Выставки:
Цюрих, Kunsthaus Zurich, Rétrospective Pougny, 1960, № 2, илл. в каталоге.
Амстердам, Stedelijk Museum, Rétrospective Pougny, 1961, № 10a.
Париж, Galerie Charpentier, Rétrospective Pougny, 1961-62, № 11, илл. в каталоге.
Турин, Galleria civica d’arte moderna, Rétrospective Pougny, 1962-63, илл. в каталоге.
Дюссельдорф, Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Werke aus der Sammlung Costakis:
Russische Avantgarde 1910-1930, 1977, № 142.
Париж, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Jean Pougny, 1993, № 33, цв. илл. в каталоге.
Литература:
Herman Berninger & Jean-Albert Cartier, Пуни, каталог работ, т. 1, Тюбинген, 1972 № 49,
цв. илл. стр. 93 (ссылка на архив Пуни № 324a).
A. Zander Rudenstein (ред.), Collecting Art of the Avant-Garde by George Costakis, Нью-Йорк,
1981, № 992, илл. стр. 437.


A key figure of the Russian avant-garde, Jean Pougny (Ivan Puni) was among the first Russian artists to experiment
with Cubism and Fauvism, thanks to his early travels to France. On his first visit to Paris from 1909-1912 he enrolled
at the esteemed Académie Julien, and it was during this period while living with Yuri Annenkov that he found himself
captivated by the art of the Cubists.

Upon his return to Russia Pougny quickly adopted the revolutionary attitudes and aesthetics of the times and joined the Union of Youth; he tentatively embraced the tenets of Cubo-Futurism, a popular and uniquely Russian
amalgamation of Cubism and Futurism, and he allied himself closely with Kazimir Malevich. Breaking with the Union of
Youth in 1914, Pougny participated in the Salon des Indépendants and organized a number of vanguard exhibitions
including Tramvai V and the groundbreaking 0.10, where Malevich first introduced his abstract Suprematist paintings.
Though Pougny was one of the earliest proponents of Malevich’s new style and revealed a number of his own
abstract compositions at this exhibition, he did not slavishly strive to copy Malevich’s methods, instead focusing on illusionistic collage reliefs, more materially akin to the work of Vladimir Tatlin.

In the later 1910s Pougny produced a variety of essays and artwork based on revolutionary themes, and he accepted
an invitation from Marc Chagall to teach at Vitebsk Art School before emigrating to Finland, Germany and ultimately
back to France. At the same time he returned to figural imagery with an important series of Cubist-inspired still life paintings. Chaise et boite à chapeaux exemplifies this series, where hat boxes figure prominently, though perhaps
most significant in this composition is the presence of a folded copy of the newspaper Le Journal—not only alluding to
the fractured words and images that commonly appeared in Russian avant-garde painting, but also alluding to the
earlier still life compositions of Pablo Picasso, who famously included fragments of Le Journal in several paintings and collages, never revealing its entire title.

Chaise et boite à chapeaux was in the celebrated collection of Mr and Mrs George Costakis when it was first
published in Herman Berninger’s Pougny catalogue raisonné in 1973. George Costakis, who worked for the Greek
and Canadian embassies in Moscow, was an avid art enthusiast and, over the course of several decades, he
amassed the world’s most important grouping of Russian avant-garde art. The Costakis’ apartment became a central
meeting place for artists and art collectors alike. When the couple chose to emigrate in 1977, they agreed to leave half their collection behind to the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, thereby helping to reinvigorate interest in this crucial and revolutionary period of art history.