Faina Vadanosava (Minsk)
Few know the artist Dmitry Nikolaevich Polazov. His work, his name, and his life are unjustly forgotten and, unfortunately, not included in the treasury of the history of national art and culture. Meanwhile, the Russian painter and teacher lived and worked in Minsk for about 10 years from 1914 to the mid-1920s, teaching at various educational institutions, helping to prepare the first national art exhibitions, in which he himself participated. Another important detail of his life is that the artist first and most successfully embodied the image of the national poet of Belarus, Yanka Kupala, in painting in 1921. He was friends with Ivan Dominikovich and lived next door on Sadova-Uzberiezhna Street.
In the late 1960s, a significant collection of paintings and graphic works, as well as photographs of the Russian artist Dmitry Nikolaevich Polazov, was transferred to the State Literary Museum of Yanka Kupala. At that time, the museum already had three of his canvases: two portraits of the poet were kept in the archives, while the third was exhibited in one of the museum’s halls. The museum’s archive also preserved the correspondence of the first director of the museum, Yanka Kupala’s wife, Vladislava Frantsavna Lutsevich, with Dmitry Polazov in the 1950s. Together with the transferred works, these materials formed an extraordinarily valuable collection of a creator, a person whose fate was connected with Minsk, for whom Belarusian land became native for a certain time, and another page of the cultural life of Belarus opened before the museum’s scholars, one of the pages from Kupala’s life.
Vladislava Frantsavna Lutsevich, recalling the artist, said: “I always thought that Zmitrok Nikolaevich Polazov, a man of calm, thoughtful character, a hardworking person, was very liked by Yanka. He said that the artist has grip, persistence, and a keen eye. He immediately grasps what he needs, but then thinks a lot about what he has noticed, ponders, clarifies — whether what he saw in a person is characteristic. So it is with Yanka. Sometimes he writes a poem right away. Then he seriously thinks it over, discusses it, polishes it, searches for the words that fit exactly here. This approach to creativity brought them closer — Polazov and Yanka Kupala.” Is it not for this reason that such a successful portrait of Yanka Kupala was painted by the artist in 1921, and not just one, but three…
Dmitry Nikolaevich Polazov
D. Polazov was known in Minsk as a painter and drawing teacher from the moment he moved there in 1914. Dmitry Nikolaevich Polazov was born on January 23, 1875, in Roslavl in the family of the famous Roslavl merchant Nikolai Polazov. And immediately, listening to the ancient names — Smolensk, Roslavl — one understands that they are Belarusian. Thus, the artist is of Belarusian descent. The places are famous; outstanding creators came from there: painter and sculptor Mikeshin, renowned sculptor Sergey Konenkov. In Roslavl, they said: “To know something, you must pass through Polazov’s university!” And the Polazov university is true human knowledge, a thirst for knowledge, a desire to make life better, an interest in folk talents. The famous Russian sculptor Sergey Konenkov was friends with Dmitry Polazov in his youth, studied with him at the gymnasium in Roslavl, and then they studied in Moscow and St. Petersburg. An interesting fact is that while being friends with Dmitry, Sergey was also very close to his father, Nikolai Alexandrovich, about whom there are fascinating memories of the sculptor in the book “My Century.” They portray an extraordinarily gifted, educated person, an enlightener, a diligent master. Nikolai Polazov had a large garden and enthusiastically engaged in the selection of fruit trees. But let us turn to Sergey Konenkov’s memories: “Polazov traveled across Russia from end to end, visited Japan, passed through China, and returned home via Singapore. At his own expense, merchant Polazov built two folk schools in the Klimovichi district and maintained them.” It was after his father’s travels that Dmitry Polazov preserved a relic: a photograph of Leo Tolstoy on the day of his seventieth birthday with the writer’s autograph to Nikolai Alexandrovich Polazov. The yellowed ancient print is now in the collections of the Yanka Kupala Museum.
The artist’s father was a strong master, had a small soap factory near his own house, and produced hemp oil. In Roslavl, he was respected by all: intelligentsia, common people, wealthy individuals, and the poor, only “black-soot” people did not like him. He valued knowledge highly, so he sent his children to study: Dmitry’s sons to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, and his daughter Olga to the Bestuzhev Courses in St. Petersburg.
