It is well known that the history of Soviet architecture is divided into the great-grandchildren of tsarism and the grandchildren of October, or rather the children of both. We also know that the architects of the first half of the century are divided into avant-garde, who survived the thirties and fifties, disguised as classics, and after 1955 led the renewed modernism - and classics who managed to successfully pretend to be avant-garde, and then flourish in the 1930s and after the war. These are two wave-like graphs: when one goes up, the other down, they intersect with the axis in the early 1920s, 1930s, and in the mid-1950s. There were also those who could not reform and even adapt, like Ivan Leonidov. Or those who expected that time would bend under them - like the “leader of the neoclassicists of St. Petersburg” Ivan Fomin, who proposed the “red doric”. But it doesn't matter in this case. Architect Alexander Gegello is one of the second, one of those who were neoclassical in the 1910s, in the 1920s, however, mostly in collaboration with David Krichevsky, Grigory Simonov, Alexander Nikolsky, worked as a constructivist. In general, we note that since the wave of the avant-garde and the need for choice covered the relatively young student of Fomin Gegello at the age of thirty, it is not surprising that his avant-garde period is mainly co-authored.
His student graphics are beautiful, this brown ink, like Maxim Borisovich Atayants. His works of the early 1920s, the period of self-determination and, apparently, "separation" from Fomin, are similar to de Chirico's metaphysics, although in fact, as we read in the explication, this is cubo-futurism - yes, it is quite possible - a kind of megaliths, rotation and pressure of large and that is why the volumes are scary, but beautiful in their stereometric power. Gegello's constructivist works, on the one hand, completely lie in the plane of direction, on the other, as curator Irina Finskaya notes, classical themes and even a hint of postmodernism, which is still fifty years old, appear in them. Particularly good are the semi-arches: both those that look in opposite directions, ironically at the breaking of the template, in the house on Tractornaya Street (1925-1927), and those that are lined up with amazingly massive flying buttresses in the houses for the workers of Donbass (1923). Remarkable are the post-war graphics, very similar to the school graphics of the 1910s, but as if more thorough and less airy, like the letters in the notebook of a Stalinist third-grader. I once learned drawing during a year in the studio of a realist painter, then showed the result to a friend, and she told me: how many were you beaten before?
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zooming 1/5 A. I. Hegello. Project of the Svirskaya hydroelectric power station, 1923 and the house of the joint-stock company "Arkos", 1924 Photo: Archi.ru / Exhibition: "Alexander Gegello: Between Classics and Constructivism" / Museum of Architecture, 2019
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zooming 2/5 A. I. Hegello. Monument to Lenin "Shalash" in Razliv, sketch, 1925 Photo: Archi.ru / Exhibition: "Alexander Gegello: Between Classics and Constructivism" / Museum of Architecture, 2019
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zooming 3/5 A. I. Hegello. Drawing for the cover of the Krasnaya Niva magazine, 1930s. In the foreground is a semi-arch of a residential area on Traktornaya Street Photo: Archi.ru / Exhibition: "Alexander Gegello: Between Classics and Constructivism" / Museum of Architecture, 2019
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zooming 4/5 A. I. Hegello. Residential buildings for workers, Donbass, competition project, 1923 Photo: Archi.ru / Exhibition: "Alexander Gegello: Between Classics and Constructivism" / Museum of Architecture, 2019
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zooming 5/5 A. I. Gegello, house of workers of science and art in Minsk, project for a closed competition, 1944-1945, fragment Photo: Archi.ru / Exhibition: "Alexander Gegello: between classics and constructivism" / Museum of Architecture, 2019
But in addition to the exaggerated accuracy of Hegello's post-war classicism - for example, the crowns of trees become somewhat wadded, lose their life, you can still see how his "world of art" handwriting returns at this time - true, more in sketches, but still. To some extent, the architect walked in a circle, tried a new style of drawing several times. It can be seen that the cubo-futuristic, or "pre-postmodern" searches of the 1920s were not a way for him to adjust, but were, with all the Cretan-Mycenaean allusions, a search for his own path. And constructivist works - there are a lot of them and they are convincing, and one cannot say - here we will argue with the curator that there are a lot of classics in them, the triangular blades of the Gorky Palace of Culture are not such a strong argument. Although the author cannot be called an experimenter in the field of ideas of constructivism: rather, he works with interesting forms for himself, an arch and a ziggurat, simultaneously mastering, apparently sincerely, the principles of constructivism. If his colleague Igor Yavein was called “a constructivist in the underground,” then I would like to call Gegello a classicist in him, but apparently this will not be correct. Perhaps life is more difficult; perhaps part of the constructivist sincerity of his clubs is due to the co-authors, this is probably still to be understood. The thought suggests itself that Krichevsky, as a steadfast avant-garde commissar, looked after Gegello, inclined to archaizing fantasies - but let us stop here: in order to draw any conclusions, one must better know the history of relations between architects.
