The statue of Fyodor Tyutchev occupies the central place in the lobby of the museum. Grigory Yastrebenetsky, an artist from Saint Petersburg, made it from marble in 1986. This is one of the most accurate depictions of the poet in sculpture.
Before starting work, Yastrebenetsky studied the biography and poetry of Tyutchev for a long time and even visited Ovstug to see the places that influenced the poet. ‘Even the very scant information that has come down to us enables us to imagine the abundance of impressions increasing over the years that forged the poet’s soul and mind here in Ovstug, ’ wrote Tyutchev’s biographer Vadim Kozhinov. ‘At first, in the early years, this is a small, modest, but still, in its own way, inexhaustible world of the estate itself. <…> Gradually, this world expanded beyond the estate”s fence… Many years later, Tyutchev walked with his daughter Daria, so to say, for the second time (behind the fence) around the world of his childhood, and she told about this in a letter to her sister, “We went together, dad and me, first to the grandfather”s grave, then to the groves, which are connected with so many childhood memories…”
Grigory Yastrebenetsky graduated from the Leningrad Art School and the Sculpture Faculty of the Institute named after I. E. Repin of the USSR Academy of Arts. In many ways, he was formed by the experience of the war: the artist survived the siege of Leningrad and was seriously wounded in the battlefield. Later, he dedicated many of his works to the theme of the Great Patriotic War. In particular, he created a memorial complex at the site of a concentration camp in Neuengamme.
The statue of Fyodor Tyutchev is made in line with the spirit of the 1980s art. It is very expressive, but the poet’s image looks generalized. This approach led to neglecting some of the poet’s character traits noted by his contemporaries. Yastrebenetsky depicts Tyutchev without a smile although this contradicts his typical mood, the poet looks serious and reserved. The viewer is unable to see any traces of the poet’s sharp and acute mind. This is because the sculptors are not always able to depict the person’s character. They rather seek to convey the scale of the personality. And Yastrebenetsky’s sculpture is just of this kind.
Before starting work, Yastrebenetsky studied the biography and poetry of Tyutchev for a long time and even visited Ovstug to see the places that influenced the poet. ‘Even the very scant information that has come down to us enables us to imagine the abundance of impressions increasing over the years that forged the poet’s soul and mind here in Ovstug, ’ wrote Tyutchev’s biographer Vadim Kozhinov. ‘At first, in the early years, this is a small, modest, but still, in its own way, inexhaustible world of the estate itself. <…> Gradually, this world expanded beyond the estate”s fence… Many years later, Tyutchev walked with his daughter Daria, so to say, for the second time (behind the fence) around the world of his childhood, and she told about this in a letter to her sister, “We went together, dad and me, first to the grandfather”s grave, then to the groves, which are connected with so many childhood memories…”
Grigory Yastrebenetsky graduated from the Leningrad Art School and the Sculpture Faculty of the Institute named after I. E. Repin of the USSR Academy of Arts. In many ways, he was formed by the experience of the war: the artist survived the siege of Leningrad and was seriously wounded in the battlefield. Later, he dedicated many of his works to the theme of the Great Patriotic War. In particular, he created a memorial complex at the site of a concentration camp in Neuengamme.
The statue of Fyodor Tyutchev is made in line with the spirit of the 1980s art. It is very expressive, but the poet’s image looks generalized. This approach led to neglecting some of the poet’s character traits noted by his contemporaries. Yastrebenetsky depicts Tyutchev without a smile although this contradicts his typical mood, the poet looks serious and reserved. The viewer is unable to see any traces of the poet’s sharp and acute mind. This is because the sculptors are not always able to depict the person’s character. They rather seek to convey the scale of the personality. And Yastrebenetsky’s sculpture is just of this kind.
