On April 27, 1930, May Volfovich was born. Ten-year-old May even managed to finish 5 classes of a music school. He would study further. Perhaps he would have become a musician ... But the war began. And the little violin remained hanging on the wall of their pre-war apartment in the Meisels house in burning Minsk in early June 1941.
11-year-old Mai owes his life to drawing in the war. In the evacuation, his family experienced a terrible famine, sometimes it saved what he painted for the factories in Ulyanovsk signs and slogans for the holidays - for this they gave clothes and food. Post-war life gradually entered its rut. He studied at 42nd high school, and when I finished 8 classes, it turned out that the choice of a future profession was made a long time ago.
In 1952, Mai Dancig graduated from high school and in the same year went to Moscow to continue his studies at a higher educational institution. In 1958 he graduated from the Moscow State Academic Art Institute. V.I. Surikova. May Dancig was enrolled in an international art studio. The artist’s archive has a series of drawings-portraits of festival participants from different countries, made by the hand of another student, but already a master. The future artist was even in the youth football team. At 84, he tried to keep fit: did exercises.
However, Dancig could become not only an artist and athletes, but also an actor. In the mid-1990s, he starred in Dmitry Astrakhan's drama "From Hell to Hell." The film was nominated for an Academy Award. Dancig played a professor. On samples, his candidacy was approved immediately. The creative team said that makeup is not needed.
Mai Volfovich gave 53 years to teaching students the fine arts. From 1958 to 1980 - senior lecturer, associate professor, from 1980 - professor. In 2001-2011, he headed the department of easel painting. Danzig considers famous Belarusian artists Vasil Sumarev, Nikolay Kazakevich, Joseph Grinberg, Vladimir Tkachev and many others to be his students. All his life he developed the topics he liked: work, partisan competition, urban landscape, contemporary portrait, life and nature.
Brightly, deeply and emotionally found the theme of war in the artist’s work. The theme of war in the works of May Dancig is revealed figuratively, with inspiration. And despite the fact that war is always grief, death, violence, cruelty, the main distinguishing feature of these works is their life-affirming beginning. And not this quality - the indestructible thirst for life - helped our people to receive the greatest victory in the history of mankind, the 75th anniversary of which the whole world celebrates this year! These impressions, which shocked the children's soul, were philosophically rethought by the artist over the years, formed the basis of many of his paintings on the war. These are Belarus - the Partisan Mother, Partisan Wedding, Partisan Ballad, On the Great Patriotic War, “And He Saves the World Saved ...” and many others. May Dancig’s paintings on the war sound a powerful anthem to life, goodness and humanism.
The artist returned to his native Minsk - the city in which he was not just born and lived, but the city, which later became one of the brightest and most significant pages of his work! May Dancig began to write Minsk immediately after the war, without suspecting that he was writing not just sketches, but a living story that was reborn from the ashes of the city.
The most important place in the work of M. Dancig is urban landscape. Therefore, it is natural that he was called a portrait painter of Minsk. Throughout his life, the artist painted urban landscapes. “Minsk. Spring 1944”, “Marta”, “On the Boulevard”, “New Quarters Are Growing”, “Old and New Minsk”, “Minsk Awakens”, “Upper Town” and many, many others. And such paintings as “My city will be forgotten young”, “My Minsk” and “Song of Minsk” have become truly classics and entered the gold fund of Belarusian art. A native of Minsk, the artist is sensitive to changes in the appearance and mood of the city. With what greed and fury he seeks to save, save, and preserve what he miraculously survived during the war years.
And how many old streets, historical buildings, and sometimes unique monuments were demolished and rebuilt by the so-called "restorers" already during restoration work! May Dancig is the only artist on whose canvases the old roofs of the long-suffering Nemiga live even today, such native houses of the Upper Town that are closely molded to each other, and the last of the synagogues in Minsk at the beginning of the century, the so-called Cold Synagogue. Foreign tourists, attracted to Minsk in recent years by the desire to get closer to their roots, can see this unique building, in which their grandfathers and great-grandfathers once prayed, only in May Dancig’s picture "My city will be forgotten, young." Many artists admit that after May Dancig it is very difficult to say something new in Minsk about the language of art.
May Dancig is a national artist of Belarus. His thoughts sounded clear and almost always large-scale. These were portraits of famous people of the time - Ales Adamovich, Vasil Bykov or Bulat Okudzhava, for example. Or when my native Minsk was singing in the colors. From his grandiose works, the image of a grandiose capital appears - this is exactly the feeling from a city that has a thirst for restoration and development. Such a Minsk can be seen in the works of the artist, which are stored in the National Art Museum of Belarus. Dancig works are in the Tretyakov Gallery. Yes, and in museums in other countries of the world. Indeed, despite the changes that have occurred in world art, professional, well-executed painting remains the basis of this creativity.