Mai Dantsig was a Belarusian artist and educator, the author of many paintings and drawings, related to the German-Soviet War. Also, he produced portraits and depicted different Belarusian cities, such as Minsk, Soligorsk and Vitebsk.
Moreover, he was one of the founders of contemporary Belarusian art.
Background
Mai Dantsig was born on April 27, 1930, in Minsk, BSSR (present-day Minsk, Belarus), in a late 19th century building on Myasnikov Street, that miraculously survived World War II only to be demolished afterwards. Mai's father, Wolf, was a gym teacher at a secondary school in Minsk and trained young gymnasts at summer camps. Wolf also was an intellectual — as a young man, he had dreamed about becoming a doctor and completed three years of medical school. However, when his daughter Bella was born, seven years prior to Mai, Wolf stopped his medical studies to look for ways to support his new family. Wolf was also a very good violin player, and prior to 1917, he attended the famous Minsk Art Studio of Jacob Kruger. Moreover, Mai's father enjoyed drawing.
Mai's mother, Basya Kagan, was a housewife and paid close attention to her children's education. She loved poetry, could recite many by heart and even tried her hand at writing poems.
World War II changed the lives of the Dantsigs. Nazis invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 and air raids on Minsk started almost immediately. By sheer luck, the Dantsigs managed to escape the burning city only on June 27. After about a month on the road, the Dantsigs found themselves in the remote Russian city of Ulyanovsk (then Simbirsk) on the banks of the Volga river.
Life in Ulyanovsk was extremely hard: everyone was constantly hungry. Mai would go to a town market, where they sold seeds, would grab a fistful of them, crack a couple seeds open and save the remainder for the rest of the day. Being a newcomer, Mai was often bullied by the local kids.
His mother, Basya, started working at a textile factory in Ulyanovsk. Once, the factory needed a sign made and Basya offered Mai's help. The boy did a wonderful job, and as a reward got an entire loaf of bread. From then on, Mai tried to help his family as much as he could, and kept accepting every offer for signs and banners from the factory, becoming a true helper and the breadwinner for the family.
In July 1944, Soviet troops liberated Minsk from the Nazis and the Dantsigs decided to return to their hometown at once. They were elated to find the house they lived in intact, with one of Wolf's drawing, dated 1912, still pinned to the wall of one of the rooms.
Education
When Mai's family came back to Minsk, he returned to school, but dedicated a lot more time to painting, which he began to enjoy more and more. For several years in a row, the young man kept going to the art studio in a local youth center, where his teacher was a talented Belarusian artist and a war veteran, Sergey Katkov.
In 1947, Dantsig enrolled in a newly opened Minsk State Art College named after A. Glebov. A number of well-known artists, such as Fedor Baranovsky, Israel Basov, Leon Borozna, Victor Versotsky, Victor Gromyko, Leonid Dudarenko, Nicholas Zalozniy, Vladimir Mineyko and others also studied there. Their teachers included Ivan Ahremchik, Valentin Volkov, Konstantin Kosmachev, Vladimir Sukhoverkhov, Vladimir Khrustalev, Lev Leytman, Haim Livshits and Alexander Mozolev. Mai's later teacher was a famous painter Vitaly Tsvirko, who played a very important role in his artistic life.
Upon graduating from Minsk State Art College in 1952, Dantsig began studying at one of the most prestigious Art Schools in the Soviet Union — the famous Surikov Art Institute in Moscow. He passed all the entrance exams with flying colors. In Surikov Art Institute, Dantsig's teachers were the famous Soviet masters Peter Pokarzhevsky and Victor Tsyplakov. In 1958, Mai graduated from the educational establishment.
The years, spent at Surikov Art Institute, were an amazing time for Dantsig, who was constantly engaged in self-education and devoted every free moment to visiting museums and going to art exhibits and book stores. He became an expert in art literature and that's how his lifelong hobby of collecting art books started.
Career
In 1957, Moscow hosted the Sixth International Youth Festival. Working with his fellow classmates, Dantsig was busy in the festival organizers' studio. Foreign festival attendees would pose for only a single session, yet in a very short time, Dantsig created a striking number of sketches, that were included in the series, titled "Sixth International Youth Festival in Moscow Attendees" (1957). These sketches are spectacular for their great mastery, impeccable execution and the ability to capture the unique character trait of each individual attendee.
