Yazep Drozdovich was a Belarusian painter, sculptor, archaeologist, ethnographer, folklorist and writer. Moreover, he was a theatre figure and amateur astronomer.
Background
Yazep Drozdovich was born on October 13, 1888 in Punki, Disnensk district, Vilna Governorate (present-day Punki, Vitebsk Region, Belarus). He was the youngest son in a large family (five sons and a daughter) of a landless catholic gentleman, who died, when the boy was only two years old. The family was left without a breadwinner and had to change lodgings quite often: they never stayed in one place for more than three years. Such a nomadic life, kaleidoscope of impressions and new people could have influenced the formation of a future artist.
Education
As a child Yazep was a herder, he grew close to nature, which made him contemplative, dreamy and given to brooding. From early years, he drew and copied pictures from magazines, modeled clay figures.
Drozdovich began his studies under the guidance of a private teacher. Later, he attended a gymnasium in Dzisna, Vitsebsk Voblast, Belarus. In 1906, Yazep entered the artistic school in Vilna (present-day Vilnius), founded by the academician Ivan Trutnev, where he remained until 1908. The school prepared craftsmen for artistic jobs at porcelain works and icon painting workshops.
In the late 1910's, he continued his education — Yazep attended courses at the Minsk Institute of Teaching, took a course of the Belarusian language, literature and history of Belarus, which was the most interesting for him.
Career
In his early years, while still a student, Yazep took different temporary jobs to make both ends meet. In order to live on, he painted signboards and pictorial lamp shades for restaurants. But at the same time, he avidly tried to learn the world — Yazep organized steamboat excursions along the Dvina to Polotsk only to see the Upper Castle and St. Sofia Cathedral. At that period, his works, imitating the refined art nouveau, that dominated at the time, began to appear at students' exhibitions. Drozdovich was interested in symbolism, based on subconsciousness streaming from the rational sphere to mystery and dream.
In 1908, Drozdovich got acquainted with editors of Vilna's newspaper "Nasha Niva" and got his first orders for covers of the books by Belarusian publishing house. In the early 1910's, he designed the first "Belarusian calendar for 1910", a book of poetry "Barrow Flower" by K. Buylo and other Belarusian publications in the style of art nouveau. But the governing body of "Nasha Niva" didn't approve of his "symbolistics" and asked him not to go far from "social ground". The newspaper needed understandable realistic pictures of didactic or propagandistic character. Soon, Drozdovich started to follow these ideas, having shaped the aesthetic line of drawings of "Nasha Niva". He signed all his works in Belarusian.
During his military service in Saratov, where he was called up in the autumn of 1910, Drozdovich didn't break his cooperation with Belarusian publishing houses. Three years later, he entered courses for assistant medical officers at a military hospital, after which he got an assignment in Volsk on the Volga. As a medical assistant, Yazep acquired freedom of movement and started his self-education: he made excursions to Kazan, Ufa and even to distant Irkutsk. When in Volsk, Drozdovich created symbolic paintings, including triptych "The funeral feast of the past", canvases the "The gate of the future", "Evil spell", "Chaos of sorrow", "The spirit of Earth" and others, that he sent to Vilna (present-day Vilnius) together with a series of drawings.
In 1917, after demobilization because of illness, Drozdovich came back to his native town Germanovichi, where his mother and brothers lived at that time. The news of the creation of Soviet Belarus brought him in 1919 to Minsk, where he got a job of a designer in literary and publishing department of People's Commissariat for Education. Also, he worked actively at the creation of pictures for the first Belarusian primer. At the same time, Yazep created his masterpiece in graphics — dainty openworked drawing in Indian ink "A view from the hospital garden to Liberty Square" (1919) — one of the best artistic images of Minsk, where the new capital of the recently announced soviet republic appears as an ancient baroque city.
In the early 1920's, Yazep's work in Vilna (present-day Vilnius) was marked by historical romanticism. His numerous local history drawings of 1920's with the images of monuments of Belarusian architecture are drawn in a plain technique in pencil or in Indian ink — detailed, realistic and a little romanticized. These are "views drawn from life", but with the preserved specific vision of the author. In 1926, Drozdovich came to historical romanticism, later — to fantastic realism and refused symbolic and allegoric interpretations of subjects in his creative works.
From 1927 till 1930, Yazep worked as a painting teacher in a gymnasium in Radoshkovichi, Vilna (present-day Vilnius) and Novogrudok. Students liked and appreciated his sincerity and obsession with arts, teaching brought him joy and satisfaction. But in 1930, Drozdovich left his job after a domestic argument with the headmaster. He didn't manage to find another position because of the crisis of the late 1920's — early 1930's. That year was the turning point, the end of the first period of his working life — the time of social demand for him and his active and diverse work as an artist. From that moment, Drozdovich lived on casual earnings, but a free and spiritually eventful life.
