Boris Grigoriev was a painter and graphic artist, a unique representative of the Russian avant-garde. His canvases are characterized by expression of forms and colour. Grigoriev bore the stigma of a prohibited ‘white’ emigrant in Russia for quite a while.

The portrait of Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold (1874-1940) is Grigoriev’s most famous composition in Russia.

The year the portrait was executed Meyerhold was working as the director of the Alexandrinsky and Mariinsky Theatres.

The painter and the director were united by a common search for a new language of expressiveness in painting and in the theatre: the inclination towards the grotesque and experimentation.