An artist who can hear angels speak
A biographical essay on the life, ‘nostalgic aesthetics’ and philosophy of Victor Ryabinin of Königsberg, by Boris Nisnevich
“When I wrote the draft to this article, I wrote that I believe there is no equal to him in Kaliningrad — I still believe he has no equal.” ~ [Boris Nisnevich]
Translated by Olga Korosteleva-Hart
Edited by Mick Hart
Published: 22 April 2020 ~ the anniversary of Königsberg philosopher Immanuel Kant’s birthday
Victor – a child of ruins
Thinking about life, we ask ourselves questions: ‘Why do we come to this world?’ or ‘What if I had not been born?’ For an artist the answer to those questions is obvious – I am here to create. To be or not to be is decided by the Creator.
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.”
But Victor’s German nanny remembered that in the city there remained a German doctor — an epidemiologist — who was considered to be a highly successful practitioner before the war. Victor’s parents paid him a visit.
“Wasser! Nur Wasser trinken!” he said, on examining the ill child. Vitya, as his parents called Victor, was given lots of water and the disease subsided.
I come from Königsberg
In his adult life, having become a famous artist, Ryabinin would call one of his exhibitions: I come from Königsberg.
Königsberg, in which Victor was born, was a city of suffering, ruins and ashes. Weapons and ammunition left over from the war caused unexpected explosions; they were available to anyone, and there were frequent shootings in the streets and killing of Soviet patrols. In the fallen fortress, now and then hidden snipers opened fire.
But ordinary Germans and Russians were already beginning to overcome their burning hatred for each other, and compassion was not unheard of.
Victor experienced this transition first-hand.
His father – an officer who built his military career over time — took part in the Siege of Königsberg. He considered the city to be a trophy, but one that must be returned to normal life as soon as possible after the war.
His mother, who had experienced forced labour in Germany, had her own vision of Germans, who were, unlike the war stereotypes, all different and not all of them cruel and heartless.
Imagining Ryabinin’s childhood against the backdrop of the ruined city, I like to think of him as a ‘child of the ruins’ and Königsberg’s ruins his ‘educators’. But I think Victor’s parents would not have liked this metaphor. They raised him to be a true Russian.
His father wanted him to follow his own example and become a devoted serviceman in the Red Army. His father’s military days had begun in the Far East on the Kalinin Front, where he took part in fierce battles. As a boy, Vitya was brought up listening to war stories that were told at the table in the company of his father’s fellow soldiers.
His mother told him about his grandfather, whom he had never seen in his lifetime — a fighter of the Old Man Bogun’s brigade, which was part of the civil war hero’s division of Shchors. The war images came to life in his parents’ stories, depicting both life at the front and civilian life.
He learnt about the dramatic days of his mother’s survival, who, in 1942, had been subjected to forced labour in Germany. First, she worked at a tachometer factory and then at a printing house in Düsseldorf.
Victor himself referred to his childhood as a ‘double education’ and described it like this:
“The fact that I grew up as a cheerful pessimist is due to my double education: I was brought up on Russian folk tales and Gothic architecture.”
“The fact that I grew up as a cheerful pessimist is due to my double education: I was brought up on Russian folk tales and Gothic architecture.”
Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Artist-Historian
The Russian way of life with its traditions, manifestations, and sometimes not the best cultural features, came to a Prussian city. A Soviet way of life was established.
And it was in this milieu that his desire to draw emerged. It was difficult, because there was no paper. He painted on pieces of plywood, scraps of wallpaper, a tile stove, where his drawing of an airplane made with a chemical pencil survived for a long time in his childhood home.
Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Artist-Historian
At school, among other subjects, he had the opportunity to study German, and he took it.
There is nothing surprising about Victor’s interest in everything German. He revealed this himself in a diary page entitled ‘Ten things that shocked me during my first years of life in Königsberg’:
- The fragrant smell of gasoline from an American Willys (pronounced ‘willis’) Jeep and a low-slung Dodge, that we, as children, could get into without any trouble
- The sight of a ripe, juicy apple rolling out of a garden, which was surrounded by the ruins of burnt houses
- German children’s toys, china, ammunition and weapons
- Hurray! I was the owner of a real Walther pistol!
- A German corrugated-iron garage full of bullet holes and in it — Oh, what joy! — a black Mercedes, almost untouched by the bombing, just a few bullet holes in the windshield and flat tyres
- And we children taking turns in steering the wheel of this wonder car
- My ride in a convertible Studebaker along the streets of ruined Königsberg, past the Prussian government building, which was lined with beautiful yellow tiles
- Walks through Königsberg’s cemetery, which had not been ravaged then, with its marble sculptures and gravestones, wrought-iron openwork grids. It was like visiting an open-air museum!
- Raids for apples in the public garden at Chestnut Alley. This was a risky enterprise, as the garden was guarded by a watchman whose gun was loaded with salt
- Trips to the Soldiers’ Club to watch films that were not meant to be watched by children.
Like all war children, Vitya had a particular respect for the military: for their medals, epaulets, and shiny boots — especially shiny boots.
“Since then [my boyhood], I have developed the habit of polishing my shoes well,” Victor recalled. “What is more, when I was six years old, a special pair of real boots were made for me. Not a pair of soldier chrome boots, but simple children boots. I was very fond of them and loved showing them off.”
The ruins of Königsberg were not at the time particularly suitable for showing off his boots and keeping them in pristine condition. But things began to change.
Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Artist-Historian
The authorities decided that a new Soviet city would emerge on the site of the Prussian stronghold, and its history would begin in 1945. Kaliningrad-Königsberg for many years remained a kingdom of ruins from a badly written fairy tale. The city long remained in ruins after all the other European cities damaged during the war had been restored.
In this environment, as Victor later refers to it ‘Gothic ruins’, emerged the path of an artist, who, from his youth to his adult years, retained an innate curiosity, an ability to see everything from the point of view of an inquisitive child.
Some of the historic and cultural monuments of what had been one of the most impressive European cities, although partially damaged, were still intact and captured his imagination.
