View source for Ilia Zdanevich

{{short description|Polish-Georgian (later French) writer and artist}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=October 2015}}
[[File:Илья Зданевич.jpg|thumb|Ilia Zdanevich]]
'''Ilia Mikhailovich Zdanevich''' ({{lang-ka|ილია ზდანევიჩი}}, (April 21, 1894 – December 25, 1975), known as '''Iliazd''' ({{lang-ka|ილიაზდ}}), was a Georgian-Polish and French writer, artist and publisher, and an active participant in such avant-garde movements as [[Futurism]] and [[Dada]].

==Early life==
He was born in [[Tbilisi]] to a Polish father, Michał Zdaniewicz, who taught [[French language|French]] in a [[Gymnasium (school)|gymnasium]] and a Georgian mother, Valentina Gamkrelidze, who was a pianist and student of [[Tchaikovsky]]. (His older brother Kiril Zdanevich also became an artist.) He studied in the Faculty of Law of [[Saint Petersburg State University]].

In 1912 he and his brother, along with their friend Mikhail Le-Dantyu, became enthusiastic about the Tbilisi painter [[Niko Pirosmanashvili]]; Ilya's article about him, "Khudozhnik-samorodok" ("A natural-born artist"), his first publication, appeared in the February 13, 1913, issue of ''Zakavkazskaia Rech'''. Later in 1913 he published a monograph ''[[Natalia Goncharova]], [[Mikhail Larionov]]'' under the pseudonym Eli Eganbyuri ({{langx|ru|link=no|Эли Эганбюри}}). In June 1914 the journal ''Vostok'' published his article "Niko Pirosmanashvili," in which he mythologized the biography of the older artist, linking him with the [[Silver Age of Russian Poetry|Silver Age]] and the Russian avant-garde.<ref>N.N. Skatov, ''Russkaya literatura XX veka: prozaiki, poėty, dramaturgi'', Vol. 2 (Olma Media Group, 2005: {{ISBN|5-94848-262-6}}), p. 99.</ref> He became involved with the new [[Russian Futurism|Futurist]] movement, participating in their discussions and writing about them and [[Filippo Tommaso Marinetti|Marinetti]] in the Russian press, and was drawn to other avant-garde movements as well, such as [[Zaum]] and dadaism.

During World War I Zdanevich returned to the Caucasus as a newspaper correspondent,<ref>Sergei Biryukov, [https://www.utoronto.ca/tsq/26/biryukov26.shtml review of Zdanevich collection] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140711155747/http://www.utoronto.ca/tsq/26/biryukov26.shtml |date=July 11, 2014 }}, ''[[Toronto Slavic Quarterly]]'' (in Russian).</ref> and from 1917 to 1919 he lived in Tbilisi, where he published several collections of poetry in the ''zaum'' style (''Yanko Krul Albansky, Ostraf Paskhi'', and ''Zga Yakaby''). In 1918, he joined [[Aleksei Kruchenykh]] and others in the Futurist group "41°." Zdanevich in 1919 adopted the pseudonym Iliazd. He left Tiflis for [[Batumi]].

==Paris==
In October 1920 left the country to investigate the new artistic currents of France.  After a year spent in [[Constantinople]] acquiring a French visa, he arrived in Paris in October 1921, where together with other artists he organized the group Cherez ("Across"), whose aim was to bring Russian [[émigré]]s together with representatives of French culture.

In 1923 he began his novel ''Parizhachi'', about four couples who agree to dine together in the [[Bois de Boulogne]]; in the course of two and a half hours (each chapter has an exact time for a title, from 11.51 to 14.09) they all manage to betray each other, and the novel itself breaks all manner of orthographic, punctuational, and compositional rules.<ref>Natalia Arlauskaite, "[http://avantgarde.narod.ru/beitraege/ra/na_iljazd.htm Неконвенциональные элементы текста в структуре повествования]
Ильязд, "Парижачьи"."</ref> Zdanevich continued working on this "hyperformalist" novel (which he described as an ''opis''', or "inventory"<ref>Sergei Kudryavtsev, "[http://www.vavilon.ru/metatext/nlg4/ilyazd.html ПАРИЖАЧЬИ]," ''Novaya Literaturnaya Gazeta'' 4 (1994).</ref>) until 1926, but it was not published until 1994.

