Viktor Popkov is a painter and graphic artist, the author of original talented works, many of which are presented in the Tretyakov Gallery. Having survived a terrible war as a child, in his paintings he conveyed the harsh reality and inner courage, which he observed in difficult years for the country. He made the audience sympathize with his heroes and admire them, empathize and admire.
Childhood
Popkov Viktor Efimovich (1932 - 1974) was born in Moscow into a family of peasants. Father and mother, accustomed to hard work from an early age, moved from place to place in search of work.
Viktor Popkov was the second child in a large family of four children. The news of the death of his father in the war arrived when the future painter was nine years old, and his youngest brother was a few months old. Mother, at the request of her beloved husband, devoted herself entirely to children, never getting married. But she put the children on their feet, gave everyone a proper education.
The Popkov family was friendly, but poor. The children loved their mother and, seeing her hard work, tried to listen in everything and not to upset. Realizing that they are connected by indestructible blood ties, the guys grew up together almost without quarrels and disagreements, always ready to come to the rescue of each other and provide the necessary support.
Mother, Stepanida Ivanovna, adored her kids and tried to bring them up in severity, but tenderness.
Such a seemingly happy childhood was overshadowed by several more tragedies (in addition to the death of his father and constant need).
The death of his younger brother, the universal favorite of Tolya, left an indelible mark on the soul of Viktor Popkov. He could not even attend the funeral of the baby.
The second bright unforgettable shock happened a little later, when a bull attacked Vitya and knocked him to the ground. The boy managed to escape thanks to timely help.
But, despite all the sorrows, Viktor Popkov grew up as a kind and friendly child, generous and sociable.
First steps on the creative path
At school, the boy was distinguished by special diligence and diligence. From an early age, he developed a desire to create on paper. Vita liked to follow the development of the drawing on the then “switchers” (transfers), on which he spent all his pocket money, and also to watch the work of an artist neighbor who painted in watercolor, but whose name, unfortunately, we do not know.
Stepanida Ivanovna, who was the first to see in her son impulses to work with a brush, began to encourage the child's desire to create. She took him to art school and helped him enter the Moscow Graphic School, sincerely praised him, inspired him to creative exploits and gave thoughtful advice.
And the boy wrote everywhere and about everything. His early sketches covered a variety of objects and events - these were trees, houses, and people.
The teachers of the art workshop also considered the talent in a gifted student and paid him extra attention. From short sketches from the novice artist's personal album, one could see that studying at the art studio did him good: amateurish sketches were replaced by meaningful high-quality works, mainly landscapes and still lifes.
The formation of creativity
In 1852, Victor entered the Surikov Institute at the Faculty of Graphics. And although this did not correspond to the desires of the young man (he wanted to study at the department of painting), nevertheless, this state of affairs had a favorable effect on his further creative activity. The knowledge and skills acquired at the graphic faculty were reflected in his unrepeatable refined manner of the painter.
Now Popkov Viktor Efimovich, whose biography and work were actively revived with admission to a higher educational institution, begins to create vigorously. He works in difficult, seemingly unfavorable conditions: in a small barracks, where five more people live with him - his mother, younger sister and older brother with his wife and child. Crowding, poverty, malnutrition - the then companions of the master.
Sometimes I had to write in an unheated corridor, in different felt boots, having eaten only a piece of bread with lard. But this did not affect the creative process. Viktor Popkov worked selflessly, talentedly, confidently and regularly. His magnificent talent was noticed almost instantly, the gifted student was first awarded an increased, and a little later - a Stalin scholarship, which he gave almost to the penny for the needs of his relatives.
Trips
Since 1956, Viktor Popkov has been making long creative journeys around the country, in search of original material for work and expressive angles. He visited the amazing, grandiose industrial construction sites, realized the whole colossal scale of the work, recorded many ordinary, routine plots, which he later “poeticized” and glorified. Unlike his fellow students, who were looking for picturesque bright places and images, the aspiring artist focused his vision on prosaic, ordinary compositions. This is a concrete worker pouring water into the solution, or two workers against the backdrop of the huge wheels of a locomotive.
Victor worked energetically, animatedly, as if he was afraid not to be in time, trying to keep on paper every episode of hard work. Student exhibition of sketches, held in one of the trips to the site, was full of accurate talented works by Vitya Popkov.
His paintings were dominated by a “severe style”, which is reflected in the conciseness of details, realistic images, and dryness of shades.
It was thanks to creative trips to construction sites that Popkov Viktor Efimovich was able to become a people's artist, depicting ordinary hard workers on his canvases during his hard monotonous occupation.
“Builders of the Bratsk hydroelectric power station”
After a trip to the construction of a hydroelectric power station in the city of Bratsk in 1960, a wonderful original painting “Builders of Bratsk” appeared. The young artist thought over every detail of the canvas for a long time - the background, color, arrangement of images, angle.
No wonder the background of the picture is black, this focuses on the drawn figures, and not on events or incidents. For the artist, the main thing was to correctly present his heroes and show their strength, courage, self-confidence. The builders of Bratsk are dusty, tired from work people, but they are beautiful in their diligence and harsh, restrained energy.
It is noteworthy that in its original form, workers with tattoos on their hands were depicted on the canvas, since most of the workers at the Bratsk hydroelectric power station were prisoners. But, realizing that in this form the management cannot release the picture for the exhibition, Viktor Efimovich removes the camp tattoos.
Since then, the artist has become famous. He was loved by the people, recognized by critics. And Viktor Popkov, whose paintings are bought by the Tretyakov Gallery and published by an advanced newspaper, continues to work fruitfully and delight the public with new original works, living modestly and cramped, almost poor.
The heyday of creativity
The “working theme”, reflected in other colorful paintings of the artist, was not the only one that Popkov Viktor Efimovich addressed during his creative inspiration.
“The Brigade is Resting”, “The Bridge in Arkhangelsk” are being replaced by moral and psychological plots of simple human relationships. Popkov combines different artistic styles, experimenting with color effects. These are dramatic everyday episodes that are reflected in the canvases “Quarrel”, “Divorce”, “The Bolotov Family”, “Two”.
"Mezen widows"
Incredible fame was brought to Popkov by his cycle “Mezen Widows” (late 1960s - early 1970s), in which he reflected the individual character and tragic fate of a woman on each canvas. Each work impresses with its realistic originality and squat picturesqueness. And although the paintings “Waiting”, “Old Age”, “Alone” are filled with tragic pain and oppressive melancholy, nevertheless they are necessary for humanity in order to awaken in it humanity and kindness in relation to post-war female grief and loneliness.
The theme of historical events occupied a significant place in the artist's work. His exposing "Chekist" and "The Doorbell" denounced the era of inexplicable bloody repressions, and "Father's Overcoat" and others conveyed an irresistible aching sadness for those who would never return from the front line.
