In 1973, the Tretyakov Gallery on the first floor housed paintings and sculptures by Soviet masters, so there were few visitors here, even when there were a lot of people on the second floor. Everyone passed the first floor very quickly. And one day a group of foreigners was also walking quickly along the first floor. They saw the sculpture of Vera Mukhina “Peasant Woman”, this is an image of a powerful woman with folded hands, they laughed, began pointing at the sculpture with their fingers and quickly moved on. That's the whole story associated with this sculpture.
In this regard, I want to say that real peasant women were much more careful even in padded jackets. And there were probably many better unknown sculptors than Mukhina.
Of course, we never took foreigners to see the monument to Vaclav Vorovsky, otherwise they would laugh even more.
But still, the monument to Aksinya and Gregory on the Don is the best monument to a love couple in the world!
One day in 1980, I was in the hospital and someone left a plasticine figurine of a 19th century lady on the nightstand. The plasticine figurine was molded like this: a long wide skirt for stability, a hat with a miniature flower, curled curls, Beautiful face, expressive hands. What unknown sculptor, or maybe even female sculptor, created this immortal masterpiece? What skillful fingers you need to have to mold such a miracle from a small piece of plasticine! Everyone admired this image. As for the laughter of foreigners, you can laugh in their galleries. For example, the painting by the artist Goya “The Family of King Charles the Fourth” in the Prado Museum is worse than a caricature. After all, the caricature could have been thrown away, but the representatives of the dynasty themselves probably paid their court artist for this painting. And the question is, what did they pay for? After all, with this painting the artist ridiculed the Spanish dynasty for centuries. This painting is in all art catalogs. And yet - critics wrote the following words about the depiction of the king’s family: “There is a degeneration of the dynasty.” But they were mistaken, nothing of the kind; representatives of the Spanish dynasty still rule to this day. Recently one of them came to Moscow. As for Goya’s painting, such identical facial expressions that the artist depicted do not exist even among close relatives, this is just the handwriting of this artist.
One very talented poetess did not like being called that.
Call me a poet. - she said.
Since then, they began to call poetesses - poets, sculptors - sculptors. Is this good? For example, if the Swedish storyteller Astrid Lindgren was called a storyteller, would it be better?
After the wonderful words of Vysotsky:
But a stewardess walked by all in blue, like a princess...-
All slender like TU, the stewardess Miss Odessa, similar to the entire civilian fleet... -
Flight attendants have become the personification of femininity. Although Vysotsky sang about poetesses in one of his many wonderful songs:
Well, the women in Odessa are all slender, all poetesses, all smart, and in extreme cases, beautiful. -
The sculptor Vera Mukhina depicted heavy women, and the wonderful artist Zinaida Serebryakova painted beautiful ballerinas. It is the fault of our art critics that her ballerinas are not as famous as the ballerinas of the artist Edgar Degas. But ballerina Serebryakova is much more feminine.
But let’s return to Vera Mukhina’s sculpture “Peasant Woman” - it’s good that it’s made of bronze, otherwise Luzhkov would have made millions for himself during the next restoration, as happened with the composition “Worker and Collective Farm Woman.”
And I would also like the galleries not to be a collection of absurdities and illiquid products of promoted authors. By the way, Tretyakov himself painted pictures, but did not exhibit them; he considered his works banal. Why in Soviet time was it necessary to remove the masterpieces bought by Tretyakov for storage in order to exhibit works by Soviet authors, from whom no one stayed? The first floor was always empty. Tretyakov was modest, unlike the promoted authors.
And now we must say something about cultural figures in general. In 1934, my dad’s sister went to RONO to get a job as a teacher. He goes into the office, the boss was sitting there. He told her:
This job of mine is temporary. I'm actually a cultural activist. We’ll go with you to the forest and have a cultural rest. You and I are intelligent people, we will understand each other. Well, are you silent? - And cynically spat on the Tambov parquet floor of a pre-revolutionary building.
My dad's sister ran away, and heard selective swearing and threats behind her. Probably for this reason, beautiful artists: Doronina, Chursina, Marilyn Monroe were left without children. I had to have abortions from such scoundrels. And modern “cultural figures” propose to introduce swearing into official circulation; they themselves have been swearing on stage for a long time. Konstantin Raikin did not hesitate in 1976 to “sing” Truffaldino’s song in such a recognizable voice of Boyarsky. Moreover, Boyarsky was used in the dark.
And the modern Minister of Culture with a huge Neanderthal jaw proposes to introduce obscenities into official conversation. You can imagine him swearing at some picnic, like the village drunks:
Uh! b...! - Minister of Culture Shvydkoy growls.
