Sophie Fedorovitch (nee Sof'ia Fedorovich) was born in Minsk, Russia (now Belarus) in 1893, but identified as Polish. Her art training was interrupted by the First World War and the Russian Revolution and in 1920 she settled in London, exhibiting with the London Group and Seven & Five Society. She is best-known as a ballet designer and for her collaborations with Frederick Ashton and the Ballet Rambert.
Painter, ballet and opera designer Sophie Fedorovitch (née Sof'ia Fedorovich) was born on 3 December 1803 into a well-connected family of Polish gentry in Minsk, Russia (now Belarus); her father was a noted doctor and intellectual. She studied painting in Moscow and at the St Petersburg Academy, but her art training was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War, when she worked organising medical supplies for the Russian army. Despite the upheaval she exhibited for the first time in 1916, showing two paintings as part of a group of young Polish artists in Minsk. In October of that year, she moved to Moscow for further training until prevented by the onset of the 1917 Russian Revolution and a bout of typhoid. During the war Fedorovitch worked on the Front between Russia and Poland (on behalf of the latter), again organising medical supplies, before some friends who had already immigrated to England persuaded her to join them in London. She arrived in August 1920 and remained (despite travels in Europe) for the rest of her life.
In London Fedorovitch established a studio and (as S. Fedorovitch) exhibited with the London Group from 1921-23. Dissatisfaction with her paintings led to a fleeting stint as a taxi driver in Paris (in 1922), and she stayed briefly at the Gurdjieff Institute, Fontainebleau, where the inhabitants practised a regime of group activities (including dancing and building projects) in the hope of attaining a higher consciousness. After returning to London, she continued (as Sophia Fedorovitch) to exhibit with the London Group in 1925-26, 1929 and 1931. She also showed with the Seven & Five Society between 1926 and 1933 (with a year's gap in 1932) and became a member (seconded by fellow artist Jessica Dismorr) in 1927. While in London she also exhibited in Paris at the annual Salon d'Automne and Salon des Indépendants. In 1928 Fedorovitch had a small solo exhibition of eight works) at the Beaux Arts Gallery, New Bond Street. Her striking figurative and still-life paintings, simplified in form and strong in colour, such as The Architect's Table (private collection), an arrangement on a wooden table of scrolled paper, a compass in a glass vase and a model of a column, displayed a modern sensibility that fitted the avant-garde ethos of her chosen milieu. She counted among her London friends leading artists of the day including Augustus John and émigré sculptor Jacob Epstein.
In 1932 Fedorovitch ceased painting and began to work as a stage designer, developing a close collaborative relationship with the dancer/choreographer Frederick Ashton, and with the Polish-Jewish émigré ballerina and teacher Marie Rambert (née Cyvia Rambam), who together formed the Ballet Rambert in 1935. Fedorovitch was to work with Ashton and Rambert for the rest of her life and the ‘sophisticated economy of her design’ is credited with ‘having an important influence on {Ashton's} choreography’ (cited Crane and Macrall, 2010, p. 164). For Ashton's first ballet, A Tragedy of Fashion (1926), she created costumes which blurred gender identities, including a tuxedo jacket worn with a skirt. Fedorovitch, who dressed this way herself and wore her hair cropped short and slicked down, was sometimes mistaken for a young man. The poet Iris Tree remembered Fedorovitch at the famous London artist's cafe the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel, as 'a beautiful young boy', who stood up to reveal 'a very feminine body [...] that ended in a skirt' (Simon Fleet, 1955, p. 14). Her circle also included the librarian and bibliographer Jane Elizabeth ‘Lucy’ Norton, with whom Fedorovitch had a close friendship, and Edward Burra, whose portrait (lost) she painted when all three visited Paris. She later travelled with Burra and the photographer Olivia Wyndham on his first visit to America in October 1933.
Fedorovitch's much admired work for Ashton's Symphonic Variations (1946) includes an ethereal abstract backdrop pared back to a luminous yellow, broken only by fine wave-like lines. Her last project was the design for the opera Orfeo ed Euridice for the Royal Opera House, London (1953).
Sophie Fedorovitch died of accidental coal gas poisoning from a faulty boiler at her home at 22 Bury Walk, Chelsea, London, England, on 25 January 1953; the site is marked by a plaque. A memorial exhibition was held at the V&A in 1955 and some of her works were included posthumously in a group exhibition accompanying a University Theatre Manchester production of The Merchant of Venice in 1967. Her friend Frederick Ashton dedicated his ballet A Month in the Country (1976) to her memory. Her costume designs are represented in the V&A and the Ballet Rambert Archive.