Alexey Shchusev. Architect number 1

"There is no recipe for beauty!" - Alexey Viktorovich Shchusev used to say. He was an amazing person. The structures built according to his projects would be enough for a whole city, where there would be a place for temples and theaters, train stations and bridges, metro stations and hotels, residential buildings and sanatoriums, and even a mausoleum. And all this was done with great taste and a sense of proportion. But how could one architect manage all this? Where did he find the strength and inspiration, calling himself an "eternal Stakhanovite"? This is what the new book by writer and historian Alexander Vaskin tells us. The figure of Alexey Shchusev appears before us against the backdrop of a complex and contradictory era in which the outstanding architect worked (more precisely, two eras - the imperial and the Soviet). He went through everything - fire, water, and copper pipes, survived ups and downs, but managed to maintain human dignity and his own creative style. This book tells about Shchusev's work in Russia, Italy, Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Uzbekistan, about his relationships with prominent figures of Russian art - Mikhail Nesterov, Vera Mukhina, Pavel Korin, Ivan Zholtovsky, Alexander Benois, Eugene Lansere, Natalia Goncharova, Nicholas Roerich, and about his unrealized projects. In writing Shchusev's biography, the author studied a lot of archival documents, many of which are cited here for the first time (including a report card with gymnasium grades and even a work record book). The book is being released for the 150th anniversary of the architect.