Yazep Drazdovich is an outstanding Belarusian painter, graphic artist, sculptor, folklorist, writer, ethnographer, amateur astronomer, philosopher and even archeologist.
Yazep Drozdovich was born on October 13, 1888 near the town of Glubokoe in a poor gentry family. The artist’s childhood was held in the vicinity of Golubitskaya Pushcha. The Yazep family lost their father early and was forced to change many places of residence, renting someone else’s land. Yazep began his studies at the Disnensky Gymnasium, and in 1906 moved to Vilnius, where he entered the art school of painting of professor Ivan Trutnev. There, for four years, he mastered the basics of art and passed the course of academic drawing.
In 1919, after the creation of the BSSR, Drozdovich came to Minsk. At that time he became a drawing teacher at the Belarusian Higher School of Women, worked as an illustrator in literary publishing houses and as an artist-decorator in the Society of Belarusian Art and the Belarusian State Theater, organized the cultural and educational society “Malinovka”. In Minsk, Drozdovich created a series of unique images of the historical districts of the city – Zamchishcha, Upper Town, Tatar suburb.
After the signing of the Riga Treaty in 1920, according to which Western Belarus found itself within the borders of Poland, Yazep Drozdovich left Soviet Belarus and returned to his native Disnensky district. In 1921, Drozdovich organized a Belarusian school in the village of Stolitsa, which lasted only three months and was closed by the Polish administration.
At the same time, Yazep Drozdovich turns to literary creativity. He undertakes to write a historical novel about the times of the Polotsk principality “Garadolskaya Pushcha”, which is decorated with his own illustrations. In 1923 Yazep Drozdovich’s story “Big Shisha” was published and positively received by the Belarusian public.
Yazep Drozdovich cooperated with the Vilnius Belarusian Museum named after Ivan Lutskevich. For the sake of replenishing the museum’s exposition, he dealt with excavations of ancient settlements, collected folklore, created numerous sketches of objects of material culture, architecture, peasant types. In 1926, Drozdovich went on a scientific and creative expedition to Pinsk, and in subsequent years visited Trakai, Vilnius, Medniki, Krevo, Golshany, Lida, Novogrudok, Lyubchu, Mir. As a result of these trips, which covered almost the whole of Western Belarus, there appeared spacious graphics albums, which are a unique phenomenon in the Belarusian art.
In the second half of the 1920s, Yazep Drozdovich taught drawing at the Glubokoye School, Novogrudok and Radoshkovichi Belarusian Gymnasiums. Since 1926, Drozdovich worked in the Vilnius Belarusian Gymnasium, in which he created an art studio-workshop. At the studio Yazep Drozdovich rallied young Belarusian artists, among whom were Vasily Sidorovich, Nikolai Vasilevsky, Roman Semashkevich.
Drozdovich established close ties with the Institute of Belarusian Culture in Minsk (since 1929 – the Academy of Sciences), sent sketches and measurements of wooden architecture and objects of peasant life. For his artistic and scientific works he was repeatedly awarded with prizes of the Academy of Sciences. He collaborated with the satirical magazine “Molniya”, the Society of the Belarusian School (TBS).
In the 1930s, Drazdovich experiences financial difficulties, and, as always, such a challenging social situation paradoxically, or maybe quite naturally, gives a unique result. He looked into the Space – and the Space looked into him. This, of course, provided an exceptional result for the Belarusian culture.Drazdovich was convinced that he was gifted with clairvoyance. And as easily as he addressed the distant past of his land, he immersed himself in the space. He was spending day after day in the library, eagerly absorbing all the literature on astronomy. In his dreams he traveled to the distant stars and planets – the Moon, Mars, Saturn, Venus, enjoyed the beautiful landscapes, the incredible flora and fauna, visited unknown countries and cities and observed the lives of local people. In the morning he meticulously, to the last detail, wrote down and documented everything he had seen in the diary and in special notebooks, then making them into albums. Some of these drawings were later developed into paintings.
He left dozens of evidence about his night visits to the space in his paintings, graphic works and texts. Drazdovich is unanimously considered “the founder of the space theme in Belarusian art”.
In 1933, Drozdovich returned to Disnensky district to his brother Konstantin. Here, in his native land, the artist created a large number of graphic and pictorial works. Yazep Drozdovich continued cooperation with the Belarusian Museum named after Ivan Lutskevich, sending there sketches of castles, fortifications, peasant architecture and everyday life. Every summer, the artist went on trips, during which he made many rustic carpets and portraits for the villagers.
After the annexation of Western Belarus to the BSSR in 1939, Yazep Drozdovich studied short-term teaching courses and worked as a teacher in Glubokoye and Luzhki. Due to the shortage of teachers, he had to teach all subjects, including astronomy, drawing and history. Drozdovich’s pedagogical activity was interrupted in 1941 with the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War. Nevertheless, during the occupation Drozdovich continued his creative activity and created a number of art paintings.
After the war, because of health problems, Yazep Drozdovich worked little. The main source of the artist’s earnings were painted carpets for peasants. Occasionally he painted landscapes, portraits.
Drazdovich did not live to the day the man travelled to space (April 12, 1961). In 1954, the villagers found Drazdovich lying unconscious on the road. The artist was brought to the nearest hospital, where he died on September 15, 1954.
Drazdovich was compared to all kinds of artists: Leonardo da Vinci, Mikalojus Čiurlionis and Nicholas Roerich, but these comparisons do not seem very convincing. Perhaps, we must admit that never and nowhere there was an artist similar to Drazdovich.
Arseny Lys was one of the first researchers of Yazep Drozdovich’s creativity in 1984 to write a book about the artist “Eternal wanderer”.A great patriot of the Native land, he chose the path of a wanderer and an outsider, making endless wanderings through his native land – from farm to farm, from village to village. Even during his lifetime, Yazep Drozdovich was called the first national artist and creator of the “Belarusian style”.
Streets in Minsk, Orsha, Molodechno, Novogrudok, Glubokoye, Sharkovshchina, Radoshkovichi are named after Yazep Drozdovich.