But there is a difference; A village drunkard would never think of swearing from high stands, but Shvydkoy offers just that.
This pre-revolutionary photo shows a fine arts lesson at the Ryazan Diocesan School. In fact, we should make sculptures of these students themselves, they all look so beautiful, but they are copying someone else’s sculptural image. The explanation for the photo is as follows: the teacher is standing in the distance, the cool lady is sitting in the center. The school was built and maintained at the expense of the clergy; the state did not give a penny. But in February 1918 everything was taken away.
Since November 1917, clergy were subject to a terrible tax, but they tried their best to maintain schools, diocesan schools, and seminaries. Even when Lenin issued a decree on the seizure of church schools and the removal of the Russian Orthodox people from the state, Patriarch Tikhon at church councils raised questions about the continuation of the construction of new schools. Then the security officers began to break into religious schools and seminaries and throw children out of the windows into the street.
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I really didn’t think it wasn’t spicy enough! Didn’t I call the bad bad, the mediocre mediocre, the swearers swearers, the funny funny. After all, I wasn’t the one laughing. There is just not a single lamentation here. But that in 1917 there was a complete robbery of public real estate by those who had never built anything, is this not true!?
Ona modeled feminine dresses and sculpted brutal sculptures, worked as a nurse and conquered Paris, was inspired by her husband’s “short thick muscles” and received Stalin Prizes for their bronze incarnations.
Vera Mukhina at work. Photo: liveinternet.ru
Vera Mukhina. Photo: vokrugsveta.ru
Vera Mukhina at work. Photo: russkije.lv
1. Dress-bud and coat made of soldier’s cloth. For some time, Vera Mukhina was a fashion designer. First sketches theatrical costumes she created in 1915–1916. Seven years later, for the first Soviet fashion magazine Atelier, she drew a model of an elegant and airy dress with a bud-shaped skirt. But Soviet realities also made their own changes to fashion: soon fashion designers Nadezhda Lamanova and Vera Mukhina released the album “Art in Everyday Life.” It contained patterns of simple and practical clothes - a universal dress, which “with a slight movement of the hand” turned into an evening dress; caftan “made from two Vladimir towels”; coat made of soldier's cloth. In 1925, at the World Exhibition in Paris, Nadezhda Lamanova presented a collection in the à la russe style, for which Vera Mukhina also created sketches.
Vera Mukhina. Damayanti. Costume sketch for the unrealized production of the ballet “Nal and Damayanti” at the Moscow Chamber Theater. 1915–1916. Photo: artinvestment.ru
Kaftan made from two Vladimir towels. Drawing by Vera Mukhina based on models by Nadezhda Lamanova. Photo: livejournal.com
Vera Mukhina. Model of a dress with a skirt in the shape of a bud. Photo: liveinternet.ru
2. Nurse. During the First World War, Vera Mukhina completed nursing courses and worked in a hospital, where she met her future husband Alexei Zamkov. When her son Vsevolod was four years old, he fell unsuccessfully, after which he fell ill with bone tuberculosis. Doctors refused to operate on the boy. And then the parents performed the operation - at home, on the dining table. Vera Mukhina assisted her husband. Vsevolod took a long time to recover, but recovered.
3. Favorite model of Vera Mukhina. Alexey Zamkov constantly posed for his wife. In 1918, she created a sculptural portrait of him. Later, she used it to sculpt Brutus killing Caesar. The sculpture was supposed to decorate the Red Stadium, which was planned to be built on the Lenin Hills (the project was not implemented). Even the hands of the “Peasant Woman” were the hands of Alexei Zamkov with “short thick muscles,” as Mukhina said. She wrote about her husband: “He was very handsome. Internal monumentality. At the same time, there is a lot of the peasant in him. External rudeness with great spiritual subtlety.”
4. “Baba” in the Vatican Museum. Vera Mukhina cast a figure of a peasant woman in bronze for art exhibition 1927, dedicated to the tenth anniversary of October. At the exhibition, the sculpture received first place, and then went on display at the Tretyakov Gallery. Vera Mukhina said: “My “Baba” stands firmly on the ground, unshakably, as if hammered into it.” In 1934, “The Peasant Woman” was exhibited at the XIX International exhibition in Venice, after which it was transferred to the Vatican Museum.
Sketches for the sculpture “Peasant Woman” by Vera Mukhina (low tide, bronze, 1927). Photo: futureruss.ru
Vera Mukhina at work on “The Peasant Woman”. Photo: vokrugsveta.ru
Sculpture “Peasant Woman” by Vera Mukhina (low tide, bronze, 1927). Photo: futureruss.ru
5. A relative of the Russian Orpheus. Vera Mukhina was a distant relative opera singer Leonid Sobinov. After the success of “The Peasant Woman,” he wrote her a humorous quatrain as a gift:
The exhibition with male art is weak.
