Valentin Andreyevich Galotschkin

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Valentin Galochkin ( Russian Валентин Андреевич Галочкин ., Scientific transliteration Valentín Andréjewič Gáločkin * 22. November 1928 in Dnepropetrovsk , USSR , † 3. November 2006 in Moscow , Russia ) was a Soviet ( Ukrainian - Russian ) sculptor .

Valentin Galotschkin, Wismar Wood Symposium (2001)

Life

Galotschkin's father, Andrei Andrejewitsch Galotschkin, was a Russian from the Kaluga region . He was the head of a canteen and later became a foreman at an artist workshop. Galotschkin's mother, Olga Grigorjewna Libermann, was a Jew born in Tschyhyryn in the Ukraine. She worked as an accountant. Honesty and fairness were valued in the family, and so the sculptor followed these principles all his life.

During the Second World War , the Galotschkin family was evacuated first to the Krasnodar region and later to Uzbekistan . In 1944 the family returned to Dnepropetrovsk. From 1944 to 1949 Galotschkin studied sculpture at the Art School in Dnepropetrovsk (among others with Professor Schiradkowa), from 1949 to 1955 at the Kiev Art School . Professor Max Isajewitsch Gelman had a great influence on him.

His diploma thesis "Stahlwerker" (1956) was cast in bronze by the university and bought by the Ministry of Culture of the USSR and exhibited in the Lviv State Museum . Immediately after graduating, he was hired as a leading artist at the artist workshop in Kiev, where Galotschkin stayed until 1959.

At the age of 29, Galotschkin was nominated for the Lenin Prize, the highest prize in the USSR, for his work “Hiroshima” (1957) . The 83-year-old Sergei Timofejewitsch Konjonkow received the award .

The sculptor's career stalled due to conflicts with the party administration. Galotschkin did not join the CPSU and avoided actively supporting Soviet propaganda because he saw his task as a sculptor in creating works of art and not in pleasing party officials. Before 1991 he received several state commissions for propaganda monuments in Russia and the Ukraine, but in these works too he strove to show general human values ​​and to reduce communist pathos .

In 1968 Galotschkin was awarded a prize at an international festival for young artists in Vienna . In the 1960s and 1970s, he traveled to the UK , France , Egypt and Greece . He was very impressed with the Louvre . The artist had wanted to visit the "Temple of Art" all his life. When he stood at the entrance and saw the Nike of Samothrace , he suddenly wept and did not venture into the museum for two hours.

Galochkin (1980)

In 1958 Galotschkin married the Ukrainian sculptor Julia Ukader. Together they had a daughter, Tatjana Rjabokon, b. Galochkina, who became a painter. In 1978 he married the film expert Elena Bokschitskaja, with whom he had the daughter Anna Bokschitskaja, who works as a journalist. In 1980 he married Lidija Galotschkina , b. Abramenko a Russian sculptor and graphic artist. With her he had two sons, Igor Galotschkin (programmer) and Andrei Galotschkin (engineer). Galotschkin played sports, mainly swimming and volleyball , and was a hunter and fisherman.

Because of the Chernobyl disaster , the sculptor moved with his family from Kiev to Moscow in 1986. After the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, Galotschkin, like other artists, had economic problems and lived from selling his old works. In 1999 he emigrated to Wismar in Germany . In 2002 he moved to Hamburg . On November 3, 2006, Galotschkin died of a heart attack in Moscow while on a trip to Russia . He was buried in the Nachabino cemetery on November 8, 2006.

plant

The early works, u. a. the thesis "Stahlwerker" (1956) follow the tradition of socialist realism ( Muchina , Schadr , Merkurow ).

His first significant work, "Hiroshima" (1957), which Galotschkin made famous in the USSR, is dedicated to the victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in World War II . In “Hiroshima” the artist expresses his protest against nuclear weapons and war, his call to humanity.

  • "Steelworker", 1956

  • "Hiroshima", 1957

  • "VI Lenin ", 1960

From 1957 to 1991 Galochkin made dozens of Gala-style monuments and busts of Lenin and other Soviet politicians. The sculptor, however , never accepted this propaganda- serving, state-appointed work as art. As a young artist he was sobered up by the principles of socialist realism . His work is based on Western Europe and the USA , studying Henry Moore , Ossip Zadkine and others.

A number of Galochkin's monumental works are dedicated to World War II . However, the view of the artist, who himself witnessed the evacuation and death of some of his relatives, was far from official propaganda. Instead of marching soldiers and Soviet leaders in solemn poses, he portrays the grief and pain that war causes people.

