Vasily Konovalenko

Between June 1 and August 31, 2016 the first ever international exhibition of Konovalenko's work was held in the One-Pillar Chamber of the Patriarch’s Palace, The Kremlin, Moscow, Russia. The exhibition included forty works in gems, bronze, silver and enamel from numerous sources around the world. In addition there were more that forty graphic works, including theatric set designs, sketches for jewelry and gem-carving sculptures. Works from both his Soviet and American years were included.

Nash, Stephen E. (2016). "Stories in Stone: The Enchanted Gem Carvings of Vasily Konovalenko". The Denver Museum of Nature and Science and University Press of Colorado.

Nash, Stephen E. (2014). "A Stone Lives On: Vasily Konovalenko's Gem Carving Sculptures at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science". Denver Museum of Nature and Science Annals: 6: 1-67, 15 Nov 2014.

Nash, Stephen E. (2012). "Oral Histories with Anna Konovalenko, March 26–30, 2012". DMNS Technical Report 2012-08. On file in DMNS archives, Denver, Colorado USA.

Nash, Stephen E. (2013). "Raphael Gregorian's Oral History about Vasily Konovalenko and His Works, Recorded on December 18, 2012, in Foster City, California."

Robson, Roy R. (1995). "Old Believers in Modern Russia". Northern Illinois University Press.

Surprisingly, no one had given much thought to the disposition of the pieces following the exhibition. Given the popularity of the exhibition, the default solution was to simply extend the display and that was done incrementally until 1989. Several pieces were added — Grandmother; Bread and Salt and Gold Prospectors. Hunter on the Mark was moved to a private collection. As the years passed, thought was given to how the collection might be made permanent at the Museum.

Vasily Konovalenko died on January 27, 1989, five days after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. Konovalenko is buried in the cemetery of the Russian Orthodox Convent 'Novo Diveevo' in Nanuet, New York.

The Konovalenko sculptures went on display for the first time outside of the Soviet Union on March 15, 1984 to great acclaim. Included were Barrel Bath; Bosom Pals; Hunter on the Mark; Ice Fishing; In the Sultry Afternoon I; In the Sultry Afternoon II; Laundress; Mower; On the Stroll; Painter; Prisoners; Spring; Sauna I: The Thin and the Fat; Sauna II: Woman; Toper; Walruses and Wanderer (or Old Believer). Swan Song had broken en route and had to be virtually recreated from scratch.

Ortman had purchased the subscriptions of Kazanjian and Gregorian in 1984 and Cohen bought the entire collection from Ortman in 1989. Cohen subsequently donated all 20 pieces to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science Foundation in 1999.

The contract that was drawn up called for Konovalenko to produce 18 works in two years. Still, there remained a gap in the plan - the display and permanent disposition of the pieces. Among Ortman's list of clients was Alvin Cohen, a Denver-based construction magnate, who was a trustee of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. He was in the position to solve the remaining issue. Through the first half of 1983 plans were formulated for an exhibition to open in Denver on November 2 of that year.

There was however, a very unfortunate turn of events on September 1, 1983, when Soviet Air Force fighter jets shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (KAL 007), a passenger airline en route from New York to Seoul. This was obviously a serious problem for the exhibition — an exhibition of Russian art produced by a Russian immigrant. A decision was made to delay the opening by some four months.

Vasily was on an airplane headed to Vienna the following day and the rest of the family followed him about two weeks later. The official intent of the Jewish emigration program was for emigres to go to Israel, but Anna's brother lived in New York City and it was decided that economic and artistic opportunities would be greater there. The family arrived in New York in April 1981.

Goldstein, Rochelle (1981). "The Art of Vasil [sic] Konovalenko". Jewelry Making Gems and Minerals. Oct 1981: 77-82.

