The Art Museum of the SUSU Institute of Media, Social Sciences and Humanities, the collection of which includes almost a thousand works of fine art of the 20th–21st centuries, received a donation from the Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Honorary Citizen of the city of Chelyabinsk and the Chelyabinsk Region German Vyatkin ‑ a portrait of an outstanding choreographer Gerardo Viana Gomez de Fonseca (1925-2013) by the chief artist of the Chelyabinsk Opera and Ballet Theatre named after M.I. Glinka Yakov Korsunsky (1932-1986).
About 270 works by this talented master are in the collection of the Chelyabinsk State Museum of Fine Arts. His creations are also in the collection of the A.A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum, in private collections in France, Germany, Russia and other countries. Now his work will decorate the collection of the university museum.
The donator, German Vyatkin, was the rector of our university from 1985 to 2005, then its president, and now he is an adviser to the rector. His contribution to the development of science and education in our region and country is enormous. But as a genuine Russian intellectual, comprehensively educated and broad-minded, German is devoted to art with all his soul. His wife Galina Vyatkina-Boreyko is a People's Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. She was the leading soloist of the ballet of the Chelyabinsk Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre from 1955 to 1981. It is no coincidence that German Vyatkin presented a portrait of the choreographer with whom Galina collaborated.
Gerardo Viana Gomez de Fonseca is an outstanding choreographer of Spanish origin (1925-2013), born in the Basque Country. His life is amazing. A son of a miner, he was one of thousands of Spanish children from working-class families who were evacuated to the USSR during the Spanish Civil War. They were saved from the bombs of the fascist dictator Franco. The New Motherland gave him an excellent education in the City on the Neva River (this is how Russians often call St. Petersburg), he became a choreographer. Gerardo considered his greatest success to be the invitation to stage a ballet at the world famous Mariinsky (then Kirov) Opera and Ballet Theatre (Leningrad - St. Petersburg). The production of the Spanish Miniatures ballet was a huge success, featuring dances from various provinces of Spain. The choreographer gained fame and invitations to stage "Spanish Dances" in many theatres across the country. In 1974, the ballet was staged at the Chelyabinsk Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre named after M.I. Glinka. The portrait by the Chelyabinsk artist Ya. Korsunsky captured Gerardo at precisely this moment in his creative life.
For the activities of the SUSU Art Gallery, which has existed since 2003, the gift of German Vyatkin is a landmark event. It was he who warmly supported the creation of this new cultural centre at the university. The tasks of forming an art collection were immediately determined. Over 21 years, more than 200 exhibitions have been organized. Among the most significant ones are joint exhibitions with the Russian Academy of Arts, the State Russian Museum, the Nizhny Tagil, Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg Museums of Fine Arts, and the embassies of the USA, Germany and the Czech Republic. Let us specifically note the exhibitions aimed at introducing the world achievements in art and science, including "Western European Engraving of the 16th Century", "Raphael’s Madonna from Nizhny Tagil", "Mountain Lake in the Urals" by A.M. Vasnetsov from the collection of the Russian Museum (St. Petersburg). In 2023, the "Great Victory Day" exhibition dedicated to the Victory Day was presented at the SUSU Art Gallery, the main exhibit of which was a large-scale canvas that is world famous − the painting "Signing of the Act of Unconditional Surrender of Germany" (1945–1946) by Kukryniksy, the creative team of Soviet artists (Mikhail Kupriyanov, Porfiry Krylov and Nikolai Sokolov) from the collection of the Chelyabinsk State Museum of Fine Arts.
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Today, the team of the Department of Theology, Culture and Art, the staff of the Art Gallery, and art historians of the city are working on a monograph that will summarize more than 20 years of experience in the work of a unique cultural centre. All of them feel great gratitude for understanding the importance of the work on artistic education of students, and for the support that German Vyatkin provides to this aspect in the life of our university.