Details
Maxim Gorky (Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, 1868-1936)
'The world's real beauty and greatness escape your brush'. 1931
Autograph letter signed ('A. Peshkov') to Boris Grigoriev, [Sorrento], 8 April 1931.

In Russian. One page, 275 x 209mm, on squared paper. Envelope.

'The world's real beauty and greatness escape your brush': a letter of encouragement to the artist Boris Grigoriev. Gorky thanks Grigoriev for a photograph and drawings, and muses on the artist's pessimistic outlook, encouraging him to take a more positive view of the Soviet Union in particuar:

It is strange ... that you, a physically fit man, see the world in a very grim shape and form, and that its real beauty and greatness escapes your brush ... Your bitterness towards the émigrés is very much understood by me, but not every human being emigrated from that sphere, where new living conditions are being created in a genuine and mighty way ... In a few days I am travelling to Moscow and I will speak about you there. I do not know my address for that period, but our postal service operates very well so if you decide to write, simply write: Moscow, for M. Gorky.

Boris Grigoriev (1886-1939) considered that his masterpiece in the genre of portraiture was his portrait of Gorky, made in Sorrento in 1926.
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Thomas VenningHead of Department, Books and Manuscripts
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