Miss Nellie, of course, is Nellie Cornish, founder of the arts school that bears her name. The studio building is known today as the Loveless Building. And the Russians refers to the murals on the walls of one of the spaces, artwork that comes from a different era and serves as a touchstone for a time and place now long gone.
The appearance of a liquor license application in the store front gave the first indication that something new was going into the old space which was home to the Bacchus restaurant, the Fork and, most recently, Coco La Ti Da.
There was a rumor that the murals would soon be covered by false walls and hidden from view. Had that happened, a vital link from Seattle's visual memory will be shrouded. But according to Philippe Thomelin, who plans on opening his new restaurant Olivar during the first week of July, the murals will remain proudly on view.
Arthur Loveless built the Studio Building in 1931 using industrial materials and consummate artistry to create a significant landmark in what became Seattle's Harvard and Belmont Historic District. In 1961, Loveless received a citation from the American Institute of Architects for this singular architectural achievement. After construction was completed, the owners of The Samovar asked Shkurkin to create a narrative mural from a book of Russian children's folk tales, which he did brilliantly and timelessly. They have been on view to the patrons of each successive establishment since that time.
Born in Northern China to the head of a military family, Shkurkin studied art in Kiev. After completing his formal education, he worked as a scenic artist for the Moscow Arts Theater, and taught painting and composition in a military college. He came to the United States in 1925, and lived in Seattle from 1925 to 1938.
Russians came to Seattle in a series of waves. The first crest was just prior to World War I, the second was the result of the 1917 Russian Revolution and civil war. By 1925, when Shkurkin arrived, approximately 5,000 Russians lived in the city. Two Russian Orthodox churches were founded in Seattle: St. Spiridon and St. Nicolas.
Shkurkin's Seattle art included icons in Russian Orthodox churches (there are four that can be seen at St. Spiridon's). He painted murals in many public buildings, such as the Eagles Auditorium, the Civic Auditorium and the Egyptian Theatre. The murals in the Loveless Building were created with private funds.
These murals were done before the great wave of mural projects started under the first Roosevelt administration through the WPA and the TRAP programs. Inspired by the achievements of the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, the murals produced between 1934 and 1940 gave an entire generation of American artists an opportunity to learn a form of art making that is almost as old as art making itself. Jackson Pollack, Willem de Kooning, Louise Nevelson and others got to work with these great talents.
The murals in the Loveless Building are executed in an elegant bravura style that is bold in its simplicity and refined in its delicateness. A deep-rich saturated earth-tone background sets off the beautiful light palette tone of the figures. Their original intent was to reflect the common stories shared by such prominent émigrés as Peter Merenblum, Elena Miramova and Alexander Koiransky, who were studying or teaching at the Cornish School two doors down on East Roy Street. One may wonder what the Russian clientele made of the night in the late 1930s, when Morris Graves created a public disturbance down the street at Cornish and the group of ejected rabble-rousers marched loudly up Roy to the De Luxe. The murals were part of the scenery by then.
In 1938, Shkurkin was invited to do two murals at the World's Fair at Treasure Island in San Francisco. He then secured a job with the Navy at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, Calif., as an artist/illustrator through World War II until his retirement in 1963. His work there included war bonds billboards, and illustrations of and on each submarine built at Mare Island. After his retirement, Shkurkin continued painting, exhibiting and giving lessons from his studio at his home in Vallejo. He passed away in 1990 at age 90.
Ben Shahn, who assisted Diego Rivera at the Rockefeller Center, later said to the Magazine of Art, in April 1944, that he preferred doing murals "because more people see them than they do easel pictures." Thomas Hart Benton also said that he liked mural painting due to the public nature of their possession, while easel paintings go to museums that nobody visits.
That the murals will remain uncovered means the early contributions of the Russian community to the cultural and civic society that is Seattle won't be extinguished. It's an important and welcome turn that this historical work will shine for the public in the future.
Steven Vroom writes about Visual Art for the Capitol Hill Times and is the host of the pod cast Art Radio Seattle on www.vroomjournal.com. He can be reached at editor@capitolhilltimes.com
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