Alexei Konstantinovich Kochuev
1925-2007
External museum page in Russian
When I first came to the Catherine Palace as an apprentice, my direct mentor was Valery Antonov (1952–2020), a pupil of Kochuyev who had taken over the leadership of the workshop from him.
By then, Alexei Konstantinovich Kochuyev had already retired because of his advanced age. Restoration and woodcarving, however, had been his life’s work, and even in very old age he was still drawn back to the workshop that had meant so much to him. One day he came there while I was completely alone in the workshop. That brief conversation consisted largely of his impassioned account of his work – of how he had recreated the ornamentation of the interiors from photographs – and it is something I shall remember for the rest of my life.
My first piece as an apprentice was a copy of one of his models, which he had made several decades earlier. His plasticine and plaster models hung everywhere in our workshop. They were an enormous help both in our work and in our training.
The master died in 2007. At his funeral, I was among those who carried his coffin out of the Catherine Palace, where the funeral service and the farewell ceremony for the master had taken place.
Hermann Sunait
Alexei Kochuev was one of the leading woodcarvers and restorers of the post-war generation in Leningrad. For more than half a century, his work was connected with the restoration of the palaces and artistic monuments of Leningrad and its surroundings that had been destroyed during the Second World War.
He combined the virtuoso skill of a woodcarver and restorer with the abilities of a sculptor. Kochuev could reconstruct lost decorative compositions and individual parts of them with only surviving photographs at his disposal.
From 1957, he led a team of woodcarvers and restorers at the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo. Under his direction, the carved decoration of the palace’s state rooms and of the Hermitage Pavilion in Catherine Park was restored.
The reconstruction of the carved decoration of the Amber Room held a special place in Kochuev’s work. Based on sculptural models made by the master himself, the overdoor compositions, mirror frames, pilaster surrounds, and other elements of gilded carving were recreated. Kochuev’s final work was the reconstruction of the lost compositions of carved decoration in the Antechambers of the Catherine Palace.
For many decades, Kochuev directed the work of woodcarvers and restorers and passed his experience on to the next generation of craftsmen. The professional tradition associated with him was continued by his pupils and successors.