Konenkov Museum (sculptor) is located in Moscow, at the address: st. Tverskaya, d. 17. In this article you will learn about what you can see today in this building. We are also interested in everything related to such a famous person as S. Konenkov: a memorial museum-workshop, the sculptor’s work and his biography.
Church of st. Dmitry Solunsky
The building where the Konenkov Memorial Museum is located is an object of cultural heritage of our country, a monument of culture and history. At this place used to be the church of St. Dmitry Solunsky. In 1625 this temple was founded and was rebuilt in the Empire style at the beginning of the XIX century. He asked the architectural appearance of the whole of the Holy Square, which is called today Pushkin. Near the church was in the 1920s the famous literary cafe "Pegasus Stall", which was visited by imagists. Often A. Mariengof, S. Yesenin, N. Klyuyev, A. Duncan, A. Tairov and others came here.
Residential complex on the site of the church
The church in 1934 was dismantled. In 1939-1941 in its place built a house on the project of A.G. Mordvinov, a famous architect. He is also the author of a number of buildings located on Tverskaya. Massive walls of the building are made of light brick. The facade was decorated with balconies, intricate reliefs, turrets of the eastern type and bay windows. A ballerina statue crowned the corner tower. Its author is the sculptor Motovilov. Due to poor preservation, at the end of 1950 it was decided to dismantle the statue.
What is famous for the house designed by Mordvinov?
The house is interesting, in addition to architectural features, and the famous people who lived in it. At different times, its inhabitants were A.B. Goldenweiser, a musician whose apartment is today a branch of the Museum. Glinka, M.I. Gudkov, aircraft designer, G.I. Gorin, satirist and playwright.
Until 1950, the monument to A.S. Pushkin was at the beginning of Tversky Boulevard. It was created by A.M. Opekushin, a famous sculptor, in 1880. This monument was liked by Sergei Timofeevich. I was very glad that the sculptor Konenkov could see him from the windows of the workshop.
The workshop museum, now located on the site of a residential building, has its own history. Let's talk about how it was created.
Museum Creation
On Tverskaya street, in the house number 17, from 1947 to 1971 lived Konenkov Sergey Timofeevich. After his death, a government decree was issued, according to which it was decided to create a memorial museum in the workshop studio where Konenkov (sculptor) lived and worked. The Academy of Arts of the USSR and the Ministry of Culture carried out work on the formation of his collection and exposition. For the centenary of the sculptor, in 1974, this museum was opened. The creativity of the sculptor S. Konenkov is presented in it as fully as possible.
What is a Konenkov museum?
It includes a workshop room, as well as a memorial part: an office, living rooms located on the second floor, a living room and a hall. Until today, it was possible to preserve all the features of the interior, which was made according to Konenkov's personal project. To date, the exposition presented here is the most significant and largest collection of works by this master. She represents most fully all the stages of his creative biography. The extensive library, manuscripts of books and articles, Konenkov’s notebooks, and a collection of photographs that include images of the master’s works remaining in the United States are of great value.
The museum today collaborates with galleries and exhibition halls of the country. Within its walls are exhibitions of works not only by Konenkov himself, but also by his students, as well as works by young artists and sculptors.
Lobby
Konenkov's famous self-portrait, made of gypsum (1954), is located in the lobby. He was awarded the Lenin Prize. Also here is one of the most poetic and sophisticated female images - a portrait of the sculptor's wife, Margarita Konenkova, created in 1918 from wood. The lobby presents the original furniture of the master’s work, made of roots and stumps (armchairs "Boa", "Owl", "Swan", etc.), in which the images and forms are borrowed from nature. One of the most interesting sights of the collection is this unique set.
Workshop room
The workshop exhibits the main exposition. Here are the early works related to the student period: “The Stoneborer” (1897), “Reading the Tatar” (1893), works of the “Silver Age”, in particular, works that were included in the treasury of the sculpture of our country. This, for example, “Bach” is the pearl of the museum of interest to us, a work in which the author rose to a monumental synthetic image, extraordinary in strength of generalization; several compositions on the theme of "Samson", "Paganini".
"Forest Series" and female portraits
The famous "Forest Series" is of constant interest to many visitors to this museum. The work of the sculptor S. Konenkov reveals the national Russian character and demonstrates his high skill in woodworking. This series includes such works as the relief “Feast” (1910), “We are Yelninsky” (1942), “Lesovik” (1909), “An Old Man” (1909), as well as the work “Bacchus” created in 1916 with malachite eyes. " It is worth noting that the tree was not only material for fabulous and fantastic images in the work of Konenkov. The sculptor, masterfully using the plastic properties of this material, created in 1918 a portrait of M.I. Konenkova, full of charm, as well as the harmoniously perfect figure of the Magnolia woman in 1934.
