Sketches of Different Years
The exhibition “Sketches of Different Years…” about the creative work of Nikolay Baskakov and Dzhanna Tutundzhan was opened in the conference hall of the Kirillo-Belozersky Museum-Reserve on July 3, 2014. Seventy pictures of the artists were displayed in two halls.
Nikolay Baskakov
He was born in Kadnikov of the Sokol district in the Vologda region in 1928. Nikolay became an orphan in early childhood and was brought up together with his younger brother Yuri by their grandmother Maria in the village located in the outskirts of Sokol. He studied in the art school of that town and was the favourite pupil of Vladimir Timofeev, wonderful artist, graduate of the Moscow Higher Art School.
In 1943, Nikolay Baskakov was sent to work as an apprentice in the Vologda Art Foundation. In 1945, he left for Moscow where he studied in the Moscow Art School in Memory of 1905 since 1945. Alexander Gerasimov, President of the Academy of Arts of the USSR, appreciated his talent visiting this educational institution in 1947 and moved Nikolay Baskakov up to the secondary art school in Moscow. In 1950, he entered the Moscow Surikov Art Institute. Having graduated from it in 1956, he went to Vologda together with his wife, talented artist Dzhanna Tutundzhan.
Nikolay Baskakov was a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR since 1961. From 1961 to 1964, he headed the Vologda branch of the Union of Artists of the RSFSR. A House of Artists with workshops was constructed in Vologda thanks to his activity. Plein air panting events and exclusive exhibitions were organized on his initiative.
The artist’s works are kept in the collections of the Vologda Regional Picture Gallery, the Vologda State Museum-Preserve, the Modern Art Gallery “Red Bridge”, the museums of the Vologda region, private collections of Russia and abroad. His one-man exhibitions were staged in the Modern Art Gallery “Red Bridge” in 2003 and in the Kirillo-Belozersky Museum-Reserve in 2009-2010.
Dzhanna Tutundzhan
Dzhanna Tutundzhan was born in Moscow into the family of office workers on September 22, 1931. She entered the Moscow Secondary Art School in 1944 and studied in the Surikov Art Institute in Moscow from 1953 to 1959. She moved to Vologda, to the native land of her husband - artist Nikolay Baskakov - in 1959. They travelled a lot in the Vologda region together. In 1964, they settled on the bank of the Sukhona River in the Sergievskaya village of the Tarnoga district.
Dzhanna was a native of Moscow of Armenian origin. She was a person whom people in the Russian village where they greeted not every stranger should treat cautiously. But she could get on the right side of all villagers with her kindness, openness and wisdom. She created in the same way: Dzhanna Tutundzhan saw the very essence of the man and showed it to other people. Portraits of ordinary people, who went through the war, suffered from hunger and injustice of the authorities, lost relatives; people on whose shoulders the Russian land rested. Ingenuousness, great energy, patience and belief in man’s better feelings – all this did this big-eyed, smiling, and maidenly impetuous woman a native person for everybody who knew her.
Dzhanna Tutundzhan started to participate in regional, interregional, All-Russian, All-Union, and international art exhibitions in 1959. She was a member of the Union of Russian Artists since 1964 and became the Honoured Artist of the RSFSR in 1972. She was given the Vologda Komsomol Award named after A.Y. Yashin in 1971 and the State Award of the Vologda region in fine art and architecture in 2006. Dzhanna Tutundzhan became the People’s Artist of Russia in 2004 and a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Arts in 2007.
Dzhanna Tutundzhan’s one-man exhibitions of painting and graphic arts were held in Vologda, Moscow, Leningrad, Veliky Novgorod, Danilov, in the Yaroslavl region. Her one-man exhibition was staged in Moscow, on Poklonnaya Hill, in late January 2011, on the occasion of her 80th birthday.
Her oeuvres are kept in the museums of the Vologda region, in art museums of Archangelsk, Ivanovo, Kaluga, Kirov, Kostroma, Petrozavodsk, Syktyvkar, Novokuznetsk, and others.
Dzhanna Tutundzhan died on February 23, 2011, and was buried at the Kozitsynskoye cemetery of Vologda near her husband Nikolay Baskakov.
They were always together and death parted them just for a short while.
