Vera Ignatievna Mukhina - great love stories. Biography and work of the Soviet sculptor Vera Mukhina Museum of Vera Mukhina in Feodosia

June 19 (July 1), 1889 - October 6, 1953
- Russian (Soviet) sculptor. People's Artist of the USSR (1943). Active member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1947). Winner of five Stalin Prizes (1941, 1943, 1946, 1951, 1952). From 1947 to 1953 -
member of the Presidium of the Academy of Arts of the USSR.

Many creations of Vera Ignatievna have become symbols of the Soviet era. And when a work becomes a symbol, it is impossible to judge its artistic value - the symbolic one will somehow distort it. The sculptures of Vera Mukhina were popular as long as the ponderous Soviet monumentalism, so dear to the heart of the Soviet leaders, was in fashion, and were forgotten or ridiculed later.

Many of Mukhina's works had difficult fate. And Vera Ignatievna herself lived difficult life, where worldwide recognition coexisted with the possibility of losing her husband at any moment or going to jail herself. Did her genius save her? No, the recognition of this genius helped out the mighty of the world this. Rescued style, surprisingly coincided with the tastes of those who built the Soviet state.

Vera Ignatievna Mukhina was born on July 1 (June 19, according to the old style), 1889 in a prosperous merchant family in Riga. Soon Vera and her sister lost their mother and then their father. The father's brothers took care of the girls, and the sisters were not offended in any way by the guardians. The children studied at the gymnasium, and then Vera moved to Moscow, where she took painting and sculpture lessons.

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In Paris, the Mecca of artists, the guardians were still afraid to let the young girl go, and Vera was brought there not by talent, but by an accident. While sleighing, the girl fell and severely injured her nose. And in order to preserve the beauty of the niece, the uncles had to send her to the best plastic surgeon in Paris. Where Vera, taking advantage of the opportunity, stayed for two years, studying sculpture with famous sculptor Bourdelle and attended anatomy courses.

In 1914 Vera returned to Moscow. During the First World War, she worked as a nurse in a hospital, where she met her future husband, surgeon Alexei Andreyevich Zamkov. They married in 1918, and two years later Vera gave birth to a son. This couple miraculously survived the storms of revolution and repression. She is a merchant family, he is a nobleman, both have a difficult character and "non-working" professions. However, Vera Mukhina's sculptures won many creative competitions, and in the 1920s she became a well-known and recognized master.

Her sculptures are somewhat heavy, but full of power and indescribable healthy animal strength. They perfectly correspond to the calls of the leaders: "Let's build!", "We'll catch up and overtake!" and "Let's overfulfill the plan!" Her women, judging by appearance, they can not only stop a galloping horse, but also lift a tractor on their shoulder.

Revolutionaries and peasant women, communists and partisans - socialist Venus and Mercury - the ideals of beauty, which all Soviet citizens should have been equal to. Their heroic proportions, of course, for most people, were almost unattainable (like the modern standards of a fashion model 90-60-90), but it was very important to strive for them.

Vera Mukhina loved to work from nature. The sculptural portraits of her husband and some of her friends are far less known than her symbolic works. In 1930, the couple decide to flee the Union, tired of harassment and denunciations and expecting the worst, but in Kharkov they are removed from the train and taken to Moscow. Thanks to the intercession of Gorky and Ordzhonikidze, the fugitives receive a very mild punishment -
exile for three years in Voronezh.

From the iron broom of the thirty-eighth, Vera is saved by "Worker and Collective Farm Girl". Among many projects, the architect B. Iofan chose this one. The sculpture adorned the USSR pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris, and the name of Vera Mukhina became known to the whole world. Vera Mukhina is congratulated, awarded orders and prizes, and most importantly, now she has been saved from persecution. She is entrusted with teaching at an art university. Later, she goes to work in the experimental workshop of the Leningrad Porcelain Factory.

After the war, Vera Mukhina worked on the monument to M. Gorky (designed by I.D. Shadr) and P.I. Tchaikovsky, which was installed in front of the Conservatory building after her death.

Zhenya Chikurova

Vera Mukhina: Socialist Art

TO On the 120th anniversary of the birth of Vera Mukhina, one of the most famous Soviet sculptors, the Russian Museum exhibited all of her works from its collection. On closer inspection, many of them turn out to be very far away.from pretentious socialist realism and partisanship.

Vera Mukhina. fall up

A few years ago, the monument that stood near the former VDNKh was dismantled. By the way, the descendants of the sculptor himself treated this with understanding. “The dismantling was caused by objective reasons - the frame began to collapse and deformation began,” says the great-grandson of the sculptor Alexei Veselovsky. - The scarf of the collective farmer dropped a meter and a half, and the monument was threatened with complete destruction. Another thing is that everything connected with dismantling resembles communal-political fuss. But the process is underway. And talk about the fact that today they cannot assemble the disassembled parts of the statue - complete nonsense. Rockets are launched into space, and even more details will be collected. But when that will happen is unknown.”

Vera Mukhina and Alexei Zamkov, TV program "More than love"

Vera Mukhina, TV show
"How the idols left"

Museum of Vera Mukhina in Feodosia

Museum

virtual trip
around the museum V. I. Mukhina

"In bronze, marble, wood, the images of people of the heroic era became sculpted with a bold and strong chisel - a single image of man and the human, marked by the unique seal of great years"

ANDart historian Arkin

Vera Ignatievna Mukhina was born in Riga on July 1, 1889 in a wealthy family andreceived a good education at home.Her mother was Frenchfather was a gifted amateur artistand interest in art Vera inherited from him.She did not have a relationship with music:Verochkait seemed that her father did not like the way she played, and he encouraged her daughter to draw.ChildhoodVera Mukhinapassed in Feodosia, where the family was forced to move due to a serious illness of the mother.When Vera was three years old, her mother died of tuberculosis, and her father took her daughter abroad for a year, to Germany. Upon their return, the family again settled in Feodosia. However, a few years later, my father changed his place of residence again: he moved to Kursk.

Vera Mukhina - Kursk schoolgirl

In 1904, Vera's father died. In 1906 Mukhina graduated from high schooland moved to Moscow. Atshe no longer had any doubts that she would be engaged in art.In 1909-1911 Vera was a student of a private studiofamous landscape painterYuon. During these years, for the first time, he showed interest in sculpture. In parallel with painting and drawing classes with Yuon and Dudin,Vera Mukhinavisits the studio of the self-taught sculptor Sinitsyna, located on the Arbat, where for a moderate fee you could get a place to work, a machine tool and clay. From Yuon at the end of 1911, Mukhina moved to the studio of the painter Mashkov.
Early 1912 VeraIngatievnashe was visiting relatives on an estate near Smolensk and, while sleighing down a mountain, she crashed and disfigured her nose. Homegrown doctors somehow "sewn" the face onto whichFaithafraid to look. The uncles sent Verochka to Paris for treatment. She steadfastly endured several facial plastic surgeries. But the character ... He became sharp. It is no coincidence that later many colleagues will christen her as a person of "cool disposition". Vera completed her treatment and at the same time studied with the famous sculptor Bourdelle, at the same time attended the La Palette Academy, as well as the drawing school, which was led by the famous teacher Colarossi.
In 1914 Vera Mukhina toured Italy and realized that sculpture was her true calling. Returning to Russia with the beginning of the First World War, she creates the first significant work - the sculptural group "Pieta", conceived as a variation on the themes of Renaissance sculptures and a requiem for the dead.

