Aleksandr Kamensky

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Aleksandr Abramovich Kamensky (Александр Абрамович Каменский) (1922 – 1992) was a Soviet art critic and art historian.

He has written and edited more than thirty books and thousands of articles helping to popularize artists, such as Marc Chagall, and Martiros Saryan.

[edit] Life and career

Aleksandr Kamensky was born in 1922 in the family of Abram Kamensky, a government and communist party functionary who fell victim to repressions in 1937.

From 1940 to 1945, studied with B.R. Vipper and G.A. Nedoshivin, majoring in Art Criticism at the Philology Department of the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History; then from 1941 at Moscow University. Kamensky received his diploma with merit for his paper titled Drawings of Valentin Serov.

From 1946 Kamensky appeared in the press as an art critic, while at the same time undertook his graduate studies at Pushkin Museum of Fine Art.

From 1949 to 1962, he chaired the department of Art History at the Art institute in Vilnius. Upon his return to Moscow, he became active in his country’s cultural life.

Aleksandr Kamensky had authority among artists; was a friend of many great masters; wrote about them; helped young emerging artists; propagated their art; was elected as a member of the governing body and Secretary of Moscow Union of Artists; headed the Moscow association of artists and critics.

The meaning of all of Kamensky’s activity as an art critic and art historian was to restore the prestige of true gems, and tear down fake reputations puffed up by official Soviet critics and academia; and to analyze how the most important artistic personalities and movements were generated.

In 2005 (thirteen years after the critic’s death) the unabridged version of his biography of Marc Chagall, Marc Chagall, An Artist From Russia was reprinted and presented in a conference room at the Tretyakov Gallery with Marc Chagall’s granddaughters in attendance.

[edit] Selected bibliography

• Konenkov (1962)
• Vernisages (1974)
• Nathan Altman (1978)
• Knightly Feat: A Book About The Sculpture Of Anna Golubkina (1978) (reprinted as Anna Golubkina, Her Personality, And Age in 1990)
• Etudes On The Artists Of Armenia (Erevan, 1979)
• Martiros Sarian (1987)
• Chagall: The Russian Years 1907-1922 (1988-1989)
• Romantic Montage (1989)
• The World Of Art Movement In Early 20th Century Russia (with Vsevolod Nikolayevich Petrov)
• Oleg Tselkov (1992)
• Marc Chagall, An Artist From Russia (unabridged version of Chagall: The Russian Years published posthumously)