Königsberg Artist Beyond the One in a Million

Thoughts on the fifth anniversary of the death of Victor Ryabinin

18 July 2024 ~ Königsberg Artist Beyond the One in a Million

I am asked by the curious both in my native country, England, and in Russia, why my blog is dedicated to Victor Ryabinin.

Surely, a blog written in English whose target audience is presumably English people could have been dedicated to any one of a number of English friends or colleagues with whom I am close or hold in high esteem?

To answer this question, I turned to the many people whom I have crossed paths with, and some with whom I have crossed swords, and drew the conclusion that outside of my family circle only three people, excluding Victor, qualified. One is my friend of 44 years, Mel (Melbourne) Smith; the other his brother, Rolly Smith; and the last, but by no means least, Mr Richard Oberman, my former English literature tutor, who taught at Kettering Technical College, aka Tresham College.

Mel and Rolly Smith are two of my life’s most colourful characters. They were an investment in experience which paid dividends in friendship. Without them I would have foregone so much by way of excitement and laughter that an omission of this magnitude would have been nothing short of criminal. Looking back, with the help of my diaries, the exploits that we shared have taken on a legendary status, made more so by the retelling of them. Of all the things in life that cannot be overvalued, friendship, laughter and camaraderie are difficult to compete with. Theirs is the currency in which we trust: the gold standard.

Richard Oberman was a master of his vocation. Dry humoured, slightly off the wall but always in control, he would play his classes like a fiddle. As good a psychologist as he was a teacher, he would deftly juggle his act using the stick and carrot approach to win his students over. He was our general, we were his troops, and like every astute and accomplished leader he brought us on by steady degrees to trust, obey and admire him. Displaying an in-depth knowledge of and an absolute love for his subject, better than any who would teach me later at university level, by the encouragement he gave and the respect that he engendered, he opened up a future for me to which before I had been oblivious and in the process of doing so changed the course of my life forever.

Set against this exquisite triumvirate, Mel, Rolly and Richard Oberman, who and what was Victor Ryabinin?

Königsberg Artist Victor Ryabinin

Victor Ryabinin was born in Königsberg, where, like the great German philosopher Emmanuel Kant before him, he worked, lived out his life and died. He shared with Emmanuel Kant a genuine, singular love for the city, and though he travelled quite extensively whereas Emmanuel Kant did not, he shared the convictions of the city’s academia that Königsberg was a spiritual magnet drawing into its centre intellectual and artistic excellence from the highest minds and most sentient hearts and from every sphere of imaginable talent.

Victor Ryabinin, the artist and historian, charmed all who came in contact with him. His professional and bohemian side possessed an aura of mystique and an intuited profundity. Like most creative minds, a managing ego must have been working somewhere behind the scenes, but wherever he kept it hidden it never got the upper hand and through all the years I knew him, he was never anything less than open, honest, affable, modest and perfectly unassuming. Indeed, Victor Ryabinin, the man, epitomised the best that human nature can offer. He was everything you could want and more than you could hope for. He was an ambassador for humankind.

Victor had a gentle heart, a warm welcome, and no edge to his character. He had a wonderful sense of humour that was often self-effacing (he said that those who could laugh at themselves had a right to laugh at others). He was endowed with a gravitational presence, a generous sense of spirit and had the most enchanting art studio, where I, for one, never painted but sat with him for hours on end, talking history, eating gherkins, smoking cigars of a cherry flavour and drinking beer and vodka.

Victor’s company never grew old. Victor himself never grew old. He collected years like the Königsberg relics with which he adorned his studio, but the years, like all who knew him, respected his ageless spirit. Driven and sustained by an endless curiosity and an endearing fascination for everybody and every new thing, this was perhaps the secret elixir by which he kept himself ever young.

The grim irony of his dying just nine short months from the time when he, more than anyone else, brought me to Kaliningrad, and the way in which his death, inconceivable and unexpected, swept away the blueprint of my future, came as a stark reminder, as it had with the death of my friend Mel Smith, that whilst we may all be unique and some of us exceptional, those most precious to us are simply irreplaceable, so that when they up and leave arm in arm with death a sizeable chunk of our present and more, much more, of our future leaves the table with them.

Victor Ryabinin disclosed that he would reach out to such people who possessed the qualities that he lacked. This statement alone reveals the modesty and humility that endeared him to so many, for it is difficult to imagine what those qualities could have been that he failed to see in himself whilst everyone around him saw them with such clarity.

If throughout my life I had taken a leaf from Victor’s book and leant towards those people whose qualities I lack, I would, to paraphrase my old friend Cohen, have “leant that way forever”.

In retrospect, my choice of friends would appear to have been determined on criteria not dissimilar to that adopted by Molly Fox, my former boss at a publishing house, who once confided in me that she no longer filled job placements on applicant suitability but according to their eccentricity, interest value and personality.

If ever a man could tick these boxes, and the many more besides by which exceptionality can be measured and companionship appreciated, then Victor Ryabinin was that man.

I have yet to meet another like him. I know I never will.

Königsberg Artist, Victor Ryabinin's tombstone

Victor Ryabinin Königsberg-Kaliningrad

“I first met Victor Ryabinin in the spring of 2001. A friend of my wife’s, knowing how much my wife liked art and how fascinated I was with anything to do with the past, suggested that we meet this ‘very interesting’ man, who was an artist and a historian.” ~ by Mick Hart

An artist who can hear angels speak

“The first year of Victor Ryabinin’s life could have been his last. There was an epidemic in Königsberg which wiped out hundreds of children, both German and Russian. The military doctor who came to visit the Ryabinin family broke Victor’s parents’ heart when he delivered the verdict that there was nothing to be done to help their child. ‘A day, perhaps two,’ he said, ‘and the child will die’.” ~ by Boris Nisnevich

“One in a million? Perhaps just one …”

“At first sight, from a teenager’s point of view, he was this small and funny man, but very soon our attention was attracted to his methods of teaching. He was a breath of fresh air in my understanding of art. He was so alive in comparison with many of the other teachers. He ignited our imagination” ~ by Stanislav Konovalov ~ student and friend of Victor Ryabinin