Teachers and alumni of the Vicebsk Art Tekhnikum

In the 1920s and 1930s Vicebsk had, due to historical circumstances, an image of the ‘cultural capital’ of BSSR, where ‘the new Soviet regional visual art was originating’. However, by the late 1921, after Chagall had left Vicebsk and when the teachers of his art school were also departing, the decline in the cultural life of the city became obvious. An outstanding role in maintaining the city’s cultural level was played by the Vicebsk Art Tekhnikum (1923-1941).

The two tasks set to the tekhnikum were to train experts in applied art and art industry and to direct its entire activity to the formation of ‘the Belarusian national style in art in accordance with the requirements of the revolutionary time’. The teachers were mostly alumni of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. In the opinion of the tekhnikum’s management, without classical fundamentals it was not possible to comprehend the laws of the true realistic art. The avant-garde of Chagall and Malevich was considered as ‘lacking ideals and formalistic’.

In all, over 500 students were educated from 1923 till 1941 at the tekhnikum’s training departments for the teachers of painting, the teachers of sculpture, for polygraphists, for club instructors, for potters, and for ceramists. . The teachers and former students of Vicebsk tekhnikum formed the main body of the Union of Artists organized in 1938 at the First Congress of Artists of Belarus. Some of them became People’s Artists (V. Volkaŭ, Z. Azgur, Y. Zaitsaŭ, I. Akhremchyk, V. Tsvirko, R. Kudrevich, P. Maslenikaŭ, A. Bembel, A. Glebaŭ, S. Selikhanaŭ, Y. Nikalaeŭ), thirteen artists were awarded the title of Honoured Art Worker.
Many tekhnikum’s teachers and alumni were among those who laid the firm foundation of Belarusian professional art in complicated and contradictory conditions of the 1930s.