Semen Georgievič Ivenskij Bookplate Collection
Semen Georgievič Ivenskij (1924-2021) was a Russian art historian, author, bookplate artist and bookplate collector.
About the collection
Ivenskij's collection includes four boxes of Russian bookplates. The majority of the bookplates in the collection are designed by various aspiring artists, and practically all of them are dedicated to Ivenskij.
Acquisition history
According to details from the Kirillo-Belozersky museum in Kirillov, Russia, Ivenskij donated 500 bookplates to the museum following an exhibition. This was apparently nohing unusual, and an educated guess would be that Ivenskij's bookplates came to the Gothenburg University Library in a similar way.
Access the collection
The collection is held in the closed stacks at the Humanities library. It is available for reading room use only.
Catalogue
The collection has not been catalogued.
There is no inventory.
Humanities library
Renströmsgatan 4
405 30 GOTHENBURG
Phone: 031-786 17 45
Text:
Kristina Sevo
Biography
Semen Georgievič Ivenskij (1924-2021) was a Russian art historian, collector, curator and artist. He was prolific both as an author and as an artist.
Ivenskij was born in Moscow on December 15th, 1924, and as a teenager he was evacuated to the Urals during the Second World War, where he worked in a tank factory. Much later, in 1953, he finished his degree in art history at the Repin institute in Leningrad. In the same year, he opened an art gallery in the city of Vologda, where he would remain for 20 years. Many gifted graphic artists sprung from this endeavour. Semen Georgievic successfully took advantage of the bookplate boom of the 1960s, collecting European, Russian and Soviet bookplates.
In the second half of the 1970s, he moved to the city of Tjumen and worked there as assistant manager of an art gallery.
From the 1960s onwards, Ivenskij wrote numerous scientific papers, as well as several monographs on Russian painters and bookplate artists, but he also designed bookplates himself. When exhibitions ended, he usually donated the bookplates to the museums where they had been exhibited. Among others, one such collection is held at the Kirillo-Belozersky museum reserve in Vologda, Russia. Ivenskij's works were exhibited in many places around Russia, as well as abroad.
Russian Wikipedia states that according to Ivenskij's granddaughter, Valeria Aleksandrovna Ivenskaya, over 1 000 bookplates have ben designed for Ivenskij by various artists around the world.
In 1996 he moved to Israel and would remain at the Beit HaEmek Kibbutz near Haifa. He died on March 5th, 2021, aged 96.
Read more
500 bookplates from the Collection of Semyon Georgevich Ivensky
Ivenskij in VIAF
Ivenskij on Russian Wikipedia
Ivensky S. G. [Bokägarmärken: historia, teori, praktik av konstnärlig utveckling] Moskva: Bok, 1980.
Ivensky S. G. Masters of Russian bookplates. S. G. Ivensky; Artist of the RSFSR, 1973.
Obutiary from "Bokälskarna"
Suggested research topics
- An overview of the collection's contents. What is represented here, and how does it mirror the time and context of the material?
- Biographical research
- Selection of images.
- Bookplates as an art form.
- Printing techniques.
- The structure and assembly of the collection.
- Artists represented in the collection.
Please contact us if you have any suggested research topics you would like to share!