But, frankly, the plots at the exhibition are amazing. For example: Infectious Diseases Hospital. Botkin, an insulator, a pergola on a flat roof. Drawing in purple ink on checkered paper, 1929. It looks like some kind of Chinese gate with stepped hats, vines twist like in Tsarskoe Selo. Meanwhile, the surgical building of the same hospital, in collaboration with Krichevsky, is sterile painted constructivism. However, the year 1926: the graphics are completely different, then German expressionism, then a drawing in the spirit of the Bauhaus.
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zooming 1/3 A. I. Gegello, D. L. Krichevsky. Infectious Disease Hospital. Botkin, 1926-1937. Insulator. Pergola on a flat roof, sketch, 1929 Photo: Archi.ru / Exhibition: "Alexander Gegello: Between Classics and Constructivism" / Museum of Architecture, 2019
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zooming 2/3 A. I. Gegello, D. L. Krichevsky. Infectious Disease Hospital. Botkin, 1926-1937. Surgical building, sketch, 1926, unrealized version Photo: Archi.ru / Exhibition: "Alexander Gegello: Between Classics and Constructivism" / Museum of Architecture, 2019
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zooming 3/3 A. I. Gegello, D. L. Krichevsky. Infectious Disease Hospital. Botkin, 1926-1937. Prosectorskaya, sketch, perspective, 1926. Linocut on blue paper Photo: Archi.ru / Exhibition: "Alexander Gegello: Between Classics and Constructivism" / Museum of Architecture, 2019
It should also be noted that Gegello designed an exposition in 1937 in the Cathedral of the Smolny Monastery, where the hemisphere of the planetarium is at the bottom, like Ledoux's, and at the top, in the Rastrelli dome, there is a spiral exposition ramp, a metal screw, following the principle of Guggenheim Wright. Surprisingly, the Guggenheim Foundation was created precisely in 1937, and the Wright Museum was commissioned in 1943. Apparently there are some other prototypes of the spiral exhibition.
But for me, Alexander Gegello will now be the architect of ziggurats, mausoleums and crematoria. He has a diploma project (1920) about the crematorium, as it is written in the exhibition, "in the form of a tower dynamic composition", but in fact, the Tower of Babel, approximately according to Bruegel, is only twice as slender. Ziggurats are the fix idea of the architect Gegello, he sometimes destroyed arches, played with them, and neatly built the step pyramids. In general, this was probably one of the ways of retreat for those architects who were not ready to run after constructivism with their pants up so immediately: the form is not in the spirit of high classics, rather Asia Minor or Middle Eastern. We look at the project of the crematorium of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, 1926-1927, we compare it with the Lenin mausoleum by Alexei Viktorovich Shchusev, 1924-1930. This stepped tower may depend on the mausoleum, but here it is rather a matter of the coincidence of vectors, because we are looking at the competition project of the Moscow-Narva District House of Culture - not the one co-authored with Krichevsky, but the second, independent, and we think: this architect, as soon as he works himself, he begins to gradually build the tower more boldly.
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zooming 1/3 A. I. Hegello. House of Culture of the Moskovsko-Narvsky District, now the House of Culture im. Gorky, competition project, var. 4, 1925 Photo: Archi.ru / Exhibition: "Alexander Gegello: Between Classics and Constructivism" / Museum of Architecture, 2019
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zooming 2/3 Student papers and graduation project of the crematorium (top left) Photo: Archi.ru / Exhibition: "Alexander Gegello: Between Classics and Constructivism" / Museum of Architecture, 2019
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zooming 3/3 Wall with projects of crematoria for Leningrad Photo: Archi.ru / Exhibition: "Alexander Gegello: Between Classics and Constructivism" / Museum of Architecture, 2019
Alexander Gegello designed and implemented a monument to Lenin's hut in Razliv, 1926-1927, the very same place where, as we now know thanks to Leonid Parfenov, Lenin and Trotsky lived, and only Lenin remained in history. Hegello's versions were completely metaphysical, dolmen-like, although everything ended with a world of art obelisk. At the same time, he is engaged in the crematoria of St. Petersburg, already with Krichevsky. This is the starting point, except for the diploma with the "Tower of Babel".
The end point is a competitive project of the pantheon of Lenin and Stalin on the Lenin Hills. Little is said about this competition, tea is not a palace of the Soviets. It turns out that in the fall of 1954, after Stalin's death, a competition was held - a little earlier than the resolution on excesses, 1955, and the debunking of the personality cult, 1956. It is curious that large-scale Soviet monuments gravitate towards the Cathedral of Christ the Savior: the Palace of Soviets was planned right in its place on Vozdvizhenka, and the mausoleum of the two leaders (although the building was officially called a monument to “the great people of the Soviet country”, that is, literally like the Pantheon in Paris) was conceived on the Lenin Hills, in the first place where Vitberg failed to realize the first XXS.
The Hegello Pantheon inside looks like the tombs of the Turkish sultans and viziers of the 16th century, especially because the coffins of the leaders painted in the center look exactly like the coffins of the sultans. It is also crossed with a Cretan-Mycenaean tomb - here, as a transmission link, an imitation of a false vault of slabs overhanging each other, adopted at a time when the Romans had not yet invented a dome, works as a transmission link. From the Pantheon occulus and a row of columns - if the columns are not from the Witberg temple. From the student's project of the memorial church in 1917, as the curator rightly notes, there is a roundabout, and maybe elongated proportions. The architect seems to be completing with this competition the circle begun in two student projects: the crematorium-ziggurat of 1920 and the memorial temple of 1917.
