Tag Archives: Victor Ryabinin

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

The Terrible Doubt of Weeping Flowers Victor Ryabinin

“Whenever sad, draw a flower” ~ Victor Ryabinin

Published: 6 January 2022 ~ The Terrible Doubt of Weeping Flowers Victor Ryabinin

The Terrible Doubt of Appearances or the Terrible Doubt of Weeping Flowers? ‘Whenever sad, draw a flower’, Victor Ryabinin wrote. If only he was here to show us how

***

Recently, a friend of Victor Ryabinin’s visited the flat where he used to live, she wrote:

“Yesterday we were at V. Ryabinin’s house. I looked at his diaries — amazing documents of the life of not one person, but of a country. Today I read poetry on one of the pages [of his diary] , and my heart sinks.”

It would appear that Victor had found the words he needed to express his own thoughts and feelings in a poem by the American poet Walt Whitman, Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances.

The following extract, translated into Russian by Victor, appeared in his diary:

Of the terrible doubt of appearances,
Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded,
That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,
That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only,
May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills,
shining and flowing waters,
The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, may-be these
are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real
something has yet to be known,
(How often they dart out of themselves as if to confound me and
mock me!
How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of
them,)

My wife, Olga, wrote on her Facebook page on the same day as she read the above:

“Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. It has always been the same. My friend Victor Ryabinin, who was not only a great artist but a great philosopher, invented a simple cure for depression. His motto was: “Whenever sad, draw a flower”.

The Terrible Doubt of Weeping Flowers ~ Victor Ryabinin

The photographs below are of the building where Victor lived and some of his stored artwork. They are reproduced here with the kind permission of Valentina Pokladova, who wrote:

“The shrubbery along the fence seems to remember the owner and sheds pearly tears …”

Click here for details of an exhibition of Victor Ryabinin’s work.

Building where Victor Ryabinin lived under repair 2021

Building where Victor Ryabinin lived under scaffolding 2021

The Terrible Doubt of Weeping Flowers Victor Ryabinin

“The shrubbery along the fence seems to remember the owner and sheds pearly tears …”

Victor Ryabinin Art Exhibition Kaliningrad opens December 2021

An Artist who Can Hear Angels Speak

Published: 21 December 2021 ~ Victor Ryabinin Art Exhibition Kaliningrad opens December 2021

An art exhibition devoted to the works of our late friend Victor Ryabinin opens at The Kaliningrad Regional Museum of History and Arts on 23 December 2021. The exhibition will run until 31 December 2022.

He [Victor Ryabinin] 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. He was not backward in pointing out our mistakes, but he inspired! And he took a sincere interest in our artistic development, which extended beyond the classroom.
Stanislav Konovalov, friend & art student of Victor Ryabinin

Details of Victor, the man and artist, can be found by accessing the links below:

Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Artist-Historian
Художник Виктор Рябинин Кёнигсберг
Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Kaliningrad
Дух Кенигсберга Виктор Рябинин
Victor Ryabinin the Artist Born in Königsberg
Stanislav Konovalov ~ student and friend of Victor Ryabinin

“When I wrote the draft to {Victor Ryabinin’s biographical essay}, I wrote that I believe there is no equal to him in Kaliningrad — I still believe he has no equal.”
Boris Nisnevich, author

Victor Ryabinin Art Exhibition Kaliningrad

The Kaliningrad Regional Museum of History and Arts is located close to the bank of Kaliningrad’s Lower Pond.

Originally Königsberg’s city hall (Stadthalle) and also a performing arts centre, the impressive, multi-roomed building was constructed in 1912 by the Berlin architect Richard Zeil.

In its pre-war glory days, the Stadhalle boasted three concert halls, a restaurant and a well-appointed garden cafe that looked out over the castle pond, Schlossteich.

As with most of Königsberg, the building suffered extensive damage during the Allied bombing raid that took place on 26 August 1944. It took five years to restore the building, from 1981 to 1986.

The museum has five halls, each one devoted to a different theme: Nature, Archaeology, Regional History, War Room & the Post-war History of the Region.

Essential details:

The Kaliningrad Regional Museum of History and Arts
236016, Kaliningrad, St. Clinical, 21

Tel: 8 (4012) 994-900; 8 (911) 868-31-76

Email: koihm@westrussia.org (director’s reception)

Website: https://westrussia.org/

Opening times
10am to 6pm Monday ~ Sunday
(Note cash desk open until 5pm)

Умер Калининградский Кенигсбергский Гид Стас

Потеря незаменимого друга

Опубликовано: 3 декабря 2020 г.

