Evgeny Ukhnalev

Evgeny Ukhnalev’s father was a metallurgical engineer and inventor who was sentenced to twenty-five years on political charges and served his term in a mine at Vorkutlag (Komi Republic); his mother was an artist and translator who worked as a military translator in the Spanish Civil War.

As a child, Ukhnalev lived through the Siege of Leningrad and the city’s evacuation. His expressive pencil sketches from those years have been preserved. After returning to Leningrad, he studied at the Secondary Art School affiliated with the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1944–47). On November 3, 1948, at the age of seventeen, he was arrested on false charges and, like his father, sentenced to twenty-five years in labor camps for anti-Soviet activities (he was accused, among other things, of attempting to assassinate Stalin). He served his term in the Kresty prison in Leningrad, then in Vorkutlag. In the camp, he worked in a sharashka (a secret laboratory staffed by prisoners) producing architectural projects for the construction of Vorkuta. The Zimmerli Art Museum collection holds small-scale drawings by Ukhnalev made in 1952–54 (D10848–52): the yard of the Leningrad Kresty prison, barracks, watchtowers, and barbed wire of the camp zone—all demonstrating the mature craftsmanship of a young artist and remarkable compositional thinking.

In 1954, he was released early (rehabilitated in 1959) and returned to Leningrad. “When we came out of there, we became different. We were better there, when we were in the camps. Perhaps we adapted to those out here, who hadn’t been imprisoned. Mimicry is a terrible trait...” [1] the artist wrote in his memoirs.

After his release, he worked in design institutes—first as a draftsman, then as an architect. From 1967 to 1975, he worked as the chief architect of the State Hermitage Museum, and from 1998, as the lead artist at the Hermitage. He collaborated as a graphic illustrator with various publishers.

Ukhnalev began to concentrate on producing paintings and works on paper in the late 1970s. The common theme of the paintings became a reflection on time, presented in images of city walls, dark courtyards, and gateways with remnants of antiquated decor and peeling plaster. A frequent motif was closed doors seen from the street, with cracked paint, sometimes with elements of modern paraphernalia—winding electrical wires, gas pipes, distribution boxes, and service plates. One example was his painting Doroga v nikuda [The road to nowhere] (1978, Erarta Museum, Saint Petersburg), the central field of which is occupied by an impenetrably black gateway entrance crowned with a mascaron—a lion’s head; multiple intertwined cables crawl into this blackness from the facade, resembling a procession of snakes or an exposed nervous system. In other works, he depicted deserted corners of crumbling Leningrad, mysterious courtyard structures, street lamps, and telephone booths, at dusk or under snow, as well as snow-covered roofs and chimney pipes. The same motifs appear in his hatched pen-and-ink drawings, which are sometimes accompanied by romantic or philosophical titles. For example, Moi altarʹ [My altar] is the name of his 1978 work depicting the monumental arch of the beautifully decaying New Holland building in Leningrad—the creation of French architect Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe.

Other typical images of his included an abandoned rusty locomotive or lonely out-of-service carriages standing on side tracks. The gloomy silhouette of a timeworn locomotive appears, for example, in his painting Zona. (Po Tarkovskomu) [Zone. (After Tarkovsky)], painted in 1982 (Erarta Museum). The painting Znak bedy [Sign of trouble] (1990) depicts a semaphore warped by winds, rising like an ominous monument against a leaden sky. His works are distinguished by expressive imagery and imbued with warm nostalgic sentiment. His attention to detail sometimes gives the impression of photography, but the instability and phantom unreality of what is depicted leads his art to be classified in the sphere of magical realism. Notable is his self-portrait from 2005, where the artist depicted his own small figure, on a sunny day, sitting on the pedestal of a disproportionately enlarged column of Kazan Cathedral in Saint Petersburg—one of his most optimistic works.

In 1981, Ukhnalev participated in an exhibition of the City Committee of Graphic Artists, an organization uniting Leningrad art masters who were not members of the official Union of Soviet Artists; in 1983 and 1984, he participated in the second and fourth exhibitions of the TEII, Fellowship for Experimental Fine Art (Товарищество экспериментального изобразительного искусства)—the first actively functioning independent art association in the USSR, which did not achieve official status but nevertheless gained recognition from the authorities. Both TEII exhibitions were held at the Youth Palace. In 1985, an exhibition of fourteen artists, including Ukhnalev, was also held there.

From 1992 to 1998, he worked as a special expert in the revived heraldic department of Russia (State Heraldry under the President of the Russian Federation), and from 1999, he was a member of the Heraldic Council under the President of the Russian Federation. In this capacity, he became the author of the official design of the coat of arms of the Russian Federation (adopted on November 30, 1993), the flag and insignia (chain) of the President of the Russian Federation, drawings of the insignia of the Orders of Saint Andrew the Apostle, “For Merit to the Fatherland,” and the Order of Courage, as well as the design of the official insignia of the Governor of Saint Petersburg (with chain). He also created numerous drawings of coats of arms, flags, awards, emblems, commemorative badges, forms, certificates, and diplomas. Some of his works were published in Georgy Vilinbakhov’s book Gosudarstvennyĭ gerb Rossii. 500 let [The state emblem of Russia. 500 years] (Saint Petersburg, 1997). In 1997, he received the title of People’s Artist of the Russian Federation with the wording “for great services in the field of fine arts.”

He is the author of the monument to the victims of political repression in Petrograd-Leningrad—the Solovetsky Stone on Trinity Square in Saint Petersburg (unveiled in 2002; Ukhnalev’s coauthor was the dissident artist and former political prisoner Yuly Rybakov [b.1946]).

He participated in more than 40 exhibitions in Russia and abroad, including in Germany, USA, Austria, Finland, and Sweden.

In 2013, he wrote his memoir, Eto moe. Podstrochnik [This is mine. Interlinear], of which a significant part is devoted to his memories of the labor camp.

In Saint Petersburg, Ukhnalev’s works are in collections including the State Hermitage Museum, State Russian Museum, Diaghilev Arts Center, Anna Akhmatova Museum at the Fountain House, and Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art.

Dmitrii Severjukhin

Translated from Russian by Ariadna Arendt

Notes

[1] Evgenii Ukhnalev. Zhivopis.’ Grafika. Geral’dika [Evgenii Ukhnalev. Painting. Graphics. Heraldry]. Saint Petersburg, 2006.