Vasiliev, Konstantin Alekseevich

Born in Maikop ( Adygei AO ) during the German occupation of the city. The artist's father Alexey Alekseevich Vasilyev was the chief engineer of one of the factories ^[1] , and during the war he was an active participant in the partisan movement. After the war, he was sent to establish production at the Vasilyevsky Glass Factory, in the village of Vasilyevo near Kazan.

Mother (Claudia Parmenovna) was engaged in raising children (Constantine and his two sisters), who gathered a good library at home and introduced the children to the masterpieces of world culture and art.

Since 1949, the family lived in the village of Vasilyevo . Konstantin began to draw early, at 11 he passed the competition and was enrolled in the Moscow Secondary Art Boarding School at the Moscow State Institute of Art named after V.I. Surikov . In 1957 he transferred to the Kazan Art School (1957–1961), which he graduated with honors, receiving a degree as a theater decorator. His thesis work was sketches for the play “The Snow Maiden ” by A. N. Ostrovsky .

He worked as a teacher of drawing and drawing in high school, as a graphic designer. Vasiliev’s creative heritage is extensive: paintings, graphics, etudes, illustrations, sketches of the church's painting in Omsk. Works of the early 1960s marked by the influence of surrealism and abstract expressionism ("String", 1963; "Abstract composition", 1963).

In the late 1960s. abandoned formalistic searches, worked in a realistic manner.

Vasiliev turned to folk art: Russian songs, epics, fairy tales, Scandinavian and Irish sagas, to "Eddic poetry." He created works on mythological subjects, heroic themes of Slavic and Scandinavian epics about the Great Patriotic War (“Marshal Zhukov”, “Invasion”, “Parade of the forty-first”, “Longing for the Motherland”, 1972-1975).

He also worked in the genre of landscape and portrait (Swans, 1967; Northern Eagle, 1969; At the Well, 1973; Waiting, 1976; The Man with the Owl, 1976). The 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 the opera by R. Wagner “The Ring of the Nibelungs” (1970s).

Participant of the republican exhibition “Kazan Satirists” (Moscow, 1963), exhibitions in Zelenodolsk and Kazan (1968-76). In the 1980s-90s. A number of personal exhibitions of Vasiliev took place in many cities of Russia, as well as in Bulgaria , Yugoslavia , and Spain . The Memorial Museum in the town was opened. Vasilievo (1996), Art Gallery in Kazan (1996) and the Konstantin Vasiliev Museum in Moscow, in Lianozovo Park (1998). Komsomol Prize of Tatarstan named after M. Jalil for the cycle of paintings about the Great Patriotic War (in 1988).

Konstantin Vasiliev died - he was shot down with a friend at a train crossing by a passing train ^[2] . It happened on October 29, 1976. He was buried in the village Vasilievo [1] .

Konstantin Alekseevich was buried in a birch grove, in the very forest where he loved to visit ^[2] .

At first he wrote in the genres of abstraction and surrealism. Then, after the crisis he experienced in 1968-69, he changed the style of painting.

Epic Heroic

The inspiration for Vasiliev was Icelandic sagas . He carefully studied this book, making notes, from which it is clear that his main attention was attracted by the so-called family sagas, a kind of description of the life of the remarkable Icelanders of the 9th — 11th centuries ^[1] . He is attracted to the mystic of destinies: heroes of sagas, as a rule. perish, preceded by prophetic dreams and omens. The strength of the spirit of these people, the expectation of death and readiness for it became a topic that the artist began to display.

At the same time, Vasiliev became acquainted with the work of Richard Wagner and even specially studied German to understand the texts of his operas. Working on the paintings of the cycle “ The Nibelungen Ring ”, Konstantin sang Siegfried's arias, thereby tuning himself into the desired wave. This series is a personal understanding of the moral theme of Wagner's epic, and not just an illustration to it. The completion of the graphic cycle was a four-meter canvas “Valkyrie over the slain Siegfried”, dedicated to the opera “The Death of the Gods ”. In it, Vasiliev does not agree with the Wagnerian interpretation of the tragedy, when the hero becomes a victim of the terrible power of gold: his Valkyrie, as a vision, descends to Siegfried on a white horse, urging him to rise and return to exploits.

Battle Painting

In search of heroics in painting, Vasilyev could not bypass the theme of the struggle of the Soviet people against Nazism. His canvas, The Parade of the 41st, represents this event from an unusual angle: the look is directed from St. Basil's Cathedral , over the deliberately enlarged Monument to Minin and Pozharsky . This sets a counterpoint between the recognition of the picture of the famous parade, from which the battle of Moscow began , and the symbol of popular resistance to the invaders. Steam to this picture “Invasion” Vasilyev at first planned as a battle scene of the struggle of the Teutons with the Slavs , but after a series of alterations he leaned towards two symbols: an iron column of conquerors moves past the destroyed core of the Assumption Cathedral of Kiev-Pechersk Lavra.

Then the artist embodies two masterpieces of Russian military music in painting: “ Farewell of the Slav ” and “Homesickness”. Always limited in funds, this time he chooses a large form: each picture is up to 2 meters long. Unfortunately, the artist had intended to rewrite the “Farewell of the Slavs”, for which he put the picture to soak, because of which the canvas had suffered, since it had been removed from the water after Vasiliev's death.

The portrait of Marshal G.K. Zhukov was conceived as the beginning of a series of images of great military leaders, and made in a deliberately ceremonial manner. “Knowing that this tradition is labeled“ high-minded spirit ”, that it is cursed and in every way wounded, Konstantin was not afraid to cross the forbidden line,” writes Vasiliev A. I. Doronin, a researcher of creativity ^[1] . The legendary marshal tramples the standards and banners of the defeated enemy with his feet, his overcoat on his shoulders is like wings raising him to glory, and behind him are the ruins of the destroyed but not defeated Stalingrad, behind which the fire of vengeance burns.

Candles and lights

Vasiliev turned to the topic of Russian fate as early as the late 1960s, working on the images of the Lay of Igor . The final man's philosophical chord of this topic was the painting “A Man with a Owl,” completed a few days before the artist’s death. In this picture, Vasilyev's favorite subject, a candle, turns into a symbol-torch, in the appearance of an old man, he represents the wisdom of human experience; with its roots, it is as if it had grown into the earth, and with its head it is connected with heaven. In his hand he holds a burning scroll with the artist's pseudonym “Konstantin Velikoross” ^[3] and the date that became the year of his death: 1976. From the flame and ashes an oak sprout breaks out, depicted like trefoil flowers, a symbol of wisdom and enlightenment . Above the seedling burns, a symbol of the unquenchable burning of the soul. Over the gray head, an old man holds a whip, and on his mitten an eagle owl sits, whose all-seeing eye completes an upward movement toward heaven and space. The owl is a bird for which there are no secrets.

Having completed “The Man with the Owl,” Vasiliev told those who came to visit his friend and mother: “I now understood that it was necessary to write and how to write.” A few days later his life ended.

The creative direction in art begun by Vasiliev echoes the prophecy of the well-known critic of the beginning of the 20th century Sergey Durylin: “The only way to get rid of the tyranny of decline in art is the path of symbolism as an artistic method, myth-making as a flesh of art” ^[4] .

This great glory came to the artist decades after his untimely death. In 1996, his gallery was opened in Kazan, on June 26, 2013, transformed into a museum ^[4] .

Vasiliev as Kazan's landmark

K. Vasilyeva Gallery has been working in private premises since 1996, but in 2011 the owners terminated the contract, and the collection was left without a home. Friends of the artist and the museum staff appealed for support to cultural figures of Tatarstan in order to petition the city and republic authorities for public space for the museum. The idea was accepted positively: Zufar Gimaev, Chairman of the Board of the Union of Artists of the Republic of Tatarstan, confirmed that Kazan was known in Russia and abroad as the city where the artist Konstantin Vasilyev lived and worked, and Rashid Kalimullin , chairman of the Union of Composers of the Republic of Tatarstan, considered Kazan’s name to be Konstantin Vasilyev’s name the names of Chaliapin and Nuriev ^[4] . They spoke in favor of the creation of the museum in the Writers' Union, the Union of Architects of the Republic of Tatarstan, the Society of Russian Culture, the societies of Belarusian, Ukrainian, Slavic culture, etc. Finally, the Mayor of Kazan Ilsur Metshin decided to select a suitable room for the museum of K. Vasilyev city ​​center, on the pedestrian Bauman street, at the intersection with ul. Astronomical - the pre-revolutionary house of Petzold. After the reconstruction, which lasted 2 years, a modernly equipped museum was created inside the building, in which 90% of the artist's works were collected ^[4] : the Moscow part of the artist’s collection Valentina Alekseyevna Vasilyeva was added to the Kazan part of the collection of paintings and graphics.

The museum has created a memorial room of Konstantin Vasilyev, where are placed the furnishings that he used, an easel, brushes. Under the glass of the showcase lies a statement written by the artist to contemporaries and descendants: “If my paintings are not needed by the Fatherland, then all my work should be considered a failure” ^[4] .

Other Memory Signs

• Museum of Konstantin Vasilyev in the village of Vasilyevo
• The Minor Planet (3930) Vasiliev , discovered in 1982, is named after the artist.

• "Invasion"
• "Farewell of the Slav"
• "Wotan"
• Sventovit
• "Valkyrie over the slain warrior"
• "Dostoevsky, Fedor Mikhailovich"
• "Marshal Zhukov"
• "The man with the owl"
• "Mermaid"
• "Forest Gothic"
• “Gift of Svyatogor” (1974, cardboard, pastel)
• Volga and Mikula (1974)
• Ascension (1964)
• “Andrew the First-Called” (1964)
• "Apostle"
• "String"
• "Ilya Muromets Angry"
• The Chapel (1971) ^[5]

• Pictures of Konstantin Vasilyev
• Konstantin Vasilyev Museum website
• Russian artist Konstantin Vasilyev
• Unofficial site of the museum of Konstantin Vasiliev. Photo gallery, forum, comments to articles.
• Konstantin Vasilyev and music - the unknown side of the artist

• Doronin, Anatoly Ivanovich. Russ magic palette. - M .: Young Guard, 1992. - 252 p. - 30 000 copies - ISBN 5-235-00358-6 .
• Doronin, Anatoly Ivanovich. Konstantin Vasilyev - artist on the call of the heart (Rus.) // Konstantin Vasilyev: Golden Gallery of Russian Painting. Album. - M .: Art-Spring, 2008. - ISBN 978-5-9794-0159-1 .
• Shnirelman Victor . Russian fatherhood: neo-paganism and nationalism in modern Russia. - M .: BBI , 2012. - 302 p. - ISBN 978-5-89647-291-9 .
• Suleimanov R.R. Baki Urmanche and Konstantin Vasilyev: were there any relationships between artists? // Report at the III All-Russian Conference on the works of Konstantin Vasilyev (September 3, 2017, Kazan ) / Russian folk line, September 5, 2017.