Powrót do mistrza. Próba rekonstrukcji biografii i portretu twórczego Bernarda Kratki

Abstract

Return to the master

Bernard Kratko (Aron-Ber Shimon Kratka) – was born on 17 January 1884 in Warsaw to a poor Jewish family. He studied at the school of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 1915 he moved to Petrograd, and from 1918 he lived and worked in Ukraine. In the USSR Kratka achieved great recognition as a sculptor, but in 1937 he suffered repression and was exiled to Central Asia. In 1945 he returned to Kiev. Since 1949 he worked in the city of Stalino (Donetsk). In 1960 he died in Kiev. Bernard was a sculptor, graphic artist, teacher. At various times he was a professor at the Ukrainian Academy of Art in Kiev; headed the Factory of the Art Industry in Kharkov; was the rector of Kharkov Art College and the Kiev Art Institute; worked as professor of sculpture; one of the founders of the Association of Revolutionary Art of Ukraine (ARMU). In almost 50 years of artistic activity, Kratka created more than one hundred works of art in various genres and styles, of which about sixty are pre-attributed, although no more than fifteen works are stored at the museums of Ukraine and Poland. Kratka’s sculptural works can be divided into three broad groups: monuments, decorative art (relief, bas-relief) and portrait sculpture (head, bust, half-figure). But it was in his portraits that the artist reached his highest peaks of creativity.