Nikolai Ivanovich Khardzhiev (1903, Kakhovka, Ukraine – 1996, Amsterdam) was a writer, art and literary historian, and art collector. He was born and raised in Kakhovka—a small town, now in Ukraine, which during his lifetime was successively part of the Russian Empire, the Ukrainian People's Republic, and the Soviet Union. He studied law in Odessa (modern-day Odesa) and worked there until the late 1920s, subsequently moving to Leningrad and later to Moscow—though his roots lay elsewhere: his father was Armenian and his mother Greek. During his lifetime, Khardzhiev was primarily known as a renowned and idiosyncratic literary and cultural historian. From the 1990s onward, he also attracted international attention as a collector of manuscripts and visual art. His collection consists of a famous assemblage of Eastern European avant-garde art and a rich archive of historical materials and manuscripts from artists, writers, and poets. It is this collection and archive to which Khardzhiev owes his enduring fame in the art world.

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  Nikolai Ivanovich Khardzhiev
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  Nikolai Ivanovich Khardzhiev & Kazimir Malevich

Khardzhiev's collection includes works by big names: think Kazimir Malevich, Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov and El Lissitzky. His archive also contains crucial manuscripts by literary luminaries such as Osip Mandelstam and Velimir Khlebnikov. Khardzhiev did not collect that work without taking great personal risk: under Stalin, support for the avant-garde (which was referred to by the code word ‘formalism’) could be considered an ‘anti-revolutionary act’.

But even after Stalin's death, collecting valuable art and historical materials could lead to a conviction for ‘speculation’ - a serious offence in the Soviet Union. Even before his collection became established, Khardzhiev was a seen figure in Ukrainian, Russian and later Soviet cultural circles. Even while studying, he immersed himself in literature and art, which he also published on in influential magazines from the age of 18. He knew many avant-garde artists and futurists from the region personally. With Kazimir Malevich and also with Vladimir Tatlin, another key figure of the Russian avant-garde, he maintained a good relationship - which, incidentally, was kept hidden back and forth, because of the constant mutual conflicts between the two artists.

Without this network of avant-gardists (and of their descendants), the collection would be unthinkable: Khardzhiev regularly acquired works by befriended artists and the collection also includes personal gifts. Because he had to operate in secrecy, the creation of the collection became a breeding ground for rumours that Khardzhiev also acquired works unlawfully.1 However, no claims were ever made, and the reality of these rumours has since become unverifiable.

In the 1950s, Khardzhiev met his second wife, the ballerina, puppet-maker and artist Lidia Vasilyevna Chaga (1912-1995). With her, he would also eventually travel to the Netherlands. This happened in the years after the fall of the Soviet Union. Khardzhiev, meanwhile, had settled in Moscow together with Chaga and they no longer felt safe in Russia.

There were the wildest rumours about the value of Khardzhiev's collection and, of course, his flat was not secured. He decided to flee west and take his collection with him. It eventually became Amsterdam, where the 90-year-old Khardzhiev and Chaga travelled in 1993, invited to do so through Willem Weststeijn, professor of Slavic Literature, by the University of Amsterdam. Much of their collection travelled with them. Khardzhiev and Chaga were in Amsterdam until their deaths.

Khardzhiev's death was followed by a period when the preservation and management of the collection was compromised while it was still part of Khardzhiev's undivided estate. When the collection could be housed at the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam in 1998 and the Khardzhiev Foundation was able to accept ownership of the collection, it became possible to bring this dark period to a close - although the loss of some important works from the collection remains an irreparable loss. You can read more about this tumultuous and painful phase and how this difficult time came to an end here.

The collection is on long-term loan to the Stedelijk Museum. On the Foundation's initiative, the collection of literary and cultural-historical manuscripts was transferred to the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI for short) in Moscow.
Currently, the Foundation does not maintain ties with this archive, but Amsterdam retained a digital copy of the entire archive, which can be consulted at the Stedelijk Museum and at the University of Amsterdam.

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  Lidia Vasil’evna Chaga