The war radically changed the usual way of life. Vera Ignatievna leaves sculpture classes, enters nursing courses and works in a hospital in 1915-17. Thereshe met her betrothed:Alexey Andreevich Zamkov worked as a doctor. Vera Mukhina and Alexei Zamkov met in 1914, and got married only four years later. In 1919, he was threatened with execution for participating in the Petrograd rebellion (1918). But, fortunately, he ended up in the Cheka in the office of Menzhinsky (from 1923 he headed the OGPU), whom he helped to leave Russia in 1907. “Oh, Alexei,” Menzhinsky told him, “you were with us in 1905, then you went to the whites. You can't survive here."
Subsequently, when Vera Ignatievna was asked what attracted her to her future husband, she answered in detail: "He has a very strong creativity. Internal monumentality. And at the same time a lot from the man. Inner rudeness with great spiritual subtlety. Besides, he was very handsome.”


Aleksey Andreevich Zamkov was indeed a very talented doctor, treated unconventionally, tried folk methods. Unlike his wife Vera Ignatievna, he was a sociable, cheerful, sociable person, but at the same time very responsible, with a heightened sense of duty. These men are said to be: “With him, she is like behind a stone wall.”

After the October Revolution, Vera Ignatievna is fond of monumental sculpture and makes several compositions on revolutionary themes: “Revolution” and “Flame of Revolution”. However, her characteristic expressiveness of modeling, combined with the influence of cubism, was so innovative that few people appreciated these works. Mukhina abruptly changes her field of activity and turns to applied art.

Mukhina vases

Vera Mukhinagetting closerI am with the avant-garde artists Popova and Exter. With themMukhinamakes sketches for several productions of Tairov at the Chamber Theater and is engaged in industrial design. Vera Ignatievna designed the labelswith Lamanova, book covers, sketches of fabrics and jewelry.At the Paris Exhibition of 1925clothing collection, created according to the sketches of Mukhina,was awarded the Grand Prix.

Icarus. 1938

“If we now look back and try once again to survey and compress the decade of Mukhina’s life with cinematic speed,- writes P.K. Suzdalev, - past after Paris and Italy, then we will face an unusually complex and turbulent period of personality formation and creative search for an outstanding artist new era, a female artist, formed in the fire of revolution and labor, in an unstoppable striving forward and painfully overcoming the resistance of the old world. A swift and impetuous movement forward, into the unknown, against the forces of resistance, towards the wind and storm - this is the essence of Mukhina's spiritual life of the past decade, the pathos of her creative nature. "

From sketches of fantastic fountains (“Female figure with a jug”) and “fiery” costumes to Benelli’s drama “The Dinner of Jokes”, from the extreme dynamism of “Archery”, she comes to the projects of monuments to “Liberated Labor” and “Flame of the Revolution”, where this plastic idea acquires a sculptural existence, a form, though not yet fully found and resolved, but figuratively filled.This is how "Julia" is born - after the name of the ballerina Podgurskaya, who served as a constant reminder of the shapes and proportions female body, because Mukhina greatly rethought and transformed the model. “She was not so heavy,” Mukhina said. The refined elegance of the ballerina gave way in "Julia" to the fortress of deliberately weighted forms. Under the stack and chisel of the sculptor was born not just beautiful woman, but the standard of a healthy, full of energy harmoniously folded body.
Suzdalev: ““Julia”, as Mukhina called her statue, is built in a spiral: all spherical volumes - head, chest, stomach, hips, calves - everything, growing out of each other, unfolds as it goes around the figure and again twists in a spiral, giving rise to a sensation whole, flesh-filled form of the female body. Separate volumes and the entire statue decisively fills the space occupied by it, as if displacing it, elastically pushing the air away from itself. “Julia” is not a ballerina, the power of her elastic, consciously weighted forms is characteristic of a woman of physical labor; this is the physically mature body of a worker or peasant woman, but with all the severity of the forms, the proportions and movement of a developed figure have integrity, harmony and feminine grace.
In 1930, Mukhina's well-established life breaks down sharply: her husband is arrested on false charges, famous doctor Zamkov. After the trial, he is sent to Voronezh and Mukhina, together with her ten-year-old son, follows her husband. Only after Gorky's intervention, four years later, did she return to Moscow. Later, Mukhina created a sketch of the tomb monument to Peshkov.

Portrait of a son. 1934 Alexey Andreevich Zamkov. 1934

Returning to Moscow, Mukhina again began to design Soviet exhibitions abroad. She creates the architectural design of the Soviet pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris. famous sculpture"Worker and Collective Farm Girl", which became Mukhina's first monumental project. Mukhina's composition shocked Europe and was recognized as a masterpiece of art of the 20th century.


IN AND. Mukhina among the second-year students of Vkhutein
From the late thirties until the end of his life, Mukhina worked mainly as a portrait sculptor. During the war years, she created a gallery of portraits of order bearers, as well as a bust of Academician Alexei Nikolaevich Krylov (1945), which now adorns his tombstone.

Krylov's shoulders and head grow out of a golden block of elm, as if emerging from the natural outgrowths of a thick-set tree. In some places, the sculptor's chisel slides over the wood chips, emphasizing their shape. There is a free and unconstrained transition from the raw part of the ridge to the smooth plastic lines of the shoulders and the powerful volume of the head. The color of elm gives a special, lively warmth and solemn decorativeness to the composition. Krylov's head in this sculpture is clearly associated with images ancient Russian art, and at the same time - this is the head of an intellectual, a scientist. Old age, physical extinction is opposed by the strength of the spirit, the strong-willed energy of a person who has given his whole life to the service of thought. His life is almost lived - and he has almost completed what he had to do.

Ballerina Marina Semyonova. 1941.

In the semi-figure portrait of Semyonova, the ballerina is depictedin a state of external immobility and internal composurebefore going on stage. In this moment of "entering the image" Mukhina reveals the confidence of the artist, who is in the prime of her beautiful talent - a feeling of youth, talent and fullness of feeling.Mukhina refuses the image dance movement, assuming that the portrait task itself disappears in it.