Tragic death
Working on historical and poetic themes, Viktor Popkov begins his legendary painting “Autumn Rain”, where he portrayed the great Pushkin against the backdrop of a weeping element. The artist came to Pushkinskiye Gory to work on the canvas.
On November 12, while in the capital on business, Viktor Efimovich and his friends approach the parked Volga to ask the driver to give them a lift. But the car turned out to be a collector's car. Due to a recent high-profile robbery, the guards, under orders to shoot if threatened, opened fire. The artist was mortally wounded.
At his funeral, next to the lifeless body was an unfinished painting "Autumn Rain".
Personal life
Popkov Viktor Efimovich was married to his classmate at the graphic school Clara - a talented artist, a true friend of life. With her, they went through poverty and deprivation, lived in the same apartment with their mother-in-law and father-in-law, worked in the same room, raised their son together.
Klara Ivanovna was a very bright and courageous person, she devotedly loved her husband, helped him in times of his depression and despondency, gave practical advice.
In addition to such wonderful spiritual qualities, the woman had a bright talent and skill. She became a sought-after popular master of children's books, worked with the Malysh publishing house, and took an active part in union and international exhibitions.
"Were conceived in unbelief,
in disbelief we survived...
Negation. How to live in denial?
How to go denying yourself? How to save, denying You, Him, Yourself?
It is hard to believe, but these painful questions are heard in the diary of a man who became a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR, before reaching the age of thirty, who painted grandiose paintings about the harsh work of the builders of a new world without God, an artist who was welcomed by the Soviet nomenclature and criticism. Greeted until the artist's soul felt a thirst for another depth and another meaning.
thaw illusion
Moscow artist Viktor Popkov. Photo by Yevgeny Kassin and Vladimir Savostyanov /TASS Newsreel/.
Viktor Popkov never managed to live “lightly”, work “lightly”. This wasting of himself to the maximum went from childhood: at school - solid fives and in the family the nickname "heady", at the Surikov Institute, when classmates did three or four works as diplomas, Popkov prepared thirteen, and becoming a professional artist, even in custom-made works squeezed himself to the drop.
Popkov's childhood is a factory communal apartment in the town of Mytishchi near Moscow, not far from the Chelyuskinskaya station of the Yaroslavl railway. Parents, yesterday's residents of the village, moved here in the thirties. Difficult life, need - the mother alone raised the children: the father died at the beginning of the war. Popkov's mother, Stepanida Ivanovna, recalled how Viktor, as a boy, for the first time saw the artist at the easel on the street, immediately began to ask her to be her student, and the mother, a simple, illiterate woman, trusting her son with her inner instinct, did not interfere with his desire, and soon they were together with his friend entered the factory art studio. The fate of Popkov is a case of a clearly expressed vocation, heard from childhood.
He entered art in the late fifties, during the short period of the Khrushchev thaw, when “after the long and harsh Stalinist winter” optimists expected reforms in politics - the liberalization of the regime, and in art there was an influx of fresh air, a desire to go beyond the officially approved, ossified Stalinist socialist realism . The director of the Moscow Art Theater, Leonid Leonidov, wrote in his diary back in the thirties: “What is realism? This is true. What is social realism? This is the truth we need." It would be more accurate to note - the truth, which was needed by the authorities and which was directly affirmed through art.
The thaw inspired illusions that it was possible to live and create more freely - then Stalin's personality cult was debunked, many artists and scientists who were repressed under the Stalinist regime were rehabilitated. It became possible to read Akhmatova, Yesenin, which were not published in the thirties and forties, to get acquainted with modern trends in Western European painting - in a word, it became possible to touch the cultural tradition, access to which was blocked by strict ideological control during the years of Stalin's rule.
It was a time of romantics, social optimism, when hundreds of thousands of young men and women went to the development of virgin lands, to the shock construction of communism to the accompaniment of inspiring songs like "Communism is the youth of the world, and it must be built by the young."
Popkov, along with other artists, also went to shock construction sites - the Irkutsk hydroelectric power station, the Bratsk hydroelectric power station, made endless sketches, sketches, "looked out for life." In the virgin lands, he painted a number of paintings from the series "People of the virgin lands". Popkov's early works "Spring at the Depot" (1958), "To Work" (1958), the "Transport" series (1958) fully corresponded to the official ideological guidelines of the time - to announce the great victories of communism in art, to glorify working people - builders new life. There was no inner conformism for him in this, there were neither intellectual nor moral temptations. “The artist is called upon to write about the great phenomena of life” - such a formula is in Popkov’s diary, then he sincerely admired the grandiose scale of construction, sought to “sing” the energy of work, youth, and at that time he himself had the “wings” of youth, was enthusiastic, open new trends in society.
Bread for the flag
In 1961, Popkov painted the painting "The Builders of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Plant", which became the canonical work of the so-called "severe style", one of the founders of which Viktor Popkov himself was. Artists of a severe style as a whole were inscribed in the system of Soviet artistic "production", but they depicted working people, working days more "severely", vitally, without the pathos of socialist realism with its declarative agitation.
In the picture "Bratskaya HPP" in the foreground, against the background of a black sky, as if against the background of a black curtain, workers stand in a row - restrained, courageous, strong-willed. The sky is a "curtain", frontal, "iconic" figures of workers - this image can be read as "His Majesty the working class at the forefront of history", and even then it becomes obvious that young Popkov's desire to get away from the prosaic, ordinary genre scene to semantic generalization, the desire not to as much to draw as "to comprehend life with a brush in hand."
The artist Eduard Bragovsky, to whom Popkov showed the Bratskaya HPP, recalled: “He was terribly upset when he saw that no one praised him, that we were indifferent. “Such a wonderful picture, and you are silent?” - Popkov was offended. Against the background of the discoveries of modern European painting, Popkov's painting seemed to some "progressive" brothers in the shop to be outdated both stylistically and thematically. Popkov's vulnerability only shows that he put much more soul into his work than is usually required for passing custom-made items.
The painting will be bought by the Tretyakov Gallery, Popkov will begin to travel to international exhibitions, he will live the rise of fame, when "he was given any contract according to any handwriting." For him, publications about him in newspapers, radio broadcasts were important - success gave the necessary self-confidence, spread his wings. Popkov was not even thirty when he became a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR, and soon he was invited to the Committee on Lenin and State Prizes. An early career take-off promised great prospects. But by the mid-1960s, the “thaw” came to naught. Almost all the gains made by Soviet culture during the short period of the thaw were subjected to serious disgrace. The retreat began. The authorities, including the orthodox-official part of the leadership of the Union of Artists, sought to undermine all sorts of "meaningless creative searches."
But Popkov could no longer live without noticing the deep contradictions in society, he could not exist within the framework of a predictable, in all respects prosperous officialdom. His reflections of that time were sad: “Either you will draw a flag and get paid today, buy bread for your mother, or you won’t get anything, but you will do as you like.” He did not go underground, did not become part of the artistic underground, but he ceased to be "orthodox", and the gates to the establishment of Soviet culture were half-closed for him.