С большой грустью сообщаю, что наш дорогой друг Стас (Станислав Коновалов) скончался от послеоперационных осложнений во время лечения в больнице. Мы с женой Ольгой познакомились со Стасом в январе 2019 года. Нас познакомил с ним наш общий друг, художник Виктор Рябинин. Позже Стас рассказывал мне, что Виктор сказал ему: «В Калининград переезжает англичанин. Тебе следует с ним встретиться. Он интересный человек, и я думаю, вы найдете общий язык ». Я не совсем уверен, что заслуживаю быть названным «интересный», но мы нашли общий язык в нашей любви к истории в целом и в частности к истории Кенигсберга- Калининграда и его окрестностей. Важным элементом нашего общего языка было вдохновение, которое мы оба получили от нашего друга и наставника Виктора Рябинина. Вскоре после смерти Виктора Рябинина в июле 2019 года я сказал Стасу, что нашел две картины Виктора среди своих вещей в Англии. Он ответил с присущей ему скромностью, что, хотя у него нет картин Виктора Рябинина с его автографами, ему достаточно того, что у него есть «тайная гордость», заключающаяся в том, что он был «близок к этому великому человеку». «Я был его учеником много лет, – сказал он. Когда я рискнул предположить, что Виктор был его другом, Стас ответил, опять с присущей ему скромностью: «Виктор знал очень многих людей, но он, вероятно, не считал их всех своими друзьями. . Могу сказать, что я был его учеником, что я восхищался им и был счастлив в его обществе… »Затем он сделал паузу, прежде чем сказать:« Но я хотел бы думать, что он считал меня своим другом ». Стас был скромным человеком. Он скромно относился ко всем своим достижениям, даже тогда когда было совершенно очевидно, что у него было столько же, если не больше, прав их превозносить. В знак признания его достижений, я попросил Стаса написать краткий биографический отчет о его работе и жизни, в том числе о его отношениях с Виктором Рябининым, и поместил его очерк, вместе со ссылками на его практику экскурсовода на страницах своего постоянного блога под рубрикой “Виктор Рябинин Кенигсберг”. “Стас Калининград Кенигсберг Путеводитель”https://expatkaliningrad.com/personal-tour-guide-kaliningrad/ Стас очень много работал над своими проектами гида, оттачивая и совершенствуя их, снимая несколько видеороликов на YouTube и всегда спрашивая: «Что ты думаешь об этом аспекте?» “Все в порядке?” «Есть ли в сценарии видеоролика что-нибудь, что, по твоему мнению, требует пояснения?». Как и смерть Виктора Рябинина до него, смерть Стаса лишила Кенигсберг-Калининград еще одного его великого посла. Но нас его смерть лишила гораздо большего. Стас был человеком прямолинейным, открытым, искренним. Он был добрым человеком, всегда готовым помочь, он был сердцем хорошей компании. Вместе, мы делили общий язык прошлого, а я через него – общий, но очень важный язык – человеческий. В общем, Стас был самым ценным арсеналом – он был незаменимым другом, которого мы не могли себе позволить потерять.

Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Kaliningrad

Victor Ryabinin the Spirit of Königsberg

Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Kaliningrad by Mick Hart

Revised 18 July 2024 | First published: 17 April 2020

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.

When somebody prefaces an introduction with ‘you’ll like him/her’, the Imp of the Perverse often ensures that you won’t, but there is no doubt in my mind, or memory, that I warmed to Victor immediately. This surprised me, because I am naturally, or unnaturally, depending on your definition, cautious when meeting strangers, selective with whom I associate and when I do make friends I do so on my terms. But Victor was a prodigy; he won me over in an instant.

How much of his good nature, depth of intellect, openness and sincerity were perceived at that moment is open to question, and I am sure that the surroundings in which I found myself contributed not a little to my relaxed frame of mind, but I still recall that overriding impression, the one of being in the company of someone very special.

The Studio: Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Kaliningrad

We met in Victor’s studio ~ a small, wedge-shaped room at the top of a non-descript concrete Soviet block of flats. Little did I know then as I climbed the tier upon tier of crumbling steps, how many more times in the next 18 years I would retrace my steps and how enthusiastically.

As an inveterate collector of vintage, antiques, junk, and having been obsessed with the past for as long as I can remember, at least from the age of four, Victor’s studio was an absolute paradise. It was a cornucopia of relics, a living memorial to the lost splendour of Königsberg, a stimulating reminder of its World War II legacy and a personalised reflection on its curious reincarnation as the Soviet city Kaliningrad.

