Chubais’s wife Avdotya Smirnova is expected in St. Petersburg for the funeral of her first husband

Art critic Arkady Ippolitov passed away from their lives

Difficult times have come in the life of the large family of film director Andrei Smirnov and his daughter Avdotya Smirnova. On November 4, two misfortunes occurred at once.

November 4 injured in an accident Andrei Sergeevich’s brother is Konstantin Smirnov, a famous journalist and producer. This night was difficult for him, and now he is in the intensive care unit of the Botkin Hospital.

On the same ill-fated day he died suddenly Arkady Ippolitov – the first husband of Avdotya Smirnova, the father of her son Danila. He was 65 years old. He died in his St. Petersburg apartment. My health was poor, and the blues associated with what was happening around me only worsened the situation. Those who knew him say that a state of anxiety accompanied him constantly.

Arkady Ippolitov predicted his death in November in 2013 in one of his essays. He wrote that he would die in November. Now friends publish on social networks memories of how he looked at the world and the Neva from the window of his office in the Hermitage, and publish photos of this window.

Ippolitov is a graduate of the history department of Leningrad University, a brilliant art critic, and a senior researcher in the Department of Western European Fine Arts of the State Hermitage with extensive experience. Arkady came to the museum in the late 1970s, worked there in the scientific library, and became the curator of Italian engravings. He was an expert in European art of the 15th–20th centuries, primarily Italian. He was a talented writer and essayist, a sophisticated man.

As a curator, Ippolitov organized the exhibitions “Irwin Penn. Photographs from the Art Institute of Chicago”, “Masterpieces of Western European Engravings”, “Baby Jesus in Western European Engravings”, “Maurits K. Escher in the Hermitage”, “Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. “An Incident in the Museum” and other installations”, “Venice and Venetian life in 18th-century engravings” and many others. But here everything was complicated, and I had to prove something to someone before the opportunity to engage in curating arose.

He wrote hundreds of articles and several books. And his essay “Simply Rome. Images of Italy in the 21st Century”, after its publication in 2019, generated such desperate debate among intellectuals that many quarreled.

The son of Avdotya and Arkady, Danila Ippolitov, whom his father loved very much, graduated from Sergei Selyanov’s production course and began producing after a bright sports career. In particular, he was an executive producer on the series “Vertinsky” by Avdotya Smirnova.

Arkady Ippolitov had a special appearance. Renata Litvinova invited him to star in her film “Joseph’s Dreams” and called him “the saddest St. Petersburg comrade.”

The farewell will take place in St. Petersburg, but many close friends will not be able to say goodbye to Arkady, since their lives have scattered them all over the world. Most likely, Avdotya Smirnova, who is outside the country with her second husband Anatoly Chubais, will not come either.