What do widows talk about
For some time, he turns to lyrical themes, to chamber, psychological works - “The Bolotov Family”, “Two”, “Three Artists” - they contain the private life of a simple, unremarkable person. In this desire for intimacy, there is emptiness, fatigue from Soviet rhetoric and ideology, which was losing its inner filler - this is a feature of the times, many artists, filmmakers, writers then left the "big topics". However, Popkov's nerve and energy did not allow him to stay in this niche for a long time. “To be free and free in the plan, to be a creator, a bully, anyone, but listen to your impulses and trust them.”
In 1966, he went on a creative trip to the North, to Mezen, and there he began the famous "Mezen cycle". Painting “Memories. Widows ”is one of the central ones in the cycle.
Renting a room in the house of one of the old women in a village on the Mezen River, Popkov witnessed village gatherings: “Somehow her friends came to the hostess where I lived. They sat for a long time, remembering the past, drank mash, ate a cake, cod with a smell, and gradually, forgetting about me, they completely disappeared into that distant time when life was just beginning for them. Behind the everyday, prosaic scene, Popkov opened the very depths of the fate of these village women: “But how is it? Why are they alone? Where are their husbands and children? Where is the happiness to which they had every right? And only I, a random person, is one witness to their woman's, damned, lonely fate. Their whole life, their whole youth, was now swimming before my eyes. After this meeting, Popkov comes up with a theme for a new painting.
Five village old women are depicted on a large canvas, in their image there is deliberately nothing from cozy, homely grandmothers, where there is a curly-haired grandson and a glass of milk on the table nearby. Here the opposite is true: the silhouettes of the figures are clearly outlined, the figures seem to be carved from wood, the folds of clothes are marked out large, the lines are straight. The thin old woman in the foreground seems to have left the icon board, resurrecting in her memory the ancient icon-painting images of the holy martyrs. There are no vain details of everyday life, and the image itself rises from illustrative narrative, from the existential limit to the poetic structure, to the symbol - this level of symbol, Popkov was the first to introduce parables into Soviet art of the 1960s-1970s.
The painting "Widows" is a memory of the war, and these five women, like different hypostases of one soul - a tragic generalized image of the widow's lot - how many of them, lonely old women, mourned their dead husbands throughout the Russian land. Behind them is a busy life with hard everyday life, Popkov emphasizes the hands of workers, disproportionately large - such cast-iron boilers and bags to carry. Their children were scattered around the world, and they themselves were left to live out in a dreary, lonely village in the northern wilderness. The harsh rich gray color of the room corresponds to the very way of life in the North. Each of the old women went inside herself, remembering what her soul had been sick and rejoiced over for many years. But it is not sorrow and the memory of the past that set the tone for the whole picture. Popkov raises the note of grief to a high life-affirmation, filling the picture with red, with all its "juices" - scarlet, crimson, fiery. “In the North, the landscape and the village in color are very restrained, and if a flower or a red dress appears, then they look significant and their effect is sharply expressive” (V. Popkov). And this red color in the clothes of old women, like a flash, becomes the basis for the perception of the image, the whole theme of the picture sounds differently ... “Joyful tragedy” is Popkov's favorite expression. “For me, the scene that I depicted in the picture has nothing to do with whining, or with hopelessness, longing. Widows, leaving mentally in a young, happy time, want to gain strength in the past for today and tomorrow. This is a life-affirmation, although tragic in its manifestation.
Widows, scorched by the experience of war, separation, death - the red color unites them into a single whole, here is the spirit of sisterhood. Behind the severity, severity of these images, dissonant red sounds the color of life, the hidden inner strength of these women is revealed, it is not by chance that in the center of the composition there is a straight, as if internally unbent, not lost faith old woman.
And here Popkov expressed something of the "main". Intuitively, by touch, he approaches the theme of Christian humble acceptance and bearing his cross. Humbly, worthily accepting his widow's lot, loneliness, all the hardships of everyday life and life that he had to endure, the soul is spiritually filled - hence the inner strength of these old women, hence the "joyful tragedy." Let there be a portrait of Karl Marx in the corner instead of an icon - a reliable detail: “a drawing from my mistress, who left her husband with his conviction, his purity of faith in the party, expressed in the sacredly guarded and expensive portraits of Marx and Lenin in the corners of the hut” (V. Popkov .) In these portraits of the leaders, a contradictory time is captured, but the whole way of the inner life of these village women goes back not to party Leninist norms, but to centuries-old Russian religious sources.
At that time, writing such a thing, multidimensional in meaning, with symbolic overtones, was a challenge. The picture was received ambiguously, Popkov was reproached for excessive gloom and hopelessness, not covering the full depth of the plan.
For Popkov, “Widows” is a personal topic, before his eyes is the fate of his mother, who at the beginning of the war was left a widow. According to the recollections of Popkov's friends, his mother was a person who personified meekness and humility. Stepanida Ivanovna was very devout, she worked as a bell ringer in the church for many years, she was small, dry, she instilled kindness and calmness in her son. He comes to her before starting a new job: “Mom, bless me.”
"Where they sing, not moan"
In 1970, Popkov completed the painting "Mother and Son", where he depicts himself and his mother. In the picture is evening, filled with silence in the room, a lamp with a lampshade reflected in the window; the son lies sick and listens to the mother reading the Bible in front of the icon. Many art historians have noted that in the image of the son there is a reference to the icon image of the “Savior Not Made by Hands”, here it is possible to echo the eternal theme of the Mother of God with the Child - the theme of sacrificial maternal love and prayerful petition for the son who is destined to carry his cross. In the picture - the mother prays, the son listens attentively to her prayer, and the soul is accustomed to the Divine word, imbued with it. The red lampshade, the echo of red in clothes and in things create an internal tension in the image - here is a concentrated comprehension of the Meaning.
Popkov was not a church person, but there was a spiritual, "root" connection with his mother, who obviously nourished him, visually in the picture this unity is again enhanced by the color scheme - a combination of white and red in the image of mother and son. Perhaps this special closeness with a believing mother was the source of the fact that Christian overtones begin to sound more and more fully in Popkov's work, which, however, is more likely to shine through than to be pronounced clearly. But, I think, the main thing here was his own constant desire "to bite into life, to learn, to comprehend the basic laws of our being."
In his works, the storyline almost disappears, a very subtle mood, listening, appears. Popkov wrote that he wanted to express in his paintings “along with the concrete something obscure, spiritual intangible”.
