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Transatlantic routes of the sculptor Stepan Erzia

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Transatlantic routes of the sculptor Stepan Erzia

18.12.2021

Dmitry Smolev

Stepan Erzia. The Man from Chaco. Replica (tinted plaster). Photo credit: Stepan Erzia International Art Foundation

The Erzia Center in Moscow houses a collection of unique sculptural replicas. Most of them are the casts from the artist's works kept in South America, although there are some originals as well.

Stepan Erzia was a Mordvin sculptor who lived in Soviet Russia and Argentina. International Art Foundation after his name was based in Shcherbinka near Moscow until recently and then moved to the Moscow city. A part of the 1934 building was thoroughly reconstructed. Currently, it has two exhibition halls along with administrative and technical premises. The location is new, but the goals of this non-profit organization founded in 2007 remain the same. It aims to care for the legacy of the artist that the foundation was named after and to popularize his works. The presentation of the Erzia Center was scheduled to coincide with the 145th anniversary of the famous sculptor's birth celebrated in November.

There was a time when the name of Stepan Erzia (1876-1959) was famous all over the USSR, although his style had nothing to do with socialist realism. And he himself was not a man with a Soviet mentality. The trajectory of his fate was extremely twisted, and his lifetime fame was international in the full sense of the word. The career of the sculptor-to-be began in the Volga countryside. Young Stepan Nefyodov (Erzia is the pseudonym that he adopted later after the name of his ethnic group) served as an apprentice in the artel of icon painters and helped to paint rural churches. His passion for art led him to the Moscow School of Arts, Sculpture, and Architecture, where he had such great teachers as Sergei Volnukhin and Paolo Troubetzkoy.

He experienced true success even before the revolution: while living in Italy and France, he participated in important European exhibitions, received orders from major collectors, and came under the notice of museum workers. Nevertheless, Erzia returned to his homeland following the outbreak of World War I. He welcomed the revolution with enthusiasm, but was eventually disappointed in it, and in 1926, he headed for Paris with his exhibition with the blessing of Commissar Lunacharsky. And then there was a much more exotic twist of fate: in 1927, Erzia settled in Argentina and stayed there for almost a quarter of a century. There he discovered a new artistic material - subtropical wood quebracho, carob, tigerwood.

He worked abroad productively and enjoyed recognition. But as the years went by, he thought about returning home more and more often. And that happened in 1950. Stalin personally gave an order to arrange shipment of Erzia's work by steamship. In Moscow, he was provided with a studio near the Sokol metro station. And in 1954, his large solo exhibition was held at the House of Artists on Kuznetsky Most. Like Sergei Konenkov, who had returned to his home country from the US in 1945, Stepan Erzia tried to look closely at the Soviet reality, look for new characters, but in fact, he did not want to change his aesthetic views and remained an artist of the Symbolist, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco periods until the end of his days.

Stepan Erzia at work. Photo credit: Stepan Erzia International Art Foundation/ Instagram

The work of this artist is now being promoted by the foundation named after him. And the new permanent exhibition features items that can be called the fruit of altruistic activities. Actually, the collection here includes some original works by Erzia (one of them was recently brought to Moscow from Philadelphia where it has been bought at an auction by the founder and president of the foundation, Mikhail Zhuravlev). Nevertheless, most items on the display platforms are replicas made of tinted plaster - there are two dozen of them.

And there is no reason to be puzzled and shrug your shoulders: the replicas are really unique. They were created for educational purposes, just like those casts that Professor Ivan Tsvetaev had ordered from all over Europe for the future museum in Volkhonka more than 100 years ago. It is true that today's art museums do not do practice this as they are dominated by the cult of the originals. However, the memorial museums often demonstrate replicas, although with certain embarrassment; they try to disguise the fact that certain exhibits are of replicated origin. As for the Erzya Center, here no one is embarrassed but rather proud of this fact.

A number of the casts were brought from South America, namely Argentina, as well as Uruguay and Paraguay. Stepan Erzia managed to do a lot during his 23-year overseas career, and a significant share of those works found local owners back then. Few people here have seen these works, even in photographs. So the foundation set itself the goal of collecting everything possible, even in the form of replicas. The point here is not to pretend that imitations are originals, it's about knowing and studying. In the case of sculptures, a quality replica is both legitimate and useful. And these replicas are of extremely high quality. Almost all of them were made by the restorer Alexander Tolokin, a man who knows everything about materials, technology, and the style of Erzia, and even more.

It should be noted that replication was often combined with restoration. Sometimes there was actually a deal: we undertake to restore your sculpture and you give us permission to take a cast. A similar scheme was used even in the case of street sculptures. For example, the marble Leisure stood on Avenida Boedo in Buenos Aires for decades. There were serious concerns about the statue preservation; it was literally "melting like sugar," as Elena Butrova, vice president and scientific director of the foundation, put it. In 2010, with the participation of Alexander Tolokin, the statue was "cured", safely preserved, and returned to its original place. A cast was left as a memento of this restoration.

In addition to the Latin American ones, the Foundation also has European addresses on its map. For example, there is an epic associated with "John the Baptist". This statue was made of reinforced cement during Erzia's Italian period. In 1914, the writer Alexander Amfiteatrov presented it to a church in the Ligurian town of Fezzano. For almost half a century the sculpture stood in a niche above the entrance to the church. In the 1960s it was dismantled because of its deteriorating state of preservation and replaced by another. Almost half a century later, the previous statue was accidentally discovered in very poor condition. The Stepan Erzia Foundation got involved. The restoration was carried out by the famous expert Daniele Angelotto. Now "John the Baptist" is back on the facade of the church in Fezzano while its replica has settled in Moscow. The foundation has quite a few stories of this kind to share, and some of them are described in the explanatory notes that can be found around the room.

Stepan Erzia. John the Baptist. Photo credit: Stepan Erzia International Art Foundation

The Erzya Center does not position itself as a personal museum of the artist. However, some museum-research work can be seen here. In addition, the new institution promises to engage in educational activities through exhibitions, lectures, master classes, and concerts. In addition to historical programs, the Erzya Center intends to introduce the public to the works of contemporary sculptors. The above intention has been announced as an integral part of the new cultural location.


Original source (in Russian): The Art Newspaper Russia


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