The ancient Königsberg region was no longer connected with Europe: from Germany and Poland the city was separated by the strictest borders. Even for the compatriots, residents of the fraternal republics, Kaliningrad remained isolated and inaccessible for a long time. The restoration of what had survived of Königsberg was not on the cards, not even in the 1970s/80s.
On the contrary, much of what had survived that bore testimony to Königsberg’s cultural heritage had been systematically destroyed. The grave of the philosopher Kant in the portico of the ruined cathedral remained an inviolable witness of the past. Victor remembers that someone left a comment on the grave: ‘Now you know that the world is material’.
Unlike his peers, children of immigrants, Victor did not know other cities and other cultures. But the grandeur of the former Königsberg, where he was born, was evident in the surviving streets with its beautiful houses under pantiled roofs, its churches, its powerful walls of the Royal Castle and the red facade of the cathedral.
The central area of the city was a mass of ruins, evoking in the child’s imagination questions as to what was there before the devastation. Victor thought of all the people who had walked upon the steps before they were ruined, before the steps were reduced to chunks of marble. He thought of all the people who drank from the cups that had become shards of porcelain.
Victor Ryabinin Artist: The language of images
As he grew older, his conversation with the ruins shifted to the language of images. Street signs inspired him, and he quickly learned all the former names of the streets. The bronze postage plates, pieces of various household items, fragments of art, melted glass and surviving figurines had a special spiritual appeal for him.
Once, one of the guests at Victor’s studio, picked up an unusually beautiful piece of glass which Victor had on display. He asked Victor: “Where did you get this ‘moonstone’ from?” And Victor told his guest the tragic story behind it.
The glass was melted by napalm. The British first used napalm in August 1944 when bombing Königsberg. The fire tornado burned everything in its way — people were burnt alive with only the nails of their boots remaining intact, recalled Victor, who had heard this story from an eyewitness. People jumped into the Pregel River to escape the blast of the fire, but the river, covered with layers of fuel from exploded oil tanks, was also burning.
“Not figuratively, but literally ‘out of the frying pan, into the fire,’” Victor summed up the horrors of that time.
There is a small town in Germany called Königsberg, where former residents of Eastern Prussia gather annually. Recently, most of the participants who come to the meetings are the children of Königsberg’s former residents.
I happened to attend one of the meetings and saw for myself in an exhibition of photographs, the horror of the fire blast as it swept through the capital of East Prussia.
Whoever took those pictures found the courage to do so instead of trying to escape. The images exuded fear. And I had a feeling that the wall where the pictures were hung reeked of burnt flesh. It is hard to describe with words what I saw.
If Ryabinin’s ‘moonstone’ could speak, it would have told us the harrowing story of how it really was.
Victor Ryabinin: No ordinary collector
Victor is no ordinary collector of artefacts, no ordinary collector of inanimate objects. I imagine, as I try to penetrate the mystery of his work, that the shards of glass, fragments of figurines, buckled signs and other scraps of life and culture, remnants of the people who lived in this city before him, talk to him in German, which he knows as well as his native Russian.
In one interview, when asked what influences his work, Victor said:
“The city, the place leaves its mark. I grew up in a post-war atmosphere. And, being a boy, I was shocked by the existing contrasts: masses of ruins, but right there, blossoming gardens full of fruit! I was particularly influenced by the presence of German china and other household items. They were silent reminders of another life, one that was here before us.
“Also, the music and the sounds, such as the beat of an old clock in a beautifully carved case and the bravura marches echoing from loudspeakers. Sometimes, I have auditory hallucinations, and I hear German. Sometimes, I hear my nanny, who was a German refugee from Tilsit; her words echo in my ears. I remember the smell of the damp cellars, in which we found toys, china and various household items that belonged to people who lived in the houses, houses that no longer exist.”
Everything that fell into his hands reminded him that these artefacts were all that remained of once living people, many of whom may have been buried under the shattered buildings.
“Many years later,” Victor confided, “the images of my childhood boomeranged back to me in my nightmares. And to relieve the growing negative tension, I decided to channel the energy into paintings. Thus, the magic of sounds, smells and images of my childhood determined the main direction of my work.”
He expresses the soul of Königsberg.
“Among those people who love their land, who connect the old Königsberg with the new Kaliningrad, who believe in the continuity of high spiritual culture and care about humanity, Ryabinin occupied a special place.”
Boris Nisnevich
I come from Königsberg
I remember how the smell of the old city hit me when I entered Victor’s workshop for the first time.
Our mutual friend Gerhard Lipfertom from Bavaria, who was in charge of the society ‘Salem’ that works with disadvantaged children, came with me. Gerhard immediately worked out the connection between the picture of the ruins on the easel and the artefacts that were hanging on the walls. He asked me: “Was he [Victor] born here?”
“Yes, here, in 1946,” I replied. “His exhibition in Lübeck was entitled: I come from Königsberg.”
Victor presented his paintings from the series Königsberg Ruins whilst he was in Lübeck, among which a special interest was attributed to the fantasy picture in memory of Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, painted by Victor in 1989.
Words are not colours; paintings are done with a brush, not with a pen. That is why it is impossible to tell what an artist wants to represent. Consider Victor’s tribute to Hoffman:
In the weak moonlight over the dark waters of the Pregel River, there are dead buildings, partially destroyed — the skeletons of the houses without roofs and empty eye sockets. The King Castle dominates this wounded quarter, still retaining the power of its centuries-old walls. A black cloud looms over the ruins, which is a figure of a reclining cat, Murr, his sad yellow eyes are fixed on the corpse of the city.
In the eighteenth century, Hoffmann spent his childhood in this fabulous city, Königsberg, on the edge of East Prussia, where he was born.
By the will of fate, Ryabinin was also born here. Since adolescence, his spiritual world had been saturated with the creations of the brilliant fellow countrymen of Hoffman — Kant, Schiller, Kollwitz and so on. But Victor was especially close to Hoffmann, a talented poet, writer and musician. Ryabinin devoted his fantasy picture to his life guru, and, as Victor believed himself, continued the ‘worldly views’ of Tomcat Murr.