The year of 1930 started the most interesting and intriguing period in his creative life — a "cosmic" period. For three years, Yazep examined astronomy, cosmogonical theories all by himself in the library of Vilna University (present-day Vilnius University), which was a real intellectual deed for him, for a person without systematic knowledge in physics, chemistry and mathematics.
When back to his ramshackle dwelling in the garret, half-starved in the evenings, he deepened into somnambulistic dreams, in which he saw what happened on the Moon, Venus, Mars and Saturn: mysterious cities, strange, extraterrestrial nature, even aliens' life. Drozdovich called his dreams "astral travelling flights". In the morning, he put down everything he saw in details, made illustrations and maps in graphic albums. More than 100 Drozdovich's drawings and paintings, united with cosmic theme, are well-known. The majority of them are dated 1930-1935. They make up three large cycles: "Life on Saturn", "Life on Mars" and "Life on the Moon".
In 1932-1933, he created an album "Life on the Moon", which is the darkest and the most anxious of all in the series. Drozdovich depicted weird city-fortresses, endless walls and towers, strong defences. In these works, Lunarians ("Mooners") are getting prepared for wars or have already been at war for quite a while.
In the first half of the 1930's, Drozdovich created his own cosmogonical theory, which consisted of theoretical, literary and visual parts. He considered the manuscript "The Harmony of Planets of the Solar System" the most valuable conclusion of his life. He sent his work to Minsk, to the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR, asking to publish it "even if only as a hypothesis". It is unknown, whether the manuscript was ever read or was considered to be mad scribbler's nonsense.
In his later years, Drozdovich chose a way of a bachelor, a homeless artist-wanderer, undertaking endless travellings and wanderings across the native land — from homestead to homestead, from village to village, getting by with casual earnings. Peasants became his main clients. His artistic "divans" (wall carpets of a flax homespun linen of 1930's), "kuferkas" (carved casckets), "kiis" (canes) and portraits (carved bas-reliefs on wood), namely the portraits of Anton Grinevich, Yanka Pachopka and his own brother Stephan Drozdovich, preserve the traits of folk aesthetics, but are professionally made.
Within 10 years of his wanderings, he created many "divans-malyavankas" (painted wall carpets) — these painting masterpieces served not only as a decoration of a country house, but also an amulet. They are various in themes: floral, animalistic and even cosmic. The refined floral ornament, painted with taste on black background, frames images of miraculous castles or moonlit night, lakes with white swans, hunters and romantic rendezvous. Peasants appreciated and carefully kept his carpets. And he was proud, that there were his works in almost every village.
The reunion of Western Belarus with the BSSR in 1939 revived hope for the demand of Drozdovich's creative talent. In 1940, he was appointed a teacher of drawing and botany in Luzhetsk village school in Vitebsk region. Yazep held this post till 1941. Also, at that time, he was provided with a house and a cow. It could seem, that he got the basis — a house and a respectful status of a country teacher, but the virus of wandering had already strongly possessed him. Drozdovich could not imagine another lifestyle.
In 1941, he sent some of his biographical data to the State Picture Gallery in Minsk, having counted on the great interest of painters from Western Belarus, whose exhibition was being prepared in Minsk, but the beginning of the war ruined the plans. Drozdovich spent the war time in abandoned forest homesteads of his acquaintances, hiding from Germans. In 1944, he created a series of historical paintings, dedicated to the Belarusian first printer Francisk Skoryna. That was also the time of the creation of the last symbolic self-portrait "The three-headed", symbolizing three roles of an artist — an artist-specialist in the local history, historian and astronomer. Also, it was at that time, that the painter created his canvas "Space" — a metaphorical image of god Sabaoth, giving planet Earth a start into the Universe.
After the war, Drozdovich's health, damaged in endless travellings, was getting worse, his eyesight betrayed him, his ulcer aggravated. Acquaintances promised to help him get a job in a museum in Minsk, but he couldn't imagine himself in a city without a habitual nomadic life in native places. Drozdovich understood, that it was time to make conclusions of his creative life. He offered his "Skoryna" series to Yanka Kupala museum. He dreamt of a large personal exhibition of his works in Minsk, but didn't manage to collect paintings for the exhibition: all of them were scattered in different villages, and he failed to find a horse with a cart.
On August 15, 1954, homestead people found him unconscious on a road. He died in a country hospital in Podsvilsk. He was buried in a village cemetery in Liplyany, a small village, close to his native place Punki, according to the recollections of eyewitnesses, without a coffin, wrapped in a white sheet. Thus, on a road came to an end the earthly way of the person, who created in arts different worlds — real and virtual.
Personality
Yazep's strange ardour for outer space, which started in his childhood years, brought him only mockery of his friends and a reputation of a strange, even insane artist. Drozdovich gradually turned into a marginal person, lonely and broken-hearted. His like-minded friends from Vilna little by little drifted apart from a bizarre artist-geezer, gone into his "visions". He hardly got a letter or an order either from Minsk or from Vilna, and from the early 1930's, nobody wrote to him.
In his later years, Drozdovich began to sign his works "Yazep the Forgotten".