Where to run from female dominance?
Mukhina's woman captivated everyone
By ability alone and without effort.Leonid Sobinov
After the death of Leonid Sobinov, Vera Mukhina sculpted a tombstone - a dying swan, which was installed on the singer’s grave. The tenor performed the aria “Farewell to the Swan” in the opera “Lohengrin”.
6. 28 carriages of “Worker and Collective Farm Woman”. Vera Mukhina created her legendary sculpture for the 1937 World Exhibition. “The ideal and symbol of the Soviet era” was sent to Paris in parts - fragments of the statue occupied 28 carriages. The monument was called an example of sculpture of the twentieth century; a series of souvenirs with the image of “The Worker and the Collective Farm Woman” was released in France. Vera Mukhina later recalled: “The impression made by this work in Paris gave me everything an artist could wish for.” In 1947, the sculpture became the emblem of Mosfilm.
“Worker and Collective Farm Woman” at the World Exhibition in Paris, 1937. Photo: liveinternet
"Worker and Collective Farm Woman." Photo: liveinternet.ru
Museum and Exhibition Center "Worker and Collective Farm Woman"
7. “My hands are itching to write it”. When artist Mikhail Nesterov met Vera Mukhina, he immediately decided to paint her portrait: “She is interesting, smart. Outwardly, it has “its own face,” completely finished, Russian... My hands are itching to paint it...” The sculptor posed for him more than 30 times. Nesterov could work enthusiastically for four to five hours, and during breaks Vera Mukhina treated him to coffee. The artist wrote it while working on the statue of Boreas, the northern god of the wind: “This is how he attacks the clay: he will hit here, he will pinch here, he will beat here. Your face is burning - don’t get caught, it will hurt you. That’s how I need you!” The portrait of Vera Mukhina is kept in the Tretyakov Gallery.
8. Faceted glass and beer mug. The sculptor is credited with the invention of the cut glass, but this is not entirely true. She only improved its form. The first batch of glasses based on her drawings was produced in 1943. Glass vessels became more durable and were ideal for the Soviet dishwasher, which had been invented shortly before. But Vera Mukhina actually came up with the shape of the Soviet beer mug herself.
Vera Ignatievna Mukhina (1889-1953) was born in Riga. Her artistic abilities were discovered early, but she began to work systematically only in Moscow, where she arrived in 1910. She studies at the private school K.F. Yuona. She makes her first attempt at sculpture in Sinitsina’s private workshop, where novice sculptors worked without a teacher. However, such work does not satisfy Mukhina.
At the end of 1912, Mukhina moved to Paris and entered one of the private academies where Bourdelle taught. Communication with Bourdelle, a living example of his art, his subtle artistic intuition, his criticism develop in her a sense of plastic form, but, perhaps, Mukhina studies even more in museums.
Mukhina stayed in Paris for two years. Then a trip to Italy. Michelangelo's titanic creativity astonishes her.
Mukhina's monumentalism is a natural expression of the basic properties of her talent. This becomes especially clear when the victorious revolution of 1917 puts forward new tasks of monumental propaganda for sculpture. Mukhina successfully participates in a number of competitions. In 1925-1927, she exhibited a number of works that attracted the attention of the artistic community: “Julia”, “Wind”, “Female Torso”. Her “Peasant Woman” has especially great success. A number of portraits created at this time - Professor Kotlyarovsky, Professor Koltsov, Doctor A.A. Zamkova, the bust “Collective Farmer” testify to Mukhina’s great talent for portraiture.
The best work of the 30s was the Soviet pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris, crowned with a sculptural work by Vera Ignatievna Mukhina. The group “Worker and Collective Farm Woman” was perfectly linked to the architecture of the pavilion.
When Mukhina’s sculptural group “Worker and Collective Farm Woman” was installed at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937, curious people asked who performed this group and who its creator was. And one of our workers, who understood the question asked in a foreign language, answered like this: “Who? Yes, we are the Soviet Union!”
Feat, creativity, joy, love of life - everything is here, in this great creation by Mukhina. It’s as if the era itself, the country itself, molded this titanic symbol - the steel giants who raised the hammer and sickle into the air, and gave this symbol to the sculptor for execution.