“Hoffmann’s imagination seems to be limitless,” Victor told me, when I inquired about the idea of the painting, “but,” Victor continued, “Hoffman could not have imagined his native Königsberg in this state, even in his wildest dreams.”
Fantasy of Hoffmann’s Memory
It explained to me why he included the cat Murr, and why his painting is called Fantasy of Hoffmann’s Memory. The answer lies among the piles of red bricks, shingles, debris and splinters, mutilated bas-reliefs and surviving wrought-iron patterns on pieces of broken fencing. The theme of ruins permeates his work.
Ruins, as a backdrop for film-makers who make films about war, are an atmospheric prop. For an artist, however, ruins are not so innocent. They are too cynical. They bring depressing thoughts about the ephemerality of life, about the destruction that is created by mind and through labour.
In truth, that ruins were Victor’s inspiration was no secret to me. He had previously told me about his obsession.
“People lived among ruins,” Victor recalled. “I remember a dilapidated house on one of the streets [in Königsberg]. In a large doorway with ragged edges dangled a bed, and over it hung torn wallpaper and crumbling bricks, and in the distance one could see the lights through the window: someone lived in the only surviving room.
“The ruins began haunting me at night. I had a reoccurring dream. It went like this: I wander among the ruins and descend into a large cellar, from which there are several exits. But as soon as I get close to any of them, everything begins to crumble — bricks, stones, pieces of plaster — and the passageways are closing. I rush from one exit to another and everything repeats.
“I decided that the only way out of this nightmare was to paint the ruins that drove me to such despair. I began to draw them and the weight, pressing down on me, went into the pictures.”
This is what Ryabinin’s atmospheric art series Königsberg Ruins is about. It is clear to me that his dreams were the catalyst for the accumulated impressions and feelings which he needed to express.
Like many famous artists, Victor is not interested in explanations about what he wanted to say through his paintings. The artist is more interested in what the beholder sees in them, using his or her own imagination.
In an interview, Picasso said that sometimes he could not explain to himself what he wanted to express in his pictures.
Victor, when he talked about the image of the ruins, drops a formula for his creation —’remember and recall’.
Another motto that could describe Victor’s artwork comes from his teacher Valentin Grigoriev, who used to say “Firstly, draw with your mind. Secondly, with matter. Finally, with God’s blessing!”
And God’s blessing Victor had, of course. It was not easy to create, to be an artist, in the political ethos of the 1970s and 80s, imbued with the Communist party’s contempt for the German past of the city, its hunt for the shadows of revanchism and subject to the unfriendly looks from the Office of Deep Drilling — the KGB.
In this period, the Königsberg artefacts that Victor had collected and to which he referred in his paintings could have been used in evidence against him.
But times changed in favour of the artist, ignorance receded, and although ‘patriots’ still struggle with the spectre of ‘Germanisation’, Victor did not dwell on such obscurantism.
Do you choke when eating a buterbrod?
Victor is certain that it is necessary to restore the historical name of the city. He does not call himself Kaliningradian. He does not like to be called by the name of a citizen whose hands, possibly, were stained with the blood of repressed people. He prefers other names which are associated with Königsberg, and which belong to the universal spiritual world. No wonder why in Lithuania, he is called ‘artist Vitya Königsbergkiy’.
“I do not approve of the name Kaliningrad,” he said, “I consider the act of renaming Königsberg to be not only an act of political retribution of the victorious power but also a historical nonsense. Please note that some cities that were named in honour of Soviet political leaders have reclaimed their historical names. Examples: Leningrad – St Petersburg; Kalinin – Tver; Gorkiy – Nizhny Novgorod; Sverdlovsk –Yekaterinburg. Only Kaliningrad has not been renamed. Even during the seven years’ war, when Königsberg was incorporated into Russia, it was not given a Russian name.
“When I hear the opinion that returning the historic name to the city is ‘Germanisation’, I ask the people who advocate this: “Do you choke when eating a buterbrod?”[Victor meant that the Russian word for a sandwich is buterbrod, but that this is a word that also has a Germanic root, meaning – Butter+Bread].
“I want to remind you that Eastern Prussia had always been one of the world’s most tolerant regions where anyone could find shelter – be it Huguenots who fled from France, or eternally persecuted Jews. Do people who are responsible for the region understand this? Even if the sea, forests, rivers, amber, just fell to us as a gift from Heaven, it would be a crime to treat this land the way they do. And after all, this land cost us a lot of spilt blood!
“In the past, the leaders of the region wanted nothing in the city to resemble the German past. And, taking into consideration the post-war feelings, I can understand that. But what about now? What makes us consciously want to make the city look worse and complicate our life? Why break up the cobblestone roads? This is an expensive material, which was shipped from Sweden. The concrete alternative is cheap, and it will fall apart soon. I hear the city officials say: ‘We dismantle the cobblestone because we do not know how to repair it.’ This is not a valid argument!
“When it comes to architecture, it seems to me that the authorities have no regulations about what can be built in the centre. In front of the stadium, ‘Youth’, archaeologists dug up the remains of the old city and part of the fortress wall ~ superb, interesting objects! They could have kept them under glass and shown them to people who are interested [in the city’s past]. Out of spite, in its place they built another ‘suitcase’. Officials behave like apathetic temporary workers.”
Victor Ryabinin ‘a citizen of the highest order’
In one newspaper Victor was called ‘a Kaliningradian of the highest standard’. It would be more accurate to say ‘a citizen of the highest order’, because he cared about the city and knew how to restore its architectural pride.
Victor was a contemporary of the new city and at the same time a beneficiary of the old one. He knew his way around the city and remembered the names of all the former streets. However, it was easier for him to recall the former names than to remember the eccentric names that were invented in Soviet times.
Somebody wrote about Ryabinin that he was one of the few locals who knows any place in the city and can honestly say ‘This is my native city!’
“Our soul lives in two cultures which are inseparable.”
