The amazing fate of Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky

The amazing fate of Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky

Prisoner and fugitive

The thinker, geologist, banker, adviser to de Bears and auction houses "Christis" and "Sotbis", collector - he embodies love for life, Britain and historical homeland.

Among the Russians in London, he is perhaps one of the most noble. And - a lot of survivors.

In 1946, his family, realizing that he was waiting for Russian emigrants in Eastern Europe, tried to escape from Bulgaria to Greece. Unsuccessfully. Nikita and parents were thrown into prison. He spent a year in a cell dressed in a burlap. And he was freed only by the efforts of the Red Cross. Soon his father, Dmitry Ivanovich Lobanov-Rostovsky, stole the state security organs. He disappeared. The son found out that his father was shot in 1992 ...

But he and his mother, Irina Vasilyevna Vyrubova, managed to escape - after the death of Stalin they were released to the west.

Today, the 80-year-old prince represents the 33rd generation of Rurikovich.

Sofia - Paris - London

Actually, the emigration for Nikita began in Paris, where he and his mother came to the efforts of his uncle, Nikolai Vyrubov - one of the closest associates of de Gaulle from among the Russian French.

Uncle believed that Nikita should live in France and become a lawyer. He dreamed of being a geologist. In Bulgaria, he not only visited the theater, read a lot and engaged in swimming, but also collected minerals. However, having left prison, he got to a school where the emphasis was on communist ideology, and in the West Nikita felt a lack of knowledge.

In 1954, his godmother Katerina Ridley, the granddaughter of the royal ambassador in London, Alexander Benkendorf, invited the young man to Oxford, and he entered the geological faculty. Stilly engaged in, the prince was nevertheless carried away by hunting. This was helped by the friendship of the godmother with the philosopher Isaia Berlin. The wife of Isaiah Mendelevich - the daughter of Baron Pierre Ginzburg - Eilin warmly reacted to the young man. At her estate, Nikita shot pheasants and partridges with friends-students. And they invited him to the lands of his parents.

He did not avoid high light. Once the Duchess of Kent Marina-the daughter of the Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna and the great-grandson of Alexander II-invited Nikita to tea. He, going to the Kensington Palace from the side of the park and seeing the grill, no more than a meter high, but not seeing the gate, he was strictly easily jumping it. And he was instantly detained. An unusual visitor was interrogated.

“I'm going to tea to the duchess,” he answered.

“But why jump through the fence?” - the guard asked in amazement.

They called the hostess. She ordered to let the guest. He was waiting for a reprimand. But Marina keen amusement with Arthur Rubinstein, who suddenly played Chopin so that she temporarily forgot about Nikita. And he, having hooked on her daughter, Princess Alexandra, amused her with stories about studying. Princess Elizaveta Pavlovna Yugoslavskaya approached. Nikita invited them to Oxford to jumps. The awkwardness was zamyat.

However, London attracted not only communication, but also tennis in Wimbledon, theaters, and museums. In January of the 54th, the godmother took Nikita to the exhibition "Russian Seasons". The young man was struck and fascinated by the rampage of popular flowers of decorative “Russianness”, which was so important to artists. And then he decided: the day will come, and he will become the owner of such work.

At nineteen years, without money, living in the starvation ... Perhaps this is a student city, its eight -century history, Gothic colleges, the shady of the parks, medieval ceremonies awakened in the young man a thirst for the possession of the treasures of the world and the knowledge of the secrets of creativity? After all, products in England were still received by cards. They just returned the rule-put sugar on the table in a restaurant. And Nikita sometimes rolled hunger, dissolving a glass of sugar in a glass of tea ... And suddenly - a stupid boldness, an erynaya dream!

“This exhibition,” he says, “inscribed the trajectory of my life ...

Collection

Since then, Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky has been collecting masterpieces of Russian theatrical and decoration art.

Alexander Benois, Lev Bakst, Konstantin Korovin - participants in the “Russian Seasons” by Sergei Diaghilev ... Their work - sketches of scenery and costumes that struck fantasy, taste and courage - made up the priceless collection of Nikita. Now, part of it is available in the State Museum of Theater and Musical Arts in St. Petersburg.

With the light hand of art critic, Camille Great, the era of our art is called the "great Russian experiment." While the Western modernists were looking for images in Africa, Japan and Polynesia, Russian artists gained it in its originality, drew the style in the bast, the icon, and the sign. Often their search coincided with the aspirations of directors. Their common finds were on stage.

Nikita began to embody the dream when, working at Columbia University, he bought sketches of Sergey Sudeikin’s costumes for Stravinsky’s ballet “parsley”. And in 1962, his wife acquired a sketch of Benoit the same performance.

Until 1965, it was possible to buy costumes and decorations of emigrant artists quite easily and inexpensively. Nikita found the people who knew Diaghilev, found out that and from whom it was preserved, carefully traced the paths leading to Paris, Madrid, New York and other lands to close heirs of the authors.

In 1968, he found in Madrid the singer Mikhail Benois. His apartment was decorated with masterpieces of his great relative, as well as Ivan Bilibin, Shchekatikhina-Pototskaya. The collector froze, learning “friends”, familiar from reproductions in Russian opera programs. Soon his meeting was replenished by the rarest work. And in 1958-sketches of Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova, bought two dollars.

The meeting of Lobanov-Rostovsky includes the work of about 180 authors. It owes many to his wife Nina. The works of Bakst and Benois accompany them wherever they live.

After the exhibition at the Harknes-House gallery and the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1967, there was no year for the collection to be not exhibited in the USA, Canada and Europe. Now it was acquired by the Konstantinovsky Foundation.

The prince discusses (so far without success) with the Rostov Museum, which has already transferred 1000 works, the possibility of repairing the ruins of a neighboring building at his expense, turning it into a museum’s hall and placing his gift there.

Time to collect stones

With infancy, he lives in the West. London considers the best city in the world. Thinly knows the center of the British capital - its monuments and commemorative places; Parliament and Westminster, museums of Victoria and Albert, theaters in Covent Garden ... Loves the change of guard, parades of the guards, trips of the royal family. The market for Portobello Road is the longest trading street in Europe. Exhibition of flowers in Chelsea. Charming parks are the possessions of the royal family, accessible to the public, where sometimes it is not averse to walking with Sally's dog.

Nikita Dmitrievich is a member of the Elite Clubs "Whits" and "Bax".

In 2011, he presented a million pounds to the University of Oxford for the creation of the Faculty of Planetary Geology, and finances the teacher of organic chemistry at the Christ Church college. He lives in a two -story house, orders shoes in Argentina, costumes in Oxford, is waiting for the law on removing emigrant kiosks from the east and south, like spoiling the face of the capital, and remains calm, discovering himself the only man in the street in a twid jacket, with a scarf in a pocket and in an expensive tie. He is London.

And moreover, Russian. The grandfather helped him-Ivan Nikolaevich Lobanov-Rostovsky. Delicately, but stubbornly reminded Nikita that he was Rurikovich and endowed with a special connection with his homeland.

- Another source of love is the art to which I gave part of my life. I am happy that I was involved in him.

He is convinced that Russia needs investments in talents, new activities, technology, education, science. But they are not. He quotes a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Quint: the development of the country is busy people who are poorly knowledgeable subject. And therefore she is not ready for new global challenges.

But Lobanov-Rostovsky believes: Russia is a great sister in a family of powerful world cultures. She will overcome the lag. It's time. Time to collect stones.

“By crumbs,” the prince sighs. - In the country and abroad.