This collection is located off-site. You will need to request this material at least three business days in advance to use the collection in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library reading room.
Personal and professional correspondence, art exhibition catalogs, photographs, printed materials, bio-biographical materials on Russian artists including emigre artists based in the U.S. and Europe collected by Viktor Kholodkov (1948-2015), renowned art dealer and collector. This collection complements Bakhmeteff Archive's holdings on Russian emigre artists.
You will need to make an appointment in advance to use this collection material in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library reading room. You can schedule an appointment once you've submitted your request through your Special Collections Research Account.
This collection is located off-site. You will need to request this material at least three business days in advance to use the collection in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library reading room.
Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. The RBML maintains ownership of the physical material only. Copyright remains with the creator and his/her heirs. The responsibility to secure copyright permission rests with the patron.
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Viktor Kholodkov Papers; Box and Folder; Bakhmeteff Archive, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library.
Materials may have been added to the collection since this finding aid was prepared. Contact rbml@columbia.edu for more information.
Columbia University Libraries, Rare Book and Manuscript Library
09/22/2020 authorities and notes updated by ksd
11/11/2020 Bio note written by Tanya Chebotarev added. ksd
Viktor Kholodkov (1948-2015), Russian-American Art Dealer and Collector, was born in Kharkiv but in the early 1970s he moved to Moscow where he became an art dealer specializing in early Soviet avant-garde. He was a close associate of Nikolai Khardzhiev, one of the most influential art collectors in the former Soviet Union. Kholodkov main interest was in the art of VKhUTEMAS, the acronym for the Russian State and Technical School founded in 1920 in Moscow. VKhUTEMAS is often been reductively referred to as the "Soviet Bauhaus". Its faculty comprised some of the most pioneering Soviet artists of the time unckuding Aleksandr Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, El Lissitzky, Vladimir Tatlin, and Gustav Klutsis.
In 1989, Viktor Kholodkov had immigrated to the United States and managed to bring there his extensive collection of prints and paintings related to the VKhUTEMAS art. In 1992, some of the paintings from his collection were exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in New York at the exhibition entitled "The Great Utopia: Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde". In 1995, he sold his collection to the Getty museum in Los Angeles. The same year, he sold his collection of early Soviet sheet music covers to the Library of Congress, however, this collection also contains similar covers.
Viktor Kholodkov died in San Diego, California in 2015.