Victor Ryabinin Artist-Historian Königsberg-Kaliningrad
During his student years in Ivanovo, central Russia, he called a church ‘a kirche’ (German for a church). Traditional cult-Russian architecture was difficult for him to comprehend. To him, the Royal Castle of Königsberg, all the cellars which he explored as a boy, kirsches, not-yet-ruined cemeteries, forever remained real history museums.
He remembers many things that survived from the former city, and which now live only as a memory in old photographs and postcards.
“I’ll tell you,” he said, “green Königsberg is a myth. Altstadt, Kneiphof — those areas with narrow streets were not spoilt by green. On the other hand, so-called new areas — Amalienau, Rossgarten, Ratshof — thanks to the efforts of the chief gardener Ernst Schneider, were turned into the green belt of Königsberg.
“As for the current state of parks and gardens, it leaves much to be desired. If they are restored, the sculptures that hide in the bushes on Kneiphof Island should be used to decorate the area.”
When asked by a journalist whether a single person could influence the fate of our region, he replied:
“We must try. I sign various petitions to the authorities. But the most important thing for everyone is to do something useful individually. For example, I have history lessons with my students, take them around the city, show and tell them about old buildings and their surroundings. I teach them how they used to look, and we discuss how they look now and what needs to be done to improve their look. We discuss what modern layers we need to get rid of and what layers to add.”
It seems that God himself authorised Victor to be the channel for the spirit, culture and art of the old city; God himself wanted him to deliver this spirit to the people who made this foreign land their home. Victor carries out this mission not only as an artist.
During a German-Russian anniversary evening that was dedicated to Hoffmann, he participated in the literary readings and delivered an unforgettable performance in the role of Tomcat Murr.
The resurrection of great poetry from oblivion
According to Victor, a very special breakthrough happened in the 1990s with the publication of the book The Poetry of Eastern Prussia, for which he provided not only the illustrations but also became co-author of a significant number of the subscript translations, which were used by the poet Sam Simkin, who masterfully turned them into poems.
“Yes, it was the resurrection of great poetry from oblivion,” Victor recalled. The abyss of Eastern Prussian culture was opening up. This should become the hallmark of our region in the future!”
It was clear to me that Sam and Victor’s mutual work on the book was very profound. Victor’s deep understanding of poetry could not but affect his appreciation of the German poets, which he perceived at a level equal to a native speaker. So, he had a lot of advice to impart to Simkin, because he believed that Sam could lose the meaning by allowing his poetic imagination to distract him from the original source. Victor wanted the translations to be as close to the metaphors of the foreign language as possible.
The book that they produced together is entitled You Are My Only Light. It is enriched with the artist’s paintings and modern poetry. For the design of the cover a reproduction of Victor’s painting Boat with Flowers was chosen — his fantasy painting based on the poem by Robert Frost. For the scene of his painting Victor chose the Curonian spit’s lighthouse in the village Lesnoe and the boat, which was made in ancient Ladoga.
Everything is symbolic in this composition: Ryabinin symbolises the arrival of the Eastern Prussian poets into Russian literature, identifying the event with the image of the boat with flowers. The leaky, worn-out boat has become a flower bed: it continues to live, but a different life. This boat gives hope, said Victor, and he recalled the verse of the American poet, Frost:
At anchor she rides the sunny sod
As full to the gunnel with flowers a-growing
As ever she turned her home with cod
From George’s Bank when winds were blowing.
The residents of our city are proud of their different, their diverse heritage. I have been shown crystal vases of extraordinary beauty, plates from the restaurant of the Royal Castle, paintings and sculptures that have become someone’s personal property.
“Königsberg in itself is a sign of the highest quality for the world’s culture. When you consider the concentration of great people who once lived here, Königsberg has no equal in the world.”
Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Artist-Historian
Victor’s shards, his accidentally inherited property that have no material value, are dearer to him than any wealth. He says about his possessions:
“Königsberg in itself is a sign of the highest quality for the world’s culture. When you consider the concentration of great people who once lived here, Königsberg has no equal in the world. It is not the Crimea or the Riviera, but there is something magnetic in this city; it pulled some of the world’s most significant people into it as it has pulled me. I cannot explain this magic, but I know that this is my city.”
Victor was able to express his feelings for the city when reminiscing about his childhood:
“I remember the milkmaids who left milk at the doorsteps, the grinders and glaziers, their loud crying: ‘Sharpen knives, scissors! Sharpen knives, scissors!’ And, ‘Glass! Inserting glass!’”
“Someone was washing the paved streets. I remember the magical appeal of the Gothic half-ruins. All this is absorbed from infancy; this is the homeland — my real homeland.
“There is something magnetic in this city; it pulled some of the world’s most significant people into it as it has pulled me. I cannot explain this magic, but I know that this is my city.”
Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Artist-Historian
Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Artist-Historian
“When I am asked by my German friends, would I be able to live in Germany? I answer no, neither in Germany nor in central Russia. A native of Ivanovo feels great in Yaroslavl or Vologda, where the sky is the same as are the churches. A resident of Hamburg will be comfortable in Berlin and Lübeck, but we are special here — we are bicultural. Our soul lives in two cultures which are inseparable.”
The best example of the intertwined cultures was he himself. When I wrote the draft to this article, I wrote that I believe there is no equal to him in Kaliningrad — I still believe he has no equal.
But for him, this feeling was not enough. He needed to introduce, to install this sense of another’s culture into those who he taught at the university. When he was asked “What about the future designers and artists, how do they see themselves? What can they offer?” he answered:
“They have a lot of interesting ideas. And they are already working on projects. For example, the reconstruction of the Max Aschmann Park, fortifications, in particular the Lithuanian Shaft. This, of course, is pre-work; part of it is virtual reconstruction. Also, there is historical reconstruction, where students restore what is already preserved. There is a ‘measuring’ practice whereby the students take photos of the damaged stucco, for example, and with the help of a computer programme restore the objects to their former glory, so that they can then reconstruct them according to the specifications from scratch. You know, Tolstoy said ‘art is not what it is, but what it should become’.”