He writes "Silence", "May Holiday", "In the Cathedral" (1974). The latter, oddly enough, he conceived while on a trip in Germany, and finished already in Russia. In the picture, the slanting rays of the sun illuminated the temple, and everything around - in the golden transparent reflections of the heavenly gold that transforms everything. In the iconic self-portrait “Father’s Overcoat”, he depicts himself trying on a soldier’s overcoat, symbolically asking his contemporaries a question: can the military feat of the fathers be up to their generation? Will there be enough inner strength, integrity, courage? "Autumn rains. Pushkin "- Popkov worked on this absolutely amazing thing in Mikhailovsky, and it seems as if he wrote everything as it was, from life: Pushkin saw, felt these Russian distances, space, expanse of fields, looked at the gray sky, in which eternal autumn sadness melts , inhaled this air when "the autumn chill breathed." Here is a single image - the poet and Russia - the land that generously nourished Pushkin with poetic power.
These are not directly religious plots, but in these topics Popkov touches on something inevitably important, “existing” in the inner life of every person.
In 1972, the North Chapel was completed. The painting withstood a terrible battle with officials from the Department of Culture at the exhibition, they demanded to remove it. Popkov as a whole in those years was exposed as random, weak things, uncharacteristic for him; he was hardly allowed to participate in republican and all-Union exhibitions. It came to oddities: the famous Popkov's "Father's Overcoat" was not wanted to be included in the exposition of the exhibition in the Manege on the grounds that Popkov depicted himself there in imported boots. The main place where he could exhibit was small-scale autumn and spring exhibitions, and even there it cost a lot of work to keep his work - “Popkov got terribly a lot. Scary. Somehow very cruel. They zealously fought formalistic art, as they called it.” Popkov was always searching, experimenting, but most importantly, “he carried with him everything that is alive, indifferent, bold, to comprehend the secrets of the human soul,” recalled the artist Igor Obrosov.
The "Northern Chapel" managed to be defended. The picture shows the figure of a boy frozen in the doorway at the entrance to the chapel. He looks in fascinated, as if a “ray from paradise” touched the soul, and she froze from the feeling of reverence that overtook her before the mystery and beauty of the heavenly landscape. The viewer sees only a part of the temple paintings - three angels, overshadowing with their cover all those who enter, written in a shining, joyful scarlet color in contrast with the silvery blue of the northern distances.
Popkov was fond of ancient Russian art for a long time and in 1964 he even made a special trip to the medieval monastery of Ferapontovo, decorated with frescoes by Dionysius, to make sketches from the frescoes. It seems that from the contemplation of the visible image of heavenly Beauty is only a step towards comprehending the invisible life, towards the sacred dimension, towards the discovery of the very source of this Beauty. Popkov himself, like the boy in the picture, stood at the threshold of this discovery. Peering, listening to this mystery is already participation. Poet Nikolai Tryapkin, a contemporary of Popkov, recalling his youth, wrote:
Let me not honor the saints and, looking at the church,
not baptized
But when the vociferous copper called from the bell tower,
I went into the porch, and humbly stood at the door,
And he looked into the depths, immersed in the dusk by a third.
The soul froze, and the candle flicker trembled,
And the thundering choirs overthrew wave after wave.
And everything seemed to me that I stepped into the limit of the Universe
And that eternity itself kindled fires before me.
So in tune with the mood of Popkov's picture! It seems that in this landmark work, he foreshadows a way out of the spiritual impasse in which his generation found itself - these are people who were formed in an atheistic era that deprived them of faith, the mystical experience of being, they walked through life as if by touch, along impassable roads, painfully feeling their isolation from the light: "Show me the edge where it is light from the lamps, show me the place I was looking for - Where they sing, and not moan, where the floor is not sloping," Vladimir Vysotsky wheezed into the microphone in those years.
Like a cocked cock
It is no coincidence that similar images are born in poetry, painting, and cinema at this time - in Vysotsky's song: "The images in the corner are even skewed", in Popkov's film "Silence" - dilapidated churches with a leaky dome, in Shukshin's film "Kalina Krasnaya - a flooded temple. In everything there is some kind of “dislocated” life, the tragic demolition of age-old foundations, God-forsakenness and ... desperate longing for some other, unearthly Truth. These voices of the era contain all the complexity of the internal self-determination of the generation of the 1960s and 1970s.
Most of the intelligentsia of his generation existed by inertia, under the protection of state recognition and simple laws of opportunism, but those who at least somehow thought, and besides, had a talent from God, they often broke into a binge, approached the "edge", not knowing how, not knowing how to keep from himself, his passions and from godless time. In 1966, at the last moment, Popkov's father-in-law pulled him out of the noose. An attack of despair. Much then piled up - quarrels with his wife because of his drinking bouts, endless embarrassment and obstacles of officials in relation to his work.
Popkov was generally a desperate, cocky man, always sharp, unexpected. “All his work was kept on the nerve. Such was in life” (artist Igor Popov). Many of his friends recall his recklessness: “They announced the boarding of the train. There were no more than three minutes left. Viti has a coin falling between the platform and the car. He goes down, picks up a coin and climbs back", or when "in winter, separated from a group of friends, he descends from the bridge to the river, and walks on barely frozen ice."
“He was always like a cocked cock, a compressed spring, ready to be released at any moment,” recalled art historian Grigory Anisimov.
His reaction to the entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968 was indicative. Popkov then, in protest, either seriously or jokingly, cut his hair bald. On the offer to work for the KGB, he “politely” declined: “Well, I would be glad to serve, but I drink!” He was one of the few who raised his hand and supported Solzhenitsyn's nomination for the Lenin Prize, although voting for him at the time required a certain amount of courage. He always took a very independent position in relation to the most reactionary part of the leadership of the Academy of Arts and the Union of Artists. The artist Max Birshtein remembered an expressive scene: “In the Hall of Columns of the House of the Unions, the congress of the Union of Artists was finishing its work. We stood with Vitya and friends in the lobby and talked. A broadcast was heard. The Chairman says that we are approaching the assessment of the activities of the past Board. There is a proposal to recognize the work as good, and there is a proposal to recognize the work as satisfactory. When we heard this, Viti was no longer with us. He, like Gagarin, is spitting on the red carpet with a mandate raised up. The presidium is confused. Victor with an energetic step rises to the podium: "I propose to consider the work unsatisfactory." He was the only one who spoke openly about it. I remember his lightning-fast reaction when, from a friendly conversation, maybe empty, he instantly ended up on the podium.
Many noted that in the last year of his life, some kind of anxiety always hung over him, as if he had a premonition of the approach of something tragic. Max Birshtein recalled that shortly before his death, Popkov brought a stack of records tied with a ribbon and said: "Please play this at my funeral."
Viktor Popkov died while trying to stop a car to get home. Accidentally approached the collection car, he was mistaken for a robber and shot point-blank. The farewell took place at the House of Artists on Kuznetsky Most. The paintings “Autumn rains. Pushkin” and “Grandma Anisya was a good person” - Popkov’s last significant work, which he managed to complete before his death. Coincidentally or not, but in this picture - the result of the author's thoughts about death, about the meaning of human existence. It turned out, he wrote a requiem to himself.