When you see this pathos of flying steel, beautiful and powerful forms, when you are imbued with the sublime spirit of this creation, your thought is about your country. About your primacy in the current world. About high primacy, measured by all the difficulties, all the victories that were on the way of our people. This work has become truly epic, popular, and has become one of those values that elevate the soul of the people. The artist’s thought seemed to absorb the thoughts of millions of people and became the focus of people’s thoughts about themselves, about their time.
Mukhina completed the design of the monument to Gorky in his hometown.
In the first years of the war, the sculptor created wonderful portraits of B.A. Yusupova, I.L. Khizhnyak. In one of the halls Tretyakov Gallery Bronze Colonel Khizhnyak and bronze Colonel Yusupov are standing next to each other. Mukhina’s art brought them closer. The great artist of Soviet times, Vera Mukhina, sculpted these heroic portraits.
The most important thing in Mukhina’s work was that she knew how to notice in the character of her contemporaries everything that was best and new, born of Soviet reality, to find a beautiful ideal in life and, embodying it, to call into the future. Mukhina achieves enormous power of typification in his work “Partisan”.
Monumental art cannot be prosaic and ordinary; it is the art of great, lofty, heroic feelings and a great image. The ideal is always beautiful. Idealization never contradicts reality, since it is the quintessence of everything beautiful that exists in life and what a person strives for.
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Fall up
Sculptor Vera Mukhina
The monument “Worker and Collective Farm Woman,” created by the world’s most famous female sculptor, has long become the hallmark of not only the city, but also, possibly, the country in which Vera Ignatievna Mukhina worked.
Mukhina lived only 64 years. Over the years, she came up with many projects, but only three were realized: “Worker and Collective Farm Woman”, a monument to Tchaikovsky near the Moscow Conservatory and a monument to Gorky, which until recently stood opposite the Belorussky railway station...
Like all children who grew up in wealthy merchant families, Verochka Mukhina received a good education at home. Only the relationship with music did not work out. It seemed to her that her father did not like the way she played. But he, on the contrary, encouraged his daughter to take up drawing.
The parent died when Mukhina turned 14 years old. Mother died long before this in Nice, Vera was then just a little more than a year. Therefore, the guardians, the Kursk uncles, took up the task of raising the girl.
The Mukhina sisters - Vera was the youngest - became real socialites of provincial Kursk. Once a year we went to Moscow “to get some air and buy clothes.” In company, the teachers often traveled abroad: Berlin, Salzburg, Tyrol. When they decided to move to Moscow, one of the local newspapers wrote: “The Kursk world lost a lot with the departure of the Mukhin ladies.”
In Moscow, settling on Prechistensky Boulevard, Vera continued her painting studies. And she went to school with Konstantin Yuon and Ilya Mashkov. She wanted to study seriously and asked her guardians to let her study abroad. But they didn’t want to hear about anything like that. Until disaster happened.
“At the end of 1911, I went for Christmas to my uncle’s estate in the Smolensk province,” Mukhina herself recalled about this “fall that enriched her life.” “A lot of young people, cousins, gathered there. It was fun. One day we rolled down the mountain. I was reclining in the sleigh, raising my face. The sled ran into a tree, and I hit my face against the tree. The blow landed right on the forehead. My eyes were filled with blood, but there was no pain and I did not lose consciousness. It seemed to me that my skull was cracked. I ran my hand over my forehead and face. The hand did not feel the nose. The nose was torn off.
I was very pretty then. The first feeling was: I can’t live. We need to run, get away from people. We rushed to the doctor. He put nine stitches and inserted a drain. The impact caused my upper lip to get caught between my teeth.”
When the girl was finally brought home, they strictly forbade the servants from giving her a mirror. They were afraid that when she saw her disfigured face, she would commit suicide. But resourceful Vera looked into the scissors. At first I was horrified and seriously thought about joining a monastery, but then I calmed down.
And she asked permission to go to Paris. The guardians, who believed that the girl had already been wronged by fate, agreed. In November 1912, Vera Mukhina left for the capital of France.
She spent only two winters in Paris, studying at the art academy with the sculptor Bourdelle, a student of Rodin. Mukhina later admitted that these classes became her education. “In essence, I am self-taught,” said Vera Ignatievna.
Upon returning home, there was no time for art - in 1914 the war began, and Mukhina became a nurse in the hospital. The war with the Germans smoothly flowed into the Civil War. Vera nursed the whites and the reds.
A new fall - now on a universal scale - again enriched her life. In 1917 she met Alexei Zamkov, her future husband.
Zamkov was a talented doctor. And, according to Mukhina, he had a stage appearance. Stanislavsky himself suggested to him: “Give up this medicine! I’ll make an actor out of you.” But Zamkov was faithful all his life to his two muses: Mukhina and medicine. For his wife, he was a favorite model (she used him to model Brutus for the Red Stadium) and a household assistant, and he managed to make a revolution in medicine.