Partisan. 1942

“We know historical examples, - Mukhina said at an anti-fascist rally. - We know Joan of Arc, we know the mighty Russian partisan Vasilisa Kozhina. We know Nadezhda Durova ... But such a massive, gigantic manifestation of genuine heroism that we see among Soviet women on the days of the battles against fascism is significant. Our Soviet woman deliberately goes to I am not only talking about such women and heroic girls as Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Elizaveta Chaikina, Anna Shubenok, Alexandra Martynovna Dreyman - a Mozhaisk partisan mother who sacrificed her son and her life to her homeland... I am also talking about thousands of unknown heroines. Isn't a heroine, for example, any Leningrad housewife who, in the days of the siege of her hometown gave the last crumb of bread to her husband or brother, or just a male neighbor who made shells?

After the warVera Ignatievna Mukhinaperforms two major official orders: creates a monument to Gorky in Moscow and a statue of Tchaikovsky. Both of these works are distinguished by the academic nature of the execution and rather indicate that the artist deliberately moves away from modern reality.

The project of the monument to P.I. Tchaikovsky. 1945. Left - "Shepherd" - high relief to the monument.

Vera Ignatievna also fulfilled the dream of her youth. figurinesitting girl, compressed into a ball, strikes with plasticity, melodiousness of lines. Slightly raised knees, crossed legs, outstretched arms, arched back, lowered head. Smooth, something subtly reminiscent of the "white ballet" sculpture. In glass, she became even more elegant and musical, acquired completeness.

seated figurine. Glass. 1947

http://murzim.ru/jenciklopedii/100-velikih-skulpto...479-vera-ignatevna-muhina.html

The only work, besides "Worker and Collective Farm Girl", in which Vera Ignatievna managed to embody and bring to the end her figurative, collectively symbolic vision of the world, is her tombstone close friend and relative to the great Russian singer Leonid Vitalievich Sobinov. Initially, it was conceived in the form of a herm depicting the singer in the role of Orpheus. Subsequently, Vera Ignatievna settled on the image of a white swan - not only a symbol of spiritual purity, but more subtly associated with the swan-prince from "Lohengrin" and " swan song"great singer. This work was a success: Sobinov's tombstone is one of the most beautiful monuments of the Moscow Novodevichy cemetery.

Monument to Sobinov on the Moscow Novodevichy cemetery

The bulk of Vera Mukhina's creative discoveries and ideas remained at the stage of sketches, layouts and drawings, replenishing the ranks on the shelves of her workshop and causing (albeit extremely rarely) a stream of bittertheir tears of impotence of the creator and woman.

Vera Mukhina. Portrait of the artist Mikhail Nesterov

“He chose everything himself, and the statue, and my pose, and point of view. He himself determined the exact size of the canvas. All by myself"- said Mukhina. Confessed: “I can’t stand it when they see me work. I never let myself be photographed in the studio. But Mikhail Vasilievich certainly wanted to paint me at work. I couldn't not give in to his urgent desire.

Boreas. 1938

Nesterov wrote it while sculpting "Borea": “I worked continuously while he was writing. Of course, I couldn’t start something new, but I was finalizing ... as Mikhail Vasilievich rightly put it, I took up darning ”.

Nesterov wrote willingly, with pleasure. “Something is coming out,” he reported to S.N. Durylin. The portrait he painted is amazing in terms of the beauty of the compositional solution (Boreas, falling off his pedestal, seems to be flying towards the artist), in terms of nobility colors: dark blue dressing gown, from under it a white blouse; the subtle warmth of its shade argues with the matte pallor of the plaster, which is further enhanced by the bluish-lilac reflections from the dressing gown playing on it.

For several years,Before this, Nesterov wrote to Shadr: “She and Shadr are the best and, perhaps, the only real sculptors we have,” he said. “He is more talented and warmer, she is smarter and more skilled.”This is how he tried to show her - smart and skilled. With attentive eyes, as if weighing the figure of Boreas, concentratedly knitted eyebrows, sensitive, able to calculate every movement with his hands.

Not a work blouse, but neat, even elegant clothes - how effectively the bow of the blouse is pinned with a round red brooch. His shadr is much softer, simpler, more frank. Does he care about the suit - he is at work! And yet the portrait went far beyond the framework, originally outlined by the master. Nesterov knew this and was glad of it. The portrait speaks not of clever craftsmanship - of creative imagination curbed by the will; about passion, holding backby the mind. About the very essence of the soul of the artist.

It is interesting to compare this portrait with photographsmade with Mukhina during work. Because, although Vera Ignatievna did not let photographers into the studio, there are such pictures - Vsevolod took them.

Photo 1949 - working on the figurine "Root as Mercutio". Drawn eyebrows, a transverse fold on the forehead and the same intense gaze as in the portrait of Nesterov. Just a little questioningly and at the same time resolutely folded lips.

The same hot power of touching the figure, the passionate desire to pour a living soul into it through the trembling of the fingers.

Another message

"Creativity is the love of life!" - with these words, Vera Ignatievna Mukhina expressed her ethical and creative principles.

She was born in Riga in 1889 into a wealthy merchant family, her mother was French. And Vera inherited her love for art from her father, who was considered a good amateur artist. Childhood years were spent in Feodosia, where the family moved due to a serious illness of the mother. She died when Vera was three years old. After this sad event, Vera's relatives often changed their place of residence: they settled either in Germany, then again in Feodosia, then in Kursk, where Vera graduated from high school. By this time, she had already firmly decided that she would do art. Enrolling in Moscow School painting, sculpture and architecture, studied in the class of the famous artist K. Yuon, then at the same time became interested in sculpture.

In 1911, on Christmas Day, she had an accident. Riding down the mountain, Vera crashed into a tree and disfigured her face. After the hospital, the girl settled in her uncle's family, where caring relatives hid all the mirrors. Subsequently, in almost all the photos, and even in the portrait of Nesterov, she is depicted half-turned.

By this time, Vera had already lost her father, and the guardians decided to send the girl to Paris for postoperative treatment. There she not only carried out medical prescriptions, but also studied under the guidance of French sculptor A. Bourdelle at the Academy de Grande Chaumières. Alexander Vertepov, a young emigrant from Russia, worked at his school. Their romance did not last long. Vertepov went to war as a volunteer and was killed almost in the first battle.

Two years later, together with two artist friends, Vera made a trip to Italy. It was the last carefree summer in her life: the world war began. Returning home, Mukhina created her first significant work - the sculptural group "Pieta" (Lamentation of the Mother of God over the body of Christ), conceived as a variation on the themes of the Renaissance and at the same time a kind of requiem for the dead. The Mother of God at Mukhina - a young woman in a scarf of a sister of mercy - what millions of soldiers around them saw in the midst of the First World War.

After graduating from medical courses, Vera began working in the hospital as a nurse. She worked here for free throughout the war, because she believed: since she came here for the sake of an idea, then it is indecent to take money. In the hospital, she met her future husband, military doctor Alexei Andreevich Zamkov.

