Leon Bakst

Leon Bakst designed the sets and costumes that made the Ballets Russes a visual event as much as a musical one, and changed European fashion in the process. He was born Leyb-Khaim Rosenberg into a Jewish family in Grodno, was expelled from the St Petersburg academy for a nativity painted with Jewish faces in a Vilnius slum setting, and made his living painting portraits before joining Diaghilev's Mir Iskusstva circle. From 1909 he designed for the company almost continuously: Scheherazade, Firebird, Carnaval, Le Spectre de la rose, L'Apres-midi d'un faune, Daphnis et Chloe. The 1910 Scheherazade in particular - emerald and orange, harem trousers, bare midriffs, a stage that looked like a jewel box - was copied by Paul Poiret and the couturiers within a season, and turned into wallpaper, lampshades and interior schemes across Europe. He drew the body rather than the frock: his costume plates show dancers in motion, and the clothes are cut to be moved in, which is why the dancers could do what Fokine asked. As a Jew he had no right of permanent residence in St Petersburg and was periodically expelled from the city even at the height of his fame, which is among the reasons he settled in Paris. He quarrelled with Diaghilev in 1918 and died in Paris of lung disease at fifty-seven. His costume designs sell at auction as works in their own right and are held by the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Pushkin. He taught Marc Chagall in St Petersburg and the two fell out. He decorated a house for the Rothschilds in Buckinghamshire.

• Lived: 1866 CE – 1924 CE
• Nationality: Russian
• Roles: artist