Documentarian of the North

“Nikolai Avenirovich Shabunin was a quiet, unassuming person, likable in the truest sense of the word, Russian through and through. He was a serious worker, an excellent painter, endowed with the pure spirit of artistic creativity, a wellspring of the most elevated motives. In him, Russian art has lost a creator who was only just coming into his own, and Russia has lost an honest, modest, yet dogged figure, who might have attained great significance in his chosen field.”

Even taking into account that Kondakov’s glowing words are an obituary, they are not overblown. Shabunin, had he not died young, might well have gone on to create numerous great works of art. In fact, one body of work he succeeded in completing was pathbreaking and utterly remarkable. And to this day virtually unnoticed.