Memories in memoirs: Mykhailo (Moisey) Fradkin

Abstract

The artist Moisey Fradkin (1904–1974) was a bright talented person in a brilliant galaxy of Ukrainian artists of the late 1920s – mid 1930s. He was a direct participant in the process of forming a special national “face” of graphic art. His works, which were exhibited at numerous foreign exhibitions in Europe and the United States, were noted as “strong and magical.” However, the further Fradkin’s creative destiny was not triumphant – after a very bright surge of original talent, his art was muted in the Procrustean bed of the Stalinist ideology, from about the end of the 1930s to the 1960s. He did not lose his skills, but only at the end of his life, full of wise experience, Fradkin again acquired bright energy and youthful enthusiasm in his work. Fradkin was a widely educated person, he taught at the Kharkiv Art Institute, was an active illustrator, author of easel compositions and graphic miniatures-exlibrises, worked in the field of industrial graphics for many years, headed the section of decorative and applied arts of the Kharkiv Club of Exlibrisists, collected a huge library. He and his wife, H. Krieger put together a unique collection of paintings, graphics and decorative and applied arts (more than 4000 items), which was later inherited by the Kharkiv Art Museum. The museum’s archives contain scattered sheets with fragments of Fradkin’s memoirs about his years of study at the Kharkiv Art College-Institute, which emotionally describe the time of the rapid reform of art education, which was full of contradictions. The article is based on these, not completely deciphered notes, and on the personal memoirs of the author of the article, who was familiar with the artist in the last four years of his life.