The centenary anniversary of a sculptor Mikhail Anikushin was celebrated in the Presidential Library

The Presidential Library hosted the events dedicated to the 100th anniversary of a sculptor Mikhail Konstantinovich Anikushin. The “October’s age-mate” multimedia exhibition, which will be running until November 16, 2017, was opened and a screening of the “Introduction” movie with the participation of its director Zhanna Romanova was held this day.

The exhibition clearly reveals the history of the creation of the most known works of Mikhail Konstantinovich, among which are a monument to Alexander Pushkin on the Square of Arts in St. Petersburg, a monument to the heroic defenders of Leningrad, a monument to Anton Chekhov in Moscow and many others. Photographs and documents from the master’s family private archive are being exposed on the plasma screens.

Opening the exhibition, the daughter of the sculptor Nina Mihailovna Anikushina told: “My father, Mikhail Konstantinovich Anikushin, was born in 1917, he is in the full sense of this word an epoch-man, witnessed and survived along with his time all social cataclysms, received a brilliant education, which allowed him revealing his talent to the maximum extent. And how he knew and loved Leningrad with its history, he could spend hours walking around the city and telling about this or that palace or a mention, about the masterpieces of Klodt or the column of Montferrand at the Palace Square! When he started work on the monument to Pushkin, he suffered for a long time, reviewing variants of sketches, thinking how to inscribe the sculpture in the magnificent ensemble of Mikhailovskaya Square. And finally he found the right decision that made this sculpture the semantic and architectural center of this area in Petersburg.”

Some materials that Nina Mikhailovna handed to the Presidential Library have already been digitized and added to the electronic fund, describing the most remarkable events of Anikushin’s life. In the near future, a collection of Mikhail Konstantinovich will be shaped from them.

After the official opening of the exhibition in the Presidential Library over the course of the next in a row cinema club, a screening of the “Introduction” movie, dedicated to the sculptor, with the participation of the director Zhanna Romanova was held.

Articulated in the movie’s title concept of “Introduction” is multifaceted in the film by Romanova: this is from one hand the presentation of professional work of the People’s Artist of the USSR, Hero of Socialist Labor, laureate of the Lenin Prize M. K. Anikushin; and a disclosure of his unique personality from the other; and, most importantly, perhaps, “Introduction” is how the sculptor is representing his next hero along the course of work on his image and expresses it in his unique plastic.

“I was too young then, — Zhanna Romanova said, opening the meeting of the cinema club, — and idolized Mikhail Konstantinovich, trying to get into the very essence of the master’s thinking process of work on sculpture — from its scheme to an embodiment. That why there is nit so much words in the movie, the camera is absorbed by observation of the creation and meticulous rendering of a drawing of the monument to Chekhov, later installed in Moscow. The sculptor impressed our filmmaking team by the fact that he has communicated with us without any ceremonies and we really enjoyed working with him.”

The director has managed to convey through the close-ups all the tension of the sculptor’s thought, busy with the most complicated decoding of the writer’s personality, which Anikushin understood and tried to put into his work. This silent dialogue of the two artists is perfectly represented in the film by Zhanna Romanova, including the beautiful camera work of Nikolai Vinogradsky.

Works of Mikhail Anikushin were forever included in the “gold list” of the best architectural and monumental monuments of St. Petersburg, and his great creative heritage added to the extensive electronic stock of the Presidential Library will always remain in the history of Russia.