ELENA LUKSCH -MAKOWSKY (RUSSIAN 1878-1967) Volga Barge-Haulers, 1922 charcoal and gouache on paper 24 x 53.5 cm (9 1/2 x 23 in.) [sight] signed and dated 'Elena Luksch-Makowsky 1922' lower right PROVENANCESotheby's, May 20, 2005, lot 24 LOT NOTESElena Luksch-Makowsky was a daughter of the famous Russian artist Konstantin Makovsky and a sister of prominent writer and art critic Sergei Makovsky. She studied under Ilya Repin and participated in Repin-organized exhibition in 1896 - 1897. In 1902 Makowsky married the Austrian sculptor Richard Luksch and moved first to Vienna and then to Hamburg where she took the German citizenship and taught at the Industrial Art School. She exhibited in Russia with "World of Arts", with "Garland" and at the Salon of Sergei Makovsky. Elena was the first woman to exhibit at the Viennese "Secession" in Austria and participated in multiple exhibitions in Germany, Hamburg. During the 1920s and 1930s she regularly exhibited at the Parisian Salons.This drawing was done for the notable Cabaret theatre "Blue Bird" (Der Blaue Vogel), founded in Berlin by the actor Yasha Yuzhny in 1920. Many famous Russian artists were doing costume and stage designs for this theatre, including George Pogedaieff, Ossip Lubitch, Jean Pougny and Pavel Tchelitchew. The production of òBurlakió( Volga Barge Haulers) went on a European tour in 1923, reaching London`s Scala Theatre in October. It was reviewed in several newspapers: òéThe Volga Boat Song, like a page torn from Gorky, is a cry from the depths. Only an artist with a strong sense of humanity and pity could have conceived those seven outcasts in their rags straining at a barge rope against a sunset skyé . As music supplies the basis of these 'dramatizations,' surely it ought to be treated less as an intruder in the theater and more as an honored guest." (The Christian Science Monitor, October 27, 1923)