André Grabar

André Grabar ( Andrei Nikolaevich Grabar, Russian Андрей Николаевич Грабар; born July 26, 1896 in Kiev, † October 3, 1990 in Paris) was a Russian -born French art historian and Byzantine Studies.

Grabar went to Kiev to school and studied there from 1915 at the St. Vladimir's University and then at the University of Petrograd in Nikodim Kondakov Pavlovich and his students Dmitri Wlassewitsch Ainalow (DV Ainalov ) and Yakov Ivanovich Smirnov ( 1869-1918 ). In 1919 he completed his studies, which was interrupted by the October Revolution, in Odessa and went to Bulgaria in 1920. He cataloged for the Director of the Archaeological Museum in Sofia Bogdan Filow the medieval monuments in Bulgaria, for which he spent three years on the road. Then he went in 1922 initially as a Russian teacher to Strasbourg, where he met the archaeologist Paul Perdrizet ( 1870-1938 ), in 1928 received his doctorate and taught art history at the university as Maitre de Conferences. In 1937, he was the successor to Gabriel Millet, at the department of Christian archeology at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris, where he taught until 1966 ( later the Department of Byzantine Art and Archaeology ). He was also from 1946 to 1966 Professor of Byzantine Art and Archaeology at the Collège de France. He also took part regularly in the conferences of the Dumbarton Oaks Institute of Harvard University, where he was professor from 1950 to 1964.

In his studies of medieval art he moved into a whole philosophy, history and theology, and followed the links to the Islamic world. He wrote widely used books on Byzantine art and icons.

He was the founder of the Cahiers Archéologiques, which he edited with Jean Hubert.

Grabars received numerous honors, so in 1955 he became a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 1963 Member of the Order Pour le Mérite in 1969 foreign member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

In 1923 he married the Bulgarian medical student Julie Ivanova († 1977), with whom he had two sons. He is the brother of Pierre Grabar. His son Oleg Grabar (1929-2011) was also an art historian specializing in medieval Islamic art.

Writings (selection )

He wrote his books mostly in French, in the following, however, usually English or German translations are included.

• La peinture religieuse en Bulgarie, Paris 1928
• Byzantine painting. Historical and Critical Study, Geneva, Skira 1953
• With Carl Falk north: early medieval painting from the fourth to the eleventh century: Mosaics and Mural Painting, New York, Skira 1957
• With Carl Falk north: Romanesque painting from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, New York, Skira 1958
• Christian Iconography. A study of its Origins, Princeton University Press, 1968 ( AW Mellon Lectures in the National Gallery of Arts, Washington DC, 1961)
• With Manole Chatzedakes Byzantine and Early Medieval Painting, Viking Press 1965
• Byzantium: from the death of Theodosius to the Rise of Islam, Thames and Hudson, 1966 ( also known as The Golden Age of Justinian, New York 1967)
• The Beginnings of Christian Art 200-395, Thames and Hudson, 1967 ( Arts of Mankind, Volume 9 )