Vitebsk Land: Pavel Maslenikov and his Vitebsk Period
The article centers round one of the periods of the creative work of an outstanding Belarusian artist, People’s Artist of Belarus, Pavel Vassylievich Maslenikov. A course at Vitebsk Art Technical School (1934-1938) became the basis of his professional activity. In those years Vitebsk was not yet the center of festival culture; contemporaries did not understand it as a phenomenon of art as they started calling it in the late XX - early XXI centuries. Vitebsk was one of the Region centers of BSSR then. However the city had deep cultural traditions. The hero of the article recollected, that exited musical life of the 1920-ies was still remembered, when Public Conservatoire functioned as well as the Symphony Orchestra directed by N. Malko, who came from St. Petersburg. Due to historical circumstances a lot of young but bright artists, composers, and musicians moved from Petersburg to Vitebsk. In those years Vitebsk was not only famous as vanguard art «Mecca», the city in which K. Malevich, M. Shagal, L. Lisitsky, V. Yermolayeva, M. Dobuzhinski, N. Lyubavina, I. Puni, A. Braser lived and worked, but also developed traditions of art and education center.