Yevgeny Umnov

Selected. To the 100th anniversary

New arrivals to the MAMM collection

Yevgeny Umnov
‘Selected Works. On the 100th Anniversary of His Birth’ /New additions to the MAMM collection, as part of the programme ‘Classics of Russian Photography’/

Supported by: Nornickel

The Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow presents an exhibition by Yevgeny Umnov, ‘Selected Works. On the 100th Anniversary of His Birth’ /New additions to the MAMM collection, as part of the programme ‘Classics of Russian Photography’/.

Yevgeny Umnov was born in Moscow on 24 May 1919. His father Pyotr Yevgenevich Umnov fell victim to political repressions in 1928 and was executed a year later. His mother Zinaida Vasilievna Maltseva’s large warm-hearted family assisted in the boy’s upbringing. Yevgeny Umnov’s mother took lessons with the artist Konstantin Yuon in her youth (these skills came in handy when she helped her son by adroitly retouching the negatives). Her sister Sofia Maltseva, the famous tennis player and champion of the Spartakiad of Peoples of the USSR, was friendly with actors from the Moscow Art Theatre. This artistic environment influenced the formation of Yevgeny Umnov’s interests.

In 1938 he began studying at the Faculty of Architecture of the Moscow Institute of Civil Engineering. After evacuation to Novosibirsk in 1941 with the institute he became interested in photography and worked for the newspaper ‘Soviet Siberia’. After returning to Moscow in 1943 Yevgeny Umnov resolved to devote himself entirely to photography. He contributed to VOKS (the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries), and his pictures appeared in the magazine ‘USSR In Construction’.

Yevgeny Umnov’s professional development was largely determined by his friendship and collaboration with iconic figures of Soviet photography. He photographed postwar Tallinn with Viktor Ruykovich, the construction of Moscow State University on the Lenin Hills with Semyon Fridlyand and Yakov Khalip, the Exhibition of Economic Achievements with Samary Gurary, and the festive Moscow of 1950 with Boris Kudoyarov. That same year Umnov became a regular photo correspondent for ‘Ogonyok’ magazine.

The cultural surroundings in which Umnov grew up and his architectural education were clearly echoed in photographs characterised by impeccable composition and innate intelligence. It is no coincidence that the Russian artistic and intellectual elite was particularly appreciative of his work, and neophytes to the stage believed that a portrait by Umnov would guarantee success in their creative career.
Yevgeny Umnov was working at a time when socialist realism formed the mainstream in all genres of art, including photography. During his time at ‘Ogonyok’ and his collaboration with most of the Soviet photo-illustrated magazines he managed to choose themes and subjects that were minimally controlled by the strict ideological censorship.

Yevgeny Umnov’s archive is vast. Despite several posthumous and fairly representative exhibitions, his work is not yet fully reflected in the history of Russian and world photography. With the exception of a few frames from the magazine ‘Ogonyok’, the MAMM exhibition reveals images never published by the photographer. The images displayed date from the period between 1944 and 1975 (the year Yevgeny Umnov died). This allows us to trace the evolution of his authorial style and to observe the photographer’s flawless mastery in a variety of different genres. A special place at the exhibition is occupied by ballet photographs from the 1950s to 1960s in which unexpected angles show a continuation of traditions from the Russian avant-garde photography of the 1920s to 1930s.

This exhibition of work by Yevgeny Umnov marks an important page in the history of Russian photography, and also in the history of Russia in photography. Vivid genre shots of Maya Plisetsakaya, Yuri Levitan, Leonid Utyosov, Mark Bernes, Iya Savvina, Elena Koreneva, Alexander Gradsky, Igor Moiseyev, Galina Ulanova, Eldar Ryazanov, Andrei Mironov, Elena Obraztsova, Galina Vishnevskaya, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Konenkov, Mikael Tariverdiev, Anastasia Vertinskaya, Olga Knipper-Chekhova and other outstanding figures in Russian culture embellish the exhibition and create a unique atmosphere.

MAMM would like to thank Natalia Feldman for her assistance and support in preparing the exhibition, and for the generous gift to the museum.