Dr. Zamkov came up with a new medicine, Gravidan, that gave amazing results. It was said that those bedridden after an injection of Gravidan began to walk, and the crazy returned to their senses.
But an article appeared in Izvestia in which Zamkov was called a “charlatan.” The doctor could not stand the bullying and decided to flee abroad. Of course, Mukhina went with him.
“We took out some passports and allegedly went south. They wanted to get across the Persian border,” she recalled. - We were arrested in Kharkov and taken back to Moscow. They brought me to the GPU. They interrogated me first. The husband was suspected of wanting to sell the secret of his invention abroad. I said that everything was printed, open and not hidden from anyone.
I was released, and the suffering of my wife, whose husband was arrested, began. This went on for three months. Finally, an investigator came to my home and said that we were being deported for three years with confiscation of property. I cried."
Maxim Gorky helped them get out of Voronezh, which was designated a place of exile. The proletarian writer, along with Vasily Kuibyshev and Clara Zetkin, was one of Dr. Zamkov’s patients and was able to convince the Politburo that a talented doctor needed not just freedom, but also his own institute. The decision was taken. True, the equipment for the institute, including the only electron microscope at that time, was purchased with funds received from the rent for the Latvian estate of Vera Mukhina.
Surprisingly, she, despite numerous hints, persuasion and demands, managed to keep her property in Riga. When, after the collapse of the USSR, a law on restitution was adopted in Latvia, the sculptor’s son was even paid a certain amount. But all this will come later.
And in the 30s, Dr. Zamkov’s scientific prosperity did not last long. After Gorky's death, there was no one to stand up for him and the persecution began again. The institute was destroyed, the electron microscope was thrown out of the second floor window. They did not dare arrest Zamkov himself. What saved him was his wife’s name, which was already thundering throughout all the cities and villages of the vast Union.
Vera Ignatievna’s grandfather reached Moscow in 1812 with Napoleon. The granddaughter was destined to conquer Paris in 1937. More precisely, it was ordered. The statue crowning the Soviet pavilion at the World's Fair was intended to dwarf the German pavilion.
Mukhina carried out the order. Her 75-meter "Worker and Collective Farm Woman" soared over Paris, eclipsing not only the Third Reich Pavilion, but also the Eiffel Tower.
According to Mukhina's original plan, the figures were supposed to be naked. “Can’t I put them on?” - recommended the management. The sculptor didn’t just dress her characters in a sundress and overalls, she came up with a scarf that seemed to float over the statue. Molotov asked to remove the scarf, but Mukhina stood her ground - he emphasized the movement. Then Voroshilov, walking around the model of the future statue, asked to remove “the bags under the girl’s eyes.”
Shortly before the work of the state commission was handed over, the Central Committee of the Party received a denunciation that Trotsky’s profile could be seen in the folds of the scarf. Stalin personally came to the site and, after inspecting the structure, did not notice any profile. Mukhina's project was approved.
28 sealed special cars went to France. A photograph of Mukhina's statue appeared in the Parisian L'Humanite with the caption that the Eiffel Tower had finally found its completion. Parisians even collected signatures so that Mukhina’s work would remain in France. The French women especially tried - they wanted to have a symbol of the power of women in Paris.
Vera Ignatievna herself did not object. But a decision had already been made to install the statue near the Agricultural Exhibition in Moscow. Several times Mukhina wrote letters of protest, explaining that her work did not look good on the “stump” (as she called the low - three times smaller than the Parisian - pedestal on which the 24-meter statue was installed). She proposed installing “The Worker and the Collective Farm Woman” either on the spit of the Moscow River (where Peter the Great by Tsereteli stands today) or on the observation deck of Moscow State University. But they didn’t listen to her.
Mukhina believed that the installation of “Worker and Collective Farm Woman” at VDNKh was her personal and perhaps the most serious defeat. She generally approached her work in a rather unique way. “I have misfortune,” she said. - As long as I make things, I love them. And then at least they weren’t there..."
Mukhina's character was difficult. Chekist A. Prokofiev, the construction manager of the Palace of the Soviets, noted that he was afraid of only two people in his life - Felix Dzerzhinsky and Vera Mukhina. “When she looked at me with her bright eyes, I had a feeling that she knew all my innermost thoughts and feelings,” the man admitted.
Vera Ignatievna preferred not to argue with the authorities. The only time she tried to convince the Kremlin to change its decision concerned the demolition of the Kazan Cathedral, which stood near the Historical Museum on Red Square. Lazar Kaganovich listened carefully to Mukhina, and then took her to the office window overlooking St. Basil's Cathedral and said: “If you make noise, we will remove this chicken coop too.”
