The editor-in-chief of the AD website Sofia Rauf and the creators of the “Cities» project & People” walked through the unique Moscow quarter — the town of artists on Maslovka, looked into the workshops of artists and sculptors, and also got acquainted with the unique process of creating lithographs in the lithographic workshop.

Sofia Rauf

EmailPinterestVKonkakte

EmailPinterestVKonkakte

The artists’ town on Verkhnyaya Maslovka was conceived as a separate quarter and a real “city within a city” with its own residential buildings, workshops, library, exhibition halls and even pottery kilns. All this was intended to create living conditions and a creative environment for the development of Soviet art. The initiators of the creation of the artists’ town were Maxim Gorky and Igor Grabar. For the construction of the town, a vacant lot was chosen in the Maslovka area on the site of the burned-down Mezhrabpom-Rus factory. At that time, this area was built up with dilapidated wooden mansions. “The former philistine Moscow street was conquered by Soviet artists,” the Soviet press wrote at that time.

The project of the artists’ town on Maslovka.

The architectural project of the town was entrusted to a group of rationalist architects ASNOV — V. F. Krinsky, A.M. Rukhlyadev (the authors of the building of the Northern River Station) Yu. N. Gerasimov, L. M. Lisenko and engineer Yu. S. Rubinstein. According to their building plan, the town was a complex of buildings in the form of a ship: workshops, residential buildings, an exhibition pavilion and an art university building. It was assumed that the artists’ town would become a “Russian Montmartre”, but not all plans were realized. From 1930 to 1954, four buildings were built: in 1930, house 9 (building W according to plan) on Verkhnyaya Maslovka; in 1931-1932, house 2 on Petrovsko—Razumovskaya Alley (building B); in 1935-1937, house 1 on Verkhnyaya Maslovka (Building A); the last in 1954 there House 3 (building B) was also built.

House 9 was the first to be completed, and its appearance corresponds to all the principles of rationalism architecture: strict asymmetric facades, geometric glazing, functionalism in everything. The house consists of two volumes — U-shaped and rectangular. The U-shaped one is designed for apartments, and the rectangular one is for workshops. It was in this house that Igor Grabar, Alexander Matveev, Vladimir Tatlin and other important artists of that era worked. In the same house, a dining room, a kindergarten, and a library were organized on the roof — all in the best traditions of commune houses. A library with rare editions existed in this house until 2009, and after a fire broke out there, it was decided to move it.

The first house in the town of artists on Maslovka, 1930. Source: pastvu.com/p/359740

Now four houses with workshops and apartments are still inhabited in the village. Mostly the heirs of the dynasties of artists and sculptors live in them, to whom the Moscow Union of Artists allocates workshops, but there are also new residents, whom we also met.

House No. 1

The first house we went to with the “Cities» project & People”, — house No. 1. One of the main architectural artifacts of this house is an old elevator. Artists are fighting for it and are not allowed to replace it with a new one, because now they are nowhere to be found. As for the decor of public spaces, time has stopped here: floors, window frames, doors — everything is original and perfectly conveys the spirit of the Soviet past.

The first stop in our tour is the workshop of the young artist Varya Tereshchenko, one of the representatives of the Tereshchenko dynasty. Her grandfather Nikolai Ivanovich Tereshchenko was a famous Soviet painter, and her father and mother are engaged in painting to this day. Varya Tereshchenko is a real native of the village on Maslovka. She was born in a residential building No. 3, and from childhood she began painting in the workshop of her grandfather Nikolai Ivanovich Tereshchenko.

“I didn’t have a question about who I would be when I grew up. I always knew I wanted to be an artist. And my grandfather was my teacher in every sense — like a master of martial arts. I was only twelve when he left. On the one hand, it is a great tragedy for me that our training was interrupted so quickly, and on the other hand, it made me grow up dramatically both as a person and as an artist. I was left on my own professionally and started looking for my way on my own at a fairly early age.”

Varya began studying at the Moscow Academic Art Lyceum, where her whole family studied. Classical education was not to her liking, and Varya moved to London, where she studied at the London School of Arts, and then for several more years at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. There the artist met her mentor, who unwittingly identified the main theme of Vari’s work — feminism. “Most of my practice is devoted in one way or another to the problem of women, mainly violence against women. My thesis in Italy was about this. Since then, I have continued to work in this direction. In 2018, my first solo exhibition took place, where I showed a documentary painting related to feminism and a total installation.”

Now Vari’s workshop keeps all these works in itself, and canvases depicting pain, horror, suffering look at us from different angles. At the same time, Varya says that she is absolutely comfortable to exist next to such paintings. Recently, the artist has been working on atypical themes for herself. If earlier, since childhood, she was drawn to political themes, themes of social inequality, now Varya has reconfigured her look inside and explores “parts of her subpersonality” in painting.

The next point of our excursion was the workshop of Varya’s mother, the artist Alyona Babich—Ostrovskaya (she shares the space with her husband Nikolai Tereshchenko). History is kept in this workshop — it once belonged to Varya’s grandfather, and a lot here speaks about it. In the area with cozy armchairs there is a self—portrait of Nikolai Ivanovich and one of his “program” works — “How beautiful this world is”.

In another part of the workshop — the work of his son, Nikolai Nikolaevich Tereshchenko. One of the artist’s latest series is “Tablets». The peculiarity of these works is that they are all made on household waste: cartons, packages of bizarre shapes. On them, Nikolai Nikolaevich depicted a whole fantastic world with colorful animals.

