Movshovich, Albert Aronovich

Albert Aronovich Movshovich, known to friends as Alik, was born November 10, 1936 into a Jewish family in what was then known as Leningrad. In 1966, he graduated from the Leningrad Vera Mukhina Higher School of Art and Design and became part of a cohort of Mukhina students that would move to Almaty to work in monumental art.

Movshovich arrived in 1966 to work on exhibits at the Central State Museum, which was housed in what is now the Ascension Cathedral. Around the same time the artist worked on decorating the Agriculture and Food Industry pavilions at VDNKh, an exhibition park in Almaty. In 1969, he travelled to Karatau with Vladimir Tverdokhlebov and Boris Chuvylko to paint murals at a kindergarten there.

In 1973-1974, Movshovich worked on two pieces in collaboration with Aleksandr Simakov, a mural at a yurt factory in Ush-Tobe and a stained glass window at the Oilworker House of Culture in Uzen. It was perhaps this experience working with Simakov, a stained glass master, that inspired his only solo work in glass, a window at the porcelain factory in Kapshagai (1980).

Movshovich’s only surviving work in Almaty is a mosaic on an office building that once belonged to the publisher Oblknigotorg. This smalti mural is one of the largest mosaics in Kazakhstan.  

Works