July 17 marks the 95th anniversary of the birth of artist and medallist Boris Iosifovich Kushnir (1931–2005).
From childhood, he loved drawing, modelling, and carving. But then the war began, and at the age of twelve, the boy had to become an apprentice to a blacksmith.
Throughout the difficult war years, his dream of becoming an artist never faded. In 1946, he entered the Odesa Architectural and Art Vocational School, which trained master restorers of palaces and churches. Students specialised in decorative painting, frescoes, mosaics, decorative sculpture, carving, and fine woodworking.
In May–June 1958, an open competition was held in Odesa for a badge-emblem representing our city. Sixteen artists from Odesa, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Izmail took part, submitting 44 badge designs.
After graduating with honours from the Art and Graphic Faculty of the Odesa Pedagogical Institute, he mastered the artistic processing of metal, wood, and plastic, and even received an inventor’s certificate for a special casting method he had developed.
Abroad, the artist’s works are represented in museums in France, Italy, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. The Museum of Medallic Art in the Polish city of Wrocław included six of the master’s works in its collection.
At the beginning of 2002, the artist received a long-awaited document confirming that Boris Kushnir had become a member of the American Association of Sculptors and Medallists. At the time, it had no more than one hundred masters of this exceptionally demanding art form.
Read more about Boris Iosifovich Kushnir on our website “They Left Their Mark on the History of Odesa”:
https://odesa-memory.info/ru/?id=527
Article prepared for the project by Viktor Korchenov, collector.