"Now carry"
The picture is revealed to the viewer gradually. At first, as a scene of a village funeral, but gradually the whole scale of the idea is revealed: here is the grandeur of the earth and the significance and grandeur of every human life, albeit unknown to anyone, the village grandmother Anisya.
A large powerful oak is like a tree of life, among its crimson foliage, green leaves suddenly shine through; the same semantic motif is repeated in the depiction of people: a group of young people is separate in composition and color scheme from the crowd of old women in black. Here is the eternal earthly cycle of the withering of life and its new conception, which includes both nature and man. In the foreground is a child who still cannot grasp the essence of what is happening, he stands with his back to the grave and facing the viewer - life goes on. Illuminated by the yellow autumn sun, the hilly ground in the foreground is strewn with crimson leaves, and this "luxurious withering of nature" is a movement from life to death. The theme of autumn is traditional in world art - it is a note of sadness, elegy, a premonition of parting and a harvest time both in the earthly and symbolically in the spiritual sense - the time to harvest what is sown. Despite the tragedy of what is happening, the coloring of the canvas, sonorous, amber-gold gives the whole work a certain enlightenment. Grandma Anisya was a “good person,” and that is why her life is crowned with fullness, she is fruitful. Everyday reality is recognizable in clothes, in types, cemetery monuments. The funeral takes place in a small northern village and at the same time against the widest background, in a vast world. It is not by chance that Popkov takes a bird’s-eye view and decides to paint “Babka Anisya” as a colored icon ... “Faces, as in icons - ocher, modeling, spaces” - in order to switch to a fundamentally different language - the language of metaphysical concepts, which for every century , out of time.
An interesting detail: there is no rain in the picture, and people are under raincoats. “Here it rains in the soul,” Popkov wrote, “the world is protected from something negative.”
At the exhibition, "Babka Anisya" went unnoticed, as the artists said, "did not receive the press." It was very painful for Popkov. He was waiting for a conversation about the picture, it was important for him to be understood, heard, because in his works he always tried to talk about important, real things; tried to intuitively break through the border of a certain spiritual tightness of his generation, about which Vysotsky figuratively wrote: "both ice above and below." But the significance of Popkov's work, with all his authority, was not completely clear to his contemporaries.
He died on November 12, 1974. Collectors defended themselves and argued that it was an attack. When it became apparent that a murder had taken place, the artist friends who had been with Victor in the last moments of his life fled; for a while he was still alive.
The mother of Viktor Popkov, Stepanida Ivanovna, recalls: “They buried with a bell ringing. She did everything herself. Seminarians came. And they sang so! The whole temple was trembling. They sang for two hours. And the priest preached how much he spoke. And when they brought it, she went, hit the bell ... Now bring it. ”
Involuntarily, the picture “Mother and Son” is again recalled - the theme of Light and Meaning, the theme of maternal love and prayerful petition for a son who is destined to carry his cross. Popkov carried his cross without cowardice. “A man seeking conscience in art,” wrote art critic Grigory Anisimov about him. It is customary to call conscience the voice of God in a person, and it was this voice that Popkov “looked after” in life, the truth of this search spilled onto his canvases.
No, I won't try. No, I won't moan.
I will laugh quietly. I will sob silently.
Quietly I will love, Quietly I will hurt,
Quietly I will live, Quiet will be death.
If I have happiness, If there is my God,
I won't rock, I'll find my threshold.
I will be kind to people, I will love everything,
I will laugh in sadness, I will be sad in laughter.
And I won't offend you. Even meanness will endure.
Regret for once in your life. Death! Will you come? I will shut up.
Viktor Popov. About Me
Viktor Efimovich Popkov is a bright representative of the generation of the sixties. He entered the history of Russian art rapidly and brightly. Immediately after graduating from the Institute. Surikov Viktor Popkov became a prominent phenomenon in the fine arts of the country. Three of his works from the graduation series were bought by the State Tretyakov Gallery, they wrote about him in newspapers and magazines, filmed on television.
At the age of 33, Popkov became a member of the Committee for the State and Lenin Prizes, in 1966 he was awarded an honorary diploma from the Biennale at an exhibition of works by young artists in Paris for his works Noon, Two, The Bolotov Family.
My day. 1960
Viktor Efimovich Popkov- heir to the great tradition of Russian realism,Like Petrov-Vodkin or Korzhev, Popkov worked in such a way as to make everyday details and everyday scenes a symbol of being in general.
Viktor Efimovich’s palette is almost monochrome, he often uses icon painting techniques (gaps in working with faces, solid colored backgrounds), his drawing is angular and sometimes hasty, but the main thing in Popkov’s paintings is that the artist has something to say to the viewer.
Victor Popkov was forgotten - his memory was obscured by endless avant-garde actions, auction successes of rogues, indistinguishable motley products of the "second avant-garde" - crafts of the new bourgeois decorative market.
The builders of the Bratsk hydroelectric power station. 1960-1961
Popkov is a purely Soviet artist. This means that his ideal in art is what was proclaimed the social ideal during the years of Soviet power - for nothing that was violated and betrayed. He believed that people love the land on which they live, are ready to die for it, remember their fathers, honor their memory, and are responsible for society - that is, for the elderly and children.
With naivete and fearlessness - because a sentimental statement in art is dangerous, it's easier to be a cynic - Popkov painted old women and children; this is a rare case for an artist to draw so many babies and helpless old people - at that time, avant-garde artists often painted win-win stripes and wrote "Brezhnev is a goat", but few dared to love. Do you know who the group "Collective Actions" or "Amanitas" loved? And they didn't know either. When drawing a child, it is easy to make a thing vulgar, and Popkov often broke down, but continued to draw; sometimes he made masterpieces.
Memories. Widows. 1966
Truly educated and intelligent people were engaged in conceptualism, drawing was considered obsolete. Everywhere in intelligent companies, weary youths said that painting was dead. In those years, it was believed that the real writer was Prigov, and Pasternak wrote an unsuccessful opus - Doctor Zhivago. It seemed to many secular people that the opinion of curators from New York and gallerists from Miami is the essence of what art should be and what art should be abyss. Through their efforts, painting was declared an anachronism. The brisk young men were engaged in installations, and Popkov, with his old-fashioned brush, looked ridiculous.
Not only did he try to paint a picture, in these pictures he painted people of no interest to anyone - village widows, clumsy peasants, children of the outskirts, Soviet townspeople. It was such a blatantly unfashionable work, shamefully sincere. Well, imagine a person who comes to an intelligent house where they read Kafka and says that he loves his Motherland, and his dad took Berlin. It's embarrassing, right? And Popkov was talking about this - and was not shy.
