The Y. Kruger School of Drawing and Painting in Minsk

Yakaŭ Kruger was born in Minsk, in 1868. In November of 1900, he returned to Minsk with a diploma of the Higher Pedagogical Course at St. Petersburg Academy of Arts hoping to become not just an art teacher but the first artist in his native town. It was not until 1904 that ‘owing to tireless efforts’ energetic Y. Kruger received the governor’s permission to set up “The School of Drawing and Painting”. The school’s task was ‘to provide the opportunity to receive art education and to prepare students for the enrolment in all educational institutions where drawing is a compulsory subject’. The compulsory subjects included the drawing of relief figures, style ornaments, antique gypsum heads, drawing from life, the theory of perspective, the studies of shadows and lights, and paints and their practical application.

During World War І, in 1915, Y. Kruger and his family moved deep into Russia. The functioning of the school was interrupted and it was not resumed due to a number of reasons when Y. Kruger returned to Minsk in 1921.

The school of painting directed by Y. Kruger in the absence of any other art educational institutions played a decisive role in the fate of many Belarusian artists. The life of the master himself was a good example to be followed. Almost all of Kruger’s talented pupils continued their studies in Vilna, Paris, Moscow.

The school gave impetus to Chaim Soutine and Mikhail Kikoine for the perfection of their skills and to become prominent artists of the School of Paris. Mikhail Staniuta (1881–1974) continued studies at the Higher Art and Technical Studios (Vkhutemas) (1918–1920) and like Kruger became a prominent teacher and a portrait painter. Vyachaslaŭ Rutsay (1905–1982) was in the 1920s a student of the Moscow Higher Art and Technical Studios (Vkhutemas) and educated later a pleiad of outstanding painters at the Vicebsk Art Tekhnikum. Kruger’s student Ivan Akhremchyk (1903–1971) was awarded the title of the People’s Artist of Belarus.