To his students Victor explains the instruction of his own teacher:
“What does ‘draw with the mind’ mean? This means that in your painting you have to express your personality. What does ‘draw with matter’ mean? This means that you need to think of how to apply your skills. What does ‘draw with God’s blessing’ mean? It means that you should improvise, be free in your expressions.”
He taught his students to be free, to fly, to welcome the flight of their brush and their thoughts. He told me that Western artists always surprised him by the lack of restrictions in their artwork. “How they manage to avoid constraint is a mystery to me,” he used to say.
“I am happy that I learnt a free-style drawing from Valentin Grigoriev, and thus I instruct my students in the art school to do the same. ‘You’re Vanya, you are Yura and you are Olya. You are different. Why do you apply similar drawing techniques? It can’t be! It shouldn’t be like this!’ This means that somewhere along the way they were not allowed to develop their individuality. Somehow, they were put into a framework and were not encouraged to think out of the box.”
This approach helped Ryabinin to raise like-minded, active and creative heirs. One could never get bored in his company.
“What boredom is, I can only guess,” he says.
“Diaries are my storehouses of memory” ~ Victor Ryabinin
Short, seemingly fragile, conflict-free, never expressing his superiority over other artists, available to anyone who wanted to communicate with him, Ryabinin spoke about his work without embellishment and did not emphasise neither his originality nor his flexible mind.
“Somehow it turned out that under my drawings I began to make notes, put extracts from verses, and they gradually turned into diaries which I compiled for almost forty years. They are called ‘diaries in pictures’.”
“Königsberg is my pride, my pain and my hope“
Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Artist-Historian
Individual sheets from these diaries are shown at exhibitions in accordance with certain themes, for example ‘Women and Poetry’.
“Diaries are my storehouses of memory. I can go back any year and any day and remember what happened then, even what the weather was like. At my personal exhibition in the regional archive, my diaries attracted interest. With diaries I often work at night. What I experience during the day is embodied in collages, drawings and notes. It is a kind of ritual; it is when the invisible work on the creation of the image begins. This is the work that is hidden from the outside eye and of which only the artist himself knows.”
Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Artist-Historian
Ryabinin gave life to every object that fell into his hands, any piece of paper, an old book cover, a newspaper clipping, an envelope, a postcard and much more. The scraps of paper became reincarnated and found their new meaning on the pages of his diaries, where he recorded interesting poems in his calligraphic handwriting, sometimes in German, conveying the artist’s perception of life and his attitude to the cultural heritage of our region. His diary was always with him. I would call his diary a textbook of his art and philosophy combined.
Art critics are amazed by Ryabinin’s remarkable observation, for whom everything becomes a source of creativity. And, judging by his diaries, also literary creativity. Comments under the drawings in his diaries, often become aphorisms. At my request, he wrote on a sheet of paper some of his ‘scattered thoughts’:
A temple is worthless if a man breaks his legs on the road that leads to it
It is better to be good to everyone than to be bad to one
You don’t have to be so loud in a little chicken hutch to be the loudest
Victor explains: “This is a hint at some of our artists and writers”:
Patriotism, that is gradually turning into idiocy; idiocy, elevated to the rank of patriotism
It is pointless for one who does not have any thoughts in his own head to seek them on the side
Königsberg is my pride, my pain and my hope
The louder is the wedding, the sooner is the divorce
He who is able to laugh at himself, has the advantage of laughing at others
They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. So, what paved the road to Communist Paradise?
The morning shadows tell us that all is yet to come
And some years after, he writes:
The evening shadows tell us that much is gone
I reach out to people for those qualities I lack.
As I record his sayings, I think of the observation, wisdom and irony that Victor possessed. I formed the opinion, however, that there were times that Victor would have liked to have spoken out, rather than write in code.
If he had become a writer, he would most certainly have contributed to the enrichment of modern prose and poetry. As it is, his literary inclusions add to the creative life of his art.
“Here is something else you might want to read from my Mockingbird [satirical aphorisms],” said Victor. He produced another piece of paper:
Much Ado about Nothing – is a wedding procession
An elephant is taken out for a walk — two drunken men are dragging another drunkard
He throws it overboard — the poacher, seeing the water-bailiff, gets rid of a great catch
The morning welcomes you with coolness — awakening at the sobering-up station
Twelve feats of Hercules — a string of crimes: rich material for a criminal chronicle.
Victor Ryabinin Artist: Symbolism
The most valuable quality of the artist, according to Ryabinin, is the ability to mobilise himself. By this he means the ability to live life in full, to feel that everything in this world is connected, to experience each moment of life consciously.
Art critics emphasise that Ryabinin’s artworks are symbolic. For example, when analysing the engraving Aphrodite and Others, one can see a knight in armour with huge wings on his back, the organ pipes, which occupy the entire centre of the composition and, only at the bottom of the composition, we notice the image of Aphrodite. The master explains: “Any art is built on contrasts. The armour represents Mars — the God of War. Wars, unfortunately, in the life of mankind occupy longer periods than peace. Therefore, against this background, the love of Aphrodite is perceived more acutely.”
Does an artist need to take an active social position? Or does he/she need to live an isolated life?
Victor’s answer is, “Of course, an artist is not a simple organism, with his own specific characteristics, including problems of a professional nature.”
Victor explains: “I tell my students that you can teach anybody to draw by the rules, and they will draw well. But to become an artist requires more than just the ability to draw. There should be a need to speak out; there must be an inner bell that does not allow the spirit to extinguish. This is probably the inspiration that is much talked about. But, in fact, if you do not work hard then where would the inspiration come from?
“When Vladimir Sollogub complained to Gogol that he was unable to write anything, Gogol replied ‘and you take a clean sheet of paper and write the phrase I am not able to write anything today, I am not able to write anything today and you keep writing it until you get bored, and then possibly you will write something decent.’”
Victor Ryabinin: the genre of foreboding
Victor was always simple and open, like a good book available for everyone to read. He shared his thoughts about the mysteries of creativity and did not give any importance to the depth of his own statements, did not emphasis their singularity but, on the contrary, made them trivial. Once he spoke of his feelings, his intuition:
“An artist is an omen of events. It is given to him from above. This special feeling, intuition, is his reward and his punishment.
