Victor Martinovich
Victor Martinovich, PhD, is a Belarusan writer, an art historian and an associate professor in European Humanities University (Vilnius, Lithuania).
He researches the Vitebsk period of the work of Marc Chagall, as well as artists of the Paris School from Belarus and the Vitebsk avant-garde. His book on Chagall by the name Motherland. Marc Chagall in Vitebsk was published in 2017 in Russian.
Currently he is working on a project linking the study of humanities and fine arts.
Fiction novels by Victor Martinovich were published in Belarusan, Russian, German, English, Finnish, Swedish and Latvian languages.
He also writes regularly for several media such as Die Zeit.
Plays based on Victor’s works have been staged in Hamburg, Munich, Vienna, Minsk, Insbruk and St. Peterburg.
The play based on the novel Revolution is being staged by the Volkstheater of Munich (directed by Philipp Arnold) and at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg (directed by Dušan David Pařízek).
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About a book in progress with the working title
Art as a language of humanities:
"I believe that it is important to find a new way of teaching and talking about fine arts. My idea is to combine Gadamer's approach to hermeneutics with a very personal way of talking about art history. Let's say, what if we take Babel's Tower by Bruegel as a source of talk about the language? What if we take Champ de blé aux corbeaux by Van Gogh as a picture to talk about Death? What if we use Vasari's Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy as an introduction to a talk about media manipulation? Thus, art history may become very interesting (again!).
The point is that the history of fine arts cannot be depersonalized from the one who is talking about it. And so is humanities. I want to compose a book which will tell about Time, Thinking, Death, Destination, Fate, Fear, War and Politics through the paintings I know so much about. I will use Chagall, Soutine, Rafael, Breugel, Schiele and Botticelli to do so".
Plays and adaptations
In 2014 Victor Martinovich started collaboration with Vienna based theatre Ganymed, founded by Jacqueline Kornmueller and Peter Wolf.
In 2015 Victor Martinovich’s mini play The best place on Earth staged by Ganymed in Kunsthistorisches museum Vienna in the framework of Ganymed Dreaming project.
In 2016 Victor composed a play The Armor of God performed by Ganymed in an armoury of Schloss Ambras (Innsbruk).
In 2017 he debuted as a playwright in Belarus with a drama Dr. Raus’ Fortune dedicated to a pioneering Slavic publisher Francisk Skaryna.
In 2021 he composed a mini play Child with a Child dedicated to Madonna with child by Giulio Cesare Procaccini, performed by Ganymed in Saint Peterburg’s Hermitage museum in the framework of the international theater project Ermitage Flora.
In 2022 Revolution, a play based on Victor Martinovich’s novel debuted in Deutsches Schauspielhaus, the biggest German language drama theatre in the world. Directed by Dušan David Pařízek.
In 2023 a play based on Victor Martinovich’s Revolution debuted at Munich’s Volkstheater. Directed by Philipp Arnold.
In November 2023 a play dedicated to Georg Kestner’s Fabian debuted on the stage of Munich’s Volkstheater. Victor Martinovich was one of the playwrights who contributed to the text.
