August 23, 2012; visit to Saratov; the city of Alexandr Pavlovich Kibalnikov’s young years (part 1)

Saratov is the city of young years, early period of work and all the creative destiny of Alexandr Pavlovich Kibalnikov.

It was a fine morning in Saratov, sunny, windy; clouds were passing by, sky-high poplars fussing with all their leaves…

Generally, it was beautiful

Saratov. Audust 23, 2012

At that, we should have been at the meeting at the Museum named after A.N. Radishchev long ago, and as it often happens in a new city we kept tuning wrong ways definitely moving off from our destination. Unable to bear the flood of impressions, emotions and rays of the sun, lack of time and turns without number, we quarrelled away and were now walking along different sided of the street…

Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Saratov. Audust 23, 2012
Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Saratov. Audust 23, 2012
Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Saratov. Audust 23, 2012

All of a sudden a saving wave flashed from the left: «Look here, it’s the ‘Lipky’ park, now we know where we are!» Along the park fence, we directed our steps confidently forward, and in a minute I caught a glimpse of Saratov Church of the Icon of the Mother of God "The Healer of Sorrows", and now well prepared, I started turning slowly to the square: here was a sharp-roofed Saratov Conservatoire so well known from black-and-white archive photos, and here it was – alive, frowning, with his arms tightly folded… The Monument to N.G. Chernyshevskiy in Saratov.

Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Памятник Н.Г. Чернышевскому Saratov. Audust 23, 2012
Saratov. Audust 23, 2012

A gust of wind from that very side we needed – and the crowns of ‘Lipky’ park trees quivered, and the Russian writer’s hair flew in the wind, and his frock-coat flap swayed… And at that very subtle moment I felt absolutely perfect… peace.

Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Памятник Н.Г. Чернышевскому Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Памятник Н.Г. Чернышевскому Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Памятник Н.Г. Чернышевскому

The same feeling I had been having on the remote days of my school-life, when from the windows of the 5th floor of Moscow Art School I could see the granite figure of Tretyakov across the lane in front of the Gallery. «Everything will be fine», – I kept thinking then peering from afar at Pavel Mikhailovich.

«Everything will be right as nails», I thought in Saratov square and went round and round the monument examining it with special care.

Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Памятник Н.Г. Чернышевскому
Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Памятник Н.Г. Чернышевскому Saratov. Audust 23, 2012
Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Памятник Н.Г. Чернышевскому Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Памятник Н.Г. Чернышевскому

When we love something dearly, we are always trying to find some flaw with it.
Perhaps to feel easier, for it is very difficult to stand beside something perfect…

I have found no flaw with the monument: from any point of view it was a perfect sculpture. Rare monument is so expressive and good even from the back… 

I wonder, why I have started thinking if Nikolay Gavrilovich had been that spiritually handsome in his days?

I was sill to find the answer to the question, but at that time we have been past out due time to the meeting.

 

Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Музей Радищева Саратов, 23 августа 2012 г Музей Радищева.
Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Музей Радищева
Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Бабушкин Взвоз Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Бабушкин Взвоз Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Бабушкин Взвоз
Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Музей Н.Г. Чернышевского

Our visit to the State Art Museum named after A.N. Radishchev, and the trip along Babushkin Vzvoz (Granny’s Up-Hill) road to the Volga looking for the place where A.P. Kibalnikov had lived and worked in the 30–40s, finished as it were absolutely naturally on the way leading to the Museum-Estate of N.G. Chernyshevskiy.

Galina Platonovna Mourenina, the Director of the municipal institution of culture «Museum of N.G. Chernyshevskiy», was in her office where we met her and started discussing the oncoming Alexandr Pavlovich Kibalnikov’s centenary.

Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Музей Н.Г. Чернышевского

On the 22nd of August, the exhibition to commemorate the great sculptor’s centenary was opened in this particular Museum-Estate of the writer, in the Edemovs’ outhouse accommodating at the time of our visit an exhibition of works by a remarkable Saratov artist V.O. Fomichiov who had known well and had been the friend of Alexandr Pavlovich Kibalnikov.

Saratov. Audust 23, 2012

With kind permission of the Museum Directorate, we are presenting here photographic coverage of the museum exposition.

Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Saratov. Audust 23, 2012
Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Saratov. Audust 23, 2012
Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Saratov. Audust 23, 2012

Galina Platonovna herself took us around the halls of the Memorial House of the Chernyshevskiys and agreed to an interview. We were talking on the balcony of the Chernyshevskiys’s House, from where a spreading view to the Volga river had opened in the former times, it was still spectacular even these days…

Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Saratov. Audust 23, 2012

We are heartily grateful to Galina Platonovna Mourenina, to Elena Manova, the Chief Keeper of the Museum funds, and to all the staff of the Museum of N.G. Chernyshevskiy for cooperation and active assistance in preparing the exhibition dedicated to A.P. Kibalnikov’s centenary in Moscow at exhibition halls of Art Lyceum at the Russian Academy of Arts.

Saratov. Audust 23, 2012

Galina Platonovna showed us the way to the monument of Konstantin Fedin by A.P. Kibalnikov; on that day she was not only the guide for two Moscow artists in Saratov, but also the guide over creative destiny of the People’s Artist of the country: from the first urban monument created by him and to bring him fame; to the last one, the latest one which opened a year before his death.

Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Памятник Константину Федину
Saratov. Audust 23, 2012 Памятник Константину Федину Saratov. Audust 23, 2012

From the image of Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevskiy, the Russian writer publicist of the 19th century, democrat philosopher who had been working once for the journal ‘Sovremennik’ (‘The Contemporary’) – to the image of Konstantin Fedin, the Russian writer humanist of the 20th century, member of literary group The Serapion Brothers.

From the year of 1953, to 1986... Milestones of the Sculptor’s creative destiny between these dates: the monument to Futurist Vladimir Mayakovskiy in Moscow (1958), the monument to the Imagist Sergei Yesenin in Ryazan (1975), the monument to the Russian writer of the 18th century, nobleman Alexandr Radishchev in Saratov (1974), conceived at the times of working at the image of Nikolay Chernyshevskiy in 1946-48.

Saratov. Audust 23, 2012

If now we cast away the names of literary groups and details of conflicts of views, we could see how closely connected an Artist and a Poet are, how an Image and a Word flow together, how they nourish each other in Russia.
Then an Artist takes his brush and chisel to visualise the Word;
then the Word roars and sings and whispers tenderly of the Artist.
It is our tradition, it is rooted in our hearts, in our genes and memory.
Perhaps, Chernyshevskiy in Saratov square is a whim of poetry.
And there is not a shadow of doubt, this very text is a whim of poetry too.
How can it be otherwise?
If Poetry vanished from our lives and Culture…
What would we be left with?..

BEAUTY

In all throughout we can find
The beauty of the God in mind:

In cliff and in abyss of the sea,
In wood and desert findest it thee,

In fish’s way, in birdie’s flight,
To where thou sendst the eye;

The eye so sharp, observant, keen.
And now and then it really seems,

That stones on the boundary path
Are dead and soullessly fast,

That bunch of roses so red and lazy
‘re more beautiful than a modest daisy.

A sculptor’s destiny’s in stone,
A flower’s for a loving soul.

Gennadiy Bogoslovskiy

Margarita Siourina,
August 28, 201

Photos: Alexands Kopeyko
Video: Margarita Siourina