Portraits of contemporaries
For a long creative life, Sergei Timofeevich created an excellent gallery of portraits of various of his contemporaries, outstanding figures of science and culture, in which his unique gift was manifested to subtly feel the features of spiritual wealth and the nature of the person, his personality. Among them, one can note the psychological portraits of Albert Einstein, Ivan Pavlov, Charles Hilder, Sergey Rachmaninov, Nadezhda Plevitskaya, Nikolai Feshin, Maxim Gorky, as well as the famous portraits of this writer’s granddaughter, Peshkova Martha Maximovna, and Ninochka, her daughter - works that are characterized by wealth emotional nuances. All of them are full of inner peace and purity.
In 1935, Sergey Konenkov, a sculptor, no doubt talented, created a portrait of Albert Einstein. To this day, he is considered one of the most successful images of this great scientist. A portrait of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, completed in 1933, is considered the pinnacle of Konenkov’s work. In it, the master managed to convey the whole complex gamut of various emotional states and create an image full of inner psychology and tragedy.
Religious subjects in the work of Konenkov
In the work of Konenkov in the late 1920s, completely new plastic and plot motifs appeared - the sculptor turns to religious subjects. The Gospel cycle is the comprehensive and only complete expression of Konenkov’s religious quest for sculpture. The following works are presented in the museum: the “Prophet” created from plaster in 1928, “John” and “James” from terracotta in 1928, as well as images of Christ in plaster and wood.
Recent work Konenkova
The sculptor in the last years of his life was fond of, first of all, plastic experiments. He made attempts to combine various forms of art, which were expressed in the synthesis of painting and sculpture, the desire to combine the latter with sound and movement. All this is embodied in "Cosmos", a musical sculptural instrument, which can be considered one of the first installations of the period of the 1950s in Russian art.
Konenkov until the end of his life remained a bold experimenter and innovator in art, the broadest erudition of man, a thinker who deeply experienced the events of that time. Therefore, we can say that it was not without reason that he called his final work “My Century”.
Short biography of Konenkov
So, we described the Konenkov Museum. This sculptor was born in 1874, on June 28, in the village of Karakovichi (today it is located in the Smolensk region, Yelninsky district). Below is a portrait of Pavel Korin.
By nationality, he is Belarusian, grew up in a peasant family. Konenkov studied at MUZHVZ, after which he studied with Professor Beklemishev in St. Petersburg, at the Higher Art School. His thesis ("Samson Tearing the Bond") was considered too revolutionary and destroyed by order of the Academy of Arts.
In 1897, the sculptor Konenkov makes trips to Germany, Italy and France. His biography at that time was marked by the fact that he performed at the end of the 19th century with “The Stoneboy”, a realistic sculpture. Konenkova was caught in Moscow by the revolutionary events of 1905. He creates under their impression a series of portraits of the participants in the clashes on Presnya. Also in 1905, he designed the Filippov cafe located on Tverskaya Street, and in 1910 he created a bas-relief “Feast”.
The sculptor Konenkov, whose work we are interested in, visited Egypt and Greece in 1912. At this time, he worked on the Forest Series. The tree is widely used in it, various methods of its processing are presented. Forest for Konenkov - a symbol of beauty, the embodiment of the elemental forces of nature. The sculptor uses folk carving methods, creatively reinterprets the images of ancient legends in his works. In parallel with this cycle, he is also working on “Greek” (“Gorus” and “Young Man”).
This sculptor was one of the first Russian masters of the turn of the 19th-20th centuries to depict a naked female body. Often his work is sustained in the tradition of wooden carving, folk Russian art. Let us note here "Caryatid (1918)," Firebird "(1915)," Winged "(1913).
Konenkov supported the October Revolution, participated in the implementation of the plan of the so-called monumental propaganda. He created, in particular, a monument "Stepan Razin" for Red Square.
Konenkov in 1922 married Vorontsova Margarita Ivanovna and went to the United States. Here the couple lived for 22 years (mainly in New York). This period of his work includes works related to reflections on the themes of the Apocalypse, the Bible. These are drawings depicting the apostles, prophets, Christ, as well as sketches for cosmogony.
Sergei Konenkov was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
So, we examined the memorial museum and the work of the sculptor S. Konenkov. His works today are known not only in our country, but throughout the world.