Ekaterina Ruskevich, “Zdes’ dolzhna byt’ lyustra, nam ne nuzhna skul’ptura” [interview with Larisa Malysheva], Colta, 19.11.1921: https://www.colta.ru/articles/she/28890-ekaterina-ruskevich-intervyu-larisa-malysheva-dizayn-i-monumentalnoe-iskusstvo-pozdniy-sssr?fbclid=IwAR1IJlK7B_OorlFlouFYs8RSfWITogcqtVZLpwsNNpUWf5iyqnnvv0NhffA

…One day my teacher came up and looked at me and said: “What are you hanging around for? Go to Minsk, there’ll soon be exams at the Institute of Theater and the Arts.”

…

I didn’t know what department to apply to, I wanted to go to the monumental arts department. Before that, a ceramics department student came to our college and told me about an interesting metal artist, Lyubimov from Moscow, and that he was admitting students for the second-year. I stood there, looking at the list of departments: I saw metalworking. And suddenly something clicked inside of me, and I went to metalworking.

Ruskevich: What techniques did you learn?

Malysheva: We were taught construction, composition and material work. We were taught everything: to work on the lathe, to forge. The only thing we were not trusted with was welding.

I was the only girl in the department. It was hard to study, I didn’t know how to do everything, like tuck in a chasing hammer. And my classmates commented on every mistake of mine: “Why did you come here?” Why? Why did people go to the sculpture department? It’s not comparable to our work: there you have to make a frame, mold and lift, and the clay is heavy. But that attitude actually stimulated me. In the practical classes I was very nervous. But it helped me a lot, I mastered everything on my own. And when you know, you’re not afraid of anything. I tried and in the end finished better than anyone. And as for drawing, painting, composition–there, no one dared to tell me anything.

…

After the institute I faced the choice of what to do next. I was offered to go back to Bobruisk. … And suddenly, in the evening, on the eve of the commission, Liya Oveysovna Qajar (an interior designer, architect, her family was descended from the Persian Kajar family) arrives. And we all had great respect for her. Qajar asked me:

– Larisa, where are you going to go?

– To Bobruisk.

– You’re crazy, no way. You should only go to the art combine.

I came to the commission in the morning, and since I was the first one to get the allocation, I said that I would go to the combine.

We were out of work for almost a year. As honest, responsible people, my friend Elena Kharaberyush and I – she was a sculptor – would come to the combine. We said hello to somebody, chatted, and left. We had no idea how everything worked there. We thought we had to come here. And what was there to do at home? There was nothing to do, so we took the streetcar every day and went. Why was there no work? The head of the workshop, Rachinskaya, told me later that nobody trusted us, they were afraid, they didn’t know what they could do. We approached my teacher Lyubimov and he said: “Be bold, don’t be afraid of anything.”

One day I was summoned and offered to take the commission for a jewelry store on Pushkin Avenue (in the seventies this was a new city district in Minsk). The customer, the store manager, was very worried. There was a metal workshop on Pulikhova Street, where the Azgur Museum is now located. The director would first go to the workshop and then to his workplace and call Rachinskaya (the workshop manager) shouting, “Who did you give me!” There was no way he could have imagined what the final story would look like, since the parts of the composition were lying apart, we had everything assembled at the last minute. It was a lattice and three-dimensional flower brooches: not the popular embossing, but a finer and more intricate plastic, something fresh and new. At that time, they weren’t doing that yet.

The customer didn’t come to the store, but the art council came and accepted everything. The chairman of the council, painter Gavril Vashchenko, liked everything, and I was paid a whole five thousand rubles.

From the early works there was also an emblem for the House of Trade Unions, 1972 or 1973. I remember bringing a lot of variants to the main architect of the building, Yuri Grigoriev. You know, how politicized it all was… I got this order because I was young, and it cost almost nothing. Everyone refused, and the order was given to me. The juicy objects were taken by more established people.

…

Then a lot of commissions came in. And while if I did the first onemyself, for larger orders and larger volumes I was allowed to hire workers.

…

Valera Yevminov was our general, he still had his military uniform after the army, and wore it to work.

…

We must have worked together for seven years. When I became completely overwhelmed with commissions, I had to work with several teams. And when I also had to make glass, I would leave the metal with them and go to Neman (the glass factory) and make glass there. Sometimes they also made several commissions at the same time.

Ruskevich: Sometimes I heard from artists who worked at that time, when asked why there were few women in monumental art, the following answer: “Because it’s hard work. Because you have to communicate with the workers, and that can also be hard.”

