Metadata: I. Ia. Itkind
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- State Russian Museum
- Holding institution (official language):
- ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ РУССКИЙ МУЗЕЙ
- Postal address:
- 191186, Россия, Санкт-Петербург, Инженерная ул., 4
- Phone number:
- (812) 595-42-40
- Web address:
- http://rusmuseum.ru/museum/
- Email:
- fzr@rusmuseum.ru
- Reference number:
- F. 193
- Title:
- I. Ia. Itkind
- Title (official language):
- Иткинд И. Я.
- Creator/accumulator:
- I. Ia. Itkind
- Date(s):
- 1913/1971
- Language:
- Russian
- Extent:
- 13 storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Photographic images
- Scope and content:
- The fonds contains a set of materials pertaining to the history of Jews in Russia, including the following documents: lists of museums and individual owners of works by I. Ia Itkind, as well as of exhibitions in which he took part, and in particular, “An Exhibition of Paintings and Sculptures by Jewish artists” (Moscow, 1918); “An Exhibition of Works by I. Ia. Itkind” at the Habima Theater (Moscow, 1918); “On the 100th Anniversary of the Death of Aleksandr Pushkin” at the State Hermitage (Leningrad, 1937); solo exhibition in Alma-Ata (1954); etc.; copies of catalogues of the sculptor’s exhibitions, including the one at the Habima Theater (1918), with information on forty-two works presented, including “Singing” (“A Jewish Melody”), “The Inquisition,” “The Talmudist,” “The Tzadik,” “An Eastern Jewish Type,” “Hasid 1,” “Hasid 2,” “The Kabbalist,” “Sarah Bat-Tovim,” “Persecution,” “Hear, O Israel,” etc.; journal publications on the work of I. Ia. Itkind, and in particular, an article by N. Baboshin (1967), and reminiscences of the sculptor by S. T. Konenkov, E. Sinel’nikova, Iu. A. Segal’, A. I. Aldan-Semenov, B. Dvinskii, V. A. Novikov-Osennikov, V. Novikov, and others (1971); photographs of I. Ia. Itkind’s works, including: “Melody” (with the notation “c. the 1920s, State Russian Museum”), “An Old Man’s Head” (A. Kasteev Museum, Alma-Ata – presumably “The Talmudist”), “The Head of the Composer Mats, Killed by the Fascists” (State Russian Museum, undated), etc.
- Archival history:
- The State Russian Museum (GRM) in St. Petersburg is the world's largest collection of Russian art. The museum’s history began in 1895, when on April 13 Emperor Nicholas II issued an imperial decree establishing the Emperor Alexander III Russian Museum, and granting, for its accommodation, the Mikhailovsky Palace, which had just been acquired by the state. In May of the same year, a restructuring of the palace premises was undertaken for the future museum’s exhibition space, as planned and overseen by the architect V. F. Svin’in. The museum statute, approved by decree of Emperor Nicholas II on 14 February 1897, indicated that the new museum would have three departments: the section in memory of Emperor Alexander III, the ethnography department, and the art and artistic-industrial department. (For more detail, see the description of f. 1, “The Ethnography Department of the Russian Museum (REM).”) The museum was opened to the general public on 7 March 1898, becoming the country’s first state museum of Russian fine arts. Forming the basis of the State Museum’s collection were items and artworks transferred from the Winter, Gatchina, and Alexander palaces, and from the Hermitage and the Academy of Arts, as well as items donated to the museum by private collectors. Currently the State Russian Museum constitutes a major museum complex, whose collections number some 400,000 exhibit items and encompass all historical periods and trends in the development of Russian art from the tenth to the twenty-first centuries.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Isaak Iakovlevich Itkind (1871-1969) was a sculptor. He studied at the yeshiva in Smorgon’ (Vil’na province), where he received smicha (the rabbinic ordination certificate). In 1889 he moved to Minsk, where he worked as a bookbinder; and from 1897 on, he lived in Vil’na. Influenced by a book about the sculptor M. M. Antokol’skii, he produced his first sculptures, which were noted by the writer and playwright Perets Hirshbeyn. Thanks to Hirshbeyn’s newspaper article about the young sculptor, I. Ia. Itkind received the opportunity to enroll at the Vil’na Art School, where his work drew the attention of Prof. F. E. Ruszczyc of the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts, who became his first mentor. Itkind’s works were first exhibited in 1910. In 1912-13 he studied at the School of Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow, and was introduced to the sculptor S. M. Volnukhin, who accepted him as a student in his private studio and introduced him to Maksim Gorky. In 1918, thanks to the assistance of Gorky, a solo exhibition of Itkind’s works was held at the Habima Theater. For some time after the October Revolution, Itkind worked with Marc Chagall teaching at the Jewish labour colony-school “III International” for homeless children in Malakhovka (near Moscow). From 1917 on, Itkind was a member of the Union of Russian Artists, and his sculptures were displayed at exhibitions of this union, as well as of the Association for Traveling Art Exhibitions (known as the Peredvizhniki or “Wanderers”), and of the “World of Art” (Mir iskusstva). He was involved in implementing the so-called Lenin plan for monumental propaganda. In the period from 1924 to 1927, he lived in Crimea (Simferopol’ and Yalta), where he created a sculptural group titled “Pogrom” (which was soon destroyed in a studio fire). He then produced the work “Where? (After the Pogrom),” presenting it at a one-man exhibition in Simferopol’. From 1927 on he resided in Leningrad, where he produced works dedicated to various historical and cultural figures. In 1937 he participated in the Hermitage exhibition to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of Aleksandr Pushkin. That same year, he was arrested and deported to the village of Zerenda (Kokchetav region, Kazakhstan); he would live in Alma-Ata from 1944 to the end of his life.
- Access points: locations:
- Russia
- Access points: persons/families:
- Aldan-Semenov, A. I.
- Baboshin, N.
- Dvinskii, B.
- Itkind, I. Ia. (Isaak Iakovlevich)
- Konenkov, S. T.
- Novikov-Osennikov, V. A.
- Novikov, V.
- Segal’, Iu. A.
- Sinel’nikova, E.
- Subject terms:
- Art
- Art--Artists
- Exhibitions
- Memoirs
- Museums
- Paintings
- Photographs
- Sculptures
- Theatre
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds includes a single inventory systematised chronologically.
- Finding aids:
- An inventory is available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
