THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE IN THE MEMOIRS OF THE ARTIST V. M. KONASHEVICH

This paper is about the memoirs of the artist Vladimir Mikhailovich Konashevich (1888–1963), who is best known for his illustrations for children’s books. Those memoirs
were written in Leningrad, then under siege, in the years 1941 to 1945. A peculiar feature of the text is the alternation of recollections and diary-type fragments, loosely connected between themselves by association or contrast. The paper analyses the composition of the text and the choice of words. Special attention is paid to the development of the creative personality of the artist, from his early childhood to studying in the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. As the principal character traits that determined his future profession, Konashevich singles out ability to observe and fantasy. The paper also analyses Konashevich’s brief remarks about the nature of creative art and his literary portraits of two artists: his “only real teacher,” Ivan Ivanovich Mikhailov, a member of “The Itinerants” group, and a “certifi ed artist’’ Tsyganok, an untalented and artistically futile teacher of painting. Special attention is paid to Konashevich’s views on the specifics of the illustrated alphabet book as a learning tool: his professional career started with producing two such books.