Serafim Sudbinin

Serafim Nikolayevich Sudbinin (Russian: Серафим Николаевич Судьбинин, born Golovastikov, Головастиков, known in France as Séraphin Soudbinine, born 21 March 1867; died 1 November 1944) was a Russian sculptor, painter, ceramicist and stage actor, associated with the Moscow Art Theatre.

In May 1898 Sudbinin joined the Stanislavski-led Moscow Art Theatre's original troupe and took part in its very first production, Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich (in which he played both Shuysky and Mstislavsky).

In the course of the next several years he took part in all this company's major productions, including Men Above the Law (by Alexey Pisemsky, 1898), Antigone (1899), The Death of Ivan the Terrible (by Alexey K. Tolstoy, Sitsky, Bityagovsky, 1899), Twelfth Night (1899), Snow Maiden (by Alexander Ostrovsky, 1900, Father Frost), The Philistines (by Maxim Gorky, 1902), The Power of Darkness (by Leo Tolstoy, 1902).

A grant awarded by Savva Morozov enabled him to study sculpture under Leopold Sinaeff-Bernstein (until 1906) and Auguste Rodin (from 1906), which he would later become an assistant of.

His exhibitions, at the Moscow Fellowship of Artists (1903), Salon d'Automne (from 1906), Salon de la Nationale, Sergei Makovsky Salon (1909), Union of Russian Artists (1906–16), Les Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev in Paris (1939), international exhibitions in Venice (1907), Munich (1909) and Rome (1911) and the exhibitions of Russian art in Paris (1906, 1920, 1932), Venice (1920), London (1921), New York City (1923), Belgrade (1930) and Prague (1935), as well as one-man shows in New York (1923), Paris (1934, 1939) and San Francisco (1935), won him much critical acclaim.