Mukhina didn’t make any more noise. “She had a neutral attitude towards the regime,” the sculptor’s great-grandson Alexei Veselovsky told me. - It seems to me that she was completely outside of this process. Although after the Voronezh exile I understood what was happening in the country. According to family legend, when she was persuaded to sculpt Stalin, she told her family: “I cannot sculpt a man with such a narrow forehead.” When the persuasion became more persistent, she called Molotov: “I cannot sculpt without life. Let Joseph Vissarionovich set a time for me, I’m ready.” Molotov called the Moscow city party committee and said: “Don’t take up time from busy people" As a result, someone else made the monument.
The sculptor’s son Vsevolod Zamkov wrote in his memoirs: “It is significant that she did not create a single lifetime portrait members of the Politburo and other members of the party leadership. The only exception is the portrait of People's Commissar of Health Kaminsky, who was soon arrested and executed for refusing to sign a false medical report on the death of Ordzhonikidze. Naturally, she could not avoid participating in competitions for monuments to Lenin. In both cases, her proposals were rejected by the selection committees, who noted the artistic qualities of the models. It is interesting to note that the 1924 portrait was considered “cruel and even evil”, and in the 1950 model (Lenin with a worker holding a rifle and a book in his hands) attention was drawn to the fact that the main character is the worker, not Lenin.”
By the way, Mukhina’s posing was considered a good sign. Everyone she sculpted was sure to get a promotion. When Vera Ignatyevna was making a bust of Marshal of Artillery Voronov, he came to the last session with a box of champagne. In response to Vera Ignatievna’s bewildered look, he said that there were rumors among the generals that everyone she blinded received a promotion in rank: “There was no rank higher than mine, marshal, in the artillery, so it must be, I found it in the newspaper today - it was established a new rank of chief marshal of artillery, and I got it!
The family's name was Vera Ignatievna Munya. With her loved ones, she was a completely different person - soft, caring, gentle. “In the dacha photographs,” says Alexey Veselovsky, “she is such a cozy grandmother-grandmother.”
Vera Ignatievna outlived her husband by eleven years. Until the last day, next to the portrait of Alexei Andreevich on her bedside table there was a bouquet of fresh flowers...
Mukhina herself died in September 1953. She undermined her health while working on the monument to Gorky, at the opening of which in November 1952 she was no longer present.
According to her great-grandson, “she died of angina pectoris - a stonecutter’s disease.”
At the Novodevichy cemetery, on the grave of Alexei Zamkov and Vera Mukhina, there are two marble slabs. “I did everything I could for the people,” the doctor’s words are embossed on one of them. “Me too,” you can read on his wife’s tombstone.
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From the book The Shining of Everlasting Stars author Razzakov FedorMUKHINA Vera MUKHINA Vera (sculptor: “Worker and Collective Farm Woman”, etc.; died on October 6, 1953 at the age of 65). A year before her death, Mukhina began having serious heart problems. In the summer, she and her colleagues handed over their next work to the commission - a monument to M. Gorky, but
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Dzhandzhugazova E.A.
…Unconditional sincerity and maximum perfection
Vera Mukhina - the only woman sculptor in the history of Russian monumental art, outstanding master, possessing a perfect sense of harmony, refined craftsmanship and a surprisingly subtle sense of space. Mukhina’s talent is truly multifaceted; she has mastered almost all genres of plastic art, from the grandiose monumental sculpture “Worker and Collective Farm Woman” to miniature decorative statues and sculptural groups, sketches for theatrical productions and art glass.
“The first lady of Soviet sculpture” combined in her work the seemingly incompatible principles - the “male” and “feminine” principles! Dizzying scale, power, expression, pressure and extraordinary plasticity of figures, combined with the precision of silhouettes, emphasized by the soft flexibility of lines, giving unusually expressive statics and dynamics of sculptural compositions.
Vera Mukhina's talent grew and strengthened during the difficult and controversial years of the twentieth century. Her work is sincere and therefore perfect, main job her life - the monument “Worker and Collective Farm Woman” challenged the Nazi ideology of racism and hatred, becoming a true symbol of Russian-Soviet art, which has always personified the ideas of peace and goodness. As a sculptor, Mukhina chose the most difficult path of a monumentalist, working on a par with the venerable male masters I. Shadr, M. Manizer, B. Iofan, V. Andreev, she never changed the vector of her creative development under the influence of recognized authorities.