After the revolution, Mukhina successfully participated in various competitions. The most famous work was The Peasant Woman (1927, bronze), which brought the author wide popularity and was awarded the first prize at the exhibition of 1927-1928. The original of this work, by the way, was bought for the museum by the Italian government.

"Peasant Woman"

In the late 1920s, Alexey Zamkov worked at the Institute of Experimental Biology, where he invented a new medical preparation - gravidan, which rejuvenates the body. But intrigues began at the institute, Zamkov was dubbed a charlatan and a "healer". The persecution of the scientist in the press began. Together with his family, he decided to go abroad. Through a good friend, we managed to get passports, but the same friend informed on those who were leaving. They were arrested right on the train and taken to the Lubyanka. Vera Mukhina and her ten-year-old son were soon released, and Zamkov had to spend several months in Butyrka prison. After that, he was sent to Voronezh. Vera Ignatievna, leaving her son in the care of a friend, went after her husband. She spent four years there and returned with him to Moscow only after the intervention of Maxim Gorky. At his request, the sculptor began work on a sketch of the monument to the writer's son, Peshkov.

Doctor Zamkov was still not allowed to work, his institute was liquidated, and Alexei Andreevich soon died.

The pinnacle of her work was the world famous 21-meter stainless steel sculpture "Worker and Collective Farm Girl", created for the Soviet pavilion at the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris. Upon their return to Moscow, almost all the exhibitors were arrested. Today it became known: some attentive scammer saw in the folds of the skirt of the Collective Farm Woman "a kind of bearded face" - a hint of Leon Trotsky. And the unique sculpture could not find a place in the capital for a long time, until it was erected at VDNKh.

"Worker and Collective Farm Woman"

According to K. Stolyarov, Mukhina sculpted the figure of a worker from his father Sergei Stolyarov, a popular film actor of the 1930s and 40s, who created on the screen a number of fabulously epic images of Russian heroes and goodies, with the song of building socialism. A young man and a girl in rapid motion lift up the emblem Soviet state- hammer and sickle.

In a village near Tula, Anna Ivanovna Bogoyavlenskaya lives her life, with whom they sculpted a collective farmer with a sickle. According to the old woman, she saw Vera Ignatyevna herself in the workshop twice. A collective farmer was sculpted by a certain V. Andreev - obviously, an assistant to the famous Mukhina.

At the end of 1940, the well-known artist M.V. Nesterov decided to paint a portrait of Mukhina.

“... I can’t stand it when they see how I work. I never let myself be photographed in the studio, - Vera Ignatievna later recalled. - But Mikhail Vasilievich certainly wanted to paint me at work. I couldn't resist giving in to his urgent desire. I worked continuously while he wrote. Of all the works that were in my workshop, he himself chose the statue of Boreas, the god of the north wind, made for the monument to the Chelyuskinites ...

I fortified it with black coffee. During the sessions, there were lively conversations about art ... "

This time was the most calm for Mukhina. She was elected a member of the Academy of Arts, awarded the title of People's Artist of the RSFSR. She was repeatedly awarded the Stalin Prize. However, despite her high social position, she remained a withdrawn and spiritually lonely person. The last sculpture destroyed by the author - "Return" - the figure of a powerful, beautiful legless young man, in despair hiding his face in women's laps - mother, wife, lover ...

“Even with the title of laureate and academician, Mukhina remained a proud, blunt and internally free personality, which is so difficult both in her and in our times,” confirms E. Korotkaya.

The sculptor in every way avoided sculpting people who were unpleasant to her, did not make a single portrait of the leaders of the party and government, almost always chose models herself and left a whole gallery of portraits of representatives of the Russian intelligentsia: scientists, doctors, musicians and artists.

Until the end of her life (she died at the age of 64 in 1953, just six months after the death of I.V. Stalin), Mukhina was never able to come to terms with the fact that her sculptures were seen not as works of art, but as means of visual agitation.

STEEL WINGS

Vera Mukhina, the world's most famous female sculptor, became famous for just one masterpiece - a giant statue of "Worker and Collective Farm Woman". This was enough to declare her the singer of a communist paradise, a hard-core Soviet fanatic. In fact, everything was much more complicated.

Genes prevented Vera Mukhina from loving Soviet power. Her ancestors, merchants of the first guild, back in early XIX centuries moved from the Kursk region to Riga and began to supply Europe with original Russian goods - hemp, flax and bread. With the money earned, the sculptor's grandfather Kuzma Ignatievich built a stone mansion in Riga, a gymnasium in Smolensk, a hospital and a real school in Roslavl. “The Latins have Cosmas Medici, and we have me for him!” - he joked, donating money to young artists and musicians. His children were also fond of philanthropy, but they did not forget about the cause. So was the eldest, Ignatius. One thing saddened Kuzma - until the age of thirty, his heir went single, refusing the most profitable marriages. So the old merchant did not wait for his grandchildren. And a year after his death, Ignatius met the daughter of the Roslavl pharmacist Nadezhda Myude - and fell in love for life. Her father was either German or French; according to family legend, he came to Russia with the army of Bonaparte, and so he stayed here.

In 1885, the young people got married, a year later their daughter Maria was born, and in June 1889 Vera was born. After the second birth, Nadezhda Vilgelmovna was often ill. Until the end of his life, Ignatius Kuzmich reproached himself for not immediately going to the doctor: the diagnosis was terrible - tuberculosis. Leaving his daughters in the care of Nadya's friend Anastasia Sobolevskaya, Mukhin took his wife abroad, to best resorts. All in vain - in 1891, in Nice, Nadezhda died before she was twenty-five years old. Having abandoned the business, forgetting about the children, Ignaty Kuzmich locked himself in the workshop, tried to forget himself in invention, built new machines for processing flax. Verochka's illness distracted him from this occupation: the cold seemed to have passed, but the girl continued to cough deafly, hysterically. The mother's tuberculosis could turn out to be hereditary, and Ignatius immediately took his daughters from cloudy Riga to warm Feodosia. There, by the sea, he soon faded quietly, unable to forget his loss.

Orphaned children - Vera was fourteen years old - were taken to relatives in Kursk, and in 1907 they were sent to Moscow to study. While still in the Crimea, Vera became seriously interested in drawing and entered the studio of the famous artist Konstantin Yuon. Fellow students were amazed at how eagerly this short girl with gray eyes and a steep, stubborn forehead comprehended the secrets of mastery. The order was the same for everyone: first drawing, then painting, still lifes, sketches, nudes. At some point, Vera became bored with Yuon, she moved on to Ilya Mashkov, but then she realized that painting no longer attracted her. Another thing is sculpture, where elastic, almost living flesh is born under the hand of a master. In the sculptural workshop, having touched the clay for the first time, Mukhina experienced an unprecedented surge of happiness until now. She quickly mastered the techniques that the modest master Yegorov, who made tombstones, could teach her. She wanted to go further, and she asked the Kursk guardians to send her to study in Paris. The merchants refused - stop doing stupid things, it's time to get married.

