The winged genius of the October Revolution

The exhibition project centers on the history of the creation of the famous monumental plaque "To Those Who Died for Peace and Brotherhood of Nations." New times required new artistic images, so the execution of such an important monument was entrusted to one of the greatest sculptors of the 20th century, a full member of the USSR Academy of Arts, Sergei Timofeevich Konenkov (1874-1971).

The monument was erected in 1918 on the Senate Tower of the Kremlin above the burial site of the Red Guards.

The exhibition will feature unique photographs with the author’s drawings, postcards from 1918 from a private collection, photo collages, as well as sketches of the monument made in glazed ceramics, plaster and colored plasticine. The exhibition project is intended to remind us of the history of the creation of one of the most iconic monumental works of the first years of Soviet power.

The art of S. T. Konenkov is multifaceted and complex – there is practically no area of human activity, no era that would not be reflected in the works of this great master. The events of 1917 find Sergei Konenkov at the height of his fame and creative blossoming. He accepted the revolution with joy and jubilation, which became a significant event in the artist’s life and work. The sculptor actively participated in the implementation of the monumental propaganda plan, which became a grandiose utopian art project of the new state. Konenkov won the Mossovet competition for the construction of a monument to the Proletarian Revolution and fallen comrades-fighters on Red Square.

As early as 1918, a memorial plaque "To the Fallen in the Struggle for Peace and Brotherhood of Nations" was installed on the Senate Tower of the Kremlin. The allegorical image of the winged figure of the genius of the October Revolution that he found was reflected in the poetry of his great contemporaries, such as V.V. Mayakovsky and S.A. Yesenin. The plaque remained on the Senate Tower until 1948, when it was dismantled due to dilapidation. In the 1960s, S.T. Konenkov restored the monument in his workshop, but the aesthetics of the work no longer corresponded to the spirit of the new era, and in 1966 the work was transferred to the collection of the State Russian Museum.

The text was compiled by the Information Department (press service of the Russian Academy of Arts) based on an article by the head of the Memorial Museum “Creative Workshop of S. T. Konenkov”, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Arts Svetlana Leonidovna Bobrova.