In 1958, as his graduation project, Mai created "Embracing Life", which showcased impressionist painting techniques with a rich palette and the feeling of airy movement. This piece is anything, but primitive. On the contrary, it exudes the sense of freedom and independence of the youth. The same year, in 1958, the head of the Belarusian State Institute of Theater and Arts (present-day the Belarusian State Academy of Arts) offered Mai a full-time teaching position. In 1980, he received a full professorship and in 2001, became a chair of Department of Painting.
Dantsig continued teaching at the Academy until 2011, and during his tenure of more than half a century, he transferred his mastery to several generations of Belarusian artists, such as Igor Barhatkov, Anton Vyrvo, Andrew Zadorin, Roman Zaslonov, Sergey Ignatenko, Vladimir Kozhuh, Yuri Krupenkov, Anatoly Kuznetsov, Oleg Matievich, Peter Nazarenko, Leonid Osedovsky, Sergei Osoprilko, Yury Platonov, Igor Sventitsky, Vasily Sumarev and Janna Chistaya, just to name a few. Dantsig concentrated on teaching the foundations of art to all of his students.
The artist burst into Soviet art scene in the early 1960's, known as the "romantic era". His contemporaries had entirely new ideas about the interaction between the artists' personas and their own art. They were in a constant search of stylistic innovations, that would best suit their creativity. Instead of glorifying the Socialist paradise, they turned to depicting mundane scenes of everyday life. The emergence of the so-called "rugged style" in Soviet art was a direct result of the political changes, that were taking place in the society at that time. During that period, Mai's works were not accepted for exhibitions because of their dramatic scale: exhibit organizers were afraid, that smaller works by other artists would become invisible among Dantsig's ones.
Also, in the early 1960's, Dantsig visited the mines of Soligorsk, Belarus — a young Soviet industrial city, that became a true "mecca" for Belarusian artists. Here, Dantsig created a huge number of sketches and studies, some of which became the bases of a number of works, including "The city shall be built here...Soligorsk" (1960), "New Neighborhoods Are Coming Up" (1960), "Soligorsk abuzz. The Night Shift" (1960), "Soligorsk Mine" (1960), "The Road to the Mines in Soligorsk" (1962) and others.
Dantsig openly stated his artistic credo in "Just moved" (1962). Instead of a glorifying propaganda piece, this work was designed to appeal solely to viewers' emotions. Mai chose a very unusual angle for his work-essentially level with a young couple, sitting on the floor. The barefoot couple is seated at the top right-hand corner, and a suitcase and a purse are positioned in the bottom left to balance the composition. Because a Soviet couple could not be presented as barefoot and shoeless, he added a pair of stilettos. Later, Dantsig removed the stilettos as an overly excessive detail.
In "Workers' Cafeteria" (1963), the artist continued to develop the theme of a typical day in the life of Soviet people. The concept of a self-service cafeteria was still new. In order to create the work, he made numerous visits to cafeterias in Minsk, making multiple sketches. He remembered how he was impressed with the colorful glasses of compote, that were placed along the counter. And again, Mai built the composition as if the viewer was himself inside the cafeteria. The work is impressive for its large-scale and careful attention to even the tiniest details.
Dantsig's "Belarus, the land of the Partisans" (1967) was exhibited at country-wide exhibit in the USSR and was exceptionally well received, including a positive review by the Minister of Culture at the time, Elena Furtseva. Dantsig admited, that at the time, he was influenced by French artists Gustave Courbet and Eugene Delacroix. Just like the French artists, he wanted to create a complex multi-tiered composition.
"Partisan Wedding" (1968) is a truly unconventional piece, in which Mai provided a rather uncommon solution to a common Soviet motif of romance. War normally interferes with romance, but here one can witness a great irony of love, cheating death. Though Dantsig was often criticized by some of his colleagues for his approach, this work is above all, a paean of love and life. Dantsig based this composition on contrast, a powerful artistic technique. The dark woods, surrounding the protagonists, are full of death and drama, but the two young lovers in the spotlight make the viewer forget all the horrors of war, even if for just a few moments.