Trying to unwind, Vera left for Christmas 1912 to her father's estate Kochany near Roslavl. She seemed to have returned to childhood - a Christmas tree, forfeits, sledding from a hill. One day the fun ended badly: her sleigh crashed into a tree with full acceleration, a sharp bough cut her cheek and cut off part of her nose like a razor. The girl was urgently taken to Smolensk, where doctors performed nine operations on her. The nose was sewn back, but deep scars remained on the face. When the bandages were removed, Vera looked at herself in the mirror for a long time, then waved her hand: “They live even worse.” For six months she remained in Kochany, then again approached her guardians with a request for Paris. Those deciding to please Vera after the incident, agreed.

In France, Emile Antoine Bourdelle, a stormy master, in whose statues a flame seemed to freeze, became Vera's teacher. And again, the studio mates marveled at the persistence of the young sculptor: if the teacher pointed out her mistakes, she broke the work and started all over again.

Bohemia raged around, but Vera did not notice this. “There was very little entertainment in my life,” she later recalled. - Once it was. They sculpted in the morning. Sketches in the evening…” She divided her time between her studio and Madame Jean's boarding house on Boulevard Raspail, where mostly Russian students lived. There she met Alexander Vertepov, a Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist who, during the revolution of 1905, shot a gendarmerie general in the center of Pyatigorsk, fled from the chase and fled abroad on a fishing boat. When he accidentally appeared in the studio of Bourdelle, he discovered his talent as a sculptor and even undertook to teach the young man for free. She and Vera became friends: or rather, she considered this feeling to be friendship, because she thought that it was impossible to love her, disfigured, she could only be sorry, but she did not want pity. He didn't confess his love to her either. last day in the spring of 1914, when Vera and her friends were leaving for Italy. Moneyless and in love Vertepov could not go with them, and on the eve of their departure they walked all night along the boulevards of the city that never sleeps and talked about what would happen in the fall when they would meet again...

But the meeting did not take place. From magical Italy, from the masterpieces of Michelangelo that struck her, Mukhina returned to Moscow and there she learned about the beginning of the World War. She immediately went to nursing courses and two months later she was already working in a hospital. “The wounded were coming straight from the front,” she recalled. - Dirty dry bandages, blood, pus. Rinse with peroxide, lice. They worked for free, did not want to take money. All my life I did not like paid positions. I love freedom." Vertepov volunteered for the French army, they corresponded across borders, letters reached months later. Once an envelope arrived with someone else's handwriting - Sasha's comrades informed him that a shell had hit his trench, and everyone who was there was buried in common grave. Many years later, when she got to France, Vera tried to find this grave, but could not. Her monument to Vertepov was "Pieta", where a girl in a nurse's scarf mourns a soldier. This clay statue has sunk into oblivion - Mukhina never managed to embody it in marble. For a while, she abandoned the sculpture and took up the design of performances at the Tairov Chamber Theater.

Once, a friend, a young doctor, Alexei Zamkov, was brought to her hospital. He was dying of typhus, she was nursing him. And fell in love, not hoping for reciprocity. In October 1917, when a shell hit the hospital building, Vera was thrown against the wall by an explosive wave. Waking up, she saw Zamkov, white with fear - by that time he had become the chief doctor of the hospital. "God bless! he whispered. “If you died, I wouldn’t be able to live either.” Soon they began to live together, and in the summer of 1918 they got married.

Vera's relatives were not at the wedding. Someone remained in Riga occupied by the Germans, many fled abroad. Beloved sister Masha married a Frenchman and left with him. She also called Vera with her, but she refused, although hunger began in the country - she could work, and therefore live, only in her homeland. When the ration for the intelligentsia was reduced to 300 grams of bread a day, Zamkov began to travel to his native village of Borisovo near Klin. There he treated the peasants, charged them with potatoes and milk, and carried precious food home, where the hungry Vera was waiting.

When the new government decided to erect monuments to the fighters against the autocracy, Mukhina proposed her own project. It was approved, but in the unheated workshop the statue crumbled to pieces. Other projects did not come to fruition. During the NEP years, she almost abandoned sculpture - she took up creating dresses for the people from cheap material. Unexpectedly, her cheerful "rooster pattern" gained recognition in Europe - the Netherlands ordered two thousand dresses, at the World Exhibition in Paris, Mukhina's outfits received a fan prix.

But then she was much more interested in the health of her only son, Vsevolod, born in the spring of 1920. At the age of four, doctors diagnosed him with bone tuberculosis. They refused to treat, and then Zamkov himself performed the operation on his son at home, on the dining table. The boy survived, but did not get up for another five years. wheelchair. Mukhina took him to a Crimean sanatorium, then to Borisovo, for fresh air. There, in order to distract from gloomy thoughts, she returned to sculpture. She carved her first work, "Julia", from the trunk of a linden tree. A fragile ballerina posed for her, but Mukhina enlarged and weighted her features, which embodied vitality. The second statue, "Wind", depicted the desperate struggle of a man - her son - with the blind element of illness. The third statue, "Peasant Woman", which Vera herself called the "folk goddess of fertility", received the first prize at the exhibition for the 10th anniversary of October. former teacher Mashkov, seeing her, admired: “Well done, Mukhina! Such a woman will give birth standing and will not grunt.

Composition "Bread"

Vera Ignatievna taught modeling at the Handicraft Art College. She strove to convey to students both skill and enthusiasm: “If the fire of feelings burns brightly, you need to support it; , like Leonardo, in order to prevent his spirit from overgrown with a stale crust of well-being and self-complacency. Then these inspired appeals sounded quite usual, but soon those who, hiding behind the armor of Marxism-Leninism, “the only true method”, established their own rules in art, soon saw a threat in them.

Vera Mukhina was saved from persecution by the fact that Dr. Zamkov went uphill - he invented the miracle drug "gravidan", obtained from the urine of women on different stages pregnancy. The world's first hormonal medicine was a success, many recovered from it and even seemed to be younger. Important people became the doctor's patients - Molotov, Kalinin, Gorky. Then some of them got worse after treatment, and immediately a devastating article about a charlatan doctor appeared in Izvestia. In the spring of 1930, Zamkov was deported to Voronezh. Mukhina left with him. Two years later, the doctor was returned, having been appointed head of the instantly created research institute for the study of gravidan - one of the very high-ranking party members stood up for him. According to rumors, it was the husband of Vera Mukhina who became the prototype of the hero of Bulgakov's " dog heart", although the story was written in 1925, when no one knew about Zamkov's miracle drug.

