The experience of the university’s interiors decorating with monumental painting as an integral art space

Abstract

The interiors of the educational buildings of the Irkutsk National Research Technical University (IRNITU) are a kind of active art museum that solves both educational and aesthetic tasks. The exhibits of this unusual museum are represented by mosaics, paintings, stained-glass windows, textiles, volumetric and spatial compositions. All of them are the works of monumental and decorative painting graduates, performed at the department, founded more than twenty-five years ago by the Professor V G Smagin, who had the honorary title of People’s Artist of Russia. The article discusses in detail the issues of zoning and the organization of the spatial environment by objects of monumental painting. The choice of materials, techniques, compositional and semantic decisions is substantiated for interiors with different functional loads. There is discussed the problem of preserving the artistic integrity of the spatial environment of the university, as well as the possible loss of works of monumental painting during future reconstructions or constructive renovation of buildings.