#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. This area of Norilsk was built in the early 1960s, when the construction industry switched from Stalin-era buildings to standard Hrushchev-era buildings.
In addition, by that time, practice had shown that long straight streets did not protect the city from snow drifts, as expected. And designers began to propose ideas for building closed residential areas protected from wind and snow by a closed loop of courtyards.
Engineer Ierohim Epshteyn proposed his own version of residential development in this area. He conceived of a closed courtyards system, where a double line of buildings placed at right angles would create calm zones and protect the center from the wind. According to his plan, a triangular microdistrict was to be created with its own microclimate inside – a vast wind shadow. And the unusual arrangement of houses in such a scheme would have enlivened the monotonous urban layout. Interesting that two sides of this triangular microdistrict were eventually built: they run along Komsomolskaya and Nansen streets. Their houses are at an angle to the center line of the highways.
But, despite the unusual turn of the houses, the typical panel Hrushchev-era buildings looked rather monotonous and dull. The ends facing Komsomolskaya street were initially full of nondescript social advertising: for example, a dove of peace and a quatrain: “Let there always be sunshine…”, and small street posters.
In the late 1960s, a new artistic craze came to the city: young artists and architects arrived. In 1973, at the instigation of Nikolay Loy, a painter and chairman of the city art council, the RSFSR Art Fund production workshops were opened in Norilsk. The artist Vladimir (Lado) Surmava, who came to Norilsk from Georgia, also worked there. Nikolay Loy and Lado Surmava created the sketches for the panels on Komsomolskaya street. After the faded hand-drawn posters, their mosaic looked colorful and original.
Work on the first panels began in 1973. By 1976, there were already five of them – on the ends of houses 41a, 43a, 45a, 47a and 49b on Komsomolskaya street. The mosaics theme corresponded to the name of the street and the mood of Norilsk – a city of youth. The first panel, on the end of Komsomolskaya 41a, depicted the faces of a young man and a girl against the backdrop of mountains and tower headframes, with the inscription below them: Talnah is All-Union, Shock, Komsomol Construction Site. At the bottom of the mosaic there was a triple signature of the Norilsk artists: N. Loy, G. Nikiforov, P. Krasnoyarov. The characters in the other panels – young miners, cosmonauts, builders and athletes – were depicted abstractly. At first, the mosaic, however, was not to everyone’s liking; experts criticized it for the fact that “poster graphics techniques were used to create the monumental work”. But most Norilsk residents considered it a bright and unusual decoration for the street.
“The regional art council accepted the new work of Norilsk artists Loy and Surmava – three monumental mosaic panels on Komsomolskaya street. These are Space, Builders and Sport. The size of each panel is about 130 square meters. They are made of bright glazed mosaic tiles. The preliminary design lasted four months. On June 15, the artists began to implement their concept in nature. The city has received a good gift forever”.
This is what Zapolyarnaya Pravda newspaper wrote in October 1976. However, ‘forever’ did not work out. In the 1990s and 2012, two of the five mosaics were destroyed, the rest survived, but in poor condition.
In 2018, a project was launched to restore the mosaics, both to recreate those that were completely lost and to restore those that were partially preserved. This was undertaken by a team of Moscow artists led by Pavel Yudin. The missing fragments were reproduced using the façade painting technique. To recreate the panels from scratch, the artists used silicate paints. They managed to achieve historical similarity thanks to the sketches and photographs they found.
In the History Spot previous publication, we told how Zavenyagin street changed.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Norilsk residents and Nornickel Polar Division’s archives, Denis Kozhevnikov
