Exhibition of Dmitry Moshchevitin (1894-1974)

Dmitry Moshchevitin is another pet of the Kazan Art School, for which the short years spent in our city have become decisive in the professional activity that has been going on in Moscow for more than 50 years. D.P. Moshchevitin is known as a graphic artist, a master of book and magazine illustration, collaborating with leading Moscow publishing houses and magazines. Today, graphic works by D.P. Moschevitin is stored in large Russian museums in Moscow (Tretyakov Gallery, Literary Museum), Kazan, Omsk, Sarapul, Istra, Moscow Region, where he settled on his declining years.

Dmitry Pavlovich Moshchevitin was born in Sarapul in the family of a craftsman (brick-stove). The early drawing abilities were supported by relatives, and he was sent to Kazan, where in 1911 he entered the Kazan Art School as a volunteer. Monetary difficulties that did not allow paying for tuition on time, and even more ruffled in character (he created and publicly bold cartoons for the school principal), led to the fact that he had to leave his studies. Two years spent in school, training in a still-life class with N.I. Feshin allowed the development of the natural talent of Dmitry Moshchevitin and laid the foundation for self-improvement, which became the key to professional growth in the future. The era of Art Nouveau style determined the aesthetic preferences of the artist for many years - he always had a love of graphics, exquisite linearity, ornament, stylization.

The years of the First World War and revolutionary upheavals in Russia became a time of painful trials and wanderings in the vast territories of the country: Sarapul, Agryz, Miass, Zlatoust, Chelyabinsk, Omsk, Novonikolaevsk. Recognized as unfit for military service because of his health, he worked on the construction of the railway, performed posters and caricatures for newspapers, led art studios in different cities of Siberia, the Urals and the Volga region, organized exhibitions and participated in them himself. His brief visits to Kazan during these years turned out to be very significant and fruitful in terms of his artistic results. In 1918, Moshchevitin took part in the organization of the first Kazan art association - the Sunflower Union, which brought together the young avant-garde-minded art forces of Kazan. In 1921, Moshchevitin joined the graphic team "The Horseman" (the most systematically realized his avant-garde aspirations in engraving), worked as a decorator at the First Workers’ Theater of Kazan (whose history has yet to be restored).

Since 1922, Moshchevitin settled in Moscow and began to collaborate with the large Moscow magazines "Searchlight", "Krasnaya Nov", "MOPR", with the major publishers "Centrosoyuz", "Pravda", "Work Newspaper", etc., especially with publishing house of G.F. Mirimanov, which produced children’s illustrated books. Moschevitin’s drawings on various topics merged into the flow of graphic production of young Soviet art, which was focused on educating a new person, on reflecting changes in the life of the country. The publishing routine determined by the state order did not always give the artist the opportunity to follow his creative aspirations. In the 1930s – 1940s, he often worked at a desk. Only in the post-Soviet era, thanks to the efforts of the artist’s daughter Nadezhda Moshchevitina, some of these series were published: “The Tale of the Dead Princess” by A. S. Pushkin (1996), “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish” by A. S. Pushkin (1998), O. Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Prison (2011). Series of illustrations to the works of M.Yu. Lermontov, B. Brecht and others are still waiting in the wings.

At the personal exhibition of D.P. Moshchevitin, which is being held in Kazan for the first time, presents more than 80 graphic works from the collection of the Pushkin Museum of the Republic of Tatarstan and the archive of the master’s family, reflecting different periods of creativity and the variety of genres and those developed by the artist. Books designed by D.P. Moshchevitin in the 1920s for Moscow publishers, provided for exposure by the Scientific Library. N.I. Lobachevsky K (P) FU. The exhibition will reveal yet another hypostasis of Dmitry Moshchevitin - his acting talent, which in the 1920s was embodied in several films made by director A. D. Popov (another student of the Kazan Art School). Visitors to the exhibition will have the opportunity to watch the film "Big Trouble" in 1929, where D.P. Moshchevitin played one of the roles.

Olga Ulemnova