Artists Alexei and Sergei Tkachyov completed ‘The Last Residents of Novoye Kotchishche’ between 2008 and 2009. In it, they portray an old woman, sitting on a bench near a run-down wooden house. A young woman with a little girl stand thoughtfully to one side. Behind the old woman, you can see a window with boarded-up shutters - this detail is a bitter indication by the artists that the village has fallen into disrepair. The abandonment of Russian villages began in the 1990s as young people went to the city to work, and the elderly either stayed to live out their lives in empty houses, or followed their children and moved to the city.
In ‘The Last Residents of Novoye Kotchishche’, the artists are seemingly begging the question - what fate lies ahead for villages: will they disappear or be reborn?
Novoye Kotchishche is a real settlement located in Tver Oblast, on the banks of the River Msta. The Tkachyov brothers have many memories related to it: this is where Alexei first courted his future wife. In fact, from the middle of the 1950’s, the artists often worked at the “I.E. Repin Akademicheskaya Dacha”. This was the former creative headquarters of the Union of Artists, which was often referred to as the “Akademichka”. In general, the surrounding region and villages near to it were also called “Akademichka”. Novoye Kotchishche was nestled in this region. It is a settlement located roughly one and a half kilometers from where the artists lived and worked.
The artist’s future wife - Lydia Pantyushkina - studied in Leningrad, but during the summer holidays she would always return to visit her grandfather (Fyodor Kozhevnikov) in Novoye Kotchishche.
Novoye Kotchishche is a real settlement located in Tver Oblast, on the banks of the River Msta. The Tkachyov brothers have many memories related to it: this is where Alexei first courted his future wife. In fact, from the middle of the 1950’s, the artists often worked at the “I.E. Repin Akademicheskaya Dacha”. This was the former creative headquarters of the Union of Artists, which was often referred to as the “Akademichka”. In general, the surrounding region and villages near to it were also called “Akademichka”. Novoye Kotchishche was nestled in this region. It is a settlement located roughly one and a half kilometers from where the artists lived and worked.
The artist’s future wife - Lydia Pantyushkina - studied in Leningrad, but during the summer holidays she would always return to visit her grandfather (Fyodor Kozhevnikov) in Novoye Kotchishche.
