Elbrus Gutnov

The youngest and fifth son of Solomon and Gadzi Gutnov (1906–1981; some sources call him Elbrus Alexandrovich). In 1922 he went to Berlin to join his brother Eugen, worked in his printing shop, and studied first at a school of arts and crafts and then in the graphic arts department of the Academy of Fine Arts under Professor Emil Orlik. He returned to the USSR at the end of 1927 and began working in Moscow as a book designer and printing specialist. The newspaper Moskovsky Khudozhnik called Elbrus Gutnov “one of the pioneers of Soviet book design.”

In December 1933 he married the historian Evgenia Vladimirovna Gutnova (see the section below). Their son was the Doctor of Architecture Alexey Elbrusovich Gutnov.

Elbrus’s wife Evgenia Vladimirovna devoted the chapter “Second Love: My Husband Elbrus Gutnov” to him in her memoir What I Lived Through, offering a detailed account of their meeting and life together.