Igor Terentiev
Soviet painter and poet (1892-1937)
Igor Gerasimovich Terentiev (Russian: Игорь Герасимович Терентьев; 17 January 1892 in Pavlograd – 17 June 1937 in Butyrskaya prison, Moscow) was a poet, artist, stage director, and a representative of the avant-garde tradition. He is known for his Zaum poems, formulated by him during his tiflis period, and his theatrical experiments were an inspiration to the Oberiu collective. Some of his most famous plays include Inspector General, John Reed, and Natalya Tarpova.
Biography and creative work
Terentiev was born in Pavlograd (now Ukraine) into the family of lieutenant Gerasim Lvovich Terentiev and Elizabeth von Derfelden, daughter of a resigned cavalry captain of German descent. He had a brother and two sisters: Vladimir (born 17/29 May 1894), Olga (born 28 April/11 May 1897) and Tatiana (born 18/31 May 1900).
He entered the law department of Kharkov University and in 1912 exchanged into jurisprudential faculty of Moscow University which he graduated in 1914. In 1916 he got married and moved to Tbilisi to live with his wife. In 1918 Terentiev entered the futuristic group "41°" created by Ilya Zdanevich (K. Zdanevich, A. Kruchenykh and others). In 1922 Terentiev unsuccessfully tried to emigrate to reunite with his family. He travelled to Istanbul but at the time when he arrived visas for France, where his family resided, were not available, and he had to return.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Igor Terentiev” is soviet painter and poet (1892-1937). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Igor, Terentiev and Soviet, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4455634. VIAF identifies the subject as 122375851. The Library of Congress control number is n85303082. 3 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 2 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1892, 1937, 1894 and 1897.
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This entry incorporates text from “Igor Terentiev” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.