Aleksandr Matveyev (sculptor)

Pavel Kuznetsov and Alexander Matveyev.

Alexander Matveev (1878–1960) was one of the leading Russian sculptors of his generation,^[1] working in a simple, vigorous, modern classical style similar to Aristide Maillol of France.

As an artist of international reputation, he was made a leader of the Soviet sculptor's union until the 1950s when the younger practitioners of socialist realism finally replaced him. He was also a teacher for many years at the Academy of Arts of the USSR and the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture where he had studied as a young man. One of his students was the Latvian Kārlis Zāle.

Works

• One of his works, a group made up of three nude figures (apart from the Red Army hat on one of them ^[2] a worker, a peasant and a Red Army soldier, entitled "October 1927" was placed in front of the Oktyabrskiy Big Concert Hall in 1968. It is cast from bronze in 1968 from the original, created in 1927.^[3]

References

1. Sopotsinsky, Oleg, Art in the Soviet Union: Painting, Sculpture, Graphic Arts: Major Works by Soviet Artists from 1917 to the 1970s, Auroa Art Publishers, Leningrad, 1978
2. Monumental and Decorative Sculpture of Leningrad, ISKUSSTVO, Leningrad Branch, 1991p. 434-45
3. Sopotsinsky, Oleg, Art in the Soviet Union: Painting, Sculpture, Graphic Arts: Major Works by Soviet Artists from 1917 to the 1970s, Aurora Art Publishers, Leningrad, 1978 p. 440

External links

• Biographical essay