“A month before the Polish plane crashed over Smolensk, I drew the artwork, anticipating the disaster. A day before the tragedy in America [11/11/2001], I made a collage with crushing skyscrapers, airplanes … I swore at myself then.”
He does not speak of psychics, of the gift of foresight. He speaks frankly about what he feels and anticipates, about what rings the inspirational bell, urging him to express his thoughts in images.
Here is an example of one of his works from the genre of foreboding.
Ryabinin introduces a 20th century version of Adam and Eve based on an engraving by Albrecht Dürer,1504, but depicting his modern characters in gas masks.
He explains: “These are my reflections on the forthcoming global changes in nature and society, I mean social and political changes. I produced this work in 1977. On the picture, Adam has an autographed sign in his hand: ‘Dürer, Ryabinin’.”
Is Dürer a favourite artist?” I asked.
Victor replied: “I can’t say that anyone in particular inspires me. I learn from everyone. All artists are connected; one is the continuation of the other. Everything is interconnected — there is no artist that creates in a vacuum.
A perfect example of his philosophy came to light as Victor was looking through the magazine West of Russia. He wanted to show me his illustration to Joseph Brodsky’s poem about Königsberg.
“What! You don’t know this masterpiece?” he exclaimed in surprise, when I said that I could not remember any Brodsky poems about Königsberg.
“In this magazine, there is my illustration of his poetic verses. The broken carriage is travelling across the ruins, and one can see scattered roses”, said Victor.
(In the preface to the magazine’s article I noticed an enthusiastic review by Victor’s friend, who is a poet, a translator and a literary critic, Anatoly Naiman, an author of an interesting book about Anna Akhmatova.)
Victor said, “Brodsky wrote nothing better than his poem about Königsberg. The rhythm that he developed in this poem stayed with me for my entire life.”
Victor looked through three pages of the poem and read its title in German, Einem alten Architekten in Rom, the translation being ‘An old architect in Rome’.
“The translation is wrong. It should not be an old architect, but an ancient architect,” Victor remarked.
Brodsky sees himself as a ghostly guest in a dead city. Königsberg for him is like Rome, destroyed by a barbaric invasion. Even the Kaliningrad goat reminds him of the goats that grazed on the ruins of Rome. Brodsky tries to distance himself from Soviet Kaliningrad and travels to the grave of the German philosopher Kant, to the portico of the destroyed cathedral.
At the end of the poem, a carriage with ghostly riders disintegrates in the rain and moves away from the city into the sea.
Victor asked, “Do you want me to recite you this poem? Not as melodically as Brodsky, but, in my own way?”
And he began to read soulfully and melodiously: his voice conveying a deep perception of the poet’s impressions of the city in which Victor lives and by which he lives:
Get in the carriage — if only a shadow
Is really capable of getting there
(Especially on such a rainy day)
And if the Ghost endures shaking,
And if the horse does not tear the harness.
In a stroller, with no umbrella, no top,
We silently perch and forward
To go through Königsberg’s quarters
Cheep, cheep-chireep. Cheep-cheep.
You look above and out of sorrow or, it may be, habit
You glimpse a Königsberg among the twigs.
And why shouldn’t a bird be called a Königsberg, a Caucasus, a Rome?
When all around us there are only bricks and broken stones;
No objects, only words.
And yet — no lips. The only sound we hear is twittering.
Brodsky’s Königsberg is not a poetic reflection of Ryabinin’s paintings, but both poet and artist equally feel the city. The poet hears the trees whisper in German and vividly conveys the impression of defeated heritage in the ruins.
The poem brought me back to the Kaliningrad of my youth. I also saw the city in a similar light, but not as a poet or an artist. I could not perceive it so deeply.
Victor read Brodsky in his own way, colouring the poem with the timbre of a sincere perception that came from his heart. Admittedly, it was not an imitation of the musical drawl of the author. In Victor’s interpretation, Königsberg sounded to me like the music comparable to the groan of the century.
And the lines below sounded as if they were directly addressed to Ryabinin:
But if you’re not a Ghost, but living flesh,
Take lessons from nature
And, sketch the landscape as you see it,
But look for better vision in your soul.
Get rid of bricks, cement, granite,
That are smashed by time and dust
And for the first time in a long while,
Give it the look that reminisces pure atom.
Victor was not familiar with these verses when he first produced his paintings of the city, but it seems that had he been he could have followed the advice of the poet literally.
Victor put on canvas his illustrations of Brodsky’s poems in the magazine West of Russia. His pictures should be considered an expressive interpretation of Brodsky’s literary work.
Note that this poem was written by the Nobel Laureate to be in 1964. This year was a landmark year for Victor. In 1964 he was one of the first to graduate from Kaliningrad’s Art School.
Later he graduated from Ivanovo’s Art school. And that year, on 9th May, Victory Day in Russia, the echo of the war burned him. By chance, a gunpowder pouch erupted under his clothes. The details of this incident can be omitted, but the consequences must be mentioned. Victor’s leg was so terribly burnt, and was accompanied by such unbearable pain, that he spent forty-four days in hospital. He was in pain for five more years after the incident. That pain reminded him of Victory Day 1964 for a long time to come. While serving in the army his comrades would hear him groaning in pain at night.
Why? Had some omnipotent force decided that he had to experience a physical pain similar to that experienced by the victims of the war?
The war always gave him pain. In his meetings with veterans and with Russian and German children who had survived the war, he recalled the pain he experienced as he listened to the tragic stories told by those who were touched by but escaped the carnage.
Mutual friends
Often, when I met my German friends, they mentioned that they knew an interesting artist and a wonderful man — Victor Ryabinin, who lived in Kaliningrad.
Victor and I had common friends everywhere — at a shipyard in Hamburg, in the Erfurt’s publishing house, in the international police community to name but a few. More often they were the initiators of charity events. With Victor’s friends — Dieter Stepputat and Dietmar Vrage — I participated in the so-called ‘police convoy’ that delivered humanitarian aid from Germany to Kaliningrad. And one summer, my old friend Dietrich Horst, who came from Wiesbaden, called me and surprised me by mentioning that he had an excellent interpreter, his old friend Ryabinin, who would help us to communicate.