Another work, that sparked controversy with Soviet officials, was "Partisan Ballad" (1969), which shows an incredible scene of an armed woman, breastfeeding a malnourished partisan fighter in a scorched battlefield. The composition was inspired by Peter Paul Rubens' "Roman Charity", which depicts Cimon, who was sentenced to death by starvation, being secretly breastfed by his daughter Pero. Dantsig creatively reworked the ancient Roman epic to make it relevant to modern times. Time rendered his critics irrelevant, and now this painting rightfully claims its place among the masterpieces of the twentieth century Belarusian art.
During his lifetime, Dantsig dedicated a great number of works to his native city of Minsk and was rightfully considered an urbanist. In celebrating his hometown, he masterfully combined the town's ancient history with its modern beauty. Throughout the years, the artist crisscrossed Minsk, making countless sketches as the war-ravaged city, like a phoenix, who was rising out of ashes and transforming into a blossoming metropolis right before his eyes. Dantsig recounted, that at first he didn't find Minsk very artistic, but over time, he started discovering hidden beauty in the most unexpected places. It made him fall in love again with his native Minsk in a completely new way. And that love of the artist for his hometown is evident to anyone, who admires his works.
In his vibrant work "My City, Old and New" (1972), Dantsig captured the essence of the city by giving the spectators the birds-eye view of the old Lower Town of Minsk. This rendition shows off the spirit of Minsk through its vivid palette of old and new buildings, construction sites, vehicles speeding by and people going about their everyday tasks.
In the "Song of Minsk" (1976), the artist used another expressive technique. While showing a colorful panorama of Minsk under construction, the upper right corner of the painting contains a vignette of a black and white photograph of the bombed out city after the war.
In 1994, Dantsig created a special Vitebsk series of works — "Vitebsk City Hall", "Goodbye, Vitebsk", "Evening in Vitebsk" and "Vitebsk Courtyard". Wide dynamic brushstroke helped to create a surreal scene.
Mai also made portraits, and for his works, he chose celebrities, whose talents, energy and passion matched his own, such as Georgy Tovstonogov (1976), Yury Kozakov (1985), Valery Belyakovich (1985), Victor Avilov (1985), Yury Tyszkiewicz (1984), Anatoly Kim (1985), Bulat Okudzhava (1986), Vasil Bykov (1987), Anatoly Anikeichik (1988), Ales Adamovich (1988). These portraits show an excellent perception of each of the subjects' unique traits.
In October 2015, Mai's 85th anniversary exhibit was held by the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus, during which the wider public first saw most of his scenic sketches and studies. It featured over four hundred paintings and drawings from museums and private collections, as well as from the artist's own studio, and marked an important culture milestone not solely for the city of Minsk, but for the Republic of Belarus as a whole.
From his emergence in the romantic era of the 1960's, Dantsig continued the tradition of "rugged style" in years that followed. But over time, his works took on much deeper psychological symbolism through individualization of imagery and technical mastery of brush strokes. He consistently avoided overused and tired cliches. At the same time, Dantsig remained true to his views of art. His works are always instantly recognizable, expressive and life-asserting.
Until his last days, Mai continued to work restlessly every day, reaffirming his unique way and rightfully claiming his spot on the Belarusian art scene.
Views
Dantsig's deepest conviction was that one can only begin to paint after one learns to understand and feel the nature through sketching.
Quotations:
"I have always wanted to do something different. After all, the most interesting thing in art is not a new theme, but a new representation of an old one."
"My realism is not that of the Itinerants. I learned from Fauvism and Expressionism instead. It is my conviction, that realism, first and foremost, has to be existential, because just depicting life as it happens doesn't have any significance. True realism always provokes, giving the viewer an opportunity to notice something infinitely essential in the mundane. And something mysterious happens, when the viewer is able to see that with the help of the artist. Realism demands, that the artist be able to clearly see the essence. A masterpiece cannot be copied from what exists out there in the world; it needs to be imagined in such a way, as to be believable to viewers. And it must be done in a powerful, convincing and deeply emotional way."
"I fear only apathy. When desires disappear and aspirations are replaced by utter indifference, life comes to an end. Creativity is driven by life-affirming force alone."
Personality
Throughout his life, the artist enjoyed painting from nature. Dantsig used to tell his students, that painting is a process, in which the artist opens his heart to the nature or essence of a subject and translates that through brush strokes on canvas for viewers.