14 Facts About Vladimir Shchuko

Vladimir Shchuko was a prolific stage designer, author of 43 drama and opera stage sets.

Vladimir Shchuko was a member of the influential non-governmental Commission for Study and Description of Old Petersburg, a preservation society led by Leon Benois, and later served on the board of the Museum of Old Petersburg established in 1907.

Vladimir Shchuko decorated a flat wall outside the main portico with loggias interspaced with carved relief, a pattern that became common in 1930s stalinist architecture.

In 1913 Vladimir Shchuko began construction of the neoclassical Municipal Building in Kyiv; it was partially completed during World War I and rebuilt to Vladimir Shchuko's revised draft in the 1920s.

Apart from the Kyiv project, Vladimir Shchuko had completed a single architectural job during the war, rebuilding the Memorial Hall at the Academy of Arts ; another Saint Petersburg project, a bank building on Nevsky Prospect, was left unfinished.

Vladimir Shchuko landed a full-time job as the chief designer, "amazingly appearing at the right time in the right place to create the atmosphere of a 'grand style' theatre".

The company, leaning towards classical works, earned cash through "lightweight" melodramas like Alexey Tolstoy's 1925 Conspiring Empress, designed by Vladimir Shchuko, that became a long-running hit.

Vladimir Shchuko frequently employed theatre designer Orest Allegri, famous for his inventive handling of perspective illusion.

In 1925 Vladimir Shchuko designed the pedestal and architectural setting for Sergey Evseyev's iconic "Lenin on Top of an Armored Car" monument on the Finland Station square.

The Evseyev-Vladimir Shchuko monument was the first one to establish a "canonical" image of Lenin and was widely repeated,; it turned out to be the architect's last notable work in Saint Petersburg.

The open contest to design the Rostov theatre was won by the Barkhin family partnership, but after the results were announced, Vladimir Shchuko personally arrived in Rostov and persuaded the commissioners to discard the Barkhin drafts.

The constructivist theater was completed in 1935, when Vladimir Shchuko was working on the Palace of Soviets.

All authors agree on the fact that the trio initially disagreed over the placement of Lenin's statue: Vladimir Shchuko insisted on literally placing the statue on top of the main hall, as instructed by the decree, while Iofan proposed more complex solutions.

Later, former associates of Iofan and Vladimir Shchuko commented about intense frictions and disarray in the early stages of their joint work; Schuko and Gelfreikh indeed imposed their vision over Iofan's, using contacts with Maxim Gorky to get a direct line to Stalin.