Beginning
Standard designs dominated Soviet architecture. Identical community centers and movie theaters, hospitals, and factory buildings were erected all over the country. However, it was customary to decorate the facades and interiors of these standard buildings with mosaics and paintings. Such works were carried out on a competitive basis by professional monumental artists who were members of the Union of Artists of the USSR and were approved by an art council.
As a result, the dreary standard buildings scattered throughout the country not only acquired their own identity and became recognizable among many similar ones, but often turned into landmarks of the city, district, region, and even the republic.
Spring of Turkmenistan. Mosaic panel on the façade of the Palace of Culture of the Hydrotechnical Builders of the Karakum Canal. Mary, Turkmenistan. 1975.
Today, we are witnessing a flourishing of architecture and a decline in monumental art. Today, many monumental works from the Soviet period have been consigned to oblivion. Some of them are entirely out of public view, “sewn up”, while others are ruthlessly dismantled and disappear completely. Moscow Artists’ Union, which recognized the quality of projects, does not make any attempts to conserve the pieces.
Now Soviet monumental art is often completely identified with large-scale art (large paintings and monuments). This leads to a dismissive attitude towards Soviet monumental art in its entirety as the art of a totalitarian regime. Obviously, it is a responsibility of art historians to emphasize the necessary points, to name the heroes and conformists of Soviet monumental art.
Father. 1960s.
Canvas, oil, 88 × 64 cm.
Yuri Kafengauz was born in 1929 in Moscow to the family of historian Bernhard Borisovich z (1894-1969), later a doctor of science and professor, and his wife, artist Tamara Andreyevna Kafengauz (1893-1969), née Prudkovskaya.
Mother. 1960s.
Canvas, oil, 88 × 64 cm.
The choice of the artist’s profession for Yuri Kafengauz was largely predetermined – he grew up surrounded by books and paintings, in a house where everyone drew. His father his youth studied under K.F.Yuon (famous Russian painter and theatre designer, associated with “Mir Iskusstva” group). Kafengauz Senior used to cover the margins of his manuscripts with portraits of historical figures, relatives, and friends. Kafengauz’s aunt, Nadezhda Andreyevna Udaltsova (1886-1961), was a famous representative of the Russian avant-garde, who was also her nephew’s first painting teacher.
Kafengauz’ professional career was thriving. In 1948-1955, he studied at the Department of Monumental and Decorative Art at the Moscow Stroganoff State Academy of Art and Design. There, Yuri Kafengauz studied in the studio of one of the leading monumental artists of that time, Vasily Bordichenko. His other teachers included famous Soviet artists Sergei Gerasimov and Dmitry Domogatsky. To achieve a broader education, Yuri Kafengauz, concurrently with studying at the Stroganov Academy, studied for three years at the art history school at the Philology department of Moscow State University.
Original — Korean Woman (1954, encaustic, 88 × 64 cm)
– artist’s signature in the upper left corner.
Since 1954, the artist has regularly participated in republican, national, and foreign exhibitions. His first painting, “Korean Woman”, created in his student years using the encaustic technique, was exhibited twice in 1954: at the First “Exhibition of Works by Young Artists of Moscow and the Moscow Region” and at the “National Art Exhibition” in the Tretyakov Gallery, and, in 1955, in Warsaw, Poland. Since 1956, this painting has been in the collection of the Tuganov North Ossetian Republican Art Museum in Vladikavkaz.
Korean Woman, author’s replica (1959, canvas, oil, 80 × 59 cm)
– artist’s signature in the lower left corner.
Kafengauz’s bachelor’s project, multi-figure composition, “The Decembrist Uprising on Senate Square in 1825,” was acknowledged as one of the best in the class.
Sketch for the painting “The Decembrist Uprising on Senate Square, December 14, 1825.” 1955.
Cardboard, oil, 65 × 134 cm.
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B.Y. Kafengauz
“Among the historical compositions completed by diploma students, the work by Y. Kafengauz, ‘The Decembrists, ‘ stands out, intended for one of the halls of the Historical Museum. With all the historical authenticity and freedom of compositional solution, Kafengauz’s work is conceived as a monumental mural. The cold colors of a short December day are conveyed well. The figures and buildings are drawn as sharp silhouettes on the snow-covered square.” – V.P. Tolstoy, scholar of the Soviet monumental art, “Art” magazine,1955. Tolstoy also notes the truthfulness and drama of the scene, the artist’s attention to historical documents, and the in-depth work on the images.
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Immediately upon graduation, Yuri Kafengauz received a commission from the USSR Ministry of Culture to create another painting on the Decembrist Uprising for the next National exhibition. A year later, in 1956, Kafengauz became a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR (Moscow Union of Artists, MUA).
State commission – the painting “The Decembrist Uprising on Senate Square in 1825” (canvas, oil, 320 x 145) was handed over to the state in 1961. It is currently kept in the Archive and Art Fund of the State Museum and Exhibition Center “ROSIZO”. However, Yuri Kafengauzz himself did not consider this work finished and continuously revisited it throughout his life.
