History and culture: Exhibition “Reborn from ruins. Transfiguration Church in Kovalyovo and its frescoes” in Novgorod

December 28, 2012 the Church of Saint George on the Marketplace (the Yaroslav’s Court, Veliky Novgorod) opened an exhibition “Reborn from ruins. The Transfiguration Church in Kovalyovo and its frescoes”. The exhibition features collection on a unique methodology of A. P. and V. B. Grekov and shields the Kovalyov frescoes mounted to titanium, considered to be lost after the Church was destroyed after the Great Patriotic War.

After the war, at the initiative of the largest national art critic V. N. Lazarev, by a special commission of the Ministry of Culture it was decided to try saving at least a small part of being in the thick debris fragments of frescoes. Over the next two years at the Central Scientific-restoration workshop of V. B. Grekova there were collected archival materials, and manufacturing process was defined. In 1965, under the guidance of artist and restorer A. P. Grekova the same workshop team began to work, continuing to this day. Their course was developed and used the technique of dismantling the dam, allowed by packaging recoverable disparate fragments to restore deleted images. The collected mural mounted on special titanium panels made by Alexander P. and B. Grekov. Images, which assembly and installation was finally completed, are presented at this exhibition. About 200 square meters of frescoes are in the process of rebirth from the ruins.