#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The bright painter Georgy Knyazhevsky worked in the traditions of the realistic school, and was fluent in form, space, and color. He was born on an extraordinary day, February 29, a date that occurs once every four years. In 2024 the museum celebrates the master’s 106th birth anniversary. The Norilsk Museum’s art gallery exhibits his ten paintings and one graphic work. The exhibition also includes photographs from the artist’s personal archive.
“Knyazhevsky came to the Arctic with his wife and daughter in 1959 at the invitation of a relative, at the age of 40, already having extensive experience in teaching and exhibition activities. He worked as a designer in the Norilsk combine’s industrial aesthetics department. In the late 1950s, he was the only professional artist in Norilsk and the first to organize a large city art exhibition and unite young talents around him”, the museum said.
Since 1967 he taught at the Norilsk children’s art school. The master’s paintings are kept in the collections of the State Historical Museum, Ivanovo Regional Art Museum, Krasnoyarsk Art Museum named after V.I. Surikov, Norilsk Museum.
Georgy Knyazhevsky was supported by his family in his creative endeavors. His wife Anna and daughter Lyudmila posed for many portraits:
“It was always painfully difficult for Ludmila to pose, but she and her mother constantly helped the father out. So the portrait of the Revolution leader Lenin has the mother’s hands, and for the image of Zavenyagin the painter had to put on a theatrical jacket, in which the shoulders were supported with pillows…”
One of the most famous paintings by Knyazhevsky in Norilsk is a group portrait of the Norilsk combine’s construction managers, headed by Zavenyagin – At the Future Giant Model.
For many years, the artist painted portraits of labor heroes, Soviet leaders and statesmen – for ceremonial halls and festive street demonstrations: such an important task was trusted only to the best artists. Several of those paintings are now on display in the gallery – along with original painted images of a metallurgist, an honored teacher, and a schoolgirl. There is also a portrait of the artist’s wife, his self-portrait and landscapes.
The exhibition in the art gallery’s hall will run until March 10.
Previously, the Norilsk Museum specialists taught northerners how to feed birds correctly. We also wrote about an exhibition of graphic works from besieged Leningrad.
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Text: Angelika Stepanova, Photo: Norilsk Museum