Father's overcoat. 1972
Some of his things (Mezen widows, After work, Mother and son, Father's overcoat) are undoubted masterpieces of painting - he did what an ordinary talent cannot do, namely: he created his hero. This, in fact, is remarkable for plastic art - unlike music or, for example, philosophy - fine art has the ability to create a person, endow the image with unique physical features. It would be difficult to reconstruct our world according to the works of the decorative avant-garde, but it is possible according to the works of Popkov. From now on, the hero of Viktor Popkov exists in the world, just as there is the hero of Petrov-Vodkin (working intellectual) or the hero Korin (a troubled priest), the hero Falk (urban lifeless intellectual) or the hero Filonov (the proletarian builder of the world).
Two. 1966
Popkov's hero is a resident of block districts of the outskirts, a husband and father with a small salary, which is enough for him - and he doesn't need more - he won't know what to use it for; he is a relative of the heroes of Vladimov and Zinoviev; this is an intellectual who no longer believes in anything, but works for the sake of others and for the sake of public duty - because "the country needs fish," in the words of the hero of Three Minutes of Silence.
This is an unsweetened fate, an uncomfortable fate, and Popkov's paintings are sad - not decorative. The modern bourgeoisie will hardly appreciate his paintings. Popkov was a real artist, including authenticity expressed in the fact that he was an uneven artist - sometimes overly sentimental, sometimes sugary. In the best things - a major realist, in the best (there is one canvas where an old woman is sitting in the corner of the hut) - a great painter.
In Popkov's paintings, the motif of the icon is exceptionally strong - he insists on the kinship of realistic (someone would say: socialist realist) painting with icon painting. His ideas about pictorial masonry are as unsophisticated and simple as those of a provincial icon painter, and the reason for which he paints pictures can be expressed in exactly the same words that describe the cause of the icon.
Time has not helped this artist to see. He seemed not modern enough, our toy, fake time does not like everything real, but we wanted something colorful and bold: he was forgotten for the sake of candy wrappers, just like his European contemporaries - Guttuso or Morandi - were forgotten, these artists will have to be rediscovered. The language itself has been lost - there is no art critic who would be able to analyze the picture today, the layer of paint, the movement of the fingers. Art was stupefied for a very long time, instead of art historians, curators were bred.
Now we have to learn not only to speak again, but also to look again.
Maxim Kantor
The team is resting. 1965
Life—sometimes it seemed to Popkov—acquired the features of an absurd farce. And as soon as it was so, it was not possible to avoid searching - not truth, no, oblivion - at the bottom of the glass. Suicide attempt. Premonition of imminent death. Two weeks before his death, he brought records to his friends: "Put music at my funeral."
Death is also ridiculous. And in this absurdity, randomness, one can hear the inexorable tread of fate.
He shouldn't have been in Moscow that day at all. He was about to leave. But he didn't leave. At 11 pm on November 12, 1974, Viktor Popkov was catching a car on Gorky Street. The taxis didn't stop. Mistaking the Volga for a taxi, the artist tried to stop it. The collector (as it turned out later, he was drunk) fired and left the mortally wounded man to die on the pavement. Popkov was brought to the hospital as a bandit who had committed a robbery attack on a cash-in-transit vehicle, and only later the circumstances of the “attack” could be clarified thanks to random witnesses.
Grandma Anisya was a good person. 1973
And already at 2 o'clock in the morning, Voice of America reported that "the famous Russian artist Popkov was killed by KGB colonels." During the civil memorial service and funerals, "provocations" were expected. But there were no provocations, except perhaps one: entering the hall of the House of Artists on Kuznetsky Most, where a civil memorial service was held, people saw Popkov’s painting “Grandma Anisya was a good person” on the stage. A few years ago, when the painting was exhibited for the first time in the House of Artists, Popkov wanted to place it here. Then they didn't. Dali now.
Tarusa. Sunny day. Was at the grave of Vatagin, Paustovsky, Borisov-Musatov. Holy graves. Light on their memory. What conclusion can I draw today? They were greedy for life. They wanted to live and understood very well that there would be peace. They were not hypocrites for life. They loved life and lived it fully both spiritually and physically, within the limits allowed to each by nature.
And now I understand that in order for you to be remembered with gratitude after your death, you need to have the courage to live tormented, suffering from joy, to love joy, laughter, health, everything beautiful, strong, alive and everything that moves - the body, thought, soul.
And one more thing: each age has its own beauty of body and spirit. But the most beautiful body in youth, and the spirit in old age. And you need to love the body when you are young, and always think about the spirit, and in old age only about the spirit. Less whining, God, give health to both body and spirit. Learn to be happy while we live. Forget thoughts about violence against life.
Return. 1972
Almost 38 years have passed since the death of the artist, but scarlet carnations still lie on the snow near his monument in Tarasovka. Many books and articles have been written about Viktor Popkov, films have been made, TV programs have been made. The paintings are kept in major museums, art galleries in Russia and abroad. Collectors consider it an honor to have Popkov's works. This is evidence of the grace that Viktor Efimovich invested in his canvases during his lifetime.
Pock. 1959
Popkov Viktor Efimovich (1932-1974) - Soviet artist, painter and graphic artist.
The artist was born on March 9, 1932 in Moscow into a working-class family. The artist's father died during the Great Patriotic War, and the artist's mother, who became a widow, raised four children alone.
From 1948 to 1952 Viktor Efimovich studied at the "Art and Graphic Pedagogical School", from 1952 to 1958 - at the "Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after V.I. Surikov" at.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Popkov traveled extensively around the country, visiting Siberian cities and major Soviet construction projects. Popkov painted pictures based on impressions from trips - the most famous such work of the artist is "Builders of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Plant (Builders of Bratsk)".
In the mid-1960s, the artist almost completely changed his artistic style, abandoning the theme of state ideology, which then prevailed in the work of Soviet masters - instead, Viktor Efimovich focused on more intricate philosophical topics.
Viktor Efimovich Popkov posthumously became a laureate of the USSR State Prize. Also, a posthumous exhibition of the artist's works was organized at the State Tretyakov Gallery.
The artist died on November 12, 1974, when he was shot at point-blank range by a collector. The event was distorted in every possible way by interested parties: the friends of the deceased artist, the protection of the collector ... In addition, the Voice of America radio staged a verbal “stuffing”, saying that “Popkov was killed by KGB officers”: because of this, a civil memorial service for to the artist - the security services were afraid of possible provocations, and therefore tried to ban the holding of a public event.
So what happened on November 12, 1974? On that day, Popkov signed an agreement with. On the territory of the plant, Popkov met an artist friend who offered to celebrate the signing of the contract in a cafe. During the celebration, two more acquaintances joined the artists - the whole company sat in the cafe until late in the evening. The time was already late - Popkov offered to go to his workshop, located on Bryanskaya Street, in order to continue the celebration in a creative atmosphere.