The new status of her husband allowed Mukhina to participate in the competition for a monument for the Soviet pavilion at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris. According to the idea of ​​the author of the project, Boris Iofan, the 35-meter pavilion was to be crowned by “a young man and a girl, personifying the owners of the Soviet land - the working class and the collective farm peasantry. They raise high the emblem of the Land of the Soviets - the hammer and sickle. Mukhina easily won the competition by presenting a one and a half meter plaster model; two powerful figures seemed to be bursting from the pedestal into flight, entwined with a fluttering scarf. True, the commission did not like the sculptor's intention to make the statues naked - they decided to refuse this. Another thing was also embarrassing: Mukhina was going to make a huge sculpture from steel sheets, which no one had done before, including herself. With the intuition of an artist, she realized that sparkling, reflective steel looks completely different than copper or bronze covered with the patina of the past. This is really the material of a new life, a new art.

The statue was made for two months at the experimental plant of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering. Then they were dismantled and sent to Paris in 28 wagons. The heaviest was a 60-ton iron frame, and the thinnest, half a millimeter steel sheets weighed only 12 tons. When the "object" was handed over, there was a scandal - someone wrote a denunciation that the face of the disgraced Trotsky was visible in the folds of the girl's skirt. Molotov and Voroshilov personally came to check, found nothing and said: "Okay, let him go."

Worker and collective farmer

In Paris, "The Worker and the Collective Farm Girl" received an enthusiastic reception. Romain Rolland wrote in a guest book: “On the banks of the Seine, two young Soviet giants lift the hammer and sickle in an indomitable impulse, and we hear how a heroic anthem pours from their chest, which calls the peoples to freedom, to unity.” The famous graphic artist Frans Mazerel said: "Your sculpture hit us, French artists, like a butt on the head." Later, much was said about the relationship of the statue with the creations of the sculptors of the Third Reich, also presented at the exhibition; they recalled that Mukhina, like them, adored Wagner's music, and she herself was more than once compared with a Valkyrie, a stern northern maiden. There are indeed similarities between the sculptures, but if the Nazi “supermen” invariably hold a sword in their hands, then the heroes of Mukhina raise peaceful tools above their heads. The difference seems to be small, but important.

In Moscow, the statue was damaged during unloading, it took a long time to repair, and in 1939 it was erected at the entrance to VDNKh. For her, Mukhina was awarded the first of her five Stalin Prizes. But she wasn't happy
contrary to her plan, the “Worker and Collective Farm Girl”, which was about 25 meters high, was installed on a low ten-meter pedestal, which completely killed the feeling of flying (only in 2009, after a long repair, the monument was erected on a pedestal 34 meters high, as in Paris). However, then the sculptor had more important problems. In an atmosphere of "great terror" over the head of Alexei Zamkov, clouds gathered again. In 1938, his institute was closed, stocks of gravidan were destroyed (according to another version, they were confiscated for especially important patients). Arriving home from another study, the doctor came down with a heart attack. Mukhina whole year treated him, fed him with a spoon, talked about trifles. She abandoned her work, although there were enough orders: a monument to the Chelyuskinites, a monument to Gorky, allegories for the Moskvoretsky Bridge ... Well-wishers conveyed an urgent request - to sculpt a portrait of “himself”. She calmly replied: “Let Comrade Stalin come to my studio. We need sessions from nature. There were no more requests. And Mukhina's projects, as if on cue, were frozen.

At that time, Vera Ignatievna was again carried away by a new material - artistic glass. She worked for a long time at a pilot plant at the Institute of Glass in Leningrad, making decanters, glasses, even glass statues. It was then that she allegedly developed the design of a faceted glass familiar to everyone. Like it or not, it's hard to say - the glass was introduced into production back in the 1920s, but its GOST was changed more than once. Perhaps Mukhina really had a hand in them. But a half-liter beer mug, also familiar to everyone, was really made according to her sketch. Another legend - she allegedly took up the creation of a glass out of a special love for alcohol. This is complete nonsense: it was not alcohol that always saved her from melancholy, but her favorite work.

The beginning of the war caused Mukhina a labor upsurge. Many people experienced this feeling then: the people again had a common misfortune and a common goal, which rallied everyone. However, the first heroes of her sculptures of the war period were not front-line soldiers, but cultural figures, including ballerina Galina Ulanova. She recalled that “it was impossible to talk about trifles with Mukhina, but it was possible to remain silent about the main things. Silence was filled with meaning, became dense, like clay in the hands of a sculptor. “Outwardly, she reminded me of a Valkyrie,” Ulanova wrote. And State Security General Prokofiev once confessed to her: “You know, Vera Ignatievna, in my life there were only two people whom I was afraid of - Felix Edmundovich and you. When you look with your bright eyes of a bird, I have a complete feeling that you see through everything, right up to the back of your head.

When the Germans approached Moscow, Mukhina was evacuated to distant Kamensk-Uralsky. As soon as she could, she returned to Moscow. She was met by her husband, who worked in the clinic. She did not recognize him: in the six months of separation, he turned into a withered old man. In the morning he slowly, staggering, went from home to work, saying: "I still have time to save someone's life," and the next day he died of a second heart attack. At the Novodevichy cemetery, Vera Ignatievna chose two places - for Alexei and for herself: "Soon I will also lie down here." Instead of a tombstone, she put her old bust of her young husband with the inscription: "I did everything I could for people."

A real monument to her husband, and at the same time to all the victims of the war, was the unfinished sculpture "Return" - a woman frozen in a woeful stupor, at whose feet a legless disabled person clung to her feet. Mukhina worked on this statue for three days without rest, and then she broke the plaster into small pieces, retaining only the wax sketch. She said that the statue failed, but, most likely, it was something else. IN post-war art major, invigorating notes dominated, and the tragic "Return" simply had no chance of being realized. In addition, it could seriously complicate the fate of the sculptor - she was already removed from the presidium of the Academy of Arts several times for her seditious conviction that allegory and symbolism did not contradict socialist realism. True, each time she was again included in the presidium - either by someone's high order, or simply realizing how much she was above the semi-official curs who persecuted her.

Mikhail Nesterov
Sculptor Vera Mukhina

IN post-war years Mukhina did a lot - portraits of generals and ordinary soldiers, monuments to Tchaikovsky at the conservatory and Gorky at the Belorussky railway station. And the last female figure- "Mir" - for the dome of the planetarium in Stalingrad, revived from the ruins. This woman has outgrown the impulses of youth, she is calm, stately and a little sad. In one hand is a sheaf of ears of corn, in the other is a globe, from which a light dove of peace flies up, a strip of wings rolled from a steel sheet. This was the last steel flight of Vera Mukhina.

Like many of her works, this one has been reworked in the spirit of "comprehensibility to the people." The host committee demanded that the pigeon be made larger, and it crushed the fragile globe with its mass. Mukhina no longer had the strength to argue - she was dying of angina pectoris - a disease of masons and sculptors. Last months she spent her life in the Kremlin hospital, which was assigned to her by the status of People's Artist of the USSR. During this time, Stalin died, and she did not know whether to grieve with all the people or rejoice with those who until recently were called "enemies of the people" and among whom were many of her friends. Doctors categorically forbade her to work, but secretly from them she made her latest masterpiece - a small glass flying Cupid. On October 6, 1953, Vera Ignatievna died.

