About
Boris
Pak
“My earliest childhood memories are of me drawing.” Though life first led Boris Pak through geology and the landscapes of the Far North, art remained the language through which he shaped memory, story, and imagination.
Boris Petrovich Pak was born on April 4, 1935 in the village of In-Korean, located in the Smidovich District of the Jewish Autonomous Region of the Russian Federation Far East. In 1937, all Koreans were subject to forced relocation from the Far East to Central Asia. Of Peter Aleksandrovich Pak-Ir's three children, only Boris survived. Moonsug Li, Boris's mother, died in 1941. From 1943, Boris Pak was raised in a Russian speaking environment in the city of Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan and forgot the Korean language.
In his autobiography, Boris Pak states that, «My earliest childhood memories are of me drawing.» Yet, his passion for drawing was not encouraged by Boris's strict father, at whose insistence he entered the Geology Department of Kazakh State University. In 1958, Boris Pak received his degree summa cum laude. As a young field geologist, he left for Leningrad, where he found work in the Northwest Geological Expedition. In 1960, Boris Pak enrolled as a night student in the Graphics Department at the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. While honing his artistic skills within the walls of the Repin Institute, Boris Pak continued to work as a geologist. "I worked three field seasons on the Koli Peninsula and once in Arkhangel Region. My basic knowledge of art I uncovered in the rich library of the Hermitages Academy of the Arts."
In 1966, after finishing the Repin Institute under the direction of A. F. Pakhomov, Boris Pak returned to Alma-Ata to teach specialized courses at the Gogol Artists' School until 1976. In 1989, Boris P. Pak was awarded the honor of Distinguished Artist of the Kazakh SSR. Boris P. Pak tragically died in 1992 while on a business trip in Aktyubinsk.
Illustration for the story Karlik Nos (Dwarf Nose) (written by Wilhelm Hauff), created in 1986.
Practice
From 1968 on, Boris Pak was a member of the USSR Artists' Union and regularly participated in republican, union, and international exhibitions. He produced print graphics, paintings, sculptures, and monumental art.
The major book illustrations of Boris Pak (1980–1986) were for a collection of the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Wilhelm Hauff's Little Mook and Dwarf Nose, Alexander Belyaev's Professor Dowell's Head and The Amphibian Man, Abai's Words of Edification, and a book of Makhtumkuli's poetry. The Hauff illustrations have been published in an English language translation in the United States, and Pak's illustrations to Song of Hiawatha are held by Harvard's Houghton Library of rare books and manuscripts. Pak's Andersen illustrations are in the permanent collection of the Kasteev Museum in Almaty. We are grateful to the Kasteev Museum for giving us the opportunity to reproduce the Andersen illustrations in this book.