Drunk artists went out into the street and, under the leadership of Viktor Efimovich Popkov, immediately went to the collector's car, which was parked on the opposite side of the road. It is difficult to say why Popkov decided to ask for a “lift” to the collectors: it is possible that it was some kind of drunken frenzy, or it could be that the artist considered himself such a significant person that the collectors should meekly obey him, spitting on their own duties.
As Popkov's contemporaries, not weighed down by the need for personal friendship with him, said, Viktor Efimovich was an overly pompous and self-confident person, it is possible that these two character traits influenced his death. It should also be noted that on November 10, 1974, in the Crimea, a robbery was committed on a cash-in-transit vehicle: two collectors were killed on a deserted section of the highway, after which the cash-in-transit service received a special order allowing shooting without warning in a dangerous situation.
It is quite obvious that the collectors transporting a large amount of money were very alarmed because of the recent murder of their comrades, and then a group of drunkards breaks through the window of an official car, demanding to let them in and “lift” ...
In 1972-1973, Viktor Efimovich Popkov, together with his wife, a well-known artist, worked at Kenozero. Among others, below are some of the works that were created on joint creative business trips with the artist's wife.
This week, the Academy of Watercolors and Fine Arts of Sergei Andriyaka opened a personal exhibition of works by the sixties artist Viktor Popkov, one of the leaders of the severe style
Academy of watercolors and fine arts of Sergey Andriyaka
May 15 - July 7, 2013
Moscow, st. Academician Varga, 15
4th floor of the Administrative building of the Academy
This week at the Academy of Watercolors and Fine Arts of Sergei Andriyaka opened a personal exhibition of works by Viktor Popkov "Painting, Graphics".
No, I won't try. No, I won't moan.
I will laugh quietly. I will sob silently.
Quietly I will love, Quietly I will hurt,
Quietly I will live, Quiet will be death.
If I have happiness, If there is my God,
I won't rock, I'll find my threshold.
I will be kind to people, I will love everything,
I will laugh in sadness, I will be sad in laughter.
And I won't offend you. Even meanness will endure.
Regret for once in your life. Death! Will you come? I will shut up.
Viktor Popov. About Me
In November 1974, the artist Viktor Efimovich Popkov was shot dead by a collector when he approached a Volga car and asked the driver to give him a ride. Subsequently, the collector claimed that he acted according to the instructions. The artist was buried at the Cherkizovsky cemetery.
Then this terrible, absurd, inexplicable story did not receive due publicity. And the Soviet government, trying to hush up the scandal, hastened to award the artist, who was not very pleased, with the State Prize of the USSR (posthumously). Thus, at the age of 42, the life of one of the most significant Russian artists of the second half of the 20th century ended.
Viktor Efimovich Popkov (03/09/1932 - 11/12/1974), laureate of the USSR State Prize, was born into a working-class family. He studied at the Art and Graphic Pedagogical School (1948-1952) and the Moscow Art Institute named after V. I. Surikov (1952-1958) under E. A. Kibrik. Lived in Moscow.
Soviet artist of the sixties. One of the leaders of the severe style. Popkov's painting is distinguished by drama, psychologism of images and situations, the desire for philosophical reflection on life, the severity of compositions and rich color. In the period from 1956 to 1974, Popkov traveled around Lake Baikal, Siberia, the Moscow region, the Vologda region, and the North, where, based on his impressions, he created a series of works in oil, gouache, and pencil. In the West, he was called a dissident. His highly social works often irritated the authorities.
From the memoirs of Viktor Popkov: “I tried to write works that, at first glance, were perceived by some viewers as heavy, gloomy, imbued with a sense of longing and oppression ... And when these works were scolded and accused of gloom, I was annoyed not for my works, but for those people, women-widows, whom they did not want to see, their grief ... "
But Popkov's most important work is his fate. Not a single advanced conceptualist has a similar one, and, quite likely, they would give a lot for such a legend. A boy from a working-class family brilliantly graduated from the Surikov Institute, for the very first big picture “Builders of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station” he was favored by the authorities. At the age of 27, by those standards, very early, he enters the Union of Artists of the USSR, in the 62nd he goes to Finland for the Festival of Youth and Students. In the 67th he received an honorary diploma from the Biennale of Contemporary Art in Paris. 30-year-old Popkov even joined the committee for awarding the State and Lenin Prizes. There was a great social success.
And in parallel - alcohol, a suicide attempt (his father-in-law literally pulled him out of the noose), a premonition of death. A couple of weeks before his death, Popkov brought records to his friends: "Put music at my funeral." At the funeral, next to the coffin was Viktor Popkov's unfinished painting "Autumn Rains (Pushkin)". Now it is in the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery.
A distinctive feature of Viktor Popkov's work is the parable nature of his works. In the language of symbols, he writes a story, a story, a novel with the plasticity of lines, spots, colors, textures, achieving a virtuoso technique of execution. There is always a mystery and mysterious appeal in his canvases. The strength of his work is also in the fact that in the language of painting he was able to achieve the optimal result in his plans. The idea, coloring, composition, virtuoso drawing - all at the highest professional level.
Viktor Popkov was a deeply national artist. His patriotic things concerned all aspects of life in society and people close to him in spirit. He, as a director, got used to the material and was imbued with sympathy for the characters of his canvases. Apparently, therefore, the emotional fullness of his canvases still resonates in the hearts of many viewers.
From the memories of Viktor Popkov
“Popkov is one of the key figures in Russian post-war art. In a few years, he made a leap from the social to the existential” (Jan Bruk, Deputy Director of the State Tretyakov Gallery for Research).
“When you look at the paintings of Viktor Popkov, it is impossible to get rid of the memories of that shot and early, at 42, death. Popkov left us an eternal riddle: why?
“Some said: the system was choking, stagnation and creative lack of freedom were approaching. But death is such a big event that political causes cannot be measured or explained. Be that as it may, his life was clearly a burden, he was looking for an opportunity to get rid of it.
“This is the fate. And Popkov's painting in the refraction of this fate is perceived differently - even more significant and much more tragic.
Rain in the artist's soul
“Someday, a museum of Viktor Popkov will be opened in Moscow, specially built, according to a special project. His canvases will hang in the huge bright halls - all of them: both those that have been awarded the State Prize, and those that have yet to be appreciated by critics and descendants, ”wrote the well-known journalist and writer Zhanna Grechukha.
March 9 of this year would have marked the 81st anniversary of the birth of the artist Viktor Efimovich Popkov. There is no museum in Moscow yet, but the memorial of Viktor Popkov has been working in the Mytishchi Art Museum for a long time.
The name of the artist is significant in the fine arts of Russia. They still write about him, make films, and make his solo exhibitions. The State Tretyakov Gallery and the Russian Museum have more than 150 works by the master. Attention to the person of the painter is not accidental. Everything related to Russian national culture is of great interest. And Popkov's work is deeply national. For him, his native land was not an empty concept. Everything concerned the artist-tribune: both the joy and the pain of society. All his program canvases are about this. "Father's Overcoat", "Widows", "Northern Song", "Builders of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Plant", "Brigade Resting" and many other paintings are modern now and will always be modern. Since the topics raised by the artist are so large-scale that they cannot be attributed to any particular time. For example, the canvas “Summer. July”, conceived here, in Mytishchi, where he spent his childhood and youth. The native land served as a model for many of Victor's paintings: "Two", "Mother and Son", "Sick Child", "Klyazma River", "Students in Practice", "Waiting". The house where the Popkovs lived, at 30 Silikatnaya Street, no longer exists, but numerous drawings, sketches, sketches remained in the history of the city thanks to the painter. For a long time, a birch stood in that place, which Victor brought in a hat from the forest and planted. But time has not been kind to her.
The artist painted ordinary people in ordinary life circumstances, and the paintings forced the viewer to be involved in the social problems of society, which were visible in pictorial plasticity. He always said: "When the soul hurts or rejoices, then a real work is obtained." Many artists ask themselves: “What would Popkov write now?” The master's work was sincere and responded to impressions that touched the heart, past which he could not pass without leaving a trace. I think that in our time of troubles, he would turn to the history of Russia, to Russian national original art, because now this is the sore point of the country. In a letter to the artist Nadia Leger, he wrote: “Of course, the artist of our time is called upon to write about the great phenomena of life. And about them, I think, you need to create either large thematic canvases, or series.
Once, after working on a sketch, he decided to swim in the Klyazma not far from the Church of the Intercession in Tarasovka. When I got out of the water, I saw a scrawled swear word on my landscape. Nearby stood two teenagers and laughed. The artist in his hearts hit them on the back of the head, and they brought their fathers, ready to pounce on Victor. He tried to find out how they raise their children, but it was useless.
Art critic G. Anisimov once showed me an album given to him by Viktor. The album contained drawings and sketches by R. Gamzatov, E. Yevtushenko, D. Shostakovich, the Alexandrov Song Ensemble in full force and others made during his work in the Committee for the award of Lenin and State Prizes, of which he was a member in the early 60s. x years. The most vivid impression of the work in the Committee was a serious conversation with a member of the Central Committee, sculptor E. Vuchetich, after voting on the award of the prize to A. Solzhenitsyn. E. Vuchetich recommended that the young artist not bury himself and not be self-willed in voting (Popkov voted for the award). Victor tried to argue, but ran into such serious threats that he went to his mother in Mytishchi for a whole week - he was afraid that they would kill him. It was a time of thaw, when many young creative people believed in the freedom of creativity and hoped that it would always be so. After all, they, young actors, writers, artists, were entrusted with work in the Prize Committee. Deceived in their expectations, they did not lay down their arms and continued to fight the communist ideology that dominated creativity. V. Popkov, speaking passionately at meetings and congresses, sometimes only later realized the danger of his actions. In the painting "Sunday" he allegorically depicted himself squeezed by dullness and dreaming of freedom. Party instructors hosting exhibitions often did not hang V. Popkov's canvases for political reasons, and he came up with a symbolic system of images, where through a parable he could talk about what he could not help but write about. He depicted himself lying naked on a roof above the city with a bottle of wine and looking at free-flying doves. He explained to me the meaning of his plan as follows. He is naked because he is open to everyone and sincere in his work. He identifies himself with the white church, squeezed by the gray roofs of the city, and envies the freedom of the doves.
Everyone who had to write about Popkov agreed that in all his work, the purity and conscientiousness of the soul, the agitated personal intonation, direct or indirect self-portraiture are striking. Without this, there is no artist Popkov.
With his righteous nature, he could not accept that a person can be slandered, slandered in public, branded with shame when there is no reason for this. Lies for his nature was simply not acceptable.
As a teenager in the village, he decided to butt heads with a local bull, and he hit him with a horn in the bridge of his nose. Barely remained alive. In fact, he butted heads with the authorities all his life. And she didn't spare him. He organically did not accept lies and injustice. In his paintings, he could convey his ideas and thoughts to the viewer. In any picture, he himself is invisibly present as a character. It seemed that everything that happened was happening right in front of him, to which he was a witness. The painting "My Day" is evidence of this. He depicted himself in a winter landscape behind a sketchbook. On the left is an old woman, on the right is a young girl. He saw how the girl ran out of the house, quarreled with her mother, and threw the key into the snow. The artist himself made from this event a parable about youth and old age, about loneliness, about time. He himself did not know which line to choose - he had several of them. A simple everyday scene is overgrown with legends and conjectures of critics. When asked by critics, he answered that the association that you have about the picture will be correct. When he wrote "Father's Overcoat" - he cried. He remembered his father, who died at the front. His teacher E. Kibrik once asked: “Viktor, in your picture “Grandma Anisya was a good person”, people are covered with a rain cape, but there is no rain. Why?" “Rain in the soul,” Popkov replied. One of the most iconic paintings of the painter is “Autumn Rains. Pushkin. There were many versions of the sketches after the trip to Mikhailovskoye: Pushkin was aiming a pistol at his image in the mirror, he was depicted as falling, lying down. The best option took place when Victor felt himself in the place of Alexander Sergeevich before the duel. Pushkin is pale, leaning on a column, standing with his back to the viewer, but facing eternity. Stairs down, flying autumn leaves, puddles of rain. The painting turned out to be the last on the painter's easel and, perhaps, the most poignant in its autobiographical nature.
Tarusa. Sunny day. Was at the grave of Vatagin, Paustovsky, Borisov-Musatov. Holy graves. Light on their memory. What conclusion can I draw today? They were greedy for life. They wanted to live and understood perfectly well that there would be peace. They were not hypocrites for life. They loved life and lived it fully both spiritually and physically, within the limits allowed to each by nature.
And now I understand that in order for you to be remembered with gratitude after your death, you need to have the courage to live tormented, suffering from joy, love joy, laughter, health, everything beautiful, strong, alive and everything that moves - the body, thought, soul.
And one more thing: each age has its own beauty of body and spirit. But the most beautiful body in youth, and the spirit in old age. And you need to love the body when you are young, and always think about the spirit, and in old age only about the spirit. Less whining, God, give health to both body and spirit. Learn to be happy while we live. Forget thoughts about violence against life.
Almost 38 years have passed since the death of the artist, but scarlet carnations still lie on the snow near his monument in Tarasovka. Many books and articles have been written about Viktor Popkov, films have been made, TV programs have been made. The paintings are kept in major museums, art galleries in Russia and abroad. Collectors consider it an honor to have Popkov's works. This is evidence of the grace that the artist invested in his canvases during his lifetime. And the significance of this grace is becoming more significant every year, because the love for the artist's work multiplies in his works.
Yuri Popkov, artist
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