Victor Popkov: artist on widow earth. Victor Popkov: The artist on the widow earth is about what the widow say

BIOGRAPHY

Born in 1932 in the family family. He studied at the Art-Graphic Pedagogical School (1948-1952) and the Moscow Art Institute named after V. I. Surikova (1952-1958) at E. A. Kibrika. He lived in Moscow. Killed the shot of the collector, when she approached the car "Volga" and asked the driver to ride it. Subsequently, the collector claimed that he acted according to the instructions. Buried at Cherkizovsky cemetery.

Work

The main works of Viktor Efimovich are devoted to modern topics:

"Builders of Bratsk" (1960-1961), GTG
"Northern Song" (1968), GTG
"Family of Botodovy" (1968), GTG
"Brigade is resting" (1965), Union of Artists of the USSR
Schinel Father "(1972), GTG
"Two" (1966), GTG
"A good man was grandmother Anice" (1973), GTG
"Widow" (1966)
"Self-portrait" (1963)
"Autumn rain. Pushkin "(1974), GTG, unfinished

Several works of Popkov entered the meeting of the Institute of Russian Realistic Art (IRRI).

MONUMENT

The tombstone at the grave of the artist was established in early 1975. Sculptor - Alla Pologov. Next to the artist is buried his mother, brother and sister.

State Prize of the USSR (posthumously) (1975)

In Mytishchinsky, the artistic museum there is a memorial room of the artist, the sketches of its paintings, graphic works, sketches, photographs are stored.

Mother - Stepanida Ivanovna (November 8, 1909- September 8, 1986)
Father - Efim Akimovich (1906-1941)
Brothers:
- Nikolai Efimovich (January 8, 1930 - April 1, 1978), son Yuriy Nikolaevich (born January 12, 1954), granddaughter Daria Yuryevna (born on May 12, 1979)
- Anatoly Efimovich (1941-1942)
- Sister - Tamara Efimovna (March 25, 1937 - March 26, 1986), son Mikhail Nikolaevich (June 3, 1963 - February 15, 2007), grandchildren Natalia Mikhailovna (born May 20, 1987) and Artyom Mikhailovich (born October 28, 1994), Son Sergey Nikolaevich (born November 14, 1958), grandson Nikita Sergeevich (born November 22, 1988)
- - Wife - Clara Kalinachev (born August 30, 1933)
  - Son - Alexey Viktorovich (born January 24, 1958)
  - Granddaughter - Alice Alekseevna (Rod. 1984)

Popkov Viktor Efimovich (1932-1974) - Russian painter and schedule

No, I won't strive. No, I will not moan.
I'll laugh quietly. Quietly I will cry.
I will love quietly, I'll be silent quietly,
I'll live quietly, the quiet will be death.
If I feel happiness, if my God is,
I will not swing, I will find my threshold.
I will be good to people, I will be all love,
I will laugh in sadness, I will be sad in a laugh.
And you will not be offended. Even the meanness is sip.
Raise at least once in my life. Death! Come? I will smalch.

Victor Popkov. About myself

Viktor Efimovich Popkov is a bright representative of the sixtieth generation. He entered the history of Russian art rapidly and brightly. Immediately after the end of the Institute. Surikova Victor Popkov became a notable phenomenon in the visual art of the country. Three of his work from the graduation series were bought by the State Tretyakov Gallery, they wrote about him in newspapers and magazines, filmed on television.

At 33, the ass became a member of the Committee on the award of state and Leninist premiums, in 1966 he was awarded an honorary diploma "Biennale" at the exhibition of young artists in Paris for the work of "halfday", "Two", "Botodovy Family".

My day. 1960.

Viktor Efimovich Popkov - Heir to the great tradition of Russian realism, pit isides Petrov-Vodkin or Korzzhev, the ass worked so that the household item and the ordinary scene make the symbol of being at all.
Victor Efimovich's palette is almost monochrome, he often uses icon-painted techniques (a space in working with persons, solid colored background), its drawing is angry and sometimes hurried, but the main thing in his paintings Popkov is that the artist is about what to tell the viewer.

Victor Popkov managed to forget - the memory of him was departed by endless avant-garde stocks, the auction successes of password, the indistinguishable print of the "second avant-garde" - crafts of the decorative market of new bourgeois.

Builders of the Bratsk HPP. 1960-1961

Popkov - artist purely Soviet. This means that his ideal in art is what was proclaimed by the public ideal during the years of Soviet power - for nothing that was disturbed and indulged. He believed that people love the land on which they live, ready to die for her, remember their fathers, honor their memory, they are responsible for society - that is, for old men and children.

With naivety and fearlessness - because the sentimental statement in art is dangerous, it is easier to be a cynic - ass painted old women and children; This is a rare case, so that the artist draw so much babies and helpless old people - at that time, the avant-gardeists more often painted the win-win strips and wrote "Brezhnev - Goat", but love few people drove away. Do you know who loved the group "Collective actions" or "Mohamor"? So they did not know themselves too. Drawing a child, it is easy to make a thing a fee, and the ass often fell, - but continued to draw; Sometimes he had masterpieces.

Memories. Widow. 1966.