The famous Russian painter V. Makovsky was Polazov’s teacher. Later in the young artist’s life, there was St. Petersburg, the Academy of Arts. Finally, Dmitry Nikolaevich began teaching first in Roslavl, then in Smolensk. But perhaps the restless character of his father, which passed to his son, did not give D. Polazov peace, and he enrolled in Moscow University in the history department to strengthen his knowledge of art with deep historical knowledge and to have the full right to teach art history in higher educational institutions.
In 1903, after completing his artistic education, Dmitry Polazov took a job at the Smolensk Government Men’s Gymnasium, where he worked for 11 years with good reviews. Arriving in Minsk on February 14, 1914, he began teaching drawing and painting at the real school and at the Minsk Teachers’ Institute. His workload was very large, and therefore he had to leave teaching at the institute. It was in 1914 that the artist’s family faced difficulties: children’s illnesses, borrowing money from the Smolensk Credit Society for their treatment in Moscow, loss of funds at the beginning of the war, the threat of debt collection through the court or property seizure, a request to the director of the real school to ask the Vilnius educational district to cancel the debt, but he refused… Thus, his first year of life in Minsk was complicated. But teacher Polazov worked honestly, sincerely, and devotedly. The memories of contemporaries-teachers who worked with him testify that strictness was a hallmark of Polazov, both in his external appearance and character. He never gave the highest mark “5” to anyone; good marks for him were “4” and even “3.” Before allowing students to start working on a drawing, he pondered a lot with them, explained, told them about art, outstanding artists, famous canvases, and the technique of execution. He often painted himself in class. He had a peculiarity — he never corrected students’ works, and after the work was completed, he organized discussions about them, allowing them to discuss his as well. He highly valued independence in his students. This was his method during work both at the real school and at school No. 5, at the railway secondary school named after A. Chervyakov, the polytechnic institute, and the Belpedtechnikum, the Institute of Education, and general education courses, etc. The sharp pencil of the artist, his observance preserved for us interesting sketches of the teaching environment of Minsk in the 1920s (now in the Yanka Kupala Museum).
Women’s Gymnasium in Roslavl
A very energetic, multifaceted nature, Dmitry Nikolaevich worked in many institutions. In the 1920s, the question arose to create a new studio of visual arts in Minsk. This matter was taken up by the Russian artist who lived and worked in Minsk at that time, Konstantin Eliseev, who published an announcement about its creation in three newspapers.
Let us turn to the memories of the theatrical artist and graphic artist Konstantin Eliseev, preserved in the poet’s museum:
”…An artist came to me, who graduated from the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, Zmitrok Nikolaevich Polazov, by specialty a painter, who had another profession — a historian (he attended a special course at Moscow University with the famous V. O. Klyuchevsky).
Z. M. Polazov was a teacher at the Belarusian Polytechnic Institute, where he also had a three-room apartment, in which he lived with his wife, the beautiful lady Elena Ivanovna, and two children — son Nikolai and daughter Elena, a cheerful and passionate girl of 15–16 years, with whom I quickly became friends.
Polazov was 10–12 years older than me, and I considered him my older friend; besides that, as a Minsk old-timer, he was acquainted with the local intelligentsia: educators, doctors, party workers, and others…
I owe my acquaintance with Yanka Kupala — the Belarusian poet — to Z. Polazov. It happened like this: he arranged at the Academic Center that he would paint a portrait of Yanka for the museum. He was promised that his work would take its place on the wall of the future museum. On his way to the next session, he suggested that I accompany him and, depending on the situation, participate in the work.” Memories of former Minsk teacher Alexandra Shklyaeva, who, together with her husband, also met Yanka Kupala in the workshop of artist Polazov in 1920, have been preserved: “At that time, Polazov was working on a portrait of Yanka Kupala, making sketches and pencil drafts. Yanka Kupala came to the Polazovs to pose.
Yanka Kupala read his works; Polazov told a lot about ancient art, about artists of Russia. The Polazov and Kupala families became friends. The national poet dedicated his poem “Cranes return from the paradise” to the artist’s daughter, gifted her a book from his library “The Patriotic War of 1812 in the Smolensk Province,” noting that partisans Polazov are mentioned there (now in the museum’s collections). Unfortunately, the book of Yanka Kupala with his autograph: “To Miss Lucy Polazova in gratitude for the flowers” has not been preserved. In her memories, the artist’s daughter, recalling the 1920s, meetings with the poet and the friendship of the families, Sadova-Uzberiezhna Street, writes that this part of the city was drowned in greenery, in spring everything was in blooming gardens, lilacs, the scent of which she preserved for her whole life.
