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  • Pictures Ready for the Exhibition

The Chelyabinsk State Fine Arts Museum has completed restoration of the three surrealism epoch pictures by Serafima Ryangina and Boris Yakovlev depicting Magnezit. 

The final restoration state was restoring the lost paintwork. Just kike at the first stage, the work was performed by Philipp Guzanov, fine art restorer from the Moscow State Stroganov Academy of Design and Applied Arts assisted by Viktor Chichilanov, employee of the Chelyabinsk State Fine Arts Museum. The fine art works are ready to be presented to the general public due to Magnezit Group  and Sobranie Cultural Initiative Supporting & Preservation Fund. This year, the museum plans to demonstrate these works on-site – in Satka with support of these partners.

The three renovated pictures devoted to Magnezit –  The Brick Making Shop Floor and Shaft Furnace of Magnezit Factory by Serafima Ryangina and The Open Cut. Satka by Boris Yakovlev are owned by the fund of the art gallery of the museum. For a long time, the painting were stored in the reserve stock, and their state did not allow to demonstrate them without damage. The exception was made during the exhibition devoted to USSR industrialization, At Full Tilt,  At Full Steam! held in the gallery halls in spring of this year, when works Serafima Ryangina  that were damaged in the course of time most of all were demonstrated in the restoration paper tapes – specially-designed strips preventing further peeling of the paint layer. Painting by Yakovlev did not have any loss, but was also cracked. At the first stage, to ensure better preservation, the restored paintings got new canvas. After they fully dried out, the second restoration stage began.

- Main work was performed by Philipp Guzanov, – Viktor Chichilanov, fine art restorer of the Chelyabinsk State Fine Arts Museum, tells. – And I was helping to move the paintings, as they are quite large. When Phillip Vladimirovich came, we stretched the canvases over the exposition stretchers and removed the prevention strips that were saving the paint layer for the period of restoration work. Then were replenished the loss of the author’s coating with the restoration coating based on chalk and fish glue. Then, these places were polished with grit paper and scalpel. The next stage was to apply tinted coating with water color. And in the end, the entire picture surface was coated with the dammar varnish – to ensure their better safety and integrity of perception. Yakovlev's picture had really minor loss that required almost no tinted coating, these were barely visible brush touches. While Ryangina’s paintings suffered significant loss, especially  The Brick Making Shop Floor. The museum guest will be able to see the restored part of the painting, it is along the edge in the top left quarter of the canvas, where pipes are depicted. Luckily, faces and bodies of women were not damaged, otherwise we had to make a more complicated restoration decision. And here the lost part of the painting did not affect the core author’s ideas. Water color coating can be seen if examined scrupulously, and if you take a step back to the exhibition distance, and no traces of restoration can be easily seen.

Pictures drawn in Magnezit by the modern artist can be seen in Magnezit Museum. Until the mid June the museum hosts Uralo Kuzbass exhibition of the Tomsk artist Lukia Murina. This is another exposition, which is a part of Satka: Crossroad initiative devoted to the 260th anniversary of the town. The author calls her art project the fusion of art and industry.

Natalya Ufimtseva, photo by Viktor Chichilanov. 

Source: Magnezitovets