Kerbel, Lev Efimovich

L.E. Kerbel was born on October 25 ( November 7 ), 1917 in the small village of Semenovka, Chernihiv province of the Russian Republic . The father of the future sculptor - Efim Abramovich (1889-1953), worked as a clerk, after the October Revolution he joined the RCP (b) , served in the Rossnabsbyt system; mother - Zlata Iosifovna (1894-1965), a housewife.

During the Civil War , the Karbala family moved from city to city. At one time they lived in Novozybkov , then in Simbirsk . After the war, Karbali settled in Smolensk . Lev Efimovich’s father got a job in the party and administrative sector, the family was given an apartment. In 1925, Leo went to study at the 5th Smolensk nine-year school named after N.K. Krupskaya (former gymnasium). There, he was seriously interested in biology and even planned to enter the biological faculty of Moscow State University named after MV Lomonosov .

Lev Efimovich’s interest and obvious abilities for artistic creativity were discovered in early childhood, at the age of about 6 years. The future sculptor recalled it like this:

At school, Karbel continued to engage in art, especially modeling. At one of the school competitions for children's creativity, he received the first prize in the form of a camera " Photocor No. 1 " for the comic clay composition "The Samovar Me and My Masha". The first serious recognition of his artistic talent, Lev Yefimovich felt in the 9th grade ( 1933 ), when the bas-relief depicting V.I. Lenin of his work was highly appreciated at the regional stage of the amateur olympiad. This creative success subsequently played an important role in the life of the young Karbel, it was then that he firmly decided to become a professional sculptor. After Leo graduated from high school, the Smolensk regional department of public education and the regional committee of the Komsomol sent petitions to the NKP of the RSFSR with a request to help the young man in obtaining a higher art education. As a result, the department considered it necessary to invite a young man to Moscow .

In the winter of 1934, Leo Kerbel arrived in Moscow with the goal of showing his prize-winning work - a bas-relief of V.I. Lenin - in the People's Commissariat of the RSFSR. There he was received first by the Commissar of Education A.S. Bubnov himself , and then by the widow of Lenin, Deputy Commissar of Education N.K. Krupskaya . She sent Leo Karbel with a recommendation to the director of the Leningrad All-Russian Academy of Arts I.I. Brodsky , who almost immediately decided to show the young man to the sculptor S.D. Merkurov . The latter gave a very good response to the competitive work of Karbel, writing Krupskaya note:

In March 1935, Leo Kerbel arrived in the direction of the People's Commissariat of the RSFSR in Leningrad , where he was enrolled in the preparatory class of the All-Russian Academy of Arts. In September 1937, he became a first-year student of the Faculty of Sculpture at the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture and Art History (future Moscow State Art Institute named after V.I. Surikov). In the summer, the young artist moonlighted as the head of children's and art circles in pioneer camps, including in Artek . In his student years, Kerbel performed a sculptural portrait of A. S. Pushkin ( 1937 , the Smolensk Art Museum), and a monument to Pioneer was erected for Artek. In 1941, he took part in a competition for a monument to V.V. Mayakovsky and in the first round received the first prize. The second round was prevented by the Great Patriotic War . The project has remained incomplete. However, as the sculptor A.P. Kibalnikov later recalls, his famous monument to V.V. Mayakovsky on Triumfalnaya Square (until 1991 - Mayakovsky Square) in Moscow, opened in 1958 in honor of the poet’s 65th birthday, is partially based on the Karbala pre-war model the monument.

There is no such genre of sculpture in which L.E. Kerbel would not work: he performed portraits and monuments , monumental complexes and easel compositions.

Since the beginning of World War II, Karbel, along with other students and high school students, was sent through Komsomol mobilization to dig trenches, where he first encountered the front-line situation. However, he failed to get to the front in 1941: the institute was evacuated to Samarkand , where Lev Kerbel worked for Chirchikstroy . Only in 1942 his petitions were granted, and Lev Kerbel was called up to the Northern Fleet , where he served as a military artist ^[2] . He took part in expeditions on the destroyers Razumny and Rattling, repeatedly went to sea on torpedo boats , and he was with the paratroopers who liberated the city of Petsamo . The service of L. E. Kerbel took place among the submariners and pilots of the Arctic , whose courage and heroism inspired the young sculptor.

In 1945, the command of the Soviet troops in Germany called Karbel to Berlin , where, in collaboration with V.E. Tsigal, he performed work on a monument in memory of the heroes of the assault on Berlin , which it was decided to install in the Tiergarten park in Berlin. It was the second memorial to the victorious warriors after the monument in Königsberg . At the same time, Kerbel created and erected monuments to the Soviet soldier-liberator in the city of Kustrin and on the Zeelovsky Heights near Berlin . Member of the CPSU since 1963 .

L. E. Kerbel is the author of more than 50 monuments and memorials erected in many domestic cities and abroad. He created a large number of sculptures by prominent figures of the Communist Party , the Soviet state , military leaders , heroes of the Soviet Union and Socialist Labor . Together with the vice-president of the Academy of Arts M.G. Manizer Kerbel performed the death mask of I.V. Stalin .

At all stages of his work, L.E. Kerbel realized the principles of communist ideology in art . For example, in the works “ Labor Reserves ”, reliefs “ Victory Parade ”, “Listen to Lenin” ( gypsum ), 1948–1949 ; Stalin Prize of the first degree (1950); portraits of astronauts ; twice Hero of the Soviet Union V.S. Petrov ( marble , 1951), Hero of Socialist Labor K.P. Mukhtarova (marble, 1954 ), J. Endicott ( bronze , 1957 ) - all in the Tretyakov Gallery .

