The Origins of Leningrad Tapestry: To the Question of the Formation of a Regional School

The subject of the research is the specificity of the formation of the regional tapestry school in the 1960s and 1970s. Tapestry was one of the leading directions in Soviet decorative art; however, the circumstances surrounding the development of this form of artistic creativity in Leningrad during the 1960s and 1970s have not been sufficiently studied, making the declared topic quite relevant. The aim of the work is to determine the role of institutional structures in the emergence of the Leningrad tapestry school. The main source of data was documents from the Central State Archive of Literature and Art of St. Petersburg. The research tasks are: 1) to establish when the hand-weaving course appeared in the curriculum of the Leningrad Higher School of Art and Industry named after V.I. Mukhina; 2) to identify the main centers of hand-weaving in Leningrad; 3) to determine for which interiors the first large tapestries were created; to outline the authors and themes of these works. The formal-stylistic analysis provided the opportunity to study the authors' concepts and assess the contributions of individual authors to the development of regional stylistic community. The iconographic method became the leading method in studying the specificity of works of artistic textile based on their content, composition, and style. By employing this method, it was possible to identify the most common themes, subjects, and artistic-expressive techniques. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that this is the first study conducted on the historical period of the 1960s and 1970s examining the process of the emergence of Leningrad tapestry, specifically its initial stage, expressed in the revival of the weaving course and the creation of the first works that had a public resonance. The main source of data was documents from the Central State Archive of Literature and Art of St. Petersburg. The conclusion notes that the weaving course developed intensively in the 1960s and was supported by internships in Eastern European countries. Educational and production institutional structures played a leading role in the process of tapestry formation. Among them, three centers were clearly distinguished: the Department of Furniture and Decorative Fabrics of the Leningrad Higher School of Art and Industry named after V.I. Mukhina, the Decorative Applied Art Combine, and the Research Experimental Workshops. The practical significance of this material is determined by its applicability in artistic design of interior textiles and in lecture courses on the history of Soviet art and the history of textiles.