Soviet sculptors and Stalin's Empire Style. High-rise building on Kotelnicheskaya embankment.

Abstract

This article is devoted to the creative team of wonderful, talented Soviet architects, sculptors, engineers, designers who decorated Moscow with their monumental works during the construction of Stalin's skyscrapers, using the example of the construction of a high-rise building on the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment. Part of the building was erected in 1938. The main building on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment began to be built at the end of the Great Patriotic War. The house on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment became one of the seven Stalinist skyscrapers erected on the arrow of the Yauza River and the Moskva River. The high-rise on the left bank of the Moskva River was supposed to mark the confluence of the Yauza into its channel and continue the concept of the projected 400-meter Palace of the Council. One of the authors of the residential building project on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment was D.N.Chechulin, who was also entrusted with the design of a high-rise building in Zaryadye. He received the state prize not for a residential building on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment, but for the project of a skyscraper in Zaryadye that was never built. The general plan for the reconstruction of Moscow in 1935 provided for the construction of 9-12 storey high-rises buildings. A special role is assigned to the Moscow sculptors who worked at the height of a bird's flight on this high-rise, and we would like to mention them - these are N.V. Tomsky, M.F. Baburin, P.I. Bondarenko, M.N. Smirnov, R. K. Taurit, A.P. Faidysh-Krandievsky, D.P. Schwartz, G. A. Schultz, L.D.Muravin, T.N.Mukhataeva, A.V.Kuznetsova, E.G.Bagirov. Many of these sculptors then became leading teachers at the sculpture departments at the Moscow State Art Institute named after V.I.Surikov and the Moscow State Art Institute now named after Duke S.G.Stroganov, where I had the opportunity to learn the art of plastics from them in 1974-1979.