The illustrations for “Colas Breugnon”, a novella by the French writer Romain Rolland, marked the pinnacle of Yevgeny Adolfovich Kibrik’s creative ascent. Created between 1934 and 1936, the series — including fourteen full-page illustrations, black-and-white and color lithographs, a meticulously designed binding, title page, and fifteen concluding vignettes — transformed the edition into a cohesive, profound, and fully realized artistic project. Kibrik, an artist and illustrator, crafted an aesthetic world that harmoniously fused truthfulness, simplicity, and romance.
In 1935, Romain Rolland, visiting the USSR at the invitation of Maxim Gorky, met Kibrik and saw his illustrations for the first time. Deeply moved, Rolland praised them as “joyful and strong”, famously declaring in a letter: “I take my hat off to them!” He was particularly captivated by the image titled “The Weasel” — he loved this print so much that Kibrik presented the writer with the original, which Rolland hung prominently in his study. There, he would gaze at it for hours, showing it to every guest as if it were a treasure. Through Rolland’s admiration, Kibrik’s Soviet graphic art found a passionate audience in Paris.
“The Weasel” and the other illustrations for “Colas Breugnon” brim with vitality, charm, and poetic beauty. The character — a mischievous young woman — is rendered with astonishing nuance: spirited yet endearing, with a sprig of cherry tucked between her teeth. Kibrik explored nearly twenty variations of her portrait, each so compelling that Rolland himself could not choose a favorite. The lithographic medium allowed Kibrik to capture the wild, escaping strands of hair tumbling from her braid with bold, expressive lines, while the soft penumbra gently defined the oval of her face. A radiant light bathes her features, imbuing them with a palpable sense of excitement and inner life.
Rolland himself wrote: “The image of the Weasel will be especially convincing for all future readers, as it is convincing for the author himself. It is a rustic Gioconda, whose features, through rare fortune, possess both a universal quality and a distinctly local, Burgundian character — it belongs to no single time or people, yet speaks to all.”
The Colas Breugnon series established Yevgeny Kibrik not merely as a gifted illustrator, but as a master of Soviet book graphics with a distinctive, unmistakable artistic voice. It announced the arrival of an artist who had few equals in his time.
