Biography

Andrey Onufrievich Bembel was born on October 30, 1905 in the city of Velizh of the former Vitebsk province (at that time - the Russian Empire), in the family of an employee of the county treasury. He began studying at a 3-year school, later transformed into a 2nd-level school, from which he graduated in 1922.

At the same time, he began to study in 1919 at the Velizh People's Art School, where classes were taught by professors and graduates of the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg/Petrograd, who had fled the revolutionary unrest and famine to the provinces - the sculptor M.A. Kerzin and the painters M. G. Ende, V.V. Volkov and M.V. Lebedeva. Andrey Bembel attended this school until 1922, learning sculpting and drawing. In his free time from studying, he organized trade union and Komsomol clubs.

From 1924 to 1927 A.Bembel continued to study the art of sculpture at the Vitebsk Art College, immediately entering the second year.

By that time, the head of the technical school, Marc Chagall, had already left Vitebsk for France, and Mikhail Kerzin, who was well known to the young sculptor from the Velizh school, was appointed to his place.

After the Vitebsk Technical School, A.Bembel entered the sculpture and architectural department of the Academy of Arts in Leningrad (formerly the Imperial Academy of Arts), where his teachers were the outstanding sculptors Matvey Manizer (1891 - 1966), Alexander Matveev (1878 - 1960), Robert (Roman) Bach (1859 - 1933), Vsevolod Lishev (1877 - 1960), Vasily Simonov (1879 - 1960) and Mikhail Kerzin (1883 - 1979), who, after a period of leading the Vitebsk Technical School, returned to teaching at the Academy.

In 1931, after finishing his studies in Leningrad, Andrey Bembel settled in Belarus, first in Gomel - the hometown of his wife and fellow student at the sculpture department Olga Dedok, and soon in Minsk, where he won a competition for interior design of the Government House of the BSSR and in 1932-1934 created, together with a group of assistants, a monumental cycle of sculptural reliefs. For the sculptural design of the interiors of the Government House and a number of other significant objects in Minsk, he received the title of Honored Artist of the Belarusian SSR (1939).

In 1941, after Nazi Germany attacked the USSR, the sculptor went to the front. A.Bembel was deputy company commander in the 6th separate engineering regiment until the end of 1943, when he was summoned to Moscow at the disposal of the Belarusian headquarters of the partisan movement, along with other cultural figures, to create works about the exploits of resisting military invasion and to participate in an exhibition. As a result, one of the most striking works of Andrey Bembel was created - a portrait of the pilot Nikolai Gastello (1943), who committed a fiery ram in the first days of the war on the approaches of the Wehrmacht army to Minsk. Following this, A.Bembel returned to military service and, together with a group of the Belarusian headquarters of the partisan movement that participated in the offensive operation «Bagration», reached Minsk on July 6, 1944, where his wife and two children had been occupied since June 1941.

After the end of the war, A.Bembel actively participated in the revival of the artistic life of Minsk and Belarus. He became one of the organizers and first teachers of the Minsk Art School (since 1947), and then of the Belarusian Theater and Art Institute (since 1953), where he headed the sculpture department for many years, training several generations of sculptors.

The Minsk workshop of Andrey Bembel was a place of training for student sculptors while a building with training workshops was being built for the Belarusian Theater and Art Institute, established in 1953. But even after this, students underwent practical training in A.Bembel’s workshop for many years, participating in the monumental projects of their mentor.

In 1955, A.Bembel received the title of People's Artist of the BSSR, and in 1962 - the title of professor.

Despite the scale of the successive large state sculptural and architectural projects in which Andrey Bembel participated as a sculptor-architect, in the post-war period he created a number of easel works - portraits and compositions that reveal the more intimate, lyrical sides of his talent.

Throughout his life, the sculptor twice headed the Union of Artists of the BSSR (1950 - 1954, 1982 - 1986).

Andrey Onufrievich Bembel died in Minsk on October 13, 1986, and was buried in the Eastern Cemetery.

Fragment from the documentary film «Andrey Bembel: Death, Victory, Glory» (2009, scriptwriter - Tatyana Bembel, production director - Andrey Kutilo).