In April 2013, a gypsum figure ‘Unsubdued’ (1946) by the Peoples’Artist of the USSR, Academician, state prizes laureate, sculptor Alexandr Pavlovich Kibalnikov was rendered into material.
In 1946, Alexandr Pavlovich Kibalnikov won the second prize at the All-Russian Contest, Moscow, for his work ‘Unsubdued’ – a figure of a fascists’ concentration camp prisoner wrathfully tearing off his ID number plate given to him by nazis to replace his name, patronymic, sex and age.
The Sculptor created several versions of the figure; two gypsum versions are being kept in the collection of the Saratov Art Museum named after A.N. Radishchev, after the sculptor’s death the author’s original piece passed into the ownership of his daughter, Valentina Alexandrovna Kibalnikova.
This particular figure has been brought from Kibalnikova’s collection to Volgograd to be displayed; it has been also promised to be rendered into material, for gypsum of 1946 started crumbling and chipping. Though from Volgograd ‘Unsubdued’ set off neither to a bronze casting workshop nor back to Moscow to its legal proprietor, but to the Sculptor’s birthplace, to Orekhovo village, to the exhibition held in the A.P. Kibalnikov Memorial Museum. By the agreement with Orekhovo authorities, the figure was brought to Moscow to the Exhibition IN MEMORY OF THE GREAT ARTIST held last November; Vladimir Victorovich Kibalnikov, the Artist’s nephew, has personally arranged its packing and transportation from Volgograd Oblast’ to the capital.
‘Unsubdued’ appeared at the Moscow exhibition along with the portraits of Chernyshevskiy and Mayakovskiy, pilot-cosmonauts Leonov and Sevastjanov, hero woman pilot Marina Raskova, and other sculpture works by Alexandr Pavlovich Kibalnikov.
Nevertheless the work needed restoration which was done in December 2012 by a Moscow sculptor Stepan Mokrousov for the second exhibition IN MEMORY OF THE GREAT ARTIST in the Ryabichevs’ Art Studio. After the exhibition, Moscow sculptors, artists and Valentina Alexandrovna Kibalnikova have decided to render the work into material – to cast ‘Unsubdued’ in bronze.
It has been done.
It is the principal of our work: no sooner said than done.
It’s just like that.
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In Alexander Ryabichev’s Studio: Alexander Ryabichev, Valentina Alexandrovna Kibalnikova, Stepan Mokrousov, Margarita Siourina |
In the Studio with Valentina Alexandrovna Kibalnikova |
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In the Studio of Alexander Ryabichev the sculptor |
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Our words of gratitude are to Alexander Ryabichev, Stepan Mokrousov, Alexandra Zagryazhskaya, to the casters at the bronze workshop at the Ryabichevs’ Art Studio in Moscow!
Now, there is no risk for the work of the great artist to crumble to dust.
Now the figure of a stubborn man rebelling against being and seeming a slave, crated more than half a century ago and more than ever actual today can be exhibited all over Russia without fear to damage fragile gypsum; it is so easy indeed to explain one’s own powerlessness and weak will.
The new bronze ‘Unsubdued’ must see its birthplace for sure.