Life
Mukhina was born in Riga into a wealthy merchant family, and lived at Turgeneva st. 23/25, where a memorial plaque has now been placed. She later moved to Moscow, where she studied at several private art schools, including those of Konstantin Yuon and Ilya Mashkov. In 1912 she traveled to Paris, where she attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and took lessons from Emile-Antoine Bourdelle, then continued on to Italy to explore the art and sculptures of the Renaissance period.
In 1915 and 1916, she served as assistant to Aleksandra Ekster at Alexander Tairov's Chamber Theater in Moscow. In 1918 she married Alexei Zamkov, a military surgeon.
In the 1920s Mukhina rose to become one of the Soviet Union's most prominent sculptors, and although she continued to produce cubist sculpture as late as 1922, she became a leading figure of Socialist realism, both in style and ideology. She taught at the state school, Vkhutemas, in 1926-1927, and came to international attention with the 1937 Worker and Kolkhoz Woman. Her studio's work on official monuments and architectural sculpture on state commissions continued through her death. She also experimented with glass, producing glass figural busts.
From 1941 to 1952, Mukhina won the Stalin Prize five times, was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1943. In 1953 she wrote "A Sculptor's Thoughts".
Because of Muhkina's influence as a great Soviet artist, and as a former student of the Latvian sculptor Kārlis Zāle, she persuaded Soviet officials in the late 1940s that the Freedom Monument in Riga was of great artistic importance. Due to her efforts the monument was not demolished to make way for a statue of Joseph Stalin.
Mukhina's house and studio at 3a Prechistensky Lane is slated for demolition. She's buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery.
Read more about this topic: Vera Mukhina
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal—that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is not any present moment that is unconnected with some future one. The life of every man is a continued chain of incidents, each link of which hangs upon the former. The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace. Evil may at some future period bring forth good; and good may bring forth evil, both equally unexpected.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“‘Pure experience’ is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.”
—William James (1842–1910)