Shchusev Alexey Viktorovich
Competitive project of the Palace of the Soviets.

Competitive project of the Palace of the Soviets.
Year: 1932.
Technique: Gouache on cardboard.
Size: 24,4х32.

Signed and dated lower right.

Shchusev Alexey Viktorovich (1873-1949).

Architect, academician and the author of the Lenin Mausoleum. In 1897 Alexei Shchusev graduated with a Golden Medal from the Petersburg Academy of Arts. His teachers were L.N. Benois and I.E. Repin. The next three years he continued his studies in Austria, Italy, France, England and Belgium. Since 1901 Alexey Shchusev was on duty in the office of the Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod. During this period, he developed his own view of the church architecture. In 1908-1912 years he built his most beloved creation - the Church “Pokrovka” on B. Ordynka. He was invited by Elizaveta Romanovna to conduct work in the group of architects. The works of the architect were immediately appreciated by the contemporaries. In 1908 A.V. Shchusev became a full member, and in 1910 - an academician of the Imperial Academy of Arts. Until 1917 Alexei Shchusev was building shelters for children, designing educational buildings and facilities for railway employees. In the years of 1908 till 1911 he taught at the Drawing School of St. Petersburg. In 1913 Shchusev moved to Moscow and continued his teaching career at the Stroganov School, and from 1914 - at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. After the October Revolution, Shchusev became universally recognized authority of the Soviet architecture. Since 1918 he was the chief master of the First State Architectural Workshops, the creator of the draft for the master plan "New Moscow", the head of the architectural and design studio of the Moscow Soviet (1932-1937). From 1922 till 1929 he was the Chairman of the Moscow Architectural Society. In the years of 1926-1929 Alexey Viktorovich Shchusev was the director of the Tretyakov Gallery. The number of buildings projected by Shchusev during the Soviet period was huge. Among them there are residential houses and theaters, metro stations, “Kazan” station, Moskvoretsky bridge, ensemble of buildings of the USSR Academy of Sciences on Leninsky Prospekt.