. Yakulov acted as the author of the project and the head of the work, lasted from July 1917 to January 1918, and attracted a large group to carry them out constructivist artists and non-objects: L. Bruni, K. Boguslavskaya, S. Dymshits-Tolstaya, L. Golov, V. Tatlin, N. Udaltsova, B. Shaposhnikov, A. Rybnikov.

Together with Tatlin, A. Osmerkin took part in the painting of the glass ceiling, A. Rodchenko was engaged in the development of lamps based on Yakulov's rough sketches (this was his first design job), sculptor P. Bromirsky helped to create chandeliers, the rotating elements of the hall's decorative solution were embodied in the material by N. Goloshchapov.

But decorativeness, as an artistic principle, was preserved, which contradicted the main ideology of the constructivists and led to a purely formal participation in the work on the cafe "Pittoresk" of their leader Tatlin.

[41] In the fall of 1918, the Pittoresk cafe, due to the change of owner and the threat of reorganization in the variety show,[42] was transferred to the Theater Department of the Commissariat and renamed to the "Red Rooster" club-workshop.

10 on Bolshaya Sadovaya Street, in the same year he marries Natalia Shif, and in September 1921, at one of the evenings in the Yakulov workshop, Sergei Yesenin met Isadora Duncan.

[89] The sculptural and architectural structure of the future monument had an asymmetric spiral shape, and by this decision, Yakulov actually entered into competition with Tatlin, who created their own model of the "Tower of the III International" in 1920.

[104] The exhibition did not take place, but the artist stayed in Paris until December: his fame and recognition as a set designer is so high that Yakulov received an offer from S. Diaghilev to participate in the creation of a ballet about the life of modern Russia.

[108] In October 1926, G. Yakulov, together with A. Shchusev, at the invitation of the Central Election Commission of Armenia, participated in the jury on the competition projects of the People's House in Yerevan,[109] after which the artist stays in the Transcaucasus for a long time: in late 1926 - early 1927, he worked on the design of four performances at once in Erivan and Tiflis: at the 1st State Theater of Armenia - Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" (premiered on December 20, 1926) and "Morgan's In-Law" A. Shirvanzade (premiered on March 3, 1927); both performances were staged by A. Burdzhalyan, Yakulov was assisted in these works by the young artist S. Aladzhalov;[110] at the State Drama Theater named after Sh.

Rustaveli - "Carmencita" by K. Lipskerov after P. Mérimée (staged by A. Akhmeteli, premiered on November 5, 1927) and "Dideba Zaghes", cantata by M. Balanchivadze (gala evening on February 27, 1927, in honor of the 6th anniversary of the SSRG).

[111] By the end of the summer of 1927, after the triumphant completion in Paris of the ballet the "Steel Gallop",[112] when Yakulov again hoped to organize his personal exhibition from the works brought in 1925, from Moscow comes the news of the arrest of his wife.

[113] He was "heartbroken by family grief", recalled his teacher N. Denisovsky,[69] "Yakulov was stabbed in the back from a loved one, the blow from which he never recovered" - wrote S. Aladzhalov, who helped Georgy Bogdanovich in his last work, - over the scenery and costumes for the play "Beauty from the island of Lulu" in December 1927 (based on the novel by S. Zayitsky, staged by R. Simonov at his Studio Theater, premiered on November 6, 1928).

On the way to Moscow, the funeral car was uncoupled from the train in Tiflis and on January 2, on the day of the 45th birthday of Georgy Yakulov, representatives of the Georgian public said goodbye to him - Sh.

[120] One of the organizers of an unusual farewell ceremony, Yakulov's student, artist N. Denisovsky, described in his memoirs this meeting, which involved an orchestra of 40 cavalrymen on horseback, 40 torches and a hearse wagon on a sleigh, draped with black cloth, with a red rectangular pedestal for the coffin; four lamps were lit on its sides, made at the Chamber Theater according to Yakulov's sketches for the play "Rosita": The hearse was carried by four horses harnessed in a train, three pairs under black and silver blankets, and were accompanied by their guides in white coats with metal buttons.

[123] Georgy Yakulov's posthumous exhibition of works in Moscow could not be organized, as it turned out that there was not a single painting in the artist's studio after his death, and his entire creative archive was missing.

[126] A year before, the artist Rafael Kherumyan created the "Society of Friends of Georgy Yakulov" in Paris (whose members were Sonia Delaunay, spouses, art historians Valentina and Jean-Claude Marcade).

[130] The main sets of documents and photographs related to the life and work of Georgy Yakulov are kept in the National Art Gallery of Armenia, in the Department of Manuscripts of the Theater Museum.

[132] Attempts by researchers to identify the distinctive features of the artist's painting style using such a small amount of material give conflicting results: according to some authors, Yakulov "remained alien to both Cubism and Futurism",[133] others have challenged this view by analyzing such works of the late 1910s, as "Tverskaya",[134] still others believed that "it came rather from the Italian classics... His paintings "Fight of the Amazons", "There lived a poor knight", "Fight", "Lombardy", "Tverskaya" - were entirely inspired by his trip to Venice, Padua, Florence, Rome".

[137] In addition to early decorative compositions that transformed visual images of the East in Western figurative forms ("Roosters", "Decorative Motif") and a series of paintings from the mid-1910s, embodying in practice the Yakulov theory of "multi-colored suns" ("Spring Walk", "Fantasy", "Bar" - all 1915), the cross-cutting themes of different years in Yakulov's painting were urbanism[2] and the atmosphere of public entertainment: crowd in urban and suburban landscapes or in confined spaces of bars and cafes, masquerade, fairgrounds, characters from the Italian commedia dell'arte.

[61] Yakulov, the set designer, sought to co-write with the director: if in unrealized productions of "Hamlet" and "Mystery-Buff" this became the reason for the conflict with Meyerhold, then in partnership with Tairov - led to a true triumph in the play "Girofle-Girofle".

They pushed out some parts, took out others, rolled out platforms, lowered stairs, opened hatches, built passages, were always at hand or under foot along with a balustrade, step, barbell, device, which could be touched to find a fulcrum for a moment".

[144] Carnival eccentricity of the Yakulov theater performances, who showed herself two years earlier in "Princess Brambill" and which seemed to the audience a cascade of impromptu, was strictly organized by the artist: this is evidenced by the preparatory sketches with the consistent development of mise-en-scenes and all the details of the spatial composition.

With even greater monumentality, Yakulov planned the pictorial solution of the opera "Rienzi", the scene of which, in an unrealized production by Meyerhold, was supposed to turn into an arena with an amphitheater.

At the end of a lecture given in 1926 to the troupe of the newly created Belarusian Jewish Theater Yakulov, answering the question, he makes a quick note: "We confuse kinetics with dynamics",[151] left at that moment without explanation.

<...> When you see this terrible speed of visual [perception] in a modern European city, experiences of impressions, then it will become quite obvious to you that the measured Greek tragedy, calculated for the whole day, is not suitable for us".

[153] In August 1925, explaining in a letter to Diaghilev the script plan for the ballet they had conceived, Yakulov notes the internal correspondence to the theme of the future production of the Introduction, just composed by Prokofiev.