In 2023, 115 years will have passed since the birth of Aliaksei Glebau (March 11 [24], 1908, the village of Zveravichi, Krasninsky district, Smalensk province – October 2, 1968, Minsk), People’s Artist of the BSSR, laureate of the State Prize of the BSSR (posthumously), veteran of the Great Patriotic War, sculptor and teacher.
Aliaksei Glebau belongs to the galaxy of artists whose creative work began during the formation and development of the Belarusian sculptural school. The master’s life and creative path are one of the brightest yet shortest pages in the history of Belarusian art in the mid-20th century.
Aliaksei Glebau’s exceptional creative individuality manifested itself in art and pedagogy. He left behind a priceless creative legacy, embedded in the treasury of national culture – consisting of monumental plastics, subject-themed compositions, and chamber easel works, as well as a whole galaxy of sculptors of the next generation, brought up by the master at the Belarusian State Theater and Art Institute (the Belarusian State Academy of Arts), where he taught for more than 10 years. A distinctive feature of the master’s creative style and the main intonational component of his work in the fields of both monumental and easel sculpture is their heroic-civil essence and lyrical-poetic interpretation of images with their soft forms, elegant outlines, spirituality and emotionality. Aliaksei Glebau’s talent and skill were realized in his work, which combined the canons of classical art with the ideals of the Soviet worldview. He gained fame and official recognition as a classic of Soviet sculpture. In memory of the outstanding sculptor and teacher, in 1969 the Minsk Art School, the successor of the Vitebsk Art School, where the future People’s Artist of the BSSR studied in 1926–1930, was named after him (now the Aliaksei Glebau Minsk State Art College).
Aliaksei Glebau’s exhibition at the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus will cover the periods of the master’s creative work from the 1940s to the 1960s, from the war years to the last years of his life. All works present the main stages of the sculptor’s path in art, revealing the key directions of his artistic pursuits. The exhibition will display sculptures from the collection of the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus and the funds of the Belarusian Union of Artists, as well as documents and photographs from the funds of the Belarusian State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art, the Belarusian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents, from sculptor Aliaksandr Kastryukou’s personal archive and the archive of Aliaksei Glebau’s family. The exhibition space will be supplemented by portraits of Aliaksei Glebau – paintings, sculptural and graphic works, created by his colleagues in the creative shop, from the collection of the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus, as well as a video film and a radio program about the sculptor with unique recordings of his voice from the funds of the Belteleradiocompany.
The curator of the exhibition is Anastasia Karneiko, senior researcher at the Department of Belarusian Art of the 20th–21st century, curator of the Belarusian Sculpture collection
The exhibition will run until August 21, 2023
