Chisinau, Bessarabian Governorate, Russia 1912-1985 Almaty, Kazakhstan

A Soviet artist, graphic artist, and writer. A representative of analytical art and a student of P. N. Filonov. Honored Art Worker of the Kazakh SSR (1962). He was born in Chisinau and was the youngest of three children in the family of a career officer of the Imperial Russian Army — Colonel Yakov Yakovlevich Salzman of the 59th Lublin Infantry Regiment (of German origin, 1868–1941) — and Maria Nikolaevna Salzman (née Maria Samuilovna Ornstein, of Jewish origin, 1873–1941). Shortly after his birth, his father’s regiment was transferred to Odessa. Beginning in 1917, the family wandered across southern Ukraine; from 1919 to 1925 they lived in Rabnița, then returned to Odessa. Finally, in late August 1925, they arrived in Leningrad. His father worked as an accountant, and the family lived at 16 Zagorodny Lane. After completing the final three grades of Leningrad’s 1st Soviet Secondary School in 1929, Salzman worked as an illustrator for the Leningrad magazines Rezets, Perelom, Stroyka, and Yuny proletarii (1931–1932). Since 1928 he had been an apprentice at the Belgoskino film studio under artists A. A. Arapov and V. Egorov. In 1929 he met P. N. Filonov, became his follower, and joined the group of the “Masters of Analytical Art” (MAI — Filonov’s school). At the same time, he became a member of the Leningrad branch of the Union of Artists of the USSR (1932), although he did not renew his membership after the war. In 1932–1933, together with other students of Filonov, he took part in preparing illustrations for the traditional Finnish epic Kalevala: the headpieces for runes 27 (p. 166) and 29 (p. 175), and the illustration for rune 29 (p. 178). From 1930 he worked at Lenfilm as an assistant to art directors P. Betaki and F. Bernshtam. From 1931 to 1941 he served as a production designer on films by the Vasiliev brothers (Personal Case, 1932), Nikolai Beresnyov (Annenkovshchina, 1933), Ilya Trauberg (A Private Case, 1934), Adolf Minkin (The Moonstone, 1935), Eduard Ioganson (At Rest, 1936), Rafail and Yuri Muzykantov (For the Soviet Motherland, 1937), Aleksandr Ivanov (On the Border, 1938), and Oleg Sergeev (Father and Son, 1941). Between 1932 and 1940 he took part in film expeditions to the Urals, the Pamirs, Karelia, Transbaikalia, Central Asia, and Crimea. In 1935 he married his former classmate Rosa Zalmanovna Magid. During the first year of the Siege of Leningrad, he worked as a designer of camouflage structures for the city’s defense. His parents died of hunger during the winter of 1941–1942. On July 27, 1942, he was evacuated from Leningrad along with Lenfilm and arrived in Alma-Ata on August 20. In Kazakhstan, Pavel Salzman was assigned to work at TsOKS (the Central United Film Studio), which operated in Alma-Ata during the war. In 1944, when Lenfilm and Mosfilm returned from evacuation, Salzman was not permitted to leave Alma-Ata — he had been given the status of “special settler” due to his German nationality on official documents. He worked as a production designer at Kazakhfilm, except during the anti-cosmopolitanism campaign of 1948–1953; from 1955 to 1985 he was the studio’s chief art director. He worked as production designer on films by Shaken Aimanov (White Rose, 1943; Daughter of the Steppes, 1954; Poem of Love, 1954; Crossroads, 1963), Yefim Aron (The Golden Horn, 1948; Botagoz, 1958), Pavel Bogolyubov (The Girl-Jigit, 1955), and others. Starting in 1948 he taught art history at the Art College, the Academy of Architecture, the Pedagogical Institute, the Philology Faculty of Kazakh State University, and at the screenwriting courses of Kazakhfilm in Alma-Ata. He became a member of the Union of Cinematographers in 1957 and of the Union of Artists of the Kazakh SSR in 1967. Salzman’s postwar artistic work is primarily associated with two main themes: a series of graphic reminiscences of Jewish shtetls on the left bank of the Dniester, and portraiture based on contemporary Kazakh motifs. He died on December 20, 1985, and was buried at the Central Cemetery of Almaty