Galina Korbut (1935-2010) Galina Korbut was born in Zhytomyr. After graduating from Odessa Art School, she worked at the Odessa film studio as a costume designer. Later, after graduating from the Leningrad Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinematography, she worked as the art director of the Theatre of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. She designed scenery at theaters in Leningrad, Moscow, Kemerovo, and Nizhny Novgorod. However, she gained recognition mostly as a poster artist. She created about 200 posters, her works were repeatedly awarded diplomas at all-Russian and international poster exhibitions. For a long time, a theater poster was the main advertisement for performances, its «cover» and its shall mark. Art historians created a concept of the Lithuanian, Latvian, Moscow, and Leningrad schools of the theater poster. The Leningrad school is one of the strongest, its poster artists always were trendsetters and winners of numerous exhibitions. This direction was established by Nikolay Akimov, who made a theater poster an indispensable attribute of each performance, brought a poster to the level of high art. Contemporaries noted: «In Leningrad, most theaters order playbills, and a theater poster is an active element of the city's cultural life of the city there.» Galina Korbut is a prominent representative of the Leningrad school, alongside Michael Gordon, Igor Ivanov, Victor Kundyshev, and Olga Biantovskaya. A large number of posters were executed by Galina for the Leningrad Drama Theatre (today it is called «Na Litejnom» Theatre). In the 1960 - the 1980s, Yakov Hamarmer was the head of this theater. Not only he directed performances himself, but he also involved young directors Kama Ginkas, Lev Dodin, Efim Padve, and Henriette Yanovskaya. Eduard Kochergin, Alexey Poray-Koshits, Mart Kitayev, and Lev Mikhaylov worked there as scene-painters. It was for their performances that Galina Korbut created the posters. She didn't just follow a scene-painter but created an independent work of art. In some cases, she interpreted performance «texture» in her own way. In other cases, she developed an idea of a poster on the basis of the original text. Her posters created a special atmosphere, a «mystery» of the performance. Not without a reason, it is said about Korbut's posters that the viewer pays attention to them not only before a performance but also after it – analyzing what was seen on stage. For the performances «Roza Bernd», «Elaine Jones (Machinalle)», «Music Lessons», Galina Korbut was both a stage designer and the author of the posters. Nonetheless, even in this case she didn't just repeat the idea of the performances' stage design in her posters, but expressed her feeling of the performances in a graphic form. The online collection is based on the materials received by the Museum as a gift from Galina Korbut's husband, the scene-painter Lev Mikhaylov.

01.12.2021