The year 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of Honoured Artist of the BSSR, laureate of the State Prize of the BSSR, laureate of the State Prize of the USSR, veteran of the Great Patriotic War, sculptor Andrei Zaspitsky (February 24, 1924, Warsaw – March 9, 2019, Minsk).
Andrei Zaspitsky belongs to the constellation of artists of a generation whose creative pursuits took shape in the post-war period – the time of active development of the Belarusian school of sculpture – and had a great influence on its fate in the second half of the twentieth century. The life and work of the master is one of the most striking and extended pages in the history of Belarusian art of the second half of the 20th – early 21st century.
The work of Andrei Zaspitsky developed in the mainstream of Soviet art and the Belarusian art school. Both his monumental and easel works are concerned with heroic and civic subjects, characterised by the originality of artistic solutions, expressiveness of plastic forms, rich contrasts of light and shadow, deep insight into the subjects’ character, romantic, exciting yet sublime imagery.
The exhibition of Andrei Zaspitsky, a true classic of Belarusian sculpture, in the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus covers the master’s body of work from the 1950s to the 2000s, from the post-war era to the last years of his life. All the works are characteristic of the stages in Zaspitsky’s artistic development and reveal the key directions of his artistic pursuits. The exhibition will feature sculptures from the collection of the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus, the Belarusian State Museum of History of the Great Patriotic War, the State Museum of the History of Belarusian Literature, the Yanka Kupala State Museum of Literature, the Yakub Kolas State Memorial Museum of Literature, the National Centre for Contemporary Arts of the Republic of Belarus, the Belarusian Union of Artists, as well as from the collection of Andrei Zaspitsky’s family – his daughter Natallia, as well as photographs from the archive of the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus, the collection of the Belarusian State Archive of Film, Photo, and Sound Documents and the Belarusian Telegraph Agency, documents and photographs from the family archive. The exhibition space will be complemented by a sculptural portrait of Andrei Zaspitsky created by his friend and colleague Aliaksandr Kastryukou, desk and stucco frames from the collection of the Minsk History Museum, as well as video reports and radio broadcasts with and about the sculptor from the funds of the Belarusian State Archive of Film, Photo, and Sound Documents and the National State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company of the Republic of Belarus.
The exhibition will be on display until December 8, 2024 in the museum building at 24 K. Marx St. (4th floor, hall 3).
Exhibition curator: Anastasia Karneiko, senior researcher at the Department of Belarusian Art of the 20th–21st century, curator of the Belarusian Sculpture collection.
