The panel, which was made in 1972 and adorned the facade of an apartment building on Pushkin Street in Kaluga for several decades, was not a heritage site and had no chance of a large-scale expensive restoration. In recent years, especially after the renovation of the building, the bas-relief, which is significant for the city and loved by the Kaluga residents, began to rapidly deteriorate, so measures to preserve it had to be taken urgently.
The panel made using the sgraffito technique did not just crack and move away from the wall. The composition completely lost its technical properties, and no contractor could give guarantees of durable repair. Since the restoration process was supervised by the chief architect of Kaluga, Aleksey Komov, it was he who had to make a responsible and difficult decision to preserve the panel in the form of a copy - accurate, durable and created using modern technology.
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zooming 1/9 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, before reconstruction Photo © Yuri Bucharsky
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zooming 2/9 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, before reconstruction Photo © Yuri Bucharsky
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zooming 3/9 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, before reconstruction Photo © Yuri Bucharsky
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zooming 4/9 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, before reconstruction Photo © Yuri Bucharsky
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zooming 5/9 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, before reconstruction Photo © Yuri Bucharsky
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zooming 6/9 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, before reconstruction Photo © Yuri Bucharsky
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zooming 7/9 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, before reconstruction Photo © Yuri Bucharsky
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zooming 8/9 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, before reconstruction Photo © Yuri Bucharsky
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zooming 9/9 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, before reconstruction Photo © Yuri Bucharsky
The first stage was the creation of a "digital cast" of the bas-relief, according to which maps were made from dense polystyrene on CNC machines. Then, many fiber-reinforced plaster-adhesive layers were applied to these cards, which made it possible to externally reproduce the sgraffito technique.
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zooming 1/8 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, recreation 2020 Photo © Mosstroy 31
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zooming 2/8 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, recreation 2020 Photo © Anna Lysenko
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zooming 3/8 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, recreation 2020 Photo © Mosstroy 31
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zooming 4/8 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, recreation 2020 Photo © Yuri Bucharsky
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zooming 5/8 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, recreation 2020 Photo © Yuri Bucharsky
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zooming 6/8 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, recreation 2020 Photo © Yuri Bucharsky
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zooming 7/8 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, recreation 2020 Photo © Yuri Bucharsky
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zooming 8/8 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, recreation 2020 Photo © Yuri Bucharsky
The work was planned to be completed by the end of November, but the townspeople managed to present a new old panel in the middle of the month. The bas-relief is now complemented by an annotation plate, which indicates the name of the author, years of creation and recreation.
Although the decision to go this way, according to Aleksey Komov himself, was difficult, it is obvious that such an approach of digitization with subsequent reconstruction can give a chance for the preservation of many other unprotected works and individual decorative elements of the facades of Soviet houses.
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zooming 1/3 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, recreation 2020 Photo © Yuri Bucharsky
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zooming 2/3 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, recreation 2020 Photo © Yuri Bucharsky
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zooming 3/3 Panel "Defenders of the Fatherland", Kaluga. 1971, recreation 2020 Photo © Yuri Bucharsky