She was buried according to the highest Soviet level, giving her name to the streets, steamships and the Leningrad Higher Art and Industrial School, the famous "Fly". Art historians have named it creative biography"cemetery of unfulfilled possibilities". But with her creations, which she nevertheless managed to realize, she was able to do the main thing - to instill in the hearts of people that dream of flying that accompanied her all her life.

Vadim Erlikhman,
Gala Biography, №12, 2011

Soviet sculptor, folk artist USSR (1943). Author of works: "The Flame of the Revolution" (1922-1923), "Worker and Collective Farm Woman" (1937), "Bread" (1939); monuments to A.M. Gorky (1938-1939), P.I. Tchaikovsky (1954).
Vera Ignatievna Mukhina
There were not too many of them - artists who survived the Stalinist terror, and each of these "lucky ones" is judged and judged a lot today, "grateful" descendants strive to distribute "earrings" to each. Vera Mukhina, the semi-official sculptor of the "Great Communist Era", who did a good job of creating a special mythology of socialism, is apparently still waiting for her fate. For now…

Nesterov M.V. - Portrait Faith Ignatievna Mukhina.

In Moscow, over the Prospekt Mira, crammed with cars, roaring with tension and choking with smoke, rises the colossus of the sculptural group "Worker and Collective Farm Girl". Reared up in the sky symbol former country- a sickle and a hammer, a scarf floats, tying the figures of the "captive" sculptures, and below, at the pavilions former exhibition achievements of the national economy, buyers of televisions, tape recorders, washing machines, mostly foreign "achievements". But the madness of this sculptural "dinosaur" does not seem to be something out of date in today's life. For some reason, this creation of Mukhina organically flowed from the absurdity of "that" time into the absurdity of "this"

Our heroine was incredibly lucky with her grandfather, Kuzma Ignatievich Mukhin. He was an excellent merchant and left his relatives a huge fortune, which made it possible to brighten up the not-too-happy childhood of Verochka's granddaughter. The girl lost her parents early, and only the wealth of her grandfather, and the decency of her uncles, allowed Vera and her older sister Maria not to recognize the material hardships of orphanhood.

Vera Mukhina grew up meek, well-behaved, sat quietly in the lessons, studied at the gymnasium approximately. She didn’t show any special talents, well, maybe she just sang well, occasionally composed poetry, and drew with pleasure. And which of the lovely provincial (Vera grew up in Kursk) young ladies with right upbringing did not show such talents before marriage. When the time came, the Mukhina sisters became enviable brides - they did not shine with beauty, but they were cheerful, simple, and most importantly, with a dowry. They flirted with pleasure at balls, seducing artillery officers who were going crazy with boredom in a small town.

The sisters made the decision to move to Moscow almost by accident. They used to often visit relatives in the capital, but, having become older, they were finally able to appreciate that in Moscow there were more entertainment, better dressmakers, and more decent balls at the Ryabushinskys. Fortunately, the Mukhin sisters had plenty of money, why not change the provincial Kursk to the second capital?

In Moscow, the maturation of the personality and talent of the future sculptor began. It was wrong to think that, having not received proper upbringing and education, Vera changed as if by magic. Our heroine has always been distinguished by amazing self-discipline, ability to work, diligence and passion for reading, and for the most part she chose books that were serious, not girlish. This deeply hidden desire for self-improvement gradually began to manifest itself in a girl in Moscow. With such an ordinary appearance, she would look for a decent match for herself, and she is suddenly looking for a decent art studio. She would have to take care of her personal future, but she is preoccupied with the creative impulses of Surikov or Polenov, who were still actively working at that time.

Vera entered the studio of Konstantin Yuon, a famous landscape painter and a serious teacher, easily: there were no exams to pass - pay and study, but it was not easy to study. Her amateur, childish drawings in the workshop of a real painter did not stand up to criticism, and ambition drove Mukhina, the desire to excel every day riveted her to a sheet of paper. She literally worked like a hard laborer. Here, in Yuon's studio, Vera acquired her first artistic skills, but, most importantly, she had the first glimpses of her own creative individuality and first passions.

She was not attracted to working on color, she devoted almost all her time to drawing, drawing lines and proportions, trying to bring out an almost primitive beauty. human body. In her student work the theme of admiration for strength, health, youth, the simple clarity of mental health sounded brighter and brighter. For the beginning of the 20th century, such an artist’s thinking, against the background of the experiments of the surrealists and cubists, seemed too primitive.

Once the master set a composition on the theme of "dream". Mukhina drew a janitor who fell asleep at the gate. Yuon grimaced in displeasure: "There is no dream fantasy." Perhaps the restrained Vera's imagination was not enough, but she had an abundance of youthful enthusiasm, admiration for strength and courage, the desire to unravel the mystery of the plasticity of a living body.

Without leaving classes with Yuon, Mukhina began working in the workshop of the sculptor Sinitsyna. Vera felt an almost childish delight when she touched the clay, which made it possible to fully experience the mobility of human joints, the magnificent flight of movement, the harmony of volume.

Sinitsyna abstained from learning, and sometimes the understanding of truths had to be comprehended at the cost of great effort. Even the tools - and those were taken at random. Mukhina felt professionally helpless: "Something huge is conceived, but her hands cannot do it." In such cases, the Russian artist of the beginning of the century went to Paris. Mukhina was no exception. However, her guardians were afraid to let the girl go abroad alone.

Everything happened as in a banal Russian proverb: "There would be no happiness, but misfortune helped."

In early 1912, during a merry Christmas vacation, while riding a sleigh, Vera seriously injured her face. She underwent nine plastic surgeries, and when six months later she saw herself in the mirror, she fell into despair. I wanted to run and hide from people. Mukhina changed her apartment, and only great inner courage helped the girl to say to herself: we must live, live worse. But the guardians considered that Vera was cruelly offended by fate and, wanting to make up for the injustice of rock, let the girl go to Paris.

In the workshop of Bourdelle, Mukhina learned the secrets of sculpture. In the huge, hotly heated halls, the master moved from machine to machine, mercilessly criticizing his students. Faith got the most, the teacher did not spare anyone, including women's pride. Once Bourdelle, seeing Mukhin's sketch, remarked with sarcasm that the Russians sculpt more "illusory than constructive." The girl broke the sketch in despair. How many more times will she have to destroy own work, numb from their own failure.

During her stay in Paris, Vera lived in a boarding house on Rue Raspail, where Russians predominated. In the colony of fellow countrymen, Mukhina also met her first love - Alexander Vertepov, a man of an unusual, romantic fate. A terrorist who killed one of the generals, he was forced to flee Russia. In the workshop of Bourdelle, this young man, who had never picked up a pencil in his life, became the most talented student. The relationship between Vera and Vertepov was probably friendly and warm, but the aged Mukhina never dared to admit that she had more than friendly interest in Vertepov, although she did not part with his letters all her life, often remembered him and did not talk about anyone with such hidden sadness, as about a friend of his Parisian youth. Alexander Vertepov died in the First world war.

