Vadym Meller

Vadym Meller was born in 1884 in Saint Petersburg into a noble family. He studies law at Kiev University (1908), and he takes art lessons at Kiev Art School (1903-1905). He studies at the Munich Academy of Arts (1908-1912), befriends with Paul Klee, meets Kandinsky and the Blue Rider’s circle of artists. In 1912 he travels to Paris where he joins the Société des Artistes Indépendants. He takes sculpture lessons with Antoine Bourdelle. In the early 1920s he works on set designs at the Shevechenko First Theater of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, and soon becomes the leader of modernist constructivism in theatre design. Among his famous sets for the theater are Macbeth (1924), and Tripes d’or (1926).

In 1925 Meller joins the Artists Union Association of the Revolutionary Masters of Ukraine. Among his colleagues are A. Bogomazov, D. Burliuk and V. Palmov. His set designs are on display at the International Exposition of Decorative Arts in Paris (1925), and at the International Theatre Exhibition in New York (1926). Meller turns away from avant-garde in the 1930s, he then starts to create in a conservative style close to Socialist Realism. In 1939 he works on the set designs for King Lear and for Faust. Between 1946-1948 he directs the Monumental Painting and Sculpture Institute of the Academy of Architecture of the Ukraine. Between 1948-1953 he is nominated as Chief Artist of the Kiev Musical Comedy Theatre. Meller dies in 1962 in Kiev.

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