Nikolai Khardzhiev

Nikolai Ivanovich Khardzhiev (ru: Харджиев, Николай Иванович, 26 June 1903, Russia—(?) June 1996, Netherlands) was a Russian writer, literary and art collector. He became famous for his extensive archive and collection of Russian Avangarde art and literature.

Early life

Born in Ukraine in 1903, Khardzhiev (pronounced HARD-zee-ev) studied law before moving to Leningrad in 1928, where he met many of the painters and writers who had ventured from European modernism into new realms of abstraction. Anna Akhmatova, the most famous Russian poet of the Soviet period, was a close friend during the war.Nicolai Khardzhiev was a heroic man, who at the risk of his own life, collected forbidden Avant-Garde Art to preserve and protect it for eternity. A wise man who had been chosen by Malevich to be his archivist, who staged (at the height of Communism) two day exhibitions of the Avant-garde only to have to close them minutes before the censors would learn of their existence. A visionary man who understood the changing times in Russia and wanted to see his archives preserved for scholars.

Suprematist movement

When Kazimir Malevich returned to Stalinist Russia, his works were confiscated, and he was arrested and banned from making art in 1930. Khardzhiev managed to preserve manuscripts and memoirs from the movement, along with about 1,350 artworks. These included rare oils, gouaches and drawings by Malevich; paintings by Pavel Filonov, Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova and Olga Rozanova; and important drawings by El Lissitzky.

After a commission to edit and write commentaries for a complete edition of works by Vladimir Mayakovsky, Stalin's favorite poet, Khardzhiev was admitted to the Soviet writers' union in 1941. This may have saved him from arrest. In 1953 he married for the second time, to a sculptor, Lydia Chaga.

Nikolai Khardzhiev archive

In 1993 Willem Weststeijn, a professor from the Slavic Institute of the University of Amsterdam, together with the art dealers Krystina Gmurzynska and Mathias Rastorfer from Galerie Gmurzynska, struck a deal and offered to help move Khardzhiev and his wife from Moscow to Amsterdam.

Krystina Gmurzynska was following in her mother Antonia's footsteps. According to Geraldine Norman OBE, an advisor to the Hermitage Museum, Antonina 'sought out the artists' families in Russia and became adept at sneaking art out of the country - art which was anyway banned by the Soviet government.'

Khardzhiev's collection was a major archive of documents, drawings and paintings by Russian Futurist artists estimated at around £100M. Norman has describes how 'Krystyna and Rastorfer went to Moscow with Professor Weststeijn [at the time a professor at the University of Amsterdam] in 1993 to meet the Khardzhievs. They drew up and signed an agreement through which Krystyna would give the old couple $2.5 million in Amsterdam. In return she was promised four paintings and two gouaches by Malevich worth some $30 million.' The gallery arranged the packing and removal of the couple's Moscow flat, but little of their archive ever reached them in Amsterdam. When the loss became public knowledge in Russia, there was an outcry aimed at the Russian Ministry of Culture. The investigating Russian authorities recovered a case containing a document outlining a deal struck between Gmurzynska and the couple:

'It contained two revealing documents: a single paragraph agreement between Khardzhiev and Krystyna Gmurzynska in which she promised "material support" to the tune of $2.5 million after he reached Amsterdam, and a page containing sketches of six works by Malevich inscribed "I, Kh. N. I. [Nikolai Ivanovich Khardzhiev], give to K.G.B. [Krystyna Gmurzynska-Bscher] to keep for ever six works of Kaz. M. [Kazimir Malevich]". The first document was witnessed by Chaga, Willem Weststeijn and Krystyna's business partner, Mathias Rastorfer.

Rastorfer, however, says that these documents were not contracts but merely "letters of intent". The gallery negotiated a tougher deal once the two old people were in Holland. He says that he rang the Hilton a couple of months after they arrived to sort things out and discovered that they were furious with the gallery. They felt that they had been deceived and abandoned; only part of the collection and archives had reached them and they had been left to their own devices at the Hilton while their visas ran out.

The New York Times reported that 'After the agreement came to light in 1994, Ms. Gmurzynska and Mr. Rastorfer denied taking part in the smuggling. But they would not say how the trove was moved, only that they advanced the couple money to relocate in November 1993 and completed the purchase of the art after it left Russia. The Khardzhievs told a very different story. The two art dealers not only took charge of moving their belongings, they said, but also helped to pack and carry away suitcases full of art.

Even this lady Gmurzynska was carrying very heavy valises, Mr. Khardzhiev told a Russian journalist, Konstantin Akinsha, who interviewed him in Amsterdam two years later. I was impressed by her womanly strength.

The case was also covered by Tony Wood in 'New Left Review'. This article states that 'Khardzhiev’s wife Lydia Chaga died in suspicious circumstances in late 1995; though no foul play is alleged regarding the death of Khardzhiev himself in March 1996, several more paintings—at least $12.5m worth—were sold to the Galerie Gmurzynska after his death, before the Dutch journalist Hella Rottenberg raised the alarm.'

On July 27, 1995, Khardzhiev made a will leaving everything to Chaga with the instruction that she choose what part of his collection was given to the Khardzhiev-Chaga Art Foundation in Amsterdam. In Khardzhiev's last interview, in December 1995, he said that Nicolas Iljine had approached him on behalf of the Russian authorities, trying to negotiate the return of some of his paintings or part of his archive. When he died in 1996, he left his art collection to the foundation, and later the foundation and the State Archive of the Russian Federation agreed to administer Khardzhiev’s archive. In 2013, many of the works from the Khardzhiev collection were included in a major retrospective on Malevich held at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Further reading

• A legacy regained: Nikolai Khardzhiev and the Russian avant-garde. Palace Editions. 2002. p. 400. ISBN 3935298382. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)
• "A tragic flight to freedom". The Telegraph. 23 May 1998. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)