The back wall of the studio alone was worth travelling one thousand, one hundred and seventy-five miles for! It had been clad from floor to ceiling with a carefully orchestrated mosaic of old enamel advertising, informational and military signs, some from pre-war Königsberg, others of wartime origin, validated as such by the presence of the swastika.

Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Kaliningrad ~ Artist & Historian — Victor Ryabinin & Mick Hart in The Studio, Summer 2015

The back wall of the studio alone was worth travelling one thousand, one hundred and seventy-five miles for!

Stuff was everywhere: bottles dug out of the Königsberg ruins, the corroded remains of wartime weapons, vintage Soviet uniforms, metal wall plaques ~ including profiles of Hitler and Stalin ~ German and Soviet military helmets, plates, cutlery, jewellery, fragments of porcelain, bottles and bottle tops, religious icons of every shape and size, bits, bobs and all sorts of a thought-provoking nature. Everywhere ~ on tables, shelves, walls and floor was stuff ~ relics from a vapourised city sublimely sharing space with Victor’s works of art-history: his symbolic paintings, surreal sculptures and subliminally haunting ‘assemblages’.

Living history: Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Kaliningrad

In one corner, by the wall, there was a set of old wooden steps that led to a small gantry, which had a slatted rail to the front. On our first visit to the studio in 2001, this rail was adorned with one or two vintage flags and three or four military visor caps. In those days, the ‘upper storey’ had been sufficiently empty for Victor to bed down there if the mood so took him. When we last visited in 2019, however, the entire front rail of the gantry was obscured with all manner of flags, hats and other items and the gantry itself was full. It was easy to see that Victor was, as they say, a man after my own heart! The studio was a nostalgists heaven! A work of living history to a city that had ceased to be.

Flags inside Victor Ryabinin's art studio — Victor Ryabinin’s Art Studio 2019: Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Kaliningrad

On our first visit to the studio, we had taken with us a ‘picnic’: some meats, cheeses, salad items, crisps, olives and pickled gherkins. We had also taken some vodka. The small room was crowded, but we happily sat around the small rectangular table shared by all sorts of interesting bygones, including the busts of Marx and Lenin, who were watching us intently. This snack and vodka gathering in Victor’s room set in motion a social ritual which would be practised many times over the next 18 years.

Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Kaliningrad

On my office wall, in the antique emporium that we used to run in England, hung a framed photograph of myself and Victor taken during a rainy day on Svetlogorsk (Rauschen) beach in winter 2004, together with a framed plaque of Lenin, which Victor had presented to me in the form of a spoof award. He had written the presentation in beautifully scrolling calligraphic script, but because at the time of the plaques creation he did not know my last name, only that I lived in Bedford, the dedication had been duly made out not to Mick Hart but ‘Mick Bedford’.

Victor Ryabinin on Svetlogorsk beach with Mick Hart 2005

Victor Ryabinin in true form discards his umbrella on this cold, wet day: ‘Ne problem!’

{January 2005, Svetlogorsk (Rauschen) }

These two items were guaranteed to raise questions from friends and customers alike, and I was only too happy and extremely proud to introduce them to my friend Victor, a Russian from Kaliningrad who was an accomplished artist, philosopher and social historian and, simply but emphatically, a wonderful person to know.

I would show them the many photographs of my trips to Kaliningrad where Victor was present, especially photographs that had been taken in the studio, and then would assert that “It is worth going to Kaliningrad, just to meet this man.”

Sometimes I liked to add a touch of mystery. Just before I would leave for Kaliningrad, I would drop a hint that I was off on holiday. Where too? They would ask. “The Shrine to Königsberg,” I would reply, meaning Victor’s studio.

Art Studio Königsberg — Fragments of Königsberg in the company of one of Victor Ryabinin’s symbolic artworks: Victor Ryabinin Art Studio

Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Kaliningrad

Whenever I holidayed in Kaliningrad I would make the most of it, staying there for four or five weeks at a time. Victor and the studio were constantly top of my itinerary list, and I have lost count of the number of social evenings we spent in that hallowed place, the studio, and, later, the excursions Victor took us on, both around Kaliningrad itself and further into the region. Suffice it to say, they were wonderful times.

We had begun talking about moving to Kaliningrad as far back as 2015, although I do not think that I had any intention of committing myself at that time. However, Victor’s enthusiasm, positivity, indefatigable interest in novelty and sincere affirmation, ‘of course you could live here, ne problem!’, must have worked its magic behind the scenes of consciousness, for, one day, when my wife and I were discussing the prospect more earnestly, it suddenly dawned upon me that if I did move to Kaliningrad I would be living in Victor’s city, the city that was his life and his life’s work.

