Pavel Pavlovich Muratov

Who was Pavel Pavlovich Muratov?

Pavel Pavlovich Muratov, also known as Paul Muratov, was a Russian essayist, novelist, art historian, critic and playwright.

Born in Bobrov in the Voronezh Oblast into the family of a military doctor, Muratov attended a Cadet Corps and graduated from the Petersburg State Transport University in 1903. He traveled abroad in 1905-06, after which he moved to Moscow and worked at the Rumyantsev Museum until 1914. He became friends with the writers Boris Zaytsev, Vladislav Khodasevich, and Nina Berberova, as well as the artist Nikolai Ulyanov. From 1906 he began to publish in journals like Vesy, Zolotoe Runo, and Apollon. He collaborated with Igor Grabar on the latter's History of Russian Art, and in 1913-14 he helped publish the journal Sofia, dedicated to early Russian art. He served in World War I and was awarded medals.

After 1918 he helped Grabar restore cathedrals and was associated with the only bookshop in Moscow which remained unregulated by the state - the Writer's Library. Having been banished in 1922, he spent the 1920s in Berlin, where he became part of the émigré community. By the 1930s he had moved to Paris - during the late 1920s and early 1930s he brought out several books in French, including ones on Fra Angelico and Russian icons, as well as a novel in Russian, Egeria. During World War II he was in Ireland, working as a military journalist ; he wrote an account of the Russian campaigns for Penguin Books.