Robert Falk in My Life

The memories of Falk shared by Marina Prozorova are mostly associated with her parents, who used to be the artist’s closest friends: the translator and musicologist Jerzy Kucharski[1] and the architect Natalya Prozorova[2]. A Russianized Pole, the son of the Polish communist and engineer Richard Szade[3], Jerzy Kucharski lost his parents very early: they died in the torture chambers of the NKVD. “I may be unlucky in many things,” he used to say, “but I have always been lucky to have good people around me”. And indeed he was – he was good friends with figures such as Sviatoslav Richter, Robert Falk, Artur Fonvizin, Aleksander Vedernikov, and Heinrich Neuhaus”.[4]

ROBERT FALK. Portrait of Jerzy Kucharski. 1950s
Graphite pencil on paper. 62.5 × 44.5 cm. Location unknown. Published for the first time

Jerzy Kucharski can truly be considered a photo chronicler of the last decade of Falk’s life. There are over thirty photo series made by Kucharski that depict the artist in informal situations of his everyday life: at his dacha in Podmoskovye with his wife Angelina Shchekin-Krotova, working on the 1954 paintings “Landscape with a Birch Tree”, “At the Dacha. Portrait in the Window” and “Khotkov Monastery”, in the apartment of Sviatoslav Richter at Falk’s solo exhibition in 1957, etc.

Regardless of all the imperfections (Jerzy Kucharski was not a professional photographer), there is another quality besides their documentary value, that makes these photographs unique. Seen through the camera of Kucharski, Falk looks natural, emotional, open to friendly conversation. Some of these photographs have been published before (though, unfortunately, without credit to their author). To supplement the memories of the artist’s contemporaries with some visual evidence, several articles in this issue will be illustrated with photos from the Kucharski family archive, many of which will be published for the first time.

It is interesting to notice that after Falk’s death, his widow Angelina Shchekin-Krotova asked Kucharski to help her as a photographer and take pictures of the paintings her husband had left in his studio in the Pertsov House. The work took several months to complete. As a result, Shchekin-Krotova made a photo catalogue of all Falk’s works based on around six hundred amateur black-and-white photos of the paintings (printed in 2-3 copies each), that allowed her to describe and systematize the artist’s vast legacy.

Yulia Didenko

1. Jerzy (Georgy) Kucharski (1926-2000), translator, biographer of Frédéric Chopin, translator of the composer's letters and author of a commentary.
2. Natalya Prozorova (1925-2019).
3. “The passport he was given in the Soviet Union was issued in the name of Stepan Vilgelmovich Kucharski” (cit. ex: Gerasimova A. Jerzy Kucharski, a Russian Translator // Nezavisimaya Gazeta. 2000. No.68. 14 April (Kulisa NG. No.6 (48). P.16).
4. Ibid.