His second novel, ''Voskhishchenie'' ("Rapture"), was published in a small edition in 1930 and was ignored at the time. Set in a mythical Georgia among mountaineers, on the surface a crime novel, it is actually a fictionalized history of the Russian avant-garde, full of allusions to world literature; it could be said to anticipate [[magic realism]]. The language of the novel is innovative and poetic, and the Slavist Milivoje Jovanović called it "undoubtedly the summit toward which the Russian avant-garde was striving."<ref>Sergei Biryukov, [https://www.utoronto.ca/tsq/26/biryukov26.shtml review of Zdanevich collection] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140711155747/http://www.utoronto.ca/tsq/26/biryukov26.shtml |date=July 11, 2014 }}, ''[[Toronto Slavic Quarterly]]'' (in Russian).</ref>

Zdanevich's 1923 poster for his and [[Tristan Tzara]]'s ''Soirée du [[Le coeur à barbe|coeur à barbe]]'' [Evening of the bearded heart] is a widely known example of [[avant-garde]] [[typography]] and [[graphic design]]. During the last forty years of his life in Paris, Zdanevich was active in a variety of areas. He did analyses of church elevations, created fabrics for Chanel, and above all dedicated himself to the creation of artist's books with the collaboration of Picasso, Max Ernst, Miro, and others, and which he published under the imprint "Le Degré 41", or "Le Degré Quarante et Un" (English, "The 41st Degree").<ref>{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20200720042837/http://readrussia.org/russian-library/rapture-a-novel.html Rapture: A Novel]}}, readrussia.org. Retrieved 13 October 2020.</ref><ref>[https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2016/05/09/picasso-and-iliazd/ Picasso and Iliazd], princeton.edu. Retrieved 13 October 2020.</ref> His innovative typographic and design work has been exhibited at the New York Public Library, MOMA, in Montreal, in Tbilisi in 1989 in a joint exhibition with his brother Kiril, and in many other venues. Catalogs for many of these exhibitions exist and contain considerably more detailed information about his life and works.

In 1972, Iliazd published '''''Pirosmanashvili – 1914''''',  which included a translation of an article he published on [[Niko Pirosmani]] in 1914 in Tbilisi, and his new article '''''60 Years Later''''',  for which [[Pablo Picasso|Picasso]] painted a portrait of Pirosmanashvili in etching technique.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Zdanevich Ilia (Iliazd) |url=https://art.gov.ge/en/portfolio/zdanevich-ilia-iliazd/ |access-date=2024-02-29 |language=en-US}}</ref>

Ilia Zdanevich died on Christmas Day 1975 in Paris. He was buried at the [[Leuville cemetery|Georgian émigré cemetery]] at [[Leuville-sur-Orge]].<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Voiskunski|first1=Natella|title=The "Everyfeelingism" of Iliazd|journal=The Tretyakov Gallery Magazine|date=2016|volume=1|issue=50|url=http://www.tretyakovgallerymagazine.com/articles/1-2016-50/everyfeelingism-iliazd|language=en}}</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Further reading==
* ''Iliazd and the Illustrated Book''. Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1987.
* ''Iliazd, Maître d'œuvre du livre moderne''. Catalog of the exhibition at The University of Quebec at Montreal, 1984.
* John Russell, "[https://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/17/books/art-iliazd-and-the-illustrated-book-at-the-modern.html 'Iliazd and the Illustrated Book' at the Modern]," ''New York Times'', July 17, 1987.
* Iliazd, ''Rapture: A Novel'', Columbia University Press, 2017 (The Russian Library). Translated by Thomas J. Kitson.
* [[Johanna Drucker]], ''Iliazd: A Meta-Biography of a Modernist'', [[Johns Hopkins University]] Press, 2020.
* Ketevan Kintsurashvili and David Janiashvili, [http://www.kjartbooks.com/the-zdanevich-brothers.html ''The Zdanevich Brothers: Kirill and Ilia,'' ''Polish traces in the Georgian Avant-garde''], KJ ArtBooks, Tbilisi, Georgia, 2019.

==External links==
*[http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/dadas/iliazd.htm Iliazd] at The International Dada Archive, hosted by the University of Iowa.
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20100210192320/http://publ.lib.ru/ARCHIVES/Z/ZDANEVICH_Il'ya_Mihaylovich/_Zdanevich_I._M..html ''Parizhachi'' and ''Voskhishchenie''] available for download (in Russian)

{{Futurism}}
{{Dada}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zdanevich, Ilia}}
[[Category:1894 births]]
[[Category:1975 deaths]]
[[Category:Dada]]
[[Category:French writers]]
[[Category:French poster artists]]
[[Category:Artists from Tbilisi]]
[[Category:Georgian people of Polish descent]]
[[Category:White Russian emigrants to France]]