The last chord of Mukhina's studies abroad was a trip to the cities of Italy. The three of them with their friends crossed this fertile country, neglecting comfort, but how much happiness Neapolitan songs brought them, the flickering of a stone of classical sculpture and revels in roadside taverns. Once the travelers got so drunk that they fell asleep right on the side of the road. In the morning, when Mukhina woke up, she saw how a gallant Englishman, raising his cap, steps over her legs.

The return to Russia was overshadowed by the outbreak of war. Vera, having mastered the qualifications of a nurse, went to work in an evacuation hospital. Unaccustomed to it, it seemed not only difficult, but unbearable. “The wounded arrived there straight from the front. You tear off dirty, dried-up bandages - blood, pus. Rinse with peroxide. Lice,” and many years later she recalled with horror. In an ordinary hospital, where she soon asked, it was much easier. But despite the new profession, which she, by the way, did for free (fortunately, millions of grandfathers gave her this opportunity), Mukhina continued to devote her free time sculpture.

There is even a legend that once a young soldier was buried in the cemetery next to the hospital. And every morning near the tombstone, made village craftsman, the mother of the murdered appeared, grieving for her son. One evening, after artillery shelling, they saw that the statue was broken. It was said that Mukhina listened to this message in silence, sadly. And in the morning appeared on the grave new monument, more beautiful than before, and Vera Ignatievna's hands were covered in abrasions. Of course, this is only a legend, but how much mercy, how much kindness is invested in the image of our heroine.

In the hospital, Mukhina also met her betrothed with the funny surname Zamkov. Subsequently, when Vera Ignatievna was asked what attracted her to her future husband, she answered in detail: “He has a very strong creative beginning. Internal monumentality. And at the same time a lot from the man. Inner rudeness with great spiritual subtlety. Besides, he was very handsome.”

Aleksey Andreevich Zamkov was indeed a very talented doctor, treated unconventionally, tried folk methods. Unlike his wife Vera Ignatievna, he was a sociable, cheerful, sociable person, but at the same time very responsible, with a heightened sense of duty. They say about such husbands: "With him she is like behind a stone wall." Vera Ignatievna was lucky in this sense. Alexey Andreevich invariably took part in all the problems of Mukhina.

The heyday of creativity of our heroine fell on the 1920-1930s. The works “Flame of Revolution”, “Julia”, “Peasant Woman” brought fame to Vera Ignatievna not only at home, but also in Europe.

One can argue about the degree of Mukhina's artistic talent, but it cannot be denied that she became a real "muse" of an entire era. Usually, they lament about this or that artist: they say, he was born at the wrong time, but in our case, one can only wonder how well the creative aspirations of Vera Ignatievna coincided with the needs and tastes of her contemporaries. Cult physical strength and health in Mukhin's sculptures reproduced in the best possible way, and contributed a lot to the creation of the mythology of Stalin's "falcons", "girls of beauties", "Stakhanovites" and "Pash Angelins".

About her famous "Peasant Woman" Mukhina said that this is "the goddess of fertility, the Russian Pomona." Indeed, - the legs of the column, above them heavily and at the same time easily, freely, a tightly knitted torso rises. “This one will give birth standing and will not grunt,” said one of the spectators. Mighty shoulders adequately complete the block of the back, and above everything - an unexpectedly small, elegant for this powerful body - head. Well, why not an ideal builder of socialism - a meek, but full of health slave?

Europe in the 1920s was already infected with the bacillus of fascism, the bacillus of mass cult hysteria, so Mukhina's images were viewed there with interest and understanding. After the 19th International Exhibition in Venice, the Peasant Woman was bought by the Museum of Trieste.

But even more famous was brought to Vera Ignatievna by the famous composition, which became the symbol of the USSR - “Worker and Collective Farm Girl”. And it was also created in a symbolic year - 1937 - for the pavilion of the Soviet Union at an exhibition in Paris. The architect Iofan developed a project where the building was supposed to resemble a rushing ship, the prow of which, according to the classical custom, was supposed to be crowned with a statue. Rather, a sculptural group.

Competition for four famous masters, on best project the monument was won by our heroine. Sketches of drawings show how painfully the idea itself was born. Here is a running nude figure (initially, Mukhina fashioned a naked man - a mighty ancient god walked next to a modern woman - but on instructions from above, the "god" had to dress up), in her hands she had something like an Olympic torch. Then another appears next to her, the movement slows down, becomes calmer ... The third option is a man and a woman holding hands: they themselves, and the sickle and hammer raised by them, are solemnly calm. Finally, the artist settled on a movement of impulse, enhanced by a rhythmic and clear gesture.

Unprecedented in the world of sculpture was Mukhina's decision to release most of the sculptural volumes through the air, flying horizontally. With such a scale, Vera Ignatievna had to calibrate each bend of the scarf for a long time, calculating each of its folds. It was decided to make the sculpture from steel, a material that, before Mukhina, was used only once in the world by Eiffel, who made the Statue of Liberty in America. But the Statue of Liberty has a very simple outline: it is a female figure in a wide toga, the folds of which lie on a pedestal. Mukhina, on the other hand, had to create the most complex, hitherto unseen structure.

They worked, as was customary under socialism, in a rush, storm, seven days a week, in record time. Mukhina later said that one of the engineers fell asleep at the drafting table from overwork, and in a dream he threw his hand on the steam heating and got burned, but the poor fellow did not wake up. When the welders fell off their feet, Mukhina and her two assistants began to cook themselves.

Finally, the sculpture was assembled. And immediately began to disassemble. 28 wagons of "Worker and Collective Farm Woman" went to Paris, the composition was cut into 65 pieces. Eleven days later, in the Soviet pavilion on International exhibition towered a gigantic sculptural group raising a hammer and sickle over the Seine. Could this colossus have been overlooked? There was a lot of noise in the press. In an instant, the image created by Mukhina became a symbol of the socialist myth of the 20th century.

On the way back from Paris, the composition was damaged, and - just think - Moscow did not stint on recreating a new copy. Vera Ignatievna dreamed of the "Worker and Collective Farm Girl" soaring into the sky on the Lenin Hills, among the wide open spaces. But no one listened to her. The group was installed in front of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (as it was then called) that opened in 1939. But the main trouble was that they put the sculpture on a relatively low, ten-meter pedestal. And she, designed for a great height, began to "crawl on the ground," as Mukhina wrote. Vera Ignatievna wrote letters to higher authorities, demanded, appealed to the Union of Artists, but everything turned out to be in vain. So this giant still stands in the wrong place, not at the level of its greatness, living its own life, contrary to the will of its creator.

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