The work “Abschied” 1957, which is carved from a whole piece of wood, shows the soldier's last kiss when he parted with his wife. In the 1964 monument “Sacrifice”, the human figure is formed by a break in the stone, as if it was created by a projectile explosion. The missing person is only drawn in the air with his trace and silhouette . Babyn Yar Memorial (other name: "violence") 1964 - a pregnant woman who was hewn in two - a symbol of the shooting of the Jews . The 1975 “Widows” monument depicts an old and a young woman (mother and wife) holding the helmet of the fallen soldier. In the work “Trauertor” 1976 “women suffer a painful loss, just like atlases”. “Monument to the burned village” 1979 - a girl on fire.

  • "Farewell", 1957

  • "Sacrifice", 1964

  • "Babin Jar", 1964

  • "Widows", 1975

  • "Mourning Gate", 1976

  • “Monument to the burned village”, 1976

The main theme of Galochkin's panel carving was the female figure and the female torso . Several of his works, which realistically depict the female figure, have been lost. Galotschkin changes from the realistic representation of the naked body to the symbolic one. In his works "Königin" 1965, "Fluß" 1970, "Cellistin" 1975, the female figure is stylized and transformed into an interplay of silhouettes, volumes and "aerial drawings". Galotschkin develops his own view of sculpture as a set of silhouettes that form the air surrounding the sculpture. The sculpture creates a different silhouette from different angles.

  • "Mermaid", 1975

  • Study ("Slavery"), 1965

  • Study ("Spring"), 1975

  • "Queen", 1965

  • "River", 1970

  • "Cellist", 1975

The geometric figure ellipse , in which the sculptor sees a basis for composition and a "drive to harmony", has a special meaning in Galotschkin's work . “Torsos” 1969 and 1975 bring the female body closer to the ellipse, transforming into tense, harmonious and balanced forms.

  • "Bending Torso", 1969

  • "Torso", 1975

  • "Torsos", 1975

Quotes (from work notes)

Even beautiful, but intentional and therefore intrusive rhythms and silhouettes are also a lie, what has been thought out and therefore the emptiness and the cold.

Only dispassion can have the quality of eternity.

If there is an objective term “beauty” and if the beautiful, in this case, has to remain beautiful forever, then one has to draw on the propositions of the universe.

It is not the delicacy that makes the work immortal and great, but rather its naked, sincere truth and purity, just like the earth itself, open to people from behind.

What constitutes this beauty of the object? Maybe first the harmony, the inner rhythm and the frictionlessness, rationality and hidden expediency.

In order to be of value to other people and not just to yourself, your inner world should be humane

There should be a mystery in the work of art

literature

  • Galochkina L. Valentin Galochkin. 2018, Viaprinto, Munich. ISBN 978-3-00-059 305-5 online online2
  • Галочкина Л. Н. Валентин Галочкин: жизнь и работа скульптора. Из рабочих записей Валентина Галочкина. 2010, Москва, Анкил, 336 с. с илл., ISBN 9785864763049 .
  • Объединение московских скульпторов 1992-2007 . Каталог произведений московских скульпторов к 15-летию ОМС, изд.МСХ, Москва, 67 стр. с илл., 2007. C. 14 [1]
  • Андрієвська В. Л., Беличко Ю. В. На межі 2-3 тисячоліття. Художники Києва. Iз древа життя Українського, образотворче мистецтво. 2009, Києв, Криниця. 523 с.
  • Galochkina L. Valentin Galochkin. 2 volumes. 2007, Hamburg, Fotobuch.de, 653353-H96C13G
  • Вольценбург О. Э. Советский биографический словарь. под. ред. Гориной Т. Н. Москва, Искусство, 1972. С. 399. [2]
  • Опыт как реальность. Конечна Р. Новости МСХ, 2010 (№11) [3]
  • Tomski about "Hiroshima" 1957 in Томский Н. В., Шевцов И. М. Прекрасное и народ: сборник статей. Москва, Из-во Академии художеств СССР, 1961. С. 144. [4]

Web links

Commons : Valentin Galochkin  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sculptures and nudes by Valentin Andrejewitsch Galochkin on evensi.de ; accessed on February 18, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Galotschkin, Valentin Andreevich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Га́лочкин, Валенти́н Андре́евич (Russian); Gáločkin, Valentín Andréjewič (scientific transliteration)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Soviet (Ukrainian-Russian) sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH November 22, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Dnepropetrovsk , Soviet Union
DATE OF DEATH November 3, 2006
Place of death Moscow , Russia