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Semyon
Vasilievich Kaminsky

Russia • Magnitogorsk • 1894−1970-th
Russian-Soviet artist, graphic artist. Member of the Union of Artists of the USSR.
Semyon Vasilievich Kaminsky was born on February 27, 1894 in Belarus, in the village of Kamenka. The boy showed his ability to draw early. In the early 1920s, in Vitebsk, the future artist regularly attended classes in the studio of Yuri Moiseevich Pen, the founder of the first Belarusian art school and teacher of the famous Vitebsk artist Marc Chagall. Semyon was a capable and most beloved of the old master's students, as evidenced by the portrait of Kaminsky painted by Yu. M. Pen. And drawing for Kaminsky was just a hobby for a long time. Hunger drove them from Belarus to Magnitka. In 1932, a family with four children traveled across the country to a shock construction site. I was traveling not as an artist, but as an accountant ... In Magnitka, where the great construction project attracted eminent artists from all over the country, Kaminsky's talent was really appreciated. In Magnitogorsk, Semyon Kaminsky met Georgy Soloviev, and for many years remained a friend and associate of the artist. Creative associates founded a city art workshop in Magnitka. He was an active participant in all exhibitions, quickly became a member of the Union of Artists of the Soviet Republic. Member of the Union of Artists of the USSR in 1936. In 1939, Kaminsky was elected a delegate to the first regional congress of artists. The artist lived and worked in Magnitogorsk during the first years of construction. Kaminsky worked in the genres of landscape and portrait, was engaged in the modeling of plaster sculptures. By order of the plant, he manufactured layouts of open-hearth and blast furnaces. In the 1930s, he was no less famous than the legendary chronicler of Magnitogorsk Georgy Solovyov. However, one went down in history, and the other was undeservedly forgotten. This assessment is also shared by art critics from Magnitogorsk, who consider Kaminsky's portraits to be real pictorial masterpieces. For services to Magnitka, the chronicle of which he kept in the same way as Soloviev, he even received an apartment from the city. He was very hardworking and completely disinterested: he did not sell a single painting, he gave away everything. People treated him with respect, as a representative of the old Russian intelligentsia. But it was forgotten by the descendants. Why this happened is difficult to say today. However, the name Kaminsky is still known in the city, since the artist managed to pass on his talent to his children and grandchildren, whom he loved very much and always considered his best creation. The creative gene of the Kaminsky family generously sprouted in the descendants. The son of Semyon Kaminsky Flavian, after whom they named Flavius Arkadievich, having presented only one drawing, was enrolled in the Leningrad Art Institute. Flavius's father Arkady Semyonovich studied at the Sverdlovsk Art School, from where he was drafted to the front. After the war, after graduating from the Faculty of History, he worked as a drawing teacher. Flavius Arkadievich's cousin Valery cut beautiful wooden masks. The older brother Vasily drew well, the cousin Sonya graduated from the Magnitogorsk art graf, the daughters Ksenia and Anastasia also showed a penchant for drawing. Grandson S.V. Kaminsky, Flavius Kaminsky, teacher at the Magnitogorsk State Conservatory. Semyon Kaminsky's paintings were exhibited at city and regional exhibitions, adorned the halls of the Museum of Local Lore, the House of Technology, the Palace of Culture of Metallurgists, and the Ilmensky Reserve Museum. The artist Semyon Vasilyevich Kaminsky painted in 1960 a portrait of Georgy Mikhailovich Zamoruev, which is in the Magnitogorsk Museum of Local Lore. Sketches and landscape works by Semyon Kaminsky are full of lyricism. According to Flavius Arkadievich, my grandfather loved the polar states of nature: rebirth and wilting, when the colors of the forest are especially clear and piercing. The painter captured the surroundings of Zapasnoye in a series of spring landscapes filled with transparent purity, the sound of a spring drip, and the smell of blooming gardens. In his graphic works - pencil sketches of an old man, a middle-aged woman, a man - Semyon Kaminsky demonstrates the unsurpassed skill of a draftsman. The mid-tones of black and white allow the professional to convey both the photographic similarity and the mood of the model. Painterly portraits that sound different. The master created the image of Yuri Pen in 1930. The artist managed to convey the extraordinary personality of his teacher, intuitively grasping his inner tragedy: in 1937, Yuri Pen was killed, according to the official version, by relatives who wanted to take possession of his inheritance.
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