1895- 1968
He received his art education at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.
From 1918 he worked in Ukraine in book and newspaper graphics, was an artist of the Kyiv Opera House “Musical Drama”.
In 1918-1919 he studied in the art studio of Oleksandra Ekster in Kyiv.
In 1919 he moved to Kharkiv. He worked at the Heroic Theater, the First State Theater. Since 1925 he has been a production designer and chief artist of the Kharkiv Opera and Ballet Theater. At the same time he staged at the Kyiv Opera and Ballet Theater.
National Artist of the USSR (1945).
From 1946 to 1952 Khvostenko-Khvostov was the chief artist of the Kyiv State Opera and Ballet Theater.
Borys Kosariev wrote about him: “He knew many stage techniques and used them with great skill. I remember that in one performance he was especially successful in terms of spatial solution, he drew a forest through which the sky and the cloud could be seen. Everything was perceived lively, moving, convincing to the point of illusion. And what? The backdrop, it turned out, was not solid, but perforated, and the slots contained “tongues” with details of the further plan. The trick, once invented by Roller, received new life at Khvostenko-Khvostov. A vivid memory lives on in my memory: the design of “Tom Sawyer” at the Children’s Theater of Kharkiv (green with orange draping with tassels, dropped on the machine-decoration); a panel in the play “Hobo” with depicting photographs of skyscrapers, drawn on the faces of cubic machines. These scenery moved, opened, overlapped…
I also remember the original radius in “Natalka Poltavka” (directed by I. Marianenko) – artistically painted willow leaves… In the decorative arts Khvostenko-Khvostov was, as they say, a king and a god. Oleksandr thought in terms of the stage as a director. “You see, old man,” he said, “platforms have to be built on the stage. Without them, the director will have nowhere to misrepresent “.
