Aleksandr Abramovich Kamensky (Александр Абрамович Каменский) (1922–1992) was a Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 art critic

Art critic

An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...

 and art historian.

He has written and edited many books and articles about various artists, such as Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...

, and Martiros Saryan

Martiros Saryan

Martiros Saryan was an Armenian painter.He was born into an Armenian family in Nor Nakhijevan . In 1895, aged 15, he completed the Nakhichevan school and from 1897 to 1904 studied at the Moscow School of Arts, including in the workshops of Valentin Serov and Konstantin Korovin...

.

Life and career

From 1940 to 1945, he studied at the Philology Department of the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History  majoring in Art Criticism; then from 1941 at Moscow University. Kamensky received his diploma with merit for his paper titled Drawings of Valentin Serov

Valentin Serov

Valentin Alexandrovich Serov was a Russian painter, and one of the premier portrait artists of his era.-Youth and education:...

.

From 1946 Kamensky appeared in the press as an art critic, while at the same time undertook his graduate studies at Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts.

From 1949 to 1962, he chaired the department of Art History at the Art institute in Vilnius

Vilnius

Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...

.

Aleksandr Kamensky was elected as a member of the governing body and Secretary of Moscow Union of Artists; headed the Moscow association of artists and critics.

In 2005 an unabridged version of his biography of Marc Chagall, Marc Chagall, An Artist From Russia was reprinted and presented in a conference room at the Tretyakov Gallery

Tretyakov Gallery

The State Tretyakov Gallery is an art gallery in Moscow, Russia, the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world.The gallery's history starts in 1856 when the Moscow merchant Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov acquired works by Russian artists of his day with the aim of creating a collection,...

with Marc Chagall’s granddaughters in attendance.

Selected bibliography

• Konenkov (1962)
• Vernisages (1974)
• Nathan Altman (1978)
• Knightly Feat: A Book About The Sculpture Of Anna Golubkina (1978) (reprinted as Anna Golubkina, Her Personality, And Age in 1990)
• Etudes On The Artists Of Armenia (Erevan, 1979)
• Martiros Sarian (1987)
• Chagall: The Russian Years 1907-1922 (1988–1989)
• Romantic Montage (1989)
• The World Of Art Movement In Early 20th Century Russia (with Vsevolod Nikolayevich Petrov)
• Oleg Tselkov (1992)
• Marc Chagall, An Artist From Russia (unabridged version of Chagall: The Russian Years published posthumously)