англ / Memorial Studio of the Sculptor Anna Golubkina

Memorial Studio of the Sculptor Anna Golubkina

Since 1986 the All-Union (All Russia since 1994) Museum Association of the Tretyakov Gallery has included the A.Golubkina Studio Museum. This is the only museum dedicated to a sculptress in Europe. It was opened on 12 Bolshoi Levshinsky Pereulok in 1932. Anna Golubkina lived and worked in this house from 1910 to 1927. The studios’ exhibits comprise works donated to the state by her relatives in accordance with her last wishes. When the decision was taken to close the museum in 1952, its collection was divided between the Tretyakov Gallery and Russian Museum. In 1976 a major part of the collection was returned to the newly opened museum in the artist’s studio. Today it contains more than 1500 exhibits, including more than 200 sculptures.

A small part of the exhibition is occupied by a memorial to the artist. The living room on the second floor, which served as a bedroom and study for A.Golubkina, demonstrates the artist’s austere way of life. The memorial studio is especially interesting because it preserves the interior and atmosphere of a working studio: there are shelves for sculptures, mounts, frames and tools for using different techniques in her work. There is clay in a large box in the corner of the studio. Completed works are side by side with unfinished pieces. Russian intellectuals in the early 20th century visited this studio, among them M.Voloshin, M.Nesterov, Vyacheslav Ivanov and others.

The museum exhibits reveal the profound and diverse talent of the master. Anna Golubkina worked in completely different materials; clay, wood and marble (she always chiselled the sculpture herself). Her hands were capable of creating the sculpture’s surface, the Impressionistically rippled (Portrait of M.Sredina, 1903) or classically clear (Hooded Woman, 1913). Her style was always determined by the search for a precise emotional and plastic equivalent. Several important themes emerged from the artist’s creative life. One of them was the embodiment of natural elements (The Fog vase, 1899, Lilac, 1908, The Caryatid, 1911, "The Birch Tree", 1927). A special selection of her work is formed by symbolically abstract images associated with the spiritual atmosphere of the early 20th century (Walking Man, 1902, Sitting Man, 1912) which reflect Golubkina’s thoughts on human existence ("Swimmer" high relief or "The Wave" decorating the front of the Moscow Art Academic Theatre, 1902-1903, "Prisoners", 1908 et al). Her work on The New Testament theme was encapsulated in the intensely expressive images in The Last Supper (1911).

Golubkina created many portraits of her contemporaries (The Portrait of Andrei Bely, 1907). "Golubkina’s face is the nervous, intangible, weak and thoughtful but aware of many spiritual temptations face of our time", wrote Maximilian Voloshin in 1911.

The collection of works produced by one of the most brilliant masters of Russian art from the turn of the 19-20 centuries makes it possible to touch the peculiar world of sculpture, to see the sophistication and the abundance of plastic form, to estimate the specific behavior of different materials, to feel the infinite variety in the life of sculptured images.

GOLUBKINA Anna

1864, Zaraisk, Moscow Region – 1927, Zaraisk

Sculptor

She was born and brought up in the family which was traditionally occupied with vegetable farming. Her professional education started in Moscow in 1889 when she attended classes at the MSPSA. Having spent several months at the St.Petersburg Academy of Arts, she went to Paris for eighteen months in 1895. During her second trip there in 1897-1899 she got acquainted with A. Rodin who agreed to give her advice and had decisive influence on the development of Golubkina’s art. Her works displayed in Paris in 1899 won her the first recognition.

In the course of her creative life A.Golubkina produced portraits, genre compositions, sculpture groups, decorative sculpture, small forms.

The first personal exhibition of Golubkina was at the Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow in 1914-1915, and it had tremendous success which made it possible to regard her as a leading master of the Russian fine art in the early 20 century.

The creative work of A.Golubkina is hard to put into a rigid lattice of trends and styles. Her art is characterized with rude realism in the awareness of nature, with love for plastically rich surface, and emotionally intense profound images. All this keeps the interest to the creative heritage of the artist high.