The Book Anatoliy Maringof Ruki Galstukom. Drawings by Georgii Bogdanovich YAKULOV. 1920. Georgii B. JAKOULOFF (1884-1928) (b Tiflis, now Tbilisi, 2 Jan 1884, d Erevan, 28 Dec 1928). Georgian stage designer and painter of Armenian origin, active in Russia. He studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1901–1903) but was expelled after a disagreement over the teaching methods. Posted to the Far East during military service, he became acquainted with Far Eastern decorative art, which inspired the works he exhibited with the Blue Rose group after his return to Moscow in 1907 (e.g. The Races, 1905, Moscow, Tretyakov Gal.). His work of this time refers to traditional Chinese and medieval European art refracted through Art Nouveau, in an attempt to create a new decorative style in easel painting. In Moscow he often designed the decor for artistic soirees and balls, creating architecturally decorative compositions whose basic components were painted panels. In 1910 he travelled to Italy and in 1912–13 he worked in Paris, where he became acquainted with Sonia Delaunay and Robert Delaunay. In 1913 Yakulov took part in the first Herbstsalon at the gallery Der Sturm in Berlin. In winter 1913–14 he became involved in the debates surrounding Futurism, and together with the Futurist composer Artur Lurye and the poet Benedikt Lifshits he published a manifesto My i Zapad (We and the West, Petrograd, 1914). In his work Yakulov used Cubist and Futurist conventions, but he remained outside Russian artistic groups, exhibiting at the avant-garde Dobychina Gallery in Petrograd as well as with the World of Art group. His painting is characteristically light, with the transparency of watercolour. After the Revolution of 1917 he became, however, an active member of the Leftist Federation of painters in Moscow, and he recruited Vladimir Tatlin and Aleksandr Rodchenko, among other avant-garde artists, to design the Cafe Pittoresque in Moscow, which turned out to be a demonstration of the decorative possibilities of abstract art.