The civic spirit of art, which builds a bridge from ideal to life, uniting truth and beauty, became the conscious program of all her thoughts until the very end of her life. Creative success and the exceptional achievements of this wonderful woman were largely determined by her personal fate, which had, perhaps, everything...
AND great love, family happiness and family tragedy, the joy of creativity and hard, exhausting work, triumphant victories and a long period of semi-oblivion...
Pages of life
Vera Ignatievna Mukhina was born in Latvia into a Russian merchant family on July 1, 1889. The Mukhin family was distinguished not only by its merchant acumen, but also by its love of art. Handling a lot of money, they hardly talked about it, but they argued fiercely about theater, music, painting and sculpture. They patronized the arts and generously encouraged young talents. So Ignatiy Kuzmich Mukhin, Vera’s father, who was almost bankrupt himself, bought a seascape from the artist Alisov, who was dying of consumption. In general, he did good a lot and quietly, like his father - Vera’s grandfather, Kuzma Ignatievich, who really wanted to be like Cosimo de’ Medici.1
Unfortunately, Vera Mukhina's parents died early and she and her older sister were left in the care of wealthy relatives. So, from 1903, the Mukhina sisters began to live with their uncle in Kursk and Moscow. Vera was an excellent student, played the piano, painted, wrote poetry, traveled around Europe, was a great fashionista and loved balls. But somewhere deep in her mind a persistent thought about sculpture had already arisen, and studying abroad became her dream. However, the relatives did not even want to hear about this. It’s not a woman’s business, the practical merchants reasoned, for a young girl to study far from her family from some Bourdelle.2
However, fate decreed otherwise... while spending the Christmas holidays with relatives on the Smolensk estate, Vera suffered a severe facial injury while riding down a hill. Pain, fear, dozens of operations instantly turned the cheerful young lady into a twitched and grief-stricken creature. And only then did the family decide to send Vera to Paris for treatment and rest. French surgeons performed several operations and actually restored the girl’s face, but it became completely different. The new face of Vera Mukhina was large, rude and very strong-willed, which was reflected in her character and hobbies. Vera decided to forget about balls, flirting and marriage. Who would love this? And the question of choosing an activity between painting and sculpture was decided in favor of the second. Vera began studying in Bourdelle's workshop, working like a convict, she very quickly overtook everyone, becoming the best. A tragic twist of fate defined her forever life path and all of it creative program. It’s hard to say whether a spoiled merchant’s daughter could turn into an extraordinary woman - Great master monumental sculpture, even if the word “sculptor” is meant only in the masculine gender.
However, ahead was the 20th century - the century of amazing speeds and the industrial revolution, a heroic and cruel era that placed a woman next to a man everywhere: at the controls of an airplane, on the captain's bridge of a ship, in the cabin of a high-rise crane or tractor. Having become equal, but not the same, men and women in the twentieth century continued their painful search for harmony in the new industrial reality. And it was precisely this ideal of searching for the harmony of “masculine” and “feminine” principles that Vera Mukhina created in her work. Her male face gave creativity extraordinary strength, courage and power, and the female heart gave soft plasticity, filigree precision and selfless love.
In love and motherhood, Vera Ignatievna, despite everything, was very happy and, despite the serious illness of her son and difficult fate husband - the famous Moscow doctor Alexei Zamkov, her women's destiny was stormy and full like a big river.
Different facets of talent: peasant woman and ballerina
Like any talented person, Vera Mukhina always looked for and found different means of self-expression. New forms, their dynamic sharpness, occupied her creative imagination. How to depict volume, its different dynamic forms, how to bring imaginary lines closer to a specific nature, this is what Mukhina was thinking about when creating her first famous sculpture of a peasant woman. In it, Mukhina showed beauty and power for the first time female body. Her heroine is not an airy sculpture, but an image of a working woman, but this is not an ugly loose lump, but an elastic, solid and harmonious figure, not devoid of living feminine grace.
“My “Baba,” said Mukhina, “stands firmly on the ground, unshakably, as if hammered into it. I made it without nature, from my head. Working all summer, from morning to evening.”
Mukhina’s “Peasant Woman” immediately attracted the most close attention, but opinions are divided. Some were delighted, and others shrugged their shoulders in bewilderment, but the results of the exhibition of Soviet sculpture dedicated to the first ten-year anniversary of the October Revolution showed the absolute success of this extraordinary work - “The Peasant Woman” was taken to the Tretyakov Gallery.
Later in 1934, “The Peasant Woman” was exhibited at XIX International exhibition in Venice and its first bronze cast became the property of the Vatican Museum in Rome. Having learned about this, Vera Ignatievna was very surprised that her rough and seemingly axed-out, but full of dignity and calm Russian woman took a place in the famous museum.