Leo Kerbel worked tirelessly on the image of V.I. Lenin , who occupied a leading place in the hierarchy of genres of socialist realism . Leninian Karbel is unusually diverse. It consists of various portraits of the leader and monuments, including compositions on revolutionary themes. According to his projects, monuments to V. I. Lenin were erected in Moscow on October Square, Smolensk , Gorki Leninsky , Kemerovo , Krasnoznamensk, Moscow Region ^[3] , Poltava , Syktyvkar , Lipetsk , Sofia , Havana (co-authored with Antonio Quintana) and other places . ^[4] Some of them are now dismantled.

Another important social order for Karbal was the image of Karl Marx . Monuments on Sverdlov Square in Moscow ( Lenin Prize , 1962) and in the center of the German city of Karl-Marx-Stadt , for which he was awarded the Order of Karl Marx by the Government of the GDR , and the USSR Academy of Arts awarded the sculptor a Gold Medal.

In 1976, the Soviet government donated the monument of Solomon Bandaranaike to Kerbel ^[5] as a gift to the Republic of Sri Lanka .

Tombstones and monuments occupy a special place among the works of L. E. Kerbel. These are the monuments to S. F. Bondarchuk (at the end of 2012 it was transferred to the territory of the Mosfilm film concern as an independent monument), E. K. Tisse , E. A. Furtseva , M. I. Babanova , B. A. Lavrenev , and Admiral A. G. Golovko , twice Hero of the Soviet Union D.A. Dragunsky , D.F. Oistrakh and many other famous figures.

No matter how significant the achievements of the master, his creative plans always went further. In the spring of 1986, Karbel completed his new big work - a monument in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ernst Thalmann , which became the center of the architectural ensemble of one of the working districts of Berlin . In 1998, a monument to Peter I was unveiled in Izmailovo .

Since 1962, Professor L. E. Kerbel led a sculpture workshop at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute named after V. I. Surikov. He trained a galaxy of talented craftsmen who successfully work in Russia and abroad.

In 1964, the film “The First Communist” about the work of L. Karbel (director V. Tomberg ) was shot at the Tsentrnauchfilm studio.

In 1967, Karbel was the sculptor of the monument to Lenin in Smolensk .

In the 1990s , according to the memoirs of the artist Mikhail Shemyakin , the source of earnings for the sculptor Lev Karbel, who was a millionaire in Soviet times , was the execution of tombstones to members of organized crime groups ^[6] :

“Misha, I am ashamed to admit. Every day I read newspapers, obituaries - which of the lads was shot. And when I see that someone was shot, I rejoice because I know that the lads will come to me and order a tombstone. ”

- Sculptor Leo Kerbel. From an interview with artist Mikhail Shemyakin .

Karbel was a member of many public organizations . He was a member of the board of the Soviet Cultural Foundation, the board of the Union of Artists of the RSFSR , the presidium of the USSR State Civil Engineering Committee, the chairman of the Art and Expert Council of the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR, and was a member of various councils and a jury .

It should be noted that he admitted copying his works, passing them off as originals. So, his last work - a monument to Peter I in front of the headquarters of the Baltic Fleet in Kaliningrad , erected for the 300th anniversary of the Russian fleet , turned out to be a copy of the monument erected in Moscow in 1998 .

He died in his 86th year of life on August 14, 2003 in Moscow, and was buried in the Novodevichy cemetery .

• Hero of Socialist Labor ( 1985 )
• Order “For Merit to the Fatherland” III degree ( November 5, 1997 ) - for merits to the state and a great personal contribution to the development of Russian fine art ^[7]
• Order of Friendship of Peoples ( May 6, 1993 ) - for great merits in the visual arts, strengthening international cultural ties and fruitful pedagogical activity ^[8]
• The order of Lenin
• Order of the Red Banner of Labor
• Order of the Patriotic War II degree
• Order of the Red Star
• Order of Karl Marx ^[2]
• Order of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, I degree ^[2]
• Gratitude of the President of the Russian Federation ( September 30, 2002 ) - for his great contribution to the development of Russian fine art ^[9] .
• Lenin Prize ( 1962 ) - for the monument to K. Marx on Sq. Sverdlov in Moscow (1961)
• Stalin Prize of the first degree ( 1950 ) - for sculptural bas-reliefs “V. I. Lenin and I. V. Stalin - founders and leaders of the Soviet state ”
• People's Artist of the USSR (1977)
• People's Artist of the RSFSR (1967)
• Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1963)
• Goethe Prize Laureate ( Germany )
• medal "For the defense of Moscow"
• medal "For the defense of the Soviet Arctic"
• medal "For the capture of Berlin"
• Awards of Israel , Sri Lanka , Germany .
• Honorary Citizen of Smolensk and Polyarny .
• Honorary Citizen of Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz ) ^[2] .

• * L.E. Kerbel,. Lev Efimovich Kerbel / author of the introductory article B. S. Ugarov , editor N. N. Dubovitskaya, red. English text A. I. Ilf ^[1] , hood. A.A. Zubchenko, thin. ed. L. Ya. Ruben, tech. ed. E. A. Mednikova .. - M .: Soviet artist, 1988. - 224 p. - 10,000 copies. - ISBN 5269001438 .

Kerbel, Lev Efimovich (Russian) . Site " Heroes of the country ".

• Biography of L. Kerbel on the site "People"
• Interview with L. Kerbel
• Last interview of L. Kerbel
• Obituary on NewsRU

1. ↑ http://odessa-memory.info/index.php?id=135