Malysheva: No, that’s not true. The workers and I were good friends and worked very hard. I can’t say that I was a tough person. But I did my own best and, accordingly, I demanded the same.

–Was this work technically difficult?

–When you know everything, it’s not hard anymore. How do you make high relief, for example? The artist makes a sketch for the composition. When the sketch is approved, a life-size sculpture is made. There was a sculpture shop on Victory Square. They used to take it to the workshop in Frolikovo, it was a metal workshop. There they cast either concrete or silumin faces and hands and pounded out of copper. The hammering could be hollow on a frame, welded and tinted. If it is large, the sheet metal is heated under lamps, trimmed, then the next piece is made. Then it is trimmed and welded.

When they were hammering out the “Solidarity” panel from aluminum at the House of Models, there was such a rumble… And this was the ministries’ district. One day one of them (maybe a minister, his face doesn’t say…) comes to our workshop: “So, who’s in charge here?”

But we don’t have a boss, but we have Valerka the general, a worker from my brigade, who wore uniform all the time. So we sent him.

He was so sorry that the general was working. And we were laughing our guts out.

The “Hammer and Sickle” emblem was also made there. We assembled it piece by piece, brought it to the place, hoisted it up with a winch. And then we cut it on the spot, put the frame on and riveted it. One time a strong wind ripped a sheet off, we had to go and fix it.

Ruskevich: What were the most popular trends at the turn of the ’70s and ’80s in design – or in interior design?

Malysheva: You know, chandeliers became trendy, because they organized space. They immediately defined the image, the character and the mood of the room. They were multifunctional. What can you decorate an ordinary ceiling with? A chandelier. We did the best we could. Chandeliers were becoming the dominant feature of the interior. And in parallel, there was a growing interest in metal.

…

It didn’t cost very much. Figures, Lenin portraits were what was expensive. And everything else Malysheva could do. And all the time Malysheva’s name was on everyone’s lips, and then they started complaining that the chandeliers were going everywhere.

Ruskevich: How did you organize your work process?

Malysheva: First of all, I talked to the architects: what tasks and what the work is created for. The technical process would then be determined at the combine, where they also selected the materials. After that, I created a sketch. Once again I went to the architects with the sketch and checked it out. Sometimes instead of architects, it could be an interior designer appointed by the artistic council, as was the case at the Museum of Military Glory in Rossony or at the Sovmin sanatorium.

The clients negotiated with the architects. We, the artists, were not in contact with the architects in the beginning. Then, after we received the order, we were told: architect so-and-so. We would come to Beldzyarzhpraekt or Minskpraekt, find Gradov or Levin and work with them.

…

Architects could find their own artists. Someone they could count on, someone they could trust doing what they wanted. There were times when you made friends with these architects, and they would come to our studio and make something for themselves: sconces or lamps, for example.

My main consultant in the beginning was Liya Oveysovna Qajar, she was an architect and interior designer. Communicating with different people during my studies taught me to present an idea through a metaphor, to look for an image. That’s how I understood the task of architecture. My task was to turn in a sketch. It was mandatory to make a reamplification on a flipchart. And as a rule, I made a three-dimensional model. If the layout was made by interior designers, then I just put my project there. The scale, proportions, character, mood and image were all apparent in the layout. Then there was a process of agreement with the interior designer, the architect and the client, after which everything was sent to the art council.

I made a layout, let’s say, 10:25 to the scale of the object. Then I enlarged it one to one. Or I would just make drawings on cardboard and show – or a spread at the appropriate scale. Then the workers would enlarge it. Most of the time I did it myself, just to be sure, and then these sheets were bent and assembled.

It was not up to me, but up to the place where the work was created. For example, at the sanatorium “Sosny” the project was made by Valery Dovgalo, a muralist. Initially the idea was slightly different, I tried to adjust, but I still did not like the abrupt color transitions.

I made a very good model. In the center of the composition there was a chandelier, which looked like a tree, I called it an apple tree. I showed the project to the Council of Ministers and brought it to the Arts Council for approval. I told about the situation, why I chose such a solution, and explained its function and purpose. At that time, sculptor Ryzhenkov was the chairman of the Art Council. He was really indignant: “What is that? There’s supposed to be a chandelier here; chandeliers are the trend now; we don’t need a sculpture. A lot of such solid chandeliers were made back then. And they killed the project. But the Council of Ministers had already approved it.

…

The last commission that I did was for the restaurant Zhuravinka. We completed the glass and the frames–almost half of the work. We worked and worked, we tried and tried. And all of that went down the drain. The 90s came and nobody cared anymore.