The sculpture “Don Fisherman with a Catfish” is Sergey Korolkov’s graduation project. The sculpture depicts a fisherman who has caught a catfish, which now lies at his feet. In his right hand, the fisherman holds a boat hook, and in his left, a fishing net slung over his shoulder. This work was acquired by Vitaly Zakrutkin in the 1950s in Rostov-on-Don. The fisherman sculpture is made of hardwood, light brown in color, and is located on an oval metal table with a labradorite tabletop.

Vitaly Zakrutkin, who lived and worked in Rostov from 1936 to 1947, proudly shared with his guests in Kochetovskaya that he had acquired this sculpture by Sergey Korolkov from a relative of the sculptor after the war, at the Rostov clothing market.

Zakrutkin had visited Sergey Korolkov multiple times and seen this sculpture on several occasions. He was aware that it was Korolkov’s diploma project, completed after he had graduated from the Rostov Art School.

It was no coincidence that the fisherman became the focus of the future sculptor’s attention. In his memoirs, Sergey Korolkov noted that from the spring of 1922 to the fall of 1928, he engaged in fishing in the Elizavetovskaya stanitsa along the Lower Don. He lived off the money earned from this work while supporting his sick mother. During that time, Korolkov frequently sketched his fellow fishermen and sometimes sculpted them in clay, long before he entered art school.

The fact that the fisherman sculpture, located in the Vitaly Zakrutkin Museum, is indeed the work of Sergey Korolkov was recently confirmed by the renowned sculptor Konstantin Chernyavsky, a member of the Moscow Union of Artists and the creator of monuments to the hero of the Patriotic War of 1812, Cossack Ataman Matvey Platov, in Moscow and Rostov-on-Don. On July 29, 2016, Konstantin Chernyavsky and his friends visited the Zakrutkin House-Museum, where he enthusiastically recounted how he learned about this sculpture during his studies in Rostov from his teacher at the Mikhailov art school. He later saw it in the 1970s, when he met with Zakrutkin at his office in the Kochetovskaya stanitsa, and immediately exclaimed,