It should be noted that at this time an individual artistic style Mukhina, distinctive features which becomes the monumentality of forms, the accentuated architectonics of sculpture and the power of the plastic artistic image. This signature Mukhina style in the late twenties propelled her into the avant-garde group of muralists who were developing design Soviet exhibitions V different countries Europe.
Sculpture “Peasant Woman” by V.I. Mukhina (low tide, bronze, 1927)
Sketches “Peasant Woman” by V.I. Mukhina (low tide, bronze, 1927)
While working on the sculpture, Vera Mukhina came to the conclusion that for her, generalization is important in every image. The tightly built, somewhat weighted “Peasant Woman” was the artistic ideal of those years. Later, having visited Europe under the influence of the elegant works of glassblowers from Murano, Mukhina creates a new female image- a ballerina sitting in a musical pose. Mukhina sculpted this image from an actress friend of hers. She first converted the sculpture into marble, then faience, and then only in 1947 into glass. Different artistic images And different materials contributed to a change in the aesthetic ideals of the sculptor, making her work versatile.
In the 1940s, Mukhina was passionate about design, working as a theater artist, and inventing faceted glasses that have become iconic. She is especially attracted to highly talented and creative people, among them the famous ballerinas Galina Ulanova and Marina Semenova occupy a special place. Her passion for ballet reveals new facets in Mukhina’s work; with the same power of expressiveness, she reveals the plastic images of such different Russian women - a simple peasant woman and famous ballerina– Russian ballet star Galina Ulanova.
Creative inspiration captured in bronze
The most romantic and inspired among all the works of Vera Mukhina was the monument to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, standing in the courtyard of the Moscow Conservatory on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street. Sculptural composition located at the main façade of the conservatory and is the dominant feature of the entire architectural complex.
This work is distinguished by originality, the great musician is depicted at the moment of creative inspiration, although Mukhina’s colleagues criticized Mukhina for Tchaikovsky’s tense pose and some overload with details, but in general the compositional solution of the monument, as well as the place itself, were chosen very well. It seems that Pyotr Ilyich listens to the music pouring from the conservatory windows and involuntarily conducts to the beat.
The monument to the composer near the walls of the Moscow Conservatory is one of the most popular attractions in the capital. It gained particular popularity among conservatory students who literally took it apart. Before restoration in 2007, its openwork lattice was missing 50 note signs; according to legend, owning a note will bring good luck in musical creativity. Even the bronze pencil disappeared from the hands of the composer, but so far the same size figure in musical world didn't appear.
Triumph
But the real apogee of Mukhina’s work was the design of the Soviet pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris. The sculptural composition “Worker and Collective Farm Woman” shocked Europe and was called a masterpiece of twentieth-century art. Not every creator manages to receive universal recognition and experience such tremendous success, but the main thing is to convey the idea of the work to the viewer so that he understands it. Vera Ignatyevna was able to make sure that not only the decorative attractiveness excited people, they acutely felt the very ideological content sculpture that reflected the dynamism of the great industrial age. “The impression made by this work in Paris gave me everything an artist could wish for,” these words were written by Vera Mukhina, summing up the happiest year of her work.
Mukhina’s talent is enormous and multifaceted, unfortunately, it was not fully in demand. She never managed to realize many of her ideas. It is symbolic that the most beloved of all unrealized works was the Icarus monument, which was made for the pantheon of fallen pilots. In 1944 he trial version was exhibited at the so-called Exhibition of Six, where it was tragically lost. But, despite unfulfilled hopes, the work of Vera Mukhina, so strong, impetuous and unusually integral, raised the world's monumental art to enormous heights, like the ancient “Icarus”, who for the first time knew the joy of conquering the sky.
Literature
- Voronova O.P. Vera Ignatievna Mukhina. M., “Iskusstvo”, 1976.
- Suzdalev P.K. Vera Ignatievna Mukhina. M., “Art”, 1981.
- Bashinskaya I.A. Vera Ignatievna Mukhina (19989-1953). Leningrad. "Artist of the RSFSR", 1987.
- http://progulkipomoskve.ru/publ/monument/pamjatnik_chajkovskomu_u_moskovskoj_konservatorii_na_bolshoj_nikitskoj_ulice/43-1-0-1182
- http://rus.ruvr.ru/2012_10_17/Neizvestnaja-Vera-Muhina/ http://smartnews.ru/articles/11699.html#ixzz2kExJvlwA
1 Florentine politician, merchant and banker, owner of the largest fortune in Europe.
2 Antoine Bourdelle is a famous French sculptor.