Dmitry Polazov realized himself in Minsk as a teacher, as an artist, but one can also say that he was a scholar, a collector. Together with Yanka Kupala, artist M. Filipovich, composer V. Teravsky, director F. Zhdanovich, teacher M. Shklyaev, he went on ethnographic expeditions to Sluchchyna, Lahoysk. At that time, the foundation of national science, the national museum was being laid, and the artist actively participated in this. Perhaps during one of these expeditions, Polazov noticed the inspiration of the folk bard to later embody it in a painted canvas.
Life circumstances turned out such that in the mid-1920s, the artist left Minsk with his family and moved to Leningrad.
In the early 1950s, information reached V. F. Lutsevich, the director of the museum, that their former neighbor, a good acquaintance from Minsk in the 1920s, who now lived in distant Leningrad, artist Polazov, had two more portraits, besides the one that was in the museum of the national poet, which he wished to transfer. And a correspondence began between them, which lasted from October 1951 to March 1953.
Having familiarized ourselves with the letters of the almost 80-year-old artist, we obtained some information about his life, worries, his thoughts and hopes, about the years of the Leningrad blockade, which left a heavy mark: in the 1950s, he lost almost 80% of his eyesight. He wrote the letters himself, but he could hardly read what he wrote; his household helped him. But by nature, an optimistic, cheerful person, he found the strength to joke, telling in a letter to Vladislava Frantsavna about the glasses prescribed to him by Leningrad doctors, calling them “Pulkov Observatory.” In August 1952, he reported that some of his works were acquired by the M. A. Ostrovsky Museum in Sochi and Moscow. And in a letter dated June 7, 1952, D. Polazov informs V. F. Lutsevich: “Once again, I apologize for the delay of the portraits, caused both by my illness and the restoration that had to be done (by the Hermitage restorer) to eliminate the slight deformation caused by thirty years of age and the unfavorable storage conditions during the blockade of Leningrad and to bring them back to their original appearance.”
Young Yanka Kupala
Now the portraits are kept in the Yanka Kupala Literary Museum. Extremely warm, artistically successful, they convey to us the face of the poet of the 1920s, bringing his image closer to the contemporary, making him close and understandable.
In the artist’s archive, there are several watercolors that are valuable to us for their documentality. Because before us stands Sadova-Uzberiezhna Street, where Yanka Kupala lived, the old garden, the flowerbed, and the artist lived nearby, on the same street in house No. 5. And on a small painted canvas, old Minsk from the side of Sadova-Uzberiezhna, a sloping house, a fence, everything overgrown, and in the distance, the chimneys and the bulk of the new stone Minsk are visible. How much tenderness, admiration the artist had for the old places, for the landscape of the city that was native to him and the memory of which he preserved for his whole life. Very dear to us, today’s generation of Minsk residents, is his view of that little street on the banks of the Svislach, which was drowned in greenery, where the national poet lived before the war, and which no longer exists.
Among the other works of the artist preserved in the museum are portraits that he painted later in life from photographs. Among them is a portrait of an old friend, Minsk teacher G. Fidrovskaya, and the portrait of Tanya Shklyaeva, daughter of Minsk teachers, neighbors of the artist and Yanka Kupala, marked for us with great significance, a work from 1950, almost the last. It was during this time that the artist lost his eyesight; only letters from friends, acquaintances, and… memories remained in his life. The artist died in 1953, having lived 78 years.
The picture of the artistic life of Belarus, its cultural achievements would be incomplete without the name of the person who diligently prepared artistic cadres, art exhibitions, participated in its cultural life, who was friends with Yanka Kupala, without the name of Dmitry Nikolaevich Polazov.
History, Cultural Studies, Art Studies: Materials of the III International Congress of Belarusian Studies “Belarusian Culture in the Dialogue of Civilizations” (Minsk, May 21-25, December 4-7, 2000) / Editorial Board: V. Skalaban (chief editor) et al. – Minsk: “Belarusian Book Collection,” 2001. – 364 p. – (Belarusica = Albaruthenica; Book 21).