Sergei Eisenstein 1898 - 1948

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Ellen de Bruijne Projects

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For pioneering film director Sergei Eisenstein (Riga, 1898—Moscow, 1948), drawing was
fundamental to his filmic and theoretical practices—if one should differentiate them.
Starting from an early age, drawing was a recurrent activity for Eisenstein. A curious child, he
was fascinated by the graphic work of artists such as Honoré Daumier and Jacques Callot.1 As
his teenage friends would recall, Eisenstein had a true passion for drawing, spending
countless hours exercising his imagination humorously. Some of his drawings were published
by newspapers in Saint Petersburg, and he would draw caricatures, sketches, and stage
designs for theatre productions. Nevertheless, he was most prolific at drawing during his
time in Mexico (1931–1932) for the occasion of a film project that he eventually had to leave
unfinished. The so-called ‘sex drawings’—coined by historian Joan Neuberger—which were
kept hidden for long, abound in this time as a result of an emancipation from censorship in a
tremendously inspiring moment in his career. In them we observe an array of sexual
intercourses, fantasies, and obscenities in explicitly queer combinations. They bear witness to
Eisenstein’s philosophical inquires, queer sexual expression and repression, and a great sense
of humour. Back in the Soviet Union in 1932, he would continue to draw until his death in
1948, yet under very different circumstances. The drawings in this exhibition attest to the
complex, multi-faceted, and fascinating artistry of Sergei Eisenstein. This exhibition presents
a remarkable and significant artistic production whilst seeking to foreground the queer
potentialities of his work, contending queerness as an integral component of his life and
work, and claiming him as a queer pioneer in the history of art.

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