Gregory Sciltian - The Veiled Woman

He was born in the Armenian settlement of Nakhichevan-na-Donu, which later merged with the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, in 1900 to a lawyer and a descendant of a wealthy Armenian family of industrialists. He studied at the Academy of Saint Petersburg and under the influence of Beardsley, debuting in Rostov at just fifteen with works attentive to the latest developments in Cubo-Futurist avant-garde.

In 1919, following the October Revolution, he leaves Russia and settles in Constantinople. But in the 1920s he returns to classical figuration, studying the works of the Italian Renaissance at the Academy and the Museums of Vienna.

He is in Berlin in '22; in 1923 he marries Elena Boberman and moves to Italy; he opens a studio in Rome and participates in the II Rome Biennale in '25. Roberto Longhi presents his solo exhibition at the Bragaglia art gallery. The critic highlights the peculiarity of a painting that revives the Caravaggesque and Flemish tradition with a realism of impressive photographic fidelity: a lenticular perfection achieved with a material of compact chromaticity and a technique borrowed from ancient painting.

After participating in the 1926 Venice Biennale, Sciltian settles in Paris where he exhibits at the Salon des Indépendants. At a solo exhibition at the Galérie de la Renaissance, one of his works is acquired by the Luxembourg Museum. In 1928 he participates in the Exposition de l'Art Russe at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels. One of his works enters the Royal Museum of Belgium. A constant theme of his painting is still life treated in 'Trompe-l'œil'.

He returns to Italy in 1934, settling in Milan until 1941, also working as a portraitist. He sends works to foreign exhibitions (Liege, Berlin, London). He organizes a Milanese solo exhibition at the Galleria Scopinich, reviewed by Carlo Carrà in 'L'Ambrosiano', and another at Van Leer in Paris in 1933, at the Circolo della Stampa in Bologna in 1937, and again in Milan at Gianferrari in 1938. He exhibits in the Great Britain Pavilion at the 1936 Venice Biennale the painting 'Bacchus in the Tavern', purchased by the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. In 1940 he executes with Fabrizio Clerici a trompe l'oeil for the VII Milan Triennale. In 1942, a solo exhibition in Milan at the Galleria del Milione and a room at the Venice Biennale. After the war, he sets up a studio in Milan in Palazzo Trivulzio. In 1947 he exhibits at the Illustrazione gallery in Milan in the exhibition of 'Painting by the Group of Modern Realist Painters' with the Bueno brothers, Acci, Carlo Guarienti, Serri and Pietro Annigoni. With the same group he exhibits in 1948 at the La Margherita gallery. He deepens his study of Mannerism while working in the summer in Gardone Riviera on Lake Garda where he owns a house (his widow in 1988 will donate 16 canvases and other paintings from the private collection to the Vittoriale degli Italiani where they are still exhibited at Villa Mirabella). He exhibits at the Portrait exhibition at the Cherubini Gallery in Florence in 1949.

In 1950 he exhibits a group of works at the XXV Venice Biennale and at the Paris review at the Galérie Martoren 'Exposition Internationale des Peintres de la Réalité'. Waldemar George's volume 'Sciltian: the magic of reality' is published in Milan.

In 1953 he exhibits in Milan in a fashionable venue in via Montenapoleone.

Further presences in Paris at Drouet in 1958 and at Bernheim Jeune in 1974. Retrospective exhibition in Rome at Palazzo Venezia in 1970.

From the '50s onwards he works on costumes for the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and for La Scala; from the '60s onwards he works on religious subjects; he illustrates works for publishing houses. He publishes the autobiographical books 'My Adventure' and 'The Reality of Sciltian. A Treatise on Painting'. Retrospectives in Milan in 1980 (with texts in the catalog by I. Faldi, M. Fagiolo dell'Arco, F. Miele) and in Moscow in 1983. Bibliography: R. Civello, Sciltian, opera omnia, Milan 1986.

He dies in Rome on April 1, 1985 and is buried at the Non-Catholic Cemetery of Rome. On his tombstone is inscribed his aphorism: "The only true and supreme purpose of the art of painting has been and will always be that of achieving the illusion of reality".

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