That I believe was the defining moment; that was when the decision to move was made. Living just up the road from him, I could hop on a bus or tram, take a taxi or even walk and be there at the studio. The advantages now were clear to me. I looked forward, under his tutelage, to developing my knowledge of the city’s past, to the excursions he would organize both in and around the city and, of course, to memorable evenings ~ evenings of camaraderie ~ sitting together with mutual friends in the studio, discussing art, culture and history, chatting and snacking away whilst drinking vodka or cognac. To live in Victor’s Königsberg would be an honour and a privilege, not forgetting a joy.

From that revelatory moment, it was no longer a question of should I move, but how quickly could I move?

Unfortunately, the practical aspects of relocation took too long and by the time we arrived in Kaliningrad in December 2018, unbeknown to us and to Victor himself, Victor’s life was ebbing away. Seven months later, he would be dead.

Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Kaliningrad

Victor Ryabinin was an artist-historian, but he was far and away beyond that. I thought of him as a time traveller or at least as a man who could talk to Konigsberg’s past, empathise with the cruelty of its fate and commune with the ghosts of its people, whom, he told us, were constant visitors ~ they invaded his dreams at night.

Victor was a man of small stature but great presence. He had an aura about him, a magnetic personality and was thoroughly and utterly engaged and engaging. The magic ethos with which Victor was infused stemmed from many sources. His personality was one of calm and calming repose. He was good natured, good humoured, his sense of humour was playful but never acerbic. His philosophy of life seemed to be based on two short words: ‘ne problem’ ~ things could be an ‘issue’ but never ‘a problem’, and issues could be resolved, or would resolve themselves in the fullness of time. This reassuring attitude, this positive philosophy made Victor’s company always good. No matter how you might be feeling before you met with Victor, you came away from his company with an overwhelming sense that all was well in your world. Victor’s company had the feelgood factor.

The Spirit of Königsberg

As an artist and historian, there was profundity and depth, but they were free from the heaviness and pretentiousness by which these qualities are so often confounded. Victor practised humility and was never confrontational. He would express himself and then move on. He never forced his point of view upon you.

The magnetism of his innate character came from an energy that seemed almost preternatural, which I believe was made more potent as it was drawn from the same cosmos source, the same mysterious well, from that which Königsberg drew its spiritual energy. Victor was not just one among a number of talented people who originated from or who worked in the city of Königsberg, he was the Spirit of Königsberg ~ the personification of the spirit of the past.

Last but by no means least, there was Victor’s dynamic thirst for knowledge, which was one of his most endearing traits.

At the funeral gathering of friends and family, the term ‘a childlike inquisitiveness’ used by Victor’s nephew captured the essence of what it was: Victor had a curiosity to know, to learn, to explore, nothing was not without wonder, and it remained that way throughout his life.

As Boris Nisnevich records in his biographical essay An Artist Who Can Hear Angels Speak, it was Victor himself who said, “I can only guess what boredom is”.

“I can only guess what boredom is”.
Victor Ryabinin

Another of his friends claimed that ‘Victor created his own reality’. I suppose that each and every one of us does just that to some extent.

Victor’s reality is possibly best summed up in the name that he attributed to one of his final compositions (‘assemblages’, as he liked to call them). A framed composite of bits and pieces from the wreckage that remained of Königsberg, he christened it with the title The Relics that will Save my Soul.

It is impossible, in the last analysis, to extricate, separate or divorce Victor Ryabinin from Königsberg. Whenever I see the word Königsberg and whenever I hear it spoken, I see and hear Victor Ryabinin. The two were, are and always will be synonymous.

When Victor died of cancer in 2019, I was devastated. Apart from my wife, Olga, he was the single most influential person to tip the scales in favour of my coming to live in Kaliningrad. It makes me smile to think that if he was here today, he would correct me at this juncture: “Königsberg, Mike!” he would typically say. I liked him to pull me up on this and would often say ‘Kaliningrad’ just to have him correct me. He continues to do so to this day. I think he always will.

Victor Ryabinin was, without question, one of the finest people I have ever known. Apart from and in addition to his accomplishments as a much-loved art teacher and artist of the symbolist genre, he had the gift just by his company of making you feel that perhaps, after all, life was worth the struggle. “I am proud,” said another great man,” Stanislav Konovalov, Victor’s student and friend, “that I was close to this great man.”

I admired Victor for his artistic talent; I respected him for his philosophy; I adored him for his love of history; I loved him as a person. My only criticism of him is that he went and died when he did, making me miss him for the rest of my life.

In the work that follows, a biographical essay of Victor’s life and the experiences and influences that informed his art and love of Königsberg, Boris Nisnevich celebrates the life of a unique artist-historian and an exceptional human being.