The Tambov Art Gallery houses a bronze sculptural portrait of the famous children’s writer and literary critic Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky. The work was created by the People’s Artist and sculptor Nikolay Bagratovich Nikoghosyan. His other sculptural works include portraits of famous figures of Armenian and Russian culture: monuments to Maxim Gorky in Vinnytsia and the writer Mikael Nalbandian in Saint Petersburg, as well as tombstones to the writer Samuil Marshak and the People’s Artist of the USSR Boris Shchukin at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

With the work “Portrait of Writer Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky”, the sculptor managed not only to convey the writer’s appearance but also to reveal the soul of this remarkable and talented person. Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky (1882–1969) lived a long and eventful life and was interested not only in writing children’s poems, but also in prose, journalism, literary criticism, and translation. His acquaintances included the artist Ilya Repin, as well as such famous writers as Alexander Kuprin, Teffi, Fyodor Sologub, Osip Mandelstam, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Vladimir Korolenko. As for literary criticism, Chukovsky published a number of critical essays on Anton Chekhov, Konstantin Balmont, Alexander Blok, Sergey Sergeyev-Tsensky, Alexander Kuprin, Maxim Gorky, Mikhail Artsybashev, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Valery Bryusov, and others. For many years, the writer collected and studied the works of his favorite poet — Nikolay Alexeyevich Nekrasov. It was through Chukovsky’s efforts that the first Soviet collected works of Nekrasov were published. But first and foremost, the writer was famous for his children’s fairy tales, which brought up more than one generation of children in the countries of the former USSR. “Little Fly so spruce and sprightly, Golden tummy shining brightly”, “Good doctor Aybolit! He sits under a tree”, “The blanket fled. And the sheet refused to stay” — all these lines are embedded in the memory of millions of Russian people from childhood years. However, the children’s works by Chukovsky were not always perceived as outstanding or showing any talent or use for children. For many years, the Soviet party and editorial members even used the term “Chukovchshina” in relation to literature that did not fully correspond to Soviet pedagogy. But, despite all the skepticism, Chukovsky’s children’s fairy tales and poems were very popular with children and their parents, and his books were published in millions of copies.

Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation