The artist Vasilyev is a man with an eagle owl. Artist Konstantin Vasiliev

The life of great people begins from the moment of their death. (J. Arren)

On this day 34 years ago, the Great Russian artist K.A. died. Vasiliev, died when he was only 34 years old. I would like to tell you a little about the author of more than 400 works, including such famous cycles as “Epic Rus'”, “The Ring of the Nibelung” and many other works.

Konstantin Vasiliev was born on September 3, 1942 in the capital of the Adygea Autonomous Region, Maykop. At that time, the city was occupied by German troops and therefore the family lived for some years without their father, since he, being an avid communist, left to become a partisan in a month before the birth of his son. Krasnodar region.
Despite the fact that the Germans knew that Alexei Alekseevich belonged to the Communist Party, the family successfully survived the days of occupation and in 1945 moved to Krasnodar, where a year later in April, Konstantin’s sister Valentina was born. Due to the addition to the family, they began to lack living space, and the father asked to be transferred to work in another place. Transferred to Kazan.

In 1949, Alexei Alekseevich and Klavdia Parmenovna Vasilyeva (nee Shishkin) had another child - daughter Lyudmila, and at the same time the father was offered to move to work in another place - he chose the village of Vasilyevo (25 km from Kazan). Those places then attracted people with their natural beauty.

Already with early childhood Konstantin began to get interested in drawing and one day his parents saw an article in Komsomolskaya Pravda where it was said that the Moscow Secondary School at the Institute named after V.I. Surikova accepts schoolchildren gifted in the field of drawing. It was decided to send several of my son’s works to the competition. The paintings passed the competition, and then Vasiliev himself went to Moscow. It was 1954.

Almost near his place of residence in the capital, there was the Tretyakov Gallery, which inspired the young artist and therefore his business was not going very badly. By the fall of 1956, he brought the watercolors he had painted that summer. They were so good that the school director ordered an exhibition of these works. There were enough of them to cover the walls of the entire second floor. This was one of Vasiliev’s first successes!

1957

But he was not destined to finish his studies in Moscow, because in 1957 his father became seriously ill. I had to go back. Therefore, Vasiliev entered the Kazan Art College, but immediately entered the second year and graduated in 1961, defending his thesis consisting of scenery sketches for Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “The Snow Maiden”. The work was rated “excellent” and thus he became a theater decorator. Immediately, the Tatar magazine "Chayan" invited him to collaborate, and Vasiliev began to draw illustrations for him, which in 1963 were successfully exhibited at the Moscow Manege and at the exhibition "Satirist Artists of Kazan".

In 1967, like his father, he died of illness. younger sister Luda. Already knowing that a tragic end could not be avoided, Vasiliev began to draw her portrait:

Vasiliev was always interested in Russian epic folklore, ancient Slavic and Scandinavian myths and legends, as well as the common roots in the history of the Aryan peoples.

"Warrior with a Sword" (1968)

An eagle is depicted on the warrior’s helmet - a symbol of power in Aryan mythology. And under the impression of Wagner’s tetralogy “The Ring of the Nibelung”, Vasiliev painted the paintings “Wotan, the Supreme God of the Ancient Scandinavians” and “The Valkyrie” (both in 1969).

The helmet is decorated with wings and has an Aryan sign in its decoration.

"Valkyrie over the slain warrior" (1969)

With a welcoming gesture, she accepts the invisible soul of the slain hero.

At the end of December 1974, Vasiliev, together with his friend, went to Moscow for the second time, now as a representative of his works at an exhibition. But the organizers there let him down and so he returned home not the same as when he left. Some believe that that trip was detrimental to him and that he has since become depressed.

Self-portraits 1968 and 1970

In the mid-70s, another of his famous series of paintings about World War II appeared. In general, he knew a lot about the war, since his father was a participant three wars: World War I, Civil War, where he served in the Chapaev Division, and World War II. Also, 4 of his mother’s brothers took part in the WWII fronts, two of whom died. Vasiliev himself was unable to serve in the army due to health reasons, which he repeatedly regretted.
This cycle includes the following paintings: “Invasion”, on one side of which stands the destroyed Assumption Cathedral of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, and on the other the Germans are marching; "Portrait of Marshal G.K. Zhukov"; "Parade 1941".

And two paintings with the names of old marches: “Farewell of a Slav” and “Longing for the Motherland.”

It was also planned to create paintings about Kursk Bulge, portrait of K.K. Rokossovsky and others.

1974 At the exhibition at the Computing Center of Kazan University

Vasiliev’s last completed work was the painting “Man with an Owl”, after the completion of which he told his mother: “ Now I know how to write".

And a few days later he was gone. It is noteworthy that he predicted to himself that he would live 33 years, because on his hand there was short line life. I was wrong by only a couple of months...
On October 29, the exhibition ended at the youth center, the first serious exhibition of Vasiliev during his lifetime, and the last. Then he presented three of his works: “An Unexpected Meeting”, “Waiting” and “Lena Aseeva”. When leaving for her, he promised his mother to return by 18:00, but did not return and only 3 days later she was informed of his death.

Returning home, he died under strange circumstances. According to the office version, he allegedly did not hear the train, although how is this possible? Nevertheless, they found him with a broken head near the Lagernaya railway platform. Either he died with a friend or without, accurate information Unfortunately, there is no news about his tragic death.
Vasiliev loved to create at night while listening to music, so when he was buried in snowy weather in a birch grove in his native village, Wagner’s “On the Death of Siegfried” was played.

A half-burnt piece of paper with the words written in his hand was found in the artist’s belongings: “The artist experiences pleasure from the proportionality of parts, pleasure from correct proportions, dissatisfaction with imbalances. These concepts are built according to the law of numbers. Views that are beautiful numerical relationships are beautiful. A man of science expresses the laws of nature in numbers, an artist contemplates them, making them the subject of his creativity. There is a pattern there. There is beauty here.
Art constantly returns to its origins, re-creating everything again, and in this new one, reviving life again. Inheritance as a saving force".

After the artist's death, his creations found a second life. The popularity was crazy even without any advertising. True, many art critics never recognized him as an artist for his special style, but the main thing is that the people recognized him. Exhibitions in the capital continued with increasing success. In total, posthumous exhibitions were opened about 30 times on the initiative of VOOPIiK in the capital and Moscow region.
In 1982, the publishing house “Fine Arts” released a set of reproductions of “Epic Rus'”, and in 1988 its first exhibition was held in Leningrad. The paintings were also taken to Bulgaria, Spain and Yugoslavia, and everywhere, even non-Slavic peoples, appreciated these paintings.

Quote from the book by Oleg Metelin - “High above sea level”:
(1991) - "Like a fool, yesterday, thanks to great connections, I got two tickets to the Manege for the exhibition of Konstantin Vasilyev... Can you imagine what a line there is at this Manege?! The tail is turning towards Marx Avenue! I made sure that they don’t freeze like tsutsikis on the street!".
And so it was, in the 80s people stood in line in 40-degree frost on Malaya Gruzinskaya to visit Vasiliev’s exhibition. The artist’s popularity was such that even astronomer L.V. Zhuravleva gave the asteroid discovered on October 25, 1982 its name - “3930 Vasilyev”.

In 1984, the Vasiliev family moved to Kolomna, where they transported all the artist’s paintings that belonged to them. The museum occupies part of a residential building, which includes a memorial apartment with an area of 53.3 m2.

In 1988, Vasiliev was awarded the Komsomol Prize of Tatarstan. M. Jalil for a series of films about the Second World War; by the way, he himself was never even a Komsomol member. At the end of the same year, the Konstantin Vasiliev Painting Lovers Club was created at the Moscow branch of VOOPIiK. And a year earlier, a club had already been created at the Kolomna State Committee of the Komsomol with many friendly clubs in other regions of the country, which formed the “K. Vasiliev Foundation”, with the money of which the paintings were restored.

You can see the paintings

Konstantin Alekseevich Vasiliev (1942-1976) - Russian artist, creative heritage which contains more than 400 works of painting and graphics: portraits, landscapes, surreal compositions, paintings of epic, mythological and battle genres.

Among famous works- cycles “Epic Rus'” and “Ring of the Nibelung”, a series of paintings about the Great Patriotic War, graphic portraits, and last work artist - “Man with an eagle owl”.

From 1949 to 1976 lived in the house where the museum was opened.

In 1976 he died tragically and was buried in the village. Vasilyevo.

In 1984, the Vasiliev family moved to Kolomna near Moscow, where they transported all the artist’s paintings that belonged to them.
The museum occupies part of a residential building, which includes a memorial apartment with an area of 53.3 m2.

The exhibition is based on a memorial collection donated by the artist’s sister V.A. Vasilyeva and his friends.

From the book "Rus' Magic Palette" by Anatoly Doronin

To understand inner world person, we must certainly touch his roots. Kostya's father was born in 1897 into the family of a St. Petersburg worker. By the will of fate, he became a participant in three wars and spent his entire life working in management positions in industry. Kostya’s mother was almost twenty years younger than her father and belonged to the family of the great Russian painter I.I. Shishkin.

Just before the war, the young couple lived in Maykop. They were eagerly awaiting their first child. But a month before his birth, Alexey Alekseevich joined the partisan detachment: the Germans were approaching Maykop. Klavdia Parmenovna was unable to evacuate. On August 8, 1942, the city was occupied, and on September 3, Konstantin Vasiliev entered the world. Needless to say, what hardships and hardships befell the young mother and baby. Klavdiya Parmenovna and her son were taken to the Gestapo, then released, trying to uncover possible connections with the partisans. The Vasilievs’ lives literally hung by a thread, and only the rapid advance of Soviet troops saved them. Maykop was liberated on February 3, 1943.

After the war, the family moved to Kazan, and in 1949 - for permanent residence in the village of Vasilyevo. And this was no accident. A passionate hunter and fisherman, Alexey Alekseevich, often traveling outside the city, somehow ended up in this village, fell in love with it and decided to move here forever. Later Kostya will reflect the unearthly beauty of these places in his numerous landscapes.

If you take a map of Tataria, you can easily find the village of Vasilyevo on the left bank of the Volga, about thirty kilometers from Kazan, opposite the mouth of the Sviyaga. Now here is the Kuibyshev Reservoir, and when the family moved to Vasilyevo, here was the untouched Volga, or the Itil River, as it is called in the eastern chronicles, and even earlier, among ancient geographers, it was called by the name of Ra.

Young Kostya was struck by the beauty of these places. She was special here, created great river. The right bank rises in a blue haze, almost steep, overgrown with forest; you can see a distant white monastery on the slope, to the right - the fabulous Sviyazhsk, all located on Table Mountain with its temples and churches, shops and houses, rising above the wide meadows in the floodplain of Sviyaga and the Volga. And very far away, already beyond Sviyaga, on its high bank, the bell tower and church of the village of Tikhy Ples are barely visible. Closer to the village there is a river, a wide water stream. And the water is deep, slow and cool, and the pools are bottomless, shady and cold.

In the spring, in April-May, the flood flooded this entire expanse from ridge to ridge, and then to the south of the village water with bushy islands was visible for many kilometers, and distant Sviyazhsk itself turned into an island. By June, the water receded, revealing the entire expanse of flooded meadows, generously watered and fertilized with silt, leaving behind cheerful streams and blue overgrown lakes, densely populated with burbot, tench, loaches, bee-eaters and frogs. The approaching summer heat with irrepressible force drove thick, juicy, sweet grasses out of the ground, and along the banks of ditches, streams and lakes it drove up and out the bushes of willow grass, currants, and rose hips.

The meadows on the left bank of the ridge gave way to light linden and oak forests, which to this day, interspersed with fields, stretch to the north for many kilometers and gradually turn into a coniferous forest-taiga.

Kostya differed from his peers in that he was not interested in toys, did not run around much with other children, but always tinkered with paints, pencils and paper. His father often took him fishing and hunting, and Kostya drew the river, boats, his father, the forest apiary, game, Orlik’s dog, and in general everything that pleased the eye and captured his imagination. Some of these drawings have survived.

Parents helped the development of his abilities as best they could: tactfully and unobtrusively, while protecting his taste, they selected books and reproductions, introduced Kostya to music, and took him to museums in Kazan, Moscow, Leningrad, when the opportunity and opportunity presented themselves.

Kostya’s first favorite book is “The Tale of Three Bogatyrs.” At the same time, the boy became acquainted with the painting “Bogatyrs” by V.M. Vasnetsov, and a year later he copied it with colored pencils. On my father's birthday I gave him a painting as a gift. The similarity between the heroes was striking. Inspired by his parents' praise, the boy copied "The Knight at the Crossroads", also with colored pencils. Then I made a pencil drawing from Antokolsky’s sculpture “Ivan the Terrible”. His first landscape sketches have survived: a stump strewn with yellow autumn leaves, hut in the forest.

The parents saw that the boy was gifted and could not live without drawing, and therefore more than once thought about the teachers’ advice - to send their son to an art school. But where, to which class, after which class? There was no such school either in the village or in Kazan. Chance helped.

In 1954, the newspaper " TVNZ" placed an advertisement that the Moscow average art school at the Institute named after V.I. Surikov accepts children gifted in the field of drawing. His parents immediately decided that this was the kind of school Kostya needed - he showed his ability to draw very early. The school accepted five to six nonresident children per year. Kostya was one of them, passing all the exams with excellent marks.

The Moscow secondary art school was located in the quiet Lavrushinsky lane of old Zamoskvorechye, opposite Tretyakov Gallery. There were only three such schools in the country: in addition to Moscow, there were also in Leningrad and Kyiv. But the MSHS was revered beyond competition, if only because it existed at the Surikov Institute, and had the Tretyakov Gallery as a training base.

Of course, Kostya did not wait for the day when the whole class, led by the teacher, went to the Tretyakov Gallery. He went to the gallery alone as soon as he was enrolled in school. The personal interest inherent in life, on the one hand, and the living, active force of the paintings, on the other, collided in his excited consciousness. Which picture should I go to? No, not to this one, where the night sky and the dark shadow of the house are, and not to the one where there is a sandy seashore and a scow in the bay, and not to where they are depicted female figures…

Kostya went further and heard a call within himself when he saw three bright, familiar figures on Vasnetsov’s large, half-wall-length canvas “Bogatyrs”. The boy was delighted to meet the source of his recent inspiration: after all, he studied the reproduction of this painting centimeter by centimeter, looked at it countless times, and then carefully redrew it. So this is what it is - the original!

The boy took in the determined faces of the heroes, the shiny, authentic weapons, the metallic chain mail, the shaggy horse manes. Where did the great Vasnetsov get all this from? From books, of course! And all this steppe distance, this air before the fight - also from books? What about the wind? After all, you can feel the wind in the picture! Kostya became agitated, now revealing the feeling of wind in front of the original. Indeed, the horses’ manes, and even the blades of grass, are moving in the wind.

Having recovered from the first overwhelming impressions of the giant city, the boy did not get lost in the unfamiliar space. Tretyakov and Pushkin Museum, Grand Theatre and the conservatory - this became the main gateway to the world for him classical art. With childish seriousness, he reads “Treatise on Painting” by Leonardo da Vinci, and then studies the paintings of this great master and “Napoleon” by the Soviet historian Evgeniy Tarle, with all the fervor of his young soul he immerses himself in the music of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Mozart and Bach. And the powerful, almost materialized spirituality of these giants is fixed in his consciousness with crystals of precious rock.

Quiet, calm Kostya Vasiliev always behaved independently. The level of his work, declared from the first days of his studies, gave him the right to do this. Not only the boys, but even the teachers were amazed by Kostina’s watercolors. As a rule, these were landscapes, with their own clearly distinctive themes. The young artist did not take something large, catchy, bright, but always found some touch in nature that you could pass by and not notice: a twig, a flower, a blade of grass. Moreover, Kostya performed these studies using minimal pictorial means, sparingly selecting colors and playing with subtle color relationships. This reveals the boy’s character and his approach to life.

Miraculously, one of his amazing productions was preserved - a still life with a plaster head. Having almost completed the work, Kostya accidentally spilled glue on it; He immediately removed the cardboard from the easel and threw it into the trash bin. So this watercolor, like many others, would have disappeared forever if not for Kolya Charugin, also a boarding school boy who studied a class later and always watched Vasiliev’s work with delight. He saved and kept this still life among his most valuable works for thirty years.

All the components of this still life were tastefully selected by someone from the school's collection of objects: as a background - a medieval plush caftan, on the table - a plaster head of a boy, an old book in a worn leather binding and with some kind of rag bookmark, and next to it - not yet wilted rose flower.

Kostya did not have to study for long - only two years. His father died and he had to return home. He continued his studies at the Kazan Art School, entering the second year immediately. Kostya’s drawings did not resemble the student’s work. He made any sketch with a smooth and almost continuous movement of his hand. Vasiliev made many lively and expressive drawings. It's a pity that most of them have been lost. Of the surviving ones, the most interesting is his self-portrait, painted at the age of fifteen. A smooth thin line draws the contour of the head. With one movement of a pencil, the shape of the nose, the curve of the eyebrows are outlined, the mouth is slightly outlined, the chiseled curve of the auricle, and the curls at the forehead. At the same time, the oval of the face, the shape of the eyes and something else subtle are reminiscent of Sandro Botticelli’s “Madonna of the Pomegranate”.

A typical surviving small still life from that period is “Kulik”, painted in oil. It is a clear imitation Dutch masters– the same strict gloomy tonality, filigree painted texture of objects. On the edge of the table, on a rough canvas tablecloth, lies the hunter's prey, and next to it is a glass of water, apricot kernel. Transparent well water, a still-dry bone, and a bird left for a while - everything is so natural that the viewer can easily mentally expand the scope of the picture and complete in his imagination some everyday situation accompanying the artist’s production.

By this period of his life, Vasiliev could write in any manner, for anyone. He mastered the craft. But he had to find his own way and, like any artist, he wanted to say his own word. He grew up and looked for himself.

In the spring of 1961, Konstantin graduated from Kazan art school. Thesis work There were sketches of the scenery for Rimsky-Korsakov's opera "The Snow Maiden". The defense was brilliant. The work was rated “excellent”, but unfortunately has not been preserved.

In a painful search for himself, Vasiliev “got sick” with abstractionism and surrealism. It was interesting to try styles and trends, led by such fashionable names, like Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, Salvador Dali. Vasiliev quite quickly comprehended the creative credo of each of them and created new interesting developments in their vein. Plunging with his characteristic seriousness into the development of new directions, Vasiliev creates a whole series of interesting surreal works, such as “String”, “Ascension”, “Apostle”. However, Vasiliev himself was quickly disappointed by the formal search, which was based on naturalism.

The only thing that is interesting about surrealism, he shared with friends, is its purely external showiness, the ability to openly express in a light form momentary aspirations and thoughts, but not deep-seated feelings.

Drawing an analogy with music, he compared this direction with a jazz arrangement of a symphonic piece. In any case, delicate subtle soul Vasilyeva did not want to put up with a certain frivolity of the forms of surrealism: the permissiveness of the expression of feelings and thoughts, their imbalance and nakedness. The artist felt its internal inconsistency, the destruction of something important that is in realistic art, the meaning, the purpose that it carries.

The fascination with expressionism, which related to non-objective painting and claimed greater depth, lasted somewhat longer. Here, the pillars of abstractionism declared, for example, that the master, without the help of objects, depicts not the melancholy on a person’s face, but the melancholy itself. That is, for the artist there is an illusion of much deeper self-expression. This period includes such works as: “Quartet”, “The Queen’s Sadness”, “Vision”, “Icon of Memory”, “Music of Eyelashes”.

Having mastered the depiction of external forms to perfection, having learned to give them a special vitality, Konstantin was tormented by the thought that behind these forms nothing, in essence, was hidden, that, remaining on this path, he would lose the main thing - creative spiritual power and would not be able to express -the real relationship to the world.

Trying to comprehend the essence of phenomena and suffer through a general structure of thoughts for future works, Konstantin began landscape sketches. What a variety of landscapes he created during his short life creative life! Undoubtedly, Vasiliev created landscapes that are unique in their beauty, but some new strong thought was tormented and beating in his mind: " Inner strength of all living things, strength of spirit - this is what an artist should express!" Yes, beauty, greatness of spirit - this is what will be the main thing for Konstantin from now on! And "Northern Eagle", "Man with an Owl", "Waiting", "At Someone else's Window" were born ", "Northern Legend" and many other works that have become the embodiment of a special "Vasilievsky" style that cannot be confused with anything else.

Northern eagle

Konstantin belonged to the rarest category of people who are invariably accompanied by inspiration, but they do not feel it, because for them it is a familiar state. It’s as if they live from birth to death in one breath, in increased tone. Konstantin loves nature all the time, loves people all the time, loves life all the time. Why does he watch, why does he catch his eye, the movement of a cloud, a leaf. He is constantly attentive to everything. This attention, this love, this desire for everything good was Vasiliev’s inspiration. And this was his whole life.

Someone else's window

But it is unfair, of course, to claim that the life of Konstantin Vasiliev was devoid of inescapable human joys. One day (Konstantin was seventeen years old at the time), his sister Valentina, returning from school, said that a new girl had come to them in the eighth grade - a beautiful girl with green, slanted eyes and long, shoulder-length hair. She came to live in the resort village because of her sick brother. Konstantin offered to bring her for posing.

When fourteen-year-old Lyudmila Chugunova entered the house, Kostya suddenly became confused, began to fuss, and began to move the easel from place to place. The first session lasted a long time. In the evening Kostya went to accompany Lyuda home. A gang of guys who came their way brutally beat him: immediately and unconditionally, Lyuda was recognized as the most beautiful girl in the village. But could beatings cool the artist’s ardent heart? He fell in love with the girl. I painted her portraits every day. Lyudmila recounted her romantic dreams to him, and he made color illustrations for them. They both didn't like yellow(maybe just youthful hostility to the symbol of betrayal?), and one day, after drawing blue sunflowers, Kostya asked: “Do you understand what I wrote? If not, it’s better to be silent, don’t say anything...”

Konstantin introduced Luda to music and literature. They seemed to understand each other from half a word, from half a glance. One day Lyudmila came to see Konstantin with a friend. At that time, he and his friend Tolya Kuznetsov were sitting in the twilight, listening intently classical music and did not react at all to those who entered. For Luda’s friend, such inattention seemed insulting, and she dragged Luda away by the hand.

After this, the girl was afraid of meetings for a long time, feeling that she had offended Kostya. Her whole being was drawn to him, and when she became completely unbearable, she would go to his house and sit on the porch for hours. But friendly relations were broken.

Several years have passed. Once on the train Konstantin was returning from Kazan with Anatoly. Having met Lyudmila in the carriage, he approached her and invited her: “I have an exhibition opening in Zelenodolsk.” Come. There is also your portrait.

A ringing, joyful hope awoke in her soul. Of course she will come! But at home, my mother categorically forbade it: “You won’t go! Why run around somewhere, you already have a lot of his drawings and portraits!”

The exhibition closed, and suddenly Konstantin himself came to her house. Having collected all his drawings, he tore them up in front of Lyudmila and silently left. Forever…

Several works of semi-abstract style - the memory of youthful quest pictorial forms and media dedicated to Lyudmila Chugunova have been preserved in the collections of Blinov and Pronin.

At one time, Konstantin had warm relations with Lena Aseeva, a graduate of the Kazan Conservatory. Lena's portrait in oil is successfully demonstrated at all the artist's posthumous exhibitions. Elena successfully completed educational institution in piano and, naturally, had a great understanding of music. This circumstance especially attracted Konstantin to the girl. One day he made up his mind and proposed to her. The girl replied that she had to think...

Well, who among us, mere mortals, can imagine what passions boil and disappear without a trace in the soul? great artist, what sometimes insignificant circumstances can radically change the intensity of his emotions? Of course, he did not know what answer Lena came to him with the next day, and, apparently, he was no longer interested in this, since he did not immediately receive the desired answer.

Many will say that this is not serious and that it is important questions they don't decide. And they will, of course, be right. But let's remember that artists, as a rule, are easily vulnerable and proud people. Unfortunately, the failure that befell Konstantin in this matchmaking played another fatal role in his fate.

Already a mature man, at the age of about thirty, he fell in love with Lena Kovalenko, who also received musical education. An intelligent, subtle, charming girl, Lena disturbed Konstantin’s heart. A strong, real feeling awoke in him again, as in his youth, but the fear of being rejected, of encountering misunderstanding, did not allow him to arrange his happiness... But the fact that his only chosen one before last days life remained painting, one can discern the special purpose of the artist.

There are, undoubtedly, objective reasons for this. One of them is selfless mother's love Klavdia Parmenovna, who was afraid to let her son out of his native nest. Sometimes she could look at the bride too meticulously, with a critical eye, and then express her opinion to her son, to which Konstantin reacted very sensitively.

Man with an owl

Extraordinary talent, rich spiritual world and the education he received allowed Konstantin Vasiliev to leave his incomparable mark on Russian painting. His paintings are easily recognizable. He may not be recognized at all, some of his works are controversial, but once having seen Vasiliev’s works, one can no longer remain indifferent to them. I would like to quote an excerpt from Vladimir Soloukhin’s story “The Continuation of Time”: -... “Konstantin Vasiliev?!” the artists protested. “But this is unprofessional. Painting has its own laws, its own rules. And this is illiterate from the point of view of painting. He is an amateur ..., an amateur, and all his paintings are amateurish daubs. And not a single spot of painting corresponds to another spot of painting! - But excuse me, if this painting is not even art at all, then how and why does it affect people? .. - Maybe there is poetry, its own thoughts, symbols, images, its own view of the world - we don’t argue, but there is no professional painting - Yes, thoughts and symbols cannot influence people on their own in their naked form. there would only be slogans, abstract signs. And poetry cannot exist in an unembodied form. And on the contrary, if the picture is super-literate and professional, if in it every pictorial spot, as you say, is correlated with another pictorial spot, but there is no poetry in it. , no thought, no symbol, no view of the world, if the picture does not touch either the mind or the heart, is boring, dull or simply dead, spiritually dead, then why do I need this competent relationship of parts. The main thing here, apparently, is the spirituality of Konstantin Vasiliev. It was the spirituality that people felt..."

Kostya died under very strange and mysterious circumstances. Official version- was hit together with a friend at a railway crossing by a passing train. This happened on October 29, 1976. Kostya's relatives and friends do not agree with this - there are too many incomprehensible coincidences associated with his death. This misfortune shocked many. They buried Konstantin in a birch grove, in the very forest where he loved to be.

Fate, which is so often evil towards great people from the outside, always treats with care what is internal and deep in them. The thought that is to live does not die with its carriers, even when death overtakes them unexpectedly and accidentally. And the artist will live as long as his paintings are alive.

Fires are burning

Valkyrie over a slain warrior

Wotan

Fire Spell

Konstantin Alekseevich Vasiliev (September 3, 1942, Maykop - October 29, 1976, Vasilyevo, Tatar ASSR, RSFSR) - Soviet artist, widely known for his works on epic and mythological themes.

Biography of Konstantin Vasiliev

Born in Maykop (Adygea Autonomous Okrug) during German occupation cities. Since 1949 he lived in the village of Vasilyevo near Kazan. Studied at the Kazan Art School (1957-1961). Worked as a drawing and drawing teacher in high school, graphic designer.

Participant of the republican exhibition “Satirist Artists of Kazan” (Moscow, 1963), exhibitions in Zelenodolsk and Kazan (1968-76). In the 1980-90s. A number of personal exhibitions of Vasiliev took place in many cities of Russia, as well as in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Spain. Open Memorial Museum in the village Vasilyevo (1996), Art Gallery in Kazan (1996) and the Konstantin Vasiliev Museum in Moscow, in Lianozovsky Park (1998). Prize of the Komsomol of Tatarstan named after. M. Jalil for a series of paintings about the Great Patriotic War (in 1988).

Konstantin Vasiliev died tragically - he was hit together with a friend at a railway crossing by a passing train. This happened on October 29, 1976. He was buried in the village of Vasilyevo. They buried Konstantin in a birch grove, in the very forest where he loved to be.

Vasiliev's creativity

Vasiliev’s creative heritage is multifaceted and diverse and includes more than 400 works of painting and graphics: portraits, landscapes, surreal compositions, paintings on fairy tales, on topics of ancient and modern Russian history.

The deep symbolism of painting, combined with the original color scheme of the canvases - the widespread use of silver-gray and red colors and their shades - make Vasiliev’s paintings recognizable and original.

Works from the early 1960s. marked by the influence of surrealism and abstract expressionism (“String”, 1963; “ Abstract compositions", 1963). In the late 1960s gt. abandoned formalistic searches and worked in a realistic manner.

Vasiliev addressed folk art: Russian songs, epics, fairy tales, Scandinavian and Irish sagas, to “Eddic poetry”.

He created works on mythological subjects, heroic themes of the Slavic and Scandinavian epics, about the Great Patriotic War (“Marshal Zhukov”, “Invasion”, “Forty-First Parade”, “Longing for the Motherland”, all - 1974). He also worked in the genre of landscape and portrait (“Swans”, 1967; “Northern Eagle”, 1969; “At the Well”, 1973; “Waiting”, 1976; “Man with an Eagle Owl”, 1976).

Expectation Parade in the 1941 The man with the owl

Author of a graphic series of portraits of composers and musicians: “Shostakovich” (1961), “Beethoven” (1962), “Scriabin” (1962), “Rimsky-Korsakov” (1962) and others; graphic cycle to R. Wagner’s opera “The Ring of the Nibelungs” (1970s).

Artist phenomenon

Many professional artists The paintings were criticized for being sweet, artificial, and pandering to the taste of the crowd. But people liked it. And how! Vasiliev's exhibitions in the 1980s were competitors in terms of attendance of the living classic Glazunov.

During perestroika, Vasiliev's paintings became a banner for the first lovers of paganism and guardians of the Russian national idea. How and in what direction such personalities pushed the artist’s creativity is not difficult to guess.

The paintings were dominated by ancient Russian themes, but not historical, but idealized, going into what is now called “Slavic fantasy.”

On the technical side, the paintings are polished and meticulous, full of details, which appeals to the audience. The faithful “Russian patriots” do not think too much about the paintings. In their opinion, Vasiliev’s works simply charge the viewer with patriotism, love for the homeland and spirituality, just by standing next to them for a few minutes.

Experts who have populated Lurka in abundance recommend paying attention interesting coincidence. Although Vasiliev was never familiar with the work of National Socialist artists, one can compare his techniques with those used by the creators of the Third Reich. Such a coincidence can be a serious weapon in the hands of a skilled troll.

The artist's museum, which is nestled comfortably in a quiet but expensive corner of Moscow, was repeatedly tried to be squeezed out for their base needs by serious men who did not even disdain setting fire to the building. The hero's paintings were not damaged. The well-known Mikhail Zadornov, having acquired noble gray hair and a beard, became an active fan of the artist’s work and spoke out in defense of the collections of paintings, preventing the artist’s sister from selling everything over the hill.

MP3 player for watching with music

Man with an owl

On Kalinov Bridge

Volga and Mikula

Fight with the Serpent

Ilya Muromets and Gol Kabatskaya

Sadko and the Lord of the Sea

Semargl

Eupraxia

Starry sky

Alyosha Popovich and the beautiful girl

Russian knight

Dobrynya's fight with the snake

Avdotya-Ryazanochka

Fires are burning

Ilya Muromsets shooting at churches

Northern eagle

Yaroslavna's cry

Accidental meeting

Mermaid

Farewell of a Slav

Sviyazhsk

Konstantin Vasiliev was born on September 3, 1942 in the city of Maikop, Krasnodar Territory. His father Alexey Alekseevich is from St. Petersburg, member of three wars (1st World War, civil - fought in the Chapaev division, 2nd World War - partisan, communist), engineer, great connoisseur and lover of nature, admirer of literature.

Mother Claudia Parmenovna Shishkina - on the side of her mother from the Saratov peasants.

On August 8, 1942, Maikop was occupied by the Nazis, and my father joined the partisans. But already in February 1943 the city was liberated, and my father returned. In 1946, the family moved to Kazan, then to Vasilyevo, thirty kilometers from the city, opposite the place where the Sviyaga flows into the Volga. Virgin forests, river expanses... Kostya goes hunting and fishing with his father. These were, apparently, unforgettable moments when the soul was open to everything wonderful in the world. He started drawing early. Mother said about him: “He was born with a pencil in his hands.” Parents are seriously thinking about further development talent, given by fate their son.

Having passed the exams perfectly, Konstantin Vasiliev becomes a student at the Moscow Art Boarding School at the Institute. Surikov Academy of Arts of the USSR. From 1954 to 1957 he lived and studied in Moscow. These years are filled with impressions from visual arts, music, theaters.

Studied at the Kazan Art School (1957-1961). He worked as a drawing and drawing teacher in a high school and as a graphic designer. Vasiliev’s creative heritage is extensive: paintings, graphics, sketches, illustrations, sketches for painting a church in Omsk. Works from the early 1960s. marked by the influence of surrealism and abstract expressionism (“String”, 1963; “Abstract Compositions”, 1963). In the late 1960s gt. abandoned formalistic searches and worked in a realistic manner.

Vasiliev turned to folk art: Russian songs, epics, fairy tales, Scandinavian and Irish sagas, and “Eddic poetry.” He created works on mythological subjects, heroic themes of Slavic and Scandinavian epics, and about the Great Patriotic War.

Konstantin Vasiliev passed away at the age of 34, as if confirming the ominous theory about the connection between genius and the inevitable early death. The artist died strangely; there were even four versions of his death: on October 29, 1976, he was beaten by hooligans on an empty train, thrown out of the train while moving, hacked to death with an ax, and hit by a train at Antropshino station. The prosecutor's office did not initiate a criminal case, there was no investigation, and the circumstances and reasons for the death of Konstantin Vasilyev will probably remain a mystery.

The artist left behind about 400 paintings, most of his creative heritage - 82 canvases - was kept in the museum. It is difficult to envy the artist’s fate. Unrecognized and persecuted during his lifetime, he painted as if possessed, as if he felt that he would soon leave. If suddenly an extravagant buyer appeared, interested unrecognized genius, the artist simply measured his work diagonally with a school ruler and charged the stunned collector a ruble per centimeter. And only many years later will people notice that Vasiliev’s paintings give rise to the so-called "Stendhal syndrome" , and visitors to exhibitions and the museum will lose consciousness from the insane energy that the master put into his canvases. His paintings are incredibly popular and are valued at many millions of dollars. Over 20 years, more than fifty personal exhibitions took place in Russian cities, as well as in Bulgaria, the former Yugoslavia, and Spain.

In 1988, Konstantin Vasiliev was posthumously awarded the Komsomol Prize of Tatarstan. Musa Jalil for a series of paintings about the Great Patriotic War.

In 1996 and 1998, two museums and the Konstantin Vasiliev Art Gallery were opened.

The museum in Moscow, where 82 paintings by the artist were stored, was created with great love fans of Vasiliev's work. These are real Russian patriots, led by Anatoly Ivanovich Doronin, who love the work of Konstantin Vasiliev and are devoted to their work.

To create the museum, the Moscow government spent three years knocking on the thresholds of the Moscow government. Finally they rented out a ruined mansion, of which only three walls remained. Then, for almost ten years, they restored it, with their own hands, with their own money. And so, in 1998, the museum opened. But land in Moscow is a tasty morsel, there are many who want to take it away; on this territory, where the museum is located, it was planned to build 2 high-rise buildings. Since 2005, attacks on the museum began - raiders, courts, fake documents, signatures...

Before 15 paintings from the Konstantin Vasiliev Museum were to be transferred to the ownership of the artist’s sister, the Club meeting decided to conduct an examination of all the paintings to establish their authenticity. Some law firm"Private Law" offered its assistance in transporting and placing the paintings on the territory of the closed security enterprise "Voskhod". However, then the paintings strangely disappeared.

That same night the museum was set on fire. On the night of September 21, 2009, a fire occurred in the Vasiliev Museum building.

At about 10 p.m., one of the two guards in the building woke up and smelled gasoline. A few minutes later the room began to fill with smoke. The gas boiler room was on fire. He woke up the second security guard and they, calling the firefighters, tried to extinguish the fire themselves. However, the fire spread through the ventilation system into the attic. Arriving firefighters managed to put out the fire quite quickly.

As a result of the fire, the roof and part of the premises burned down. The rest were severely damaged by water during extinguishing. Fortunately, there were no paintings in the building, but now the museum needs major renovation.

Burnt car tires and pieces of wood were found at the site of the fire. Even after several hours, there was a strong smell of gasoline, which suggests deliberate arson.

Only a year later the paintings were found and returned to the now new owner - the artist’s sister Valentina Vasilyeva. Paintings by the artist Konstantin Vasilyev, which, according to the decision of the Butyrsky court, should be transferred to sister Valentina Vasilyeva, were found in cultural center FSB!

As Irina Lakhouzova, a representative of the Moscow department of the bailiff service, stated: “The paintings were found in the cultural center of the FSB, an FSB officer who was involved in transporting the paintings was involved in this situation. They subsequently disappeared, thanks to the bailiff service, they received information that the paintings were located at the FSB cultural center, they informed the investigation, the investigation has already directly seized it."

In October 2010, an exhibition of missing paintings was held in Moscow.

However, Vasilyeva did not have to dispose of the collection - the same company of swindlers that started this whole story presented her with a huge bill for costs and payment of court decisions in her favor. Therefore, she had to give the paintings to them. In a conversation with the director of the museum A.I. These people told Doronin that the contract for the disposal of the collection was drawn up in such a way that Valentin Vasilyev would never receive the paintings.

After the arson of the museum building in the year, the Club of Painting Lovers of K. Vasiliev was drawn into numerous litigation with the mentioned legal form. And yet, having won more than 30 wrongful claims, the Club reopened the museum to visitors on March 31, 2012.

The paintings of Konstantin Vasiliev can certainly be considered a national treasure. And certainly - of general cultural value. And for all fans of the artist’s work, by and large, it doesn’t matter who exactly will keep the paintings, the main thing is that they are properly taken care of and they are available to the general public. And will it be state or private museum- doesn't matter. This is of fundamental importance only for those who see in Vasiliev’s paintings primarily 90 million rubles, and not works of art.

Biography of Konstantin Vasiliev

Konstantin Alekseevich Vasiliev (1942-1976) is a Russian artist whose creative heritage includes more than 400 works of painting and graphics: portraits, landscapes, surreal compositions, paintings of epic, mythological and battle genres.

Among the famous works are the cycles “Epic Rus'” and “The Ring of the Nibelung”, a series of paintings about the Great Patriotic War, graphic portraits, as well as the artist’s last work, “Man with an Eagle Owl”.

From 1949 to 1976 lived in the house where the museum was opened.

In 1976 he died tragically and was buried in the village. Vasilyevo.

The exhibition is based on a memorial collection donated by the artist’s sister V.A. Vasilyeva and his friends.

Artist by heart

From the book “Rus’ Magic Palette” by Anatoly Doronin

To understand the inner world of a person, one must certainly touch his roots. Kostya's father was born in 1897 into the family of a St. Petersburg worker. By the will of fate, he became a participant in three wars and spent his entire life working in management positions in industry. Kostya’s mother was almost twenty years younger than her father and belonged to the family of the great Russian painter I.I. Shishkin.

Young Kostya was struck by the beauty of these places. It was special here, created by the great river. The right bank rises in a blue haze, almost steep, overgrown with forest; you can see a distant white monastery on the slope, to the right - the fabulous Sviyazhsk, all located on Table Mountain with its temples and churches, shops and houses, rising above the wide meadows in the floodplain of Sviyaga and the Volga. And very far away, already beyond Sviyaga, on its high bank, the bell tower and church of the village of Tikhy Ples are barely visible. Closer to the village there is a river, a wide water stream. And the water is deep, slow and cool, and the pools are bottomless, shady and cold.

Kostya’s first favorite book is “The Tale of the Three Bogatyrs.” At the same time, the boy became acquainted with the painting “Bogatyrs” by V.M. Vasnetsov, and a year later he copied it with colored pencils. On my father's birthday I gave him a painting as a gift. The similarity between the heroes was striking. Inspired by his parents’ praise, the boy copied “The Knight at the Crossroads,” also with colored pencils. Then I made a pencil drawing from Antokolsky’s sculpture “Ivan the Terrible”. His first landscape sketches have been preserved: a stump strewn with yellow autumn leaves, a hut in the forest.

In 1954, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper published an advertisement that the Moscow Secondary Art School at the V. I. Surikov Institute accepted children gifted in the field of drawing. His parents immediately decided that this was the kind of school Kostya needed - he showed his ability to draw very early. The school accepted five to six nonresident children per year. Kostya was one of them, passing all exams with “excellent marks”.

The Moscow secondary art school was located in the quiet Lavrushinsky lane of the old Zamoskvorechye, opposite the Tretyakov Gallery. There were only three such schools in the country: in addition to Moscow, there were also in Leningrad and Kyiv. But the MSHS was revered beyond competition, if only because it existed at the Surikov Institute, and had the Tretyakov Gallery as a training base.

Kostya went further and heard a call within himself when he saw three bright, familiar figures on Vasnetsov’s large, half-wall canvas “Bogatyrs”. The boy was delighted to meet the source of his recent inspiration: after all, he studied the reproduction of this painting centimeter by centimeter, looked at it countless times, and then carefully redrew it. So this is what it is - the original!

Having recovered from the first overwhelming impressions of the giant city, the boy did not get lost in the unfamiliar space. The Tretyakov Gallery and the Pushkin Museum, the Bolshoi Theater and the Conservatory - these became his main gates to the world of classical art. With childish seriousness, he reads “Treatise on Painting” by Leonardo da Vinci, and then studies the paintings of this great master and “Napoleon” by the Soviet historian Evgeniy Tarle, with all the fervor of his young soul he immerses himself in the music of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Mozart and Bach. And the powerful, almost materialized spirituality of these giants is fixed in his consciousness with crystals of precious rock.

A typical surviving small still life from that period is “Kulik”, painted in oil. It is a clear imitation of the Dutch masters - the same strict gloomy tonality, filigree painted texture of objects. At the edge of the table, on a rough canvas tablecloth, lies the hunter’s catch, and next to it is a glass of water and an apricot kernel. Transparent well water, a still-dry bone, and a bird left for a while - everything is so natural that the viewer can easily mentally expand the scope of the picture and complete in his imagination some everyday situation accompanying the artist’s production.

In the spring of 1961, Konstantin graduated from the Kazan Art School. His diploma work included sketches of the scenery for Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “The Snow Maiden”. The defense was brilliant. The work was rated “excellent”, but unfortunately was not preserved.

In a painful search for himself, Vasiliev “got sick” with abstractionism and surrealism. It was interesting to try styles and trends, led by such fashionable names as Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, Salvador Dali. Vasiliev quite quickly comprehended the creative credo of each of them and created new interesting developments in their vein. Plunging with his usual seriousness into the development of new directions, Vasiliev creates a whole series of interesting surreal works, such as “String”, “Ascension”, “Apostle”. However, Vasiliev himself was quickly disappointed by the formal search, which was based on naturalism.

