Icarus Theme
The theme of Icarus as an image of a person striving for the new and unknown in all areas of human knowledge (art, literature, science or technology) runs through all the works of Yuri Kafengauz.
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B.Y. Kafengauz
Since childhood, I remember the stories adults told about our family’s life in a communal apartment on Yakimanka street (until 1959), where, surprisingly, my father kept a live goose in the bathroom for some time. My father needed the goose, bought at a Pet Market, to paint the wings of “Icarus” from life. We laughingly recalled how my aunt Lilia, my father’s cousin and our neighbor in that apartment, when getting ready to wash, shouted: “Yura, put your goose away! It’s looking at me! I’m embarrassed!”
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Head of Icarus. 1967.
In 1967, Yuri proposed a sketch of “Icarus” for the interior design of the Central House of Writers. And literally a year later, when Yuri Gagarin died and Kaluzhskaya Zastava Square was renamed Gagarin Square (1968), my father took part in a competition for a monument to the first cosmonaut of the planet.
In Dream and in Reality. Reality.
Right panel of the diptych. 1990.
Gesso, oil. 64 × 61 cm.
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B.Y. Kafengauz
I remember very well the model that my father prepared for this competition: a square with its houses, lawns and trees, and in the middle – a large sculpture of a man with wings. I really liked this model, and I was sure that my father would win the competition.
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However, the monument to Yuri Gagarin on Gagarin Square in Moscow was erected only in 1980; its authors were sculptor Pavel Bondarenko, architects Yakov Belopolsky and F. M. Gazhevsky , and designer A. F. Sudakov.
In 1975, the Icarus theme resurfaced – my father proposed a sketch for the design of the University metro station; his “Icarus” was supposed to fly towards the sun on a blank wall at the end of the hall.
Icarus.
Design sketch for the decoration of the Universitet metro station. 1975. Plywood, paper, oil. 100 × 86 cm.
And finally, the painting “Icarus” occupies a central position in the latest painting composition by Yuri Kafengauz “Adam and Eve” (canvas, oil, 2008), consisting of 7 separate paintings, each of which has the right to an independent existence.
