NIKOLAI BENOIS (1901-1988) 9 sketches of costume designs for the film ‘Un colpo di pistola’ [A pistol shot] by Renato Castellani after the eponymous novel by Alexandre Pushkin (1830)

watercolour, ink, gold paint on paper 53.5 x 31 cm (each) Provenance: Estate of the artist Descendants of the Benois family Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature: Illustrated in a magazine ‘La Casa La Vita’ Nicolai Benois was appointed art director for the movie A Pistol Shot (1942) directed by Renato Castellani, a film inspired from the eponymous novel by Pushkin. “A rather freewheeling and inventive adaptation of Pushkin’s very short (16 pages) tale, this incredibly controlled and efficiently crafted first film by Castellani (…)Astonishingly rich and luxuriant for a film made during the Second World War, with an impressive reconstruction of Russia and Ukraine during the 1830s” – a film critic Miguel Marías and a former director of the Spanish Film Archive “I quickly got the book and read it. I liked the novella a lot, so much that I stayed awake that night in my little room (I was living in Via Flaminia) and wrote non-stop most of the scenario. (…) When Un colpo di pistola was screened, I was criticized for formalism and being cold. Seeing it again, I think it is pure slander. It was not cold at all. Formal? The film was shot on purpose in a studied way, in the name of elegance." - Renato Castellani, Quattro soggetti, Centro Cattolico Cinematografico, Rome, 1983