House No. 9

Workshops of sculptors and painters are located in the house No. 9 on Verkhnyaya Maslovka. The sculptors’ workshops are located on the ground floor and face the shadow side — thus changes in natural light cannot affect the work. High ceilings and windows allow you to create large-scale sculptures and transport them from the workshops.

One of the workshops in house No. 9 is occupied by a young sculptor Nadia Likhogrud and her dog Vesna. Light walls, high ceiling, huge windows and two basements for storing clay — these are the main introductions for the sculptor’s workshop. Around the perimeter of the room there are storage systems and shelves filled with Nadia’s works.

“Right now I’m still mostly engaged in ceramics, I like to perpetuate images in this style. My first series is dedicated to the childhood of the 90s and nostalgic memories of the time when we could go out into the yard and enjoy simple games with friends. There are also sculptures from the series “Winter Fun”, “Masquerade». All of them are made in the same style — like polaroid pictures. All the works are made by hand, without the use of forms — in such a careless manner I wanted to give them dynamics and breathe life into them.”

Nadia has been living in this workshop for three years, and before that she graduated from the Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after V. I. Surikov. Nadia’s acquaintance with this area began during her student days. At the Institute, one of her teachers was Hugo Matveyevich Manizer, the son of the famous Soviet sculptor Matvey Manizer, a teacher of VKhUTEMAS, the author of sculptures at the Revolution Square metro station.

“Hugo Matveyevich invited students to his family workshop, which was located in an old mansion on the 8th of March Street. Hugo Matveyevich’s mother is also a sculptor — she decorated the Dynamo metro station with porcelain reliefs with different sports. When I first arrived at the Manizer workshop, I got off at the Dynamo metro station and fell in love with these reliefs. And when everything turned out with my workshop in the town of artists on Maslovka, I thought it was very symbolic to work in the same area where I was once so impressed by the works of the great ones.”

When asked what the life of a modern sculptor consists of, Nadia answers: “I divide the work to order and creativity. To order, I do very different things, which just did not happen. One of the latest works is a huge relief of the goddess for the yoga studio “Ashram». I like to work together with architects and create objects for the space, like, for example, this huge hand that I made for the bar. As for creativity, so far I have focused on ceramic sculpture and am developing in this.”

Behind the wall of Nadia’s workshop is the museum of the sculptor Alexander Matveev. As Nadia says, such a neighborhood gives her strength every day and sets her up for a working mood.

One of the main features of this particular workshop is the constructive inventions that Alyona shows us. Rotating platforms and movable structures that allow you to transfer sculptures from the workplace to the exit from the workshop are still working, and Alyona actively uses them. The Shelovs’ workshop preserves the memory of the previous inhabitants, and this creates an absolutely magical feeling.

The workshop became the last stop in the house No. 9Alyona Shelova, daughter of the sculptor Vadim Shelov. Vadim Shelov worked in the field of easel, monumental, monumental-decorative and medallion plastics. His authorship belongs to many memorial monuments both in Moscow and in other cities of Russia, and some of his works are in the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery. Vadim actively participated in the creation of the memorial workshop — museum of sculptor Alexander Matveev, and also achieved registration as an architectural monument of the artists’ town on Maslovka.

House No. 3

The house at number 3, which is now adjacent to house number 1, was built in 1949-1954. They have one architect — Vladimir Krinsky, the author of the projects of the Komsomolskaya metro station and the co-author of the building of the Northern River Station. Its facades differ from the rationalist ninth house. Krinsky has reworked the classical heritage here: the decor uses stucco, rustication, pilasters, reliefs with floral motifs and socialist symbols framing large windows of workshops, a relief frieze and a crowning cornice with brackets. In this house, our stop was the unique lithographic workshop “Lito”, whose history was told by its “keeper” Ekaterina Smirnova. Graphic artist Ekaterina Smirnova has been engaged in printmaking for more than 30 years, she graduated from the Surikov Institute and is now a teacher there, in the lithography workshop.

In house No. 3, a lithographic workshop appeared from the moment the house was built as an experiment, and then famous graphic artists worked in it. The workshop has never been a print run, but it has always had a good set of materials, stones — people came here to create, which is why it was called experimental. In the 1990s, the workshop closed and moved between different tenants. In the early 2000s, Ekaterina Smirnova decided to revive this business and reopened the workshop. She made repairs on her own and reinvented the scheme of work.

Ekaterina gave graphic artists and students the opportunity to work in this rare technique, which can only be practiced here — in this workshop. All the materials needed to create lithographs are very rare and expensive, and the process itself is painstaking and requires certain skills. In this way, Ekaterina literally revives antique printing techniques.

“Mostly artists who know how to work with the material come here. But there are also those who do not know how, but want to learn, and we help them in this. I have a very good young team of enthusiasts. They don’t pay a lot of money here, but you have the right to do work for free on rare and expensive materials. There are no technical staff here either, so artists help students and vice versa.”

Ekaterina also organizes exhibitions and master classes. Every December, the workshop “Lito” hosts the event “New Year’s Card». Artists come to the workshop to work for free and make a small Christmas card, and then the staff sets the table and invites guests who can buy these unique cards as a gift for their loved ones.

The town of artists on Maslovka seems frozen in time, and if you want to immerse yourself in this atmosphere, be sure to sign up for a tour of the “City & People” and go on a journey through time.

Photo: Natalie Hertz

Original content from the site