Sergey
Mikhailovich Barkhin

People's Artist of the Russian Federation (1998), laureate of State Prizes of Russia (1993, 2001). Professor, head of the stage design department of the Russian Academy of Theater Arts.

Born in Moscow on March 31, 1938 in a family of architects E.B. Novikova and M.G.Barkhin. In 1956 he entered the Moscow Architectural Institute, which he graduated in 1962 (main teachers S.V. Tikhonov, M.A. Turkus and G.Ya. Movchan). After institute, he worked for three years in Mosproject 2, in the workshop of L.N. Pavlov (1962-1965). However, then, having lost interest in completing other people's tasks and in the aesthetics of these tasks themselves (the Soviet standard buildings of those years), he left the service, and, as an architect, in the future he participated only in various competitions: first domestic (projects of a children's movie theater, together with M . Anikstom, 1965 and the club - together with his mother E. Novikova and sister T. Barkhina, 1966), and in the 1980s. and international, where he received a number of prizes for the so-called paper architecture (the main prize for the Theater in Amsterdam - together with M. Belov and M. Khazinov; second prize for the Japanese House, a special UNESCO prize for the Home for the Homeless, invented from disarmed rockets).

Leaving practical classes in architecture, Barkhin took up the illustration of books and the design of performances. The first books (“Seven English Pieces” and Iris Murdoch “Scarlet and Green”, both 1968) and the first performances (“Ballad of a Sad Zucchini” by E. Olby, “People's Freedom” by A. Svobodin in Sovremennik, 1967 and “Tartuffe” by Moliere - at the Taganka Theater, 1968) carried out in collaboration with M. Anikst, after which Barkhin began an active independent work in the book and on the stage. Moreover, the peculiarity of his work on the book is that he draws it up as a kind of theatrical performance (dust jacket is a curtain drawn, and the illustrations themselves are scenes from a certain representation composed by the artist). Its animated projects (for example, “A Lion with a Gray Beard” based on the story of Tonino Guerra, directed by A. Khrzhanovsky), and paper architecture and painting (including a series of compositions from the earth brought from Jerusalem, and finally, absolutely unlike anything else that he composes for himself at his leisure.

In parallel with his work in the Bolshoi (as well as after leaving it in 2000), Barkhin continues fruitful cooperation with dramatic directors, primarily and most of all, with G. Yanovskaya (“Heart of a Dog” by M. Bulgakov, “Ivanov and Others” A. Chekhov, The Storm by A. Ostrovsky) and K. Ginkas (The Black Monk, Lady with a Dog, where the artist designs a new theater space for Chekhov’s heroes and spectators, and finally, the grand mystery of Polyphony of the World by V. Bakshi - one thing from the central events of the Moscow Theater Olympics 2001).