A girl in a turban, a boy with a ball and carpet traders: a new art object appeared in Kazan

It took more than two weeks to create a mural on the wall of the building at G. Kamala Street, №2.

(KZN.RU, July 4, Alsu Safina). A new art object decorated one of the buildings in the center of Kazan. The wall of the historic house at the street of G. Kamala, №2, which is not an object of cultural heritage, now has painted windows with people of the end of the XIX and the beginning of the XX century lookout. A large-scale composition carries walkers in the past and tells how this part of Kazan lived in that period.

The idea of creating such an art object appeared last year, but it was only now possible to realize it. The author was a Novosibirsk artist Vasily Kaptyrev (Lastochkin). It took him just over two weeks to create the mural. The bulk of the works for today is completed, there are nuances left to be done that will help reveal the artist's intentions.

Vasily Kaptyrev was offered to work on the creation of this art object by his Kazan friend Dmitry Kudinov (Supernova), the author of street art with the image of football players Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, and Igor Netto. The residents of Kazan are also already familiar with the work of Vasily Kaptyrev. He made an art object in Staro-Tatarskaya Sloboda, painted on a large brick wall, and an image of a girl on the facade of one of the residential buildings in A. Kutuy Street (as part of the festival Like it Art).

Vasily Kaptyrev was presented with a draft project. “It seemed interesting to me. But I immediately set the condition that I would do everything in the historical framework of the late XIX-early XX centuries, but in my own way. I would put other people, interesting situations. The idea is that this is an apartment house. There are living quarters on the second floor and shops on the first floor”, he said. Archival photographs of Kazan at that time helped the artist to recreate the life of that time, Tatar suits, signs, and fonts.

And now, there are 10 windows on the yellow wall, located on two floors. Each window tells its own story. For example, at the central upper window, fr om which the white curtains are fluttering, there is a girl in red robes and a red turban, with a cup in her hand, seems to be thinking about something. A branchy plant is looking out of the next window, and a girl in blue with a watering can is sitting on the windowsill. In another window, you can see the men and a boy holding a brush. It seems as if something caught his attention on the street, and he, forgetting about everything, leaned out of the window and did not notice how the blue paint was dripping fr om the brush.

Passing by the building, we see a shop wh ere they sell carpets, dishes are seen through another window. Young girls in national costumes whisper about something in the central window, covering themselves with a corner of the cloth. The smell of freshly baked bread comes from the window next to it. In another window, you can see a boy with a ball in his hand that accidentally smashed the vases, and adults reproachfully look at him.

The art object turned out to be really interesting, you would want to look into every window, examine every detail and learn the history of all the characters. “Everything is rather arbitrary. There is no binding to any particular house or situation, it is a collective image”, said the artist. “There were photos of modern people, I used some of them to convey the position of a person, but later "dressed" them in different clothes, changed the position of the hands, etc.”, said Vasily Kaptyrev. “It was difficult to get on the scale; I wanted people turned out in full size. The most difficult thing is to adjust all this to architectural elements”. In the process of creating a mural, he used aerosol paints and painted smaller elements with a brush.

The residents and guests of the city react positively to the appearance of a new art object. Zhanna Belitskaya, the chief of the city design department, the main artist of the city noted that this place was chosen for a reason. Transport and pedestrian roads pass from Staro-Tatarskaya Sloboda to Bauman Street and further to Kazanka Embankment, there are many tourists. “At first they wanted to depict simply the life of Kazan residents, but then they decided that it was necessary to tell the story of this place”, said Zhanna Belitskaya. “In 1722, when Peter I was in Kazan, he stopped at the house of merchant Mihlyaev, who promised him to build a cathedral of Peter and Paul. At the time of construction, the merchant moved to this district. On the site of the present square, which is in the neighborhood, there was a lake wh ere the fish was kept, hay was dried nearby. Merchant Mihlyaev transformed this territory into Sennaya Square”.

The main artist called the new art object an artistic painting with great inner meaning. In total, there are about 50 places in the city, decorated with similar art objects.

Photo report

A new art object decorated the enter of Kazan

Video report

04.07.2018 15:49

A new art object decorated the center of Kazan