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zooming 1/3 A. I. Hegello. Pantheon, competition project, 1954 Photo: Archi.ru / Exhibition: "Alexander Gegello: Between Classics and Constructivism" / Museum of Architecture, 2019
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zooming 2/3 A. I. Hegello. Pantheon, competition project, 1954 Photo: Archi.ru / Exhibition: "Alexander Gegello: Between Classics and Constructivism" / Museum of Architecture, 2019
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zooming 3/3 The third room, mostly post-war Photo: Archi.ru / Exhibition: "Alexander Gegello: Between Classics and Constructivism" / Museum of Architecture, 2019
From the outside, the pantheon is similar to the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus and is represented in the exhibition by a small ink sketch, rather dramatic, somewhat Pyranesian, hanging on a window in the center of the third hall of the exhibition. And in the exposition it quite clearly looks like a thick black dot on the career of the architect Alexander Gegello. There are no projects after 1955 and until the architect's death in 1965, after 1955 he does not design, but writes a book.
It must be said that the exhibition is small, it occupied three rooms behind the suite on the second floor, to get there you need to go through the exposition of the Grand Kremlin Palace - but informative, and the material is capaciously united by the "talking" design of the exposition from Dmitry Poshvin and lesenkaarchitects. They came up with the idea of placing Stalin's mausoleum as a black dot on the window - for displaying graphics, this is a completely wild decision: to hang a dark drawing on a light cloth in front of the window from where the sun is shining. It turns out a light box, which, in essence, interferes with viewing the drawing. But in the sense - very much even. And the drawing itself is gloomy, with dark clouds, as if after a careful drawing of a Middle Eastern tomb, something erupted from the subconscious, was awakened there by touching an Anatolian model. The tyrant's tomb - it is.
On the opposite wall, there is a large printout of the Victory Arch on Srednaya Slingshot, one of the wooden triumphal arches erected in St. Petersburg in 1945 and never replaced by stone ones: the Gegello arch was dismantled in the 1970s, and then in 2015 the arch was installed in Krasnoe Selo - according to the curator, "An unfortunate memory of the Arch of Alexander Gegello." Thus, in the third hall, the Victory Monument and the Stalin Monument confront each other. In addition, the Victory Arch glows with reflected light, and the mausoleum, on the contrary, is black against the background of light. Quite subtle in my opinion.
The hero of the first hall is the aforementioned yellow semi-arch, the forerunner of postmodernism. She sticks into the wall, serves as an attractor, preventing you from passing by the houses on Tractor Street. It also has a built-in monitor with a video about the complex. In the central hall in the center is a model of two central buildings of Gegello / Krichevsky: the Gorky Palace of Culture, 1927 - "the most significant monument of early constructivism in Leningrad" - and the House of Technical Studies, 1932, both standing side by side on Stachek Square. In this hall, a large, up to the ceiling, fragment of the rounded "nose" of the House of Technical Studies was built. Well, in the third, the arch of victory and the "point" of the Stalinist mausoleum, as a counterpoint to a theme that has not yet become ill.
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zooming 1/5 Semi-arch in the first hall - a paraphrase of the housing estate on Traktornaya Street Photo: Archi.ru / Exhibition: "Alexander Gegello: Between Classics and Constructivism" / Museum of Architecture, 2019
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zooming 2/5 House of technical studies on pl. Stachek, 1932 / layout Photo: Archi.ru / Exhibition: "Alexander Gegello: Between Classics and Constructivism" / Museum of Architecture, 2019
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zooming 3/5 A. I. Gegello, D. L. Krichevsky. DK im. Gorky (House of Culture of the Moskovsko-Narvsky District), 1925-1927 and the House of Technical Studies on pl. Stachek, 1932 / layout Photo: Archi.ru / Exhibition: "Alexander Gegello: Between Classics and Constructivism" / Museum of Architecture, 2019
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zooming 4/5 The second hall is decorated with the "nose" of the House of Technical Studies Photo: Archi.ru / Exhibition: "Alexander Gegello: Between Classics and Constructivism" / Museum of Architecture, 2019
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zooming 5/5 Photo: Archi.ru / Exhibition: "Alexander Gegello: Between Classics and Constructivism" / Museum of Architecture, 2019
In a word, the exhibition is extremely fascinating and informative, it contains a lot of originals and curious details, architectural graphics of various types, which can be viewed for a long time - in fact, we are shown the archives of the architect, transferred by his widow to the museum. Completely systematized and meaningful - I will note the very intelligible comments of the curator Irina Finskaya on key subjects - quite a rudiment of a monograph. It is interesting that the architect is fully shown through his work, perhaps I did not notice, but it seems that there is no portrait of Hegello in the exhibition.
So we have to go, the exhibition is until July 14, 8 days left.
