Metadata: I. Ia. Gintsburg
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- State Russian Museum. Manuscripts Department
- Holding institution (official language):
- ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ РУССКИЙ МУЗЕЙ. ОТДЕЛ РУКОПИСЕЙ
- Postal address:
- 191186, St Petersburg, Inzhenernaya St, 4
- Phone number:
- (812) 595-42-40
- Web address:
- http://rusmuseum.ru/museum/
- Email:
- fzr@rusmuseum.ru
- Reference number:
- F. 97
- Title:
- I. Ia. Gintsburg
- Title (official language):
- ГИНЦБУРГ И. Я.
- Creator/accumulator:
- Gintsburg, I Ia
- Date(s):
- 1871/1938
- Language:
- Russian
- Yiddish
- Extent:
- 97 archival storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Photographic images
- Scope and content:
-
This fonds includes personal documents of I Ia Gintsburg, including his birth certificate (1859); certificate of graduation from the Academy of Arts (1886); his diploma conferring the title of academician, issued by the Imperial Academy of Arts (1911); various identification documents and diplomas (1890s-30s); manuscripts of articles, stories and autobiographical writings by I Ia Gintsburg (1903-37); his personal correspondence; the catalogue of an exhibit of I Ia Gintsburg’s works held in Petrograd on the occasion of the thirty-fifth anniversary of his artistic activity (1918); lists of his works (1886-1930); and photographs of I Ia Gintsburg, his relatives and friends, as well as photographs of works by the sculptor (1872-1938).
Pertaining to Jewish history and culture is a pamphlet titled “Report of the Jewish Society for the Encouragement of the Arts for 1916”, which includes business cards of members of the society and a set of tear-off donation “ticket-coupons” issued by it in the same year; an authorised memoir typescript, and manuscripts, including “V. V. Stasov” (1907), “Two Friends” (on Il’ia Repin and M M Antokol’skii; 1922); “Notes from a Life” (1918); “How and Why I Was Arrested in Perm” (1919); “Doubts and Experiences” (1921-22); “How I Worked and Taught” (c. 1925); “My First Experiences and Doubts (Notes on a Religious Education)” (1926); “Religion and My Life” (1937); “How I Became a Sympathiser” (1936); fragments of reminiscences about M M Antokol’skii (undated); etc.; manuscripts and transcripts of reports titled “Aestheticism and the Freedom of Artistic Creation” (1909), “On Formalism in Art” (1936), etc.; a review by I Ia Gintsburg of a two-volume edition of selected works by V V Stasov and reminiscences about him; manuscripts of works of fiction, including the autobiographical stories “The Steward” (1903) and “On the Border” (1904), etc., as well as a dramatic sketch in three acts titled “At the Son’s Place”.
The fonds also contains I Ia Gintsburg’s correspondence, including with, among others, the sculptor M G Manizer, the literary critic I Ia Aizenshtock, the violinist M E Gol’dshtein, the artists L M Antokol’skii and Il’ia Repin, and others (1910s-30s).
- 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:
- Il’ia Iakovlevich Gintsburg (1859-1939) was a sculptor, playwright, and public commentator. He was born in Vil’na, to a religious family. He began his studies as a pupil in the studio of M M Antokol’skii in St. Petersburg in 1870. From 1878-86, he studied in the sculpture department of the Imperial Academy of Arts. In 1886 he was awarded the gold medal and title of class artist first degree for his work The Lamentation of Jeremiah on the Ruins of Jerusalem. He was one of the founders of the Jewish Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in Petrograd in 1915; the following year, he was elected the society’s deputy chair and chairman of the council of its combined arts section. From 1918 he was a professor and head of the sculpture workshop of the Petrograd State Free Art Studios. From 1912-23, he served as dean of the sculpture department of the Higher Artistic-Technical Studios. From 1919 he taught at the Institute of Higher Jewish Studies and he was a member of the Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia (OPE). In 1923, he served as head of the Museum of the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society. He produced sculptural portraits of L Tolstoy, M M Antokol’skii, G O (E) Gintsburg, L O Pasternak, A G Rubinshtein, and the gravestone of his teacher M M Antokol’skii at the Preobrazhenskii cemetery (1909).
- Access points: locations:
- St Petersburg
- Access points: persons/families:
- Aizenshtock, I Ia
- Antokol’skii, L M
- Gintsburg, Il’ia Iakovlevich
- Gol’dshtein, M E
- Manizer, M G
- Repin, Il’ia
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds comprises a single inventory, arranged by structure and in part alphabetically.
- Finding aids:
- An inventory is available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