“I reach out to people for those qualities I lack.”
Victor Ryabinin Artist-Historian Königsberg-Kaliningrad
Wariness, the ice of alienation melted when people met Victor.
In 1995, an artist from Lübeck, Hans Reichert, came to see Victor at his studio. Frowning, tense, aloof, he began to converse with Victor, but as if by force. Victor noticed this but did not pay attention and carried on the conversation in his usual open and confident manner. Gradually, little by little, his visitor began to open up.
“As a boy in Königsberg [at the end of the war] I made a promise never to speak to Russians,” said Reichert, and proceeded to divulge to Victor what had incited this fierce hatred, and why he had a lasting aversion to Russians.
He did not elaborate, as the details were too horrid to describe. But he told Victor that after hearing his mother cry out and seeing Russian soldiers dragging his mother to bed, he rushed to protect her. One of the Russian soldiers hit him over the head and when he came to his senses, he witnessed his raped mother being taken to hospital.
This terrible incident left its mark, and he vowed that under no circumstances would he ever want anything to do with Russians.
In 1993, Ryabinin’s exhibition had been held in Lübeck. Hans ignored his mother’s advice to go and see it. Nevertheless, she kept a newspaper cutting with the information about the artist and his works from the series Königsberg Ruins. Among those paintings, Hans was particularly interested in the Fantasy of Hoffmann’s Memory.
His mother said to Hans, “You must go [to the exhibition]; he is like you, he is an artist-teacher, and he experienced the tragedy of our city as if it was his own. You should meet him.”
It was not until after his mother’s death that Hans decided to follow her advice, and he travelled to Kaliningrad to seek out Victor.
Hans and Victor became friends. Like brothers in arms and all war children they shared a mutual grief.
Hans began to visit Kaliningrad more often. He found the place where he used to live, he found his school on Nansen Street and a bunker on Berlinerstrasse (Suvorov Street) in which he as a boy ‘defended’ the city by throwing stones at the Russian soldiers as they dragged their machine guns along.
As a child, he wondered what had happened to the Wehrmacht soldiers and why they did not fight for the city. When Hans spoke of his memories, he cried.
Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Artist-Historian
Hans invited Ryabinin to visit his beautiful dacha in Italy on the Lake Garda. Victor accepted and was accompanied by our mutual friend, Dietmar Vrage.
Hans had not only invited Victor for pleasure but also for business, as he had organised an exhibition of Victor’s paintings there.
The picturesque landscape surrounding Ryabinin, the serpentine roads, climbing vineyards on rocky escarpments, the subtropical greens and azure sky was meant to be immortalised on canvas.
Both Italian and German artists, who capture this exotic landscape in paint, were waiting to be introduced to Victor, whose work was exhibited in a thousand-year-old temple which, during the war, had been used as a hospital for wounded Wehrmacht soldiers.
It had been Hans’ mother who had advised Hans to build a house in that part of Italy. He deeply regretted that he had not done so in her lifetime. She would have been pleased that he had followed her advice, and she would have been especially pleased that the Russian artist from Königsberg had been invited to stay at her son’s house.
Nothing in the life of an artist passes without trace. Everything that Victor observed and experienced is immortalised in Victor’s diary in drawings accompanied by comments and rhymes.
He composed a beautifully funny and clever rhyme whilst observing Italian children. The rhyme has three lines only, but each line is written in a different language: German, Italian and Russian.
To symbolise unity of spirit the two artists, Victor and Hans, organised joint exhibitions in Germany. When the exhibitions opened in the city of Salzgitter, the advertising leaflet read, ‘Here are exhibited the works of an artist who was born in Königsberg before the war, and another artist who was born there after the war’.
It is needless to point out the significance of such an event.
Reichert wrote about his friendship with his Kaliningrad colleague in an autobiographical book called I would never want to talk to Russians. The picture on the book cover depicts a partly demolished roof and a tree with broken branches ~ both hit by a wartime shell. Through the roof you can see the Royal Castle of Königsberg in the distance. Further along the street lie two machine gunners and a smiling four-year-old boy, which is a watercolour drawing made by Reichert himself.
Victor translated pages from Reichert’s book, where the author talks about him and other Kaliningrad friends. Hans summarised, “and I said that I would never speak to Russians.” Closing the book, Victor recited a line from Friedrich von Logau:
“War is always war; it is difficult for it to be different. Far more dangerous is peace, since it is fraught with war.”
Among those people who love their land, who connect the old Königsberg with the new Kaliningrad, who believe in the continuity of high spiritual culture and care about humanity, Ryabinin occupied a special place.
Victor, who according to my amateurish definition, works in the genre of ‘historical memory’ or, possibly more precise, ‘nostalgic aesthetics’, expresses these feelings in his artwork.
“By the way, in Königsberg Cathedral there is a gift given by Reichert,” Victor told me, “two wrought-iron roses and a cross. This is what Hans calls a ‘material build’.
Victor Ryabinin ‘Assemblages’
In memory of Hans and his Königsberg, in later years Ryabinin himself became enthusiastically engaged in such composition work. He told me that he was so taken with it that he could not say when he would return to painting, if he would ever return at all. He had already exhibited such works, calling the composition If Only Angels Could Speak.
Victor Ryabini ~ ‘Assemblages’ (Photo credit: Alexander Zimin)
I was not at all surprised by Victor’s preoccupation with this peculiar ‘installation’ — the artefacts of his Königsberg had to speak in the language of art understandable to all of us. But my definition of his new art direction as an installation turned out to be wrong. He called it ‘assemblage’.
Within his assemblage, Victor’s collectable artefacts received a new life, a new understanding. Each individual object that could be lost among others, and which meant nothing in itself, became in the composition a powerful image, setting off other objects.
As art critics noticed, Victor’s assemblage work has Easten Prussian flair.
