Boris Aronson was born in Kiev in 1900, the son of a Jewish rabbi. He came of age in pre-revolutionary Russia in the city that was at the center of Jewish avant-garde theater. After attending art school in Kiev, Aronson served an apprenticeship with the Constructivist designer Alexandre Exter. Under Exter's tutelage and under the influence of the Russian theater directors Alexander Tairov and Vsevolod Meyerhold, whom Aronson admired, he rejected the fashionable realism of Stanislavski in favor of stylized reality and Constructivism. After his apprenticeship he moved to Moscow and then to Germany, where he published two books in 1922, and on their strength was able to obtain a visa to America. In New York he found work in the Yiddish experimental theater designing sets and costumes for, among other venues, the Unser Theatre and the Yiddish Art Theatre.
Aronson's first major success was
Despite Aronson's critical successes in the 1930s, his career was in limbo for much of the 1940s and 1950s. In a Broadway which favored tactful sets over dramatic designs, other designers were getting many of the better productions. Aronson was forced to temper his abstract, Constructivist inclinations and produce naturalistic sets, but he continued to make important contacts. In 1953 he created sets for
Aronson's career upswing began with
The Boris Aronson Scenic Design Papers were donated to the Ransom Center by Lisa Aronson in 1996. One rendering for
The Boris Aronson Scenic Design Papers, 1939-1977, contain original sketches, photostats and copy prints of sketches, photographs, art reproductions, scripts, technical drawings, and a model which document Aronson's work as set designer for thirty-one plays written or produced between 1939 and 1977. The papers are arranged alphabetically by title of production and can also be accessed by playwright, librettist, or translator via the index of authors following the folder list. Items are grouped together in accordance with their original order, e.g., the two folders of photographs for
Though the papers are slightly skewed toward the later part of Aronson's career, his work in the 1940s and 1950s is amply represented. In particular, works by Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Irwin Shaw abound. These production materials include Miller's
The bulk of the papers comprises concept drawings, study sketches, and preliminary and
final renderings for stages, scenery, show curtains, and cyclorama projections. The sketches
range from a single prop to individual scenes to overall floor designs. They are executed in
pencil, ink, watercolor, lithographic crayon, or pastel. (For brevity and clarity, all of
the drawings, renderings and sketches are referred to as
Item-level descriptions of all materials except for the
In the folder list, year of production is given in parentheses after the title of the work. Dates for the contents of individual folders are given only if known and if they differ from the year of production. The number of items per folder is given in parentheses.
Abbreviations used in the folder list are as follows
Source: Rich, Frank, with Lisa Aronson.
Elsewhere in the Theater Arts Collection is an Aronson costume rendering for
Gift and purchase, 1996 (G10669, R13821)
Open for research
Helen Baer and Toni Alfau, 1999
The finding aid for the Boris Aronson Scenic Design Papers is a conflation of the original
inventory created in 1999, and of a small addition that was catalogued in 2006. The
addition, consisting of two models for
Material from the 2006 Addition is not included in this index.