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[AFTER WORLD WAR II] Album of projects for mass grave monuments

Item #2779

[Leningrad, late 1940s]. 38 prints on photo paper. Album: 23,5x31 cm, photos 17х10 and 17х23 cm. Slightly rubbed, otherwise good.

The album features designs for individual grave monuments, cemetery compositions, and mass graves presented in 1945 to commemorate the memory of fallen Red Army soldiers and officers. During the war, the design of mass graves was simple and provisional: wooden pyramids topped with a star, name plaques, or earthen mounds adorned with wreaths. From the late 1940s onward, more permanent forms began to appear — white marble slabs, stone markers, obelisks, and larger memorial complexes.

28 prints show the projects, while 10 photographs capture individual funerary monuments that had been built. The project designs show general views of the monuments, site plans indicating the placement of memorial elements, as well as calculations of distances and scale.

Some of the projects credit A. Nikol’skii among the authors. Likely, the designs were created by Leningrad architect Alexander Nikol’skii (1884–1953). In 1918–1920, he served as head of the Civil Structures Bureau within the Railway Construction Department of the People's Commissariat of Communications, as well as head of the Urban Planning Scientific Bureau at the Leningrad Department of Municipal Services. In 1925–1932, he led the Leningrad branch of the Society of Modern Architects (OSA) and was a member of the editorial board of the OSA magazine “Contemporary Architecture”. His projects included factories, workers' clubs, schools, public bathhouses, stadiums, and educational institutions. During the Second World War, he was in besieged Leningrad. He kept an illustrated diary and produced a series of sketches and engravings.

Another signature refers to Leningrad architect Abram Lapirov (1908–1975). He studied in Leningrad VKHUTEIN and worked in the city, but he was evacuated to Ufa during the war. He was the author of a number of residential building designs, standard projects for small architectural forms, furniture, and interiors. He was also a researcher of the architecture and visual arts of the Russian North and Central Russia.

Price: $1,200.00