In 1974 at the "Samotsvety", Konovalenko began working as the director of the newly formed Laboratory of Small Sculptural Forms. Unfortunately he soon discovered that much of his work would consist of making pieces for Communist Party officials to offer as gifts to colleagues and friends. So in spite of the seemingly stable employment and living situations, he was not free as an artist and he realized that likely he never would be. The ultimate solution would be to emigrate from the Soviet Union, but Konovalenko himself had no basis for applying for an exit visa. However between 1966 and 1982, there was a mechanism for Jews to leave and Vasily's wife/widow was/is Jewish. The family applied under this program and in February 1981, their emigration visas arrived.

At the end of 1973, ten sculptures, created between 1959 and 1973, went on display at the State Russian Museum. The exhibition was an unmitigated success. Within a week of the exhibition's opening, some 25,000 copies of the exhibit catalog were sold. The pieces in the exhibition included:

By 1971, Konovalenko's theatrical reputation was at its zenith, but his gem carving reputation was lagging because he had never had a public exhibition. Vasily's wife, Anna, decided that Vasily should be the focus of such an exhibition and that they should try to meet with authorities in Moscow toward this end. This was a bold approach, considering that they had no letter of introduction from party officials in Leningrad. That was bad enough but in addition the example of Vasily's work that they chose to present was an early version of Bosom Pals (Brazhniki), a rather ill-advised choice as it depicted three men carousing, definitely not the Soviet Realism style then favored by the Communist Party. Anna and Vasily were summarily dismissed and they returned to Leningrad, rejected but unscathed.

On April 25, 1957, the Mariinsky Theater opened Sergei Prokofiev's eighth and final ballet, The Tale of the Stone Flower, for which Konovalenko served as the lead set designer. (The Tale of the Stone Flower was premiered in 1954 by the Bolshoi Theater. The production proved to be a public disappointment and it was not produced again for another five years.) Among Konovalenko's many tasks for the production was the creation of a large malachite box as a prop. At this point he was not known as a gem carver but he had had sculptural experience as far back as his apprenticeship at the Donetsk National Theater. With the malachite box, Konovaleko would find his life's calling.

Between March 1949 and January 1950, Konovalenko worked in sculpture at the Stalinist Regional Association of Artists. In October 1950 Konovalenko was drafted into the Soviet navy but he was discharged only five months later due to unspecified and unrecorded medical reasons. At some point during this service, he visited Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and he was taken by the artistic, historic and cultural environment of the city and he perceived career opportunities there. Shortly after his military discharge, he moved to Leningrad and he found employment with the prestigious Mariinsky Theater, then the Kirov State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet (Государственный академический театр оперы и балета имени С.М. Кирова). Konovalenko's engagement with the Mariinsky launched him on the path of his life's work.

In 1944 at the age of fifteen, he began work in the Donetsk National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre as an apprentice set designer. Between March 1944 and June 1945 he was recalled to attend a factory trade school, a so-called FZO. (At that time in the Soviet Union, attending a trade school was compulsory. ref) In 1945 he moved to the Stalin Theater for Opera and Ballet and the following year he enrolled in the art and architecture school at Donetsk Polytechnic Institute where he received specialized training.

Vasily Vasilivich Konovalenko (Russian: Василий Васильевич Коноваленко, koʊ-noʊ-VA-ɪŋ-koʊ; 5 July 1929 – 27 January 1989) was a Soviet artist, known for creating unique three dimensional gemstone sculptures.

Konovalenko was born in Petrovka, a village in east-central Ukraine on July 5, 1929 to a Ukrainian father, Basil Vasily Konovalenko (1900-1946), and a Russian mother, Galiguzova Theodosius Tikhonovna (1899 -?). He was the couple's fifth child and only son, and his documents listed him as "Ukrainian". After spending his first few years in Petrovka, the family moved to the mining center of Donetsk, a larger and more cosmopolitan city in eastern Ukraine. The remainder of his childhood was spent there, with the exception of the two years of Nazi occupation, October 1941 through September 1943.

• Wanderer (Old Believer): A member of a fundamentalist religious group, known as the Old Believers, that split from the traditional Russian Orthodox Church around 1660. Materials: Beloretsk quartz, rutilated quartz, cacholong or Kalmuck agate, amethyst, turquoise, malachite, red- and black-banded jasper, gold and gold-plated silver. Height 34 cm.