Nikodim Pavlovitch Kondakov et Prague : comment l'émigration change l'histoire (de l'art)

In March 1923 Russian professor Nikodim Pavlovich Kondakov came to Prague, having fled Bolshevik Russia a few years earlier. Invited to the Czechoslovak capital as part of the 'Russian Action', 78-year-old Kondakov tried to adapt to his new environment. Like many times in the past, he integrated – on a borderline conscious and unconscious level – the political and social changes in the surrounding world into his scientific work. After spending years studying the Russian 'icon' and the iconography of the Virgin Mary, Kondakov began to search for new themes that might be of interest to Czechoslovaks. He found them in the common past of all the Slavic nations, which, in his opinion, was one of the most important moments in European culture.