Drawing an analogy with music, he compared this direction with a jazz arrangement of a symphonic piece. In any case, Vasiliev’s delicate, subtle soul did not want to put up with a certain frivolity of the forms of surrealism: the permissiveness of the expression of feelings and thoughts, their imbalance and nakedness. The artist felt its internal inconsistency, the destruction of something important that is in realistic art, the meaning, the purpose that it carries.

Trying to comprehend the essence of phenomena and suffer through a general structure of thoughts for future works, Konstantin took up landscape sketches. What a variety of landscapes he created during his short creative life! Undoubtedly, Vasiliev created landscapes that are unique in their beauty, but some new strong thought was tormented and beating in his mind: “The inner strength of all living things, the strength of the spirit - this is what an artist should express!” Yes, beauty, greatness of spirit - that’s what will be the main thing for Konstantin from now on! And “Northern Eagle”, “Man with an Owl”, “Waiting”, “At Someone else’s Window”, “Northern Legend” and many other works were born, which became the embodiment of a special “Vasilievsky” style that cannot be confused with anything.

Northern eagle

Someone else's window

When fourteen-year-old Lyudmila Chugunova entered the house, Kostya suddenly became confused, began to fuss, and began to move the easel from place to place. The first session lasted a long time. In the evening Kostya went to accompany Lyuda home. A gang of guys who came their way brutally beat him: immediately and unconditionally, Lyuda was recognized as the most beautiful girl in the village. But could beatings cool the artist’s ardent heart? He fell in love with the girl. I painted her portraits every day. Lyudmila recounted her romantic dreams to him, and he made color illustrations for them. They both didn’t like the color yellow (maybe just a youthful dislike for the symbol of betrayal?), and one day, after drawing blue sunflowers, Kostya asked: “Do you understand what I wrote?” If not, better be silent, don’t say anything..."

Konstantin introduced Luda to music and literature. They seemed to understand each other from half a word, from half a glance. One day Lyudmila came to see Konstantin with a friend. At that time, he and his friend Tolya Kuznetsov were sitting in the twilight, enthusiastically listening to classical music and did not react to those who entered. For Luda’s friend, such inattention seemed insulting, and she dragged Luda away by the hand.

A ringing, joyful hope awoke in her soul. Of course she will come! But at home my mother categorically forbade me: “You won’t go! Why run around somewhere, you already have plenty of his drawings and portraits!”

The exhibition closed, and suddenly Konstantin himself came to her house. Having collected all his drawings, he tore them up in front of Lyudmila and silently left. Forever…

Several works of a semi-abstract style - a memory of the youthful search for pictorial forms and means, dedicated to Lyudmila Chugunova, are still preserved in the collections of Blinov and Pronin.

At one time, Konstantin had warm relations with Lena Aseeva, a graduate of the Kazan Conservatory. Lena's portrait in oil is successfully demonstrated at all the artist's posthumous exhibitions. Elena successfully graduated from an educational institution in piano and, naturally, had an excellent understanding of music. This circumstance especially attracted Konstantin to the girl. One day he made up his mind and proposed to her. The girl replied that she had to think...

Well, who of us, mere mortals, can imagine what passions boil and disappear without a trace in the soul of a great artist, what sometimes insignificant circumstances can radically change the intensity of his emotions? Of course, he did not know what answer Lena came to him with the next day, and, apparently, he was no longer interested in this, since he did not immediately receive the desired answer.

Many will say that this is not serious and that important issues are not resolved this way. And they will, of course, be right. But let's remember that artists, as a rule, are easily vulnerable and proud people. Unfortunately, the failure that befell Konstantin in this matchmaking played another fatal role in his fate.

Already a mature man, at the age of about thirty, he fell in love with Lena Kovalenko, who also received a musical education. An intelligent, subtle, charming girl, Lena disturbed Konstantin’s heart. Once again, as in his youth, a strong, real feeling awoke in him, but the fear of being refused, of encountering misunderstanding did not allow him to achieve his happiness... But in the fact that painting remained his only chosen one until the last days of his life, one can discern the special purpose of the artist.

There are, undoubtedly, objective reasons for this. One of them is the selfless maternal love of Claudia Parmenovna, who was afraid to let her son out of his native nest. Sometimes she could look at the bride too meticulously, with a critical eye, and then express her opinion to her son, to which Konstantin reacted very sensitively.

Man with an owl

Extraordinary talent, a rich spiritual world and the education he received allowed Konstantin Vasiliev to leave his incomparable mark on Russian painting. His paintings are easily recognizable. He may not be recognized at all, some of his works are controversial, but once having seen Vasiliev’s works, one can no longer remain indifferent to them. I would like to quote an excerpt from Vladimir Soloukhin’s story “Continuation of Time”: -… “Konstantin Vasiliev?! - the artists protested. - But this is unprofessional. Painting has its own laws, its own rules. And this is illiterate from the point of view of painting. He is an amateur..., an amateur, and all his paintings are amateurish daub. There, not a single picturesque spot corresponds to another picturesque spot! - But excuse me, if this painting is not even art at all, then how and why does it affect people?.. - Maybe it has poetry, its own thoughts, symbols, images, its own view of the world - we don’t argue, but there is no professional painting there. - Yes, thoughts and symbols cannot influence people on their own in their naked form. These would only be slogans, abstract signs. And poetry cannot exist in an unembodied form. And on the contrary, if the picture is super-literate and professional, if in it every pictorial spot, as you say, is correlated with another pictorial spot, but there is no poetry, no thought, no symbol, no own view of the world, if the picture does not touch no mind, no heart, boring, sad or simply dead, spiritually dead, then why do I need this competent relationship of parts. The main thing here, apparently, is the spirituality of Konstantin Vasiliev. It was the spirituality that people felt..."

Kostya died under very strange and mysterious circumstances. The official version is that he and his friend were hit at a railway crossing by a passing train. This happened on October 29, 1976. Kostya's relatives and friends do not agree with this - there are too many incomprehensible coincidences associated with his death. This misfortune shocked many. They buried Konstantin in a birch grove, in the very forest where he loved to be.