Ryabinin’s art studio was itself an assemblage dedicated to Königsberg. Here the city came alive with fragments of sculptures, bubbles from perfume bottles, wartime relics, Königsberg signs, uniforms, hats, figurines, jewellery, household trifles and more, a mosaic collection which, taken together, reconstructed the image of the former city of Königsberg. The ensemble as a whole echoed Victor’s philosophy that “there is no foreign culture, only one-world culture.”
After If Only Angels Could Speak came Monsters Dwelling Among Us. For this composition, and others, Victor used skills that he had acquired at construction school while working with wood.
“I’ve always loved working with wood,” Victor told me. “Plastics, combined with wood, old metal, glass, different artefacts in a single, three-dimensional composition can express a lot,” said Victor, and he went on to tell me how he was going to create a series of ‘Prussian motifs’.
Those who interpret his assemblages tell me about the feelings they evoke. A fellow journalist, for example, who saw his assemblage in which he incorporated a vintage doll, was struck by the dramatic way in which it took her back to her childhood.
When I think about the name of his exhibition, If Only Angels Could Speak, I come to the conclusion that angels speak everywhere, even where they are not visible.
One essay about Ryabinin closed with a phrase that now brings me pain: “If Ryabinin’s angels spoke, what revelations would they tell us? Could the human soul bear it all? And the artist’s soul?”
Ryabinin’s premonitions that pervaded his spiritual world did not extend to his physical being. He had aches and pains, but it was only when he became aware of a significant loss of weight that he decided to go to the doctor. It was about the time when we had started discussing the details of this essay, as we were getting ready to publish it. I never publish biographical essays without the subject’s approval.
Victor turned out to be a very scrupulous, thoughtful editor, endowed with literary and artistic flair. We spent five hours going through the first three pages in the interest of authenticity.
Really, Victor should have written a complete autobiography, since he had lots of interesting material to share.
For example, during our revision of the typescript we stopped at the line about his father:
“My father told me about the war,” said Victor. “The first time my father experienced fear was when a German aircraft pilot fired at him. My father was young and inexperienced then, and he fired at the German pilot with a rifle. The pilot circled above him and, replying with a burst of machine gun fire, shook his fist from the cockpit, and only then my father realised that it [the war] was for real.
“My father was a young soldier. He began his service in the 39th Army in Blagoveshchensk in the Far East, where a group was formed, waiting for the Japanese attack. It was a reserve army. In case of war with Germany, Stalin believed that this unit would go first. This fact is documented.
“When they were transferred to Moscow, my father said that they did not feel hatred or danger. Therefore, the episode with the German airplane was just a joke for them. It was only later, when the war turned to bloodshed, with the first wounded and the first casualties, that they realised the horror of it.
“So, I learned from my father about everyday life during the war.”
He turned to me and said: “You can write ‘from his father he learned about everyday life in wartime.”
Editing the piece about his mother, he asked me to include more information:
“She was taken to Düsseldorf to be used as forced labour. There, hard, dramatic days began for her. In Düsseldorf, mother worked at a tachometric factory. Here airplane and car parts were produced, and then she was transferred. She did not want to be transferred because she did not want to be separated from her friend who worked in the same factory. She tearfully begged that they would not be separated, but her plea was not granted, and my mother was transferred to the printing office. The next night, the tachometric factory was bombed. Her friend died. Mum was saved by chance; otherwise I would not have been born.”
There are guardian angels in the Ryabinin family, and through his art Victor spoke to them.
Victor methodically reviewed all interviews about himself before they were published and was precise in resolving inaccuracies.
He did not just reflect on Königsberg as an artist or approach the subject of Königsberg as an artistic theme, but knowing the history of the region well, he publicly expressed his opinion about its past and future.
It is likely that his reflections on the fate of the city will emerge many more times in the future.
Victor took the pages of the unfinished manuscript of this essay with him when he went to the seaside for a few days, after what was to be our last meeting. On his return, he telephoned me and said, “After I have been to the doctor’s, I will call on you.”
He went to the doctor, but too late. He was diagnosed with cancer and being too weak by that time to undergo surgery, he died on 18 July 2019.
If you understand Victor’s work, you can hear angels talking to him through his paintings and compositions. What does he talk to the angels about now? He had so much to tell them here, on this earth.
Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Artist-Historian
Further information:
Victor Ryabinin taught children at Kaliningrad Art School for 28 years and was a teacher at Kaliningrad State University for 8 years.
From 2005, he taught at the Kaliningrad branch of the Moscow State University of Technology and Management.
He took part in international exhibitions as well as exhibitions in the Kaliningrad region. His exhibitions included: Expression of Nida, Lithuania; On Lake Zelva, Poland; Beauty of the Land of Novotomys, Poland; Amber Tears of Raushen, Svetlogorsk, Kaliningrad region.
He was winner of the ‘Inspiration Award’ (2007).
He was a participant in regional, zonal, Union of Artists and international exhibitions.
His work features in the collections of the Kaliningrad Regional Museum of History and Art, the Kaliningrad Art Gallery, and in private collections in Russia and abroad.
About the author
Boris Nisnevich is a journalist, winner of all-Russian and regional creative competitions, author of the books Farvaters of the Obsessed, Salt Miles and The Light of My Memory. He has also had a number of essays and stories published in both central and regional Russian newspapers as well as literary and artistic magazines.
Boris Nisnevich is a member of the Kaliningrad fishermen expeditions to the North and Central-East Atlantic, the Antarctic scientific and search flight ‘Saprybpromintelligence’. He was engaged in engineering work in the fishing industry and worked on ships for 10 years.
Boris Nisnevich is a graduate of Leningrad State University. His educational background is both technical and humanitarian.
From 1978 to 2005 he worked for the newspaper Kaliningrad Pravda, first as special correspondent, then editor-in-chief and finally CEO.
Among his other awards, he was presented with the Mikhail Sholokhov Medal for Humanism and Service of Russia and is a Chevalier of the Order of Merit for the Republic of Poland.
This version in English Copyright © 2018-2021 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.