Genuinely educated and intelligent people were engaged in conceptualism, drawing was considered obsolete. Everywhere in intelligent companies, tired young men said that painting died. In those years, it was believed that the real writer - prich, and Pasternak wrote an unsuccessful Opus - Dr. Zhivago. Many secular people seemed that the opinion of curators from New York and Miami gallery players is critical of what art is to be, and what kind of abyss should be. Their efforts - painting declared an anachronism. The fool's young men took up installations, and the ass with their tassel looked ridiculous.
Not only was he dragged to draw a picture, in these paintings he painted anyone not interesting people - rustic widows, cored men, children of the Okrain, Soviet citizens. It was such a flagless creativity, a reasonable sincere. Well, imagine a person who comes to an intelligent house, where they read the kafku and say that he loves his homeland, and his dad took Berlin. Ashamed, right? And the ass, it was about this and said - and did not hesitate.

Schinel father. 1972.

Some of his things (Mezen widows, after work, mother and son, father's chinel) are undoubted masterpieces of painting - he did what ordinary talent cannot do, namely, he created his hero. This, actually wonderful plastic art - in contrast to music or, for example, philosophy - visual art has the ability to create a person, to make an image of unique physical features. It would be difficult to reconstruct our world on the works of a decorative avant-garde, and on the works of Popkov - you can. In the world, there is now the hero of Victor Popkov, as far as there is a Hero of Petrova-Vodkina (a worker intellectual) or a hero of Corin (a tormented priest), a hero Falk (city friendly intellectual) or the hero Filonov (United Hero-builder).

Two. 1966.

Hero Popkov - a resident of block regions of the outskirts, husband and father with a small salary, which he has enough, - but no longer needed, - he will not know what to use it; He is a relative of the heroes of Vladim and Zinoviev; This is an intellectual who is no longer believed in anything, but it works for others and for the sake of public debt - because "the country needs a fish," expressing the words of the hero "three minutes of silence".

This is a savory fate, uncomfortable fate, and Popkov's paintings are sad - not decorative. Modern burzhui his paintings will be appreciated hardly. The ass was a real artist, including authenticity expressed in the fact that he was an artist uneven - sometimes unnecessary sentimental, sometimes relaxed. In the best things - a major realist, in the best (there is one canvas, where the old woman sits in the corner of the hut) - a great painter.

In the pictures of Popkov, the motive of the icon is exceptionally strong - he insists on the relationship of realistic (someone will say: socially owned) painting with icon painting. His ideas about picturesque laying are just as idle and simple, like a provincial icon painter, and that, for which he writes pictures, it is possible to express exactly the same words as we describe the cause of the icon.

Time did not help this artist to see. He seemed insufficiently modern, our toy, fake time does not love the real thing, - and I wanted a motley and daring: he was forgotten forgotten by the Fantikov, just like the European contemporaries forgot - Guttuzo or Morandi, to open these artists to renovate. The language itself is lost - no art historian who would know today to analyze the picture, the colorful layer, the movement of the fingers. Art was very stumbled very long, instead of art historians, curators were coolant.

Now to learn not only to speak, but also to see.

Brigade is resting. 1965.

Life - Sometimes it seemed to the ass - she acquired the features of a ridiculous farce. And since it is so, to avoid the search, not the truth, no, oblivion - at the bottom of the glass I could not. Attempted suicide. Premonition of early death. Two weeks before the death brought the records to friends: "By put the music on my funeral."

Death - also ridiculous. And in this absurdity, the inexorable flow of fate is heard by chance.

He should not have been on this day in MO Snel. He was going to leave. But did not leave. At 11 o'clock in the evening, on November 12, 1974, Victor Popkov caught the car at Tset Gorky. Taxi did not stop. Taking on a taxi in Cassatory "Volga", the artist tried to stop her. The collector (as it turned out later, he was drunk) shot and threw a deadly wounded man to the pavement. The Popkov hospital was brought as Bundy that who committed a robbery attack on the collection machine, and only later the circumstances of the "attack" were able to clarify thanks to random witnesses.

A good man was grandmother Anice. 1973.

And already at 2 o'clock in the morning, according to Voice of America, they were transferred that "KGB's colonels killed by the famous Russian huzza ass." During the civilian memorization and in Horon, "provocations" were waiting. But there were no provocations, Cro Me is one: entering the hall of the house of artists on Kuznetsky Bridge, where the civilian memorial service was held, people saw a picture of Popkov "Good man was grandmother Anusya." A few years ago, when the picture was first put in the house of artists, the ass, it was here that I wanted to place it. Then they did not give. Dali now.

"Tarusa. Sunny day. Was on the grave of Vatagina, Pouustovsky, Borisov-Musatov. Holy graves. Light about them memory. What conclusion today could I do? They were greedy to life. They wanted to live and perfectly understood - peace will be. They were not a guaji to life. They loved life and lived full and spiritually and physically, within the limits released by each nature.

And I now understand, so that after your death about you remembered with gratitude, you need to have the courage to live trusted, suffering from joy, love joy, laughter, health, everything is beautiful, strong, living, and everything that moves, the body, Thought, soul.

And yet: each age is characterized by its beauty and body and spirit. But the finest body is in youth, and the Spirit in old age. And you need to love the body when young, and always think about the spirit, and in old age only about the spirit. Smaller whining, God, give health and body and spirit. Teaching to rejoice while we live. Forget the thoughts about violence over life. "

Return. 1972.

Almost 38 years have passed since the death of the artist, but so far to his monument in Tarasovka lay on the snow scarlet cloves. A lot of books, articles, films were written about Victor Popkov, made by television. Pictures are stored in large museums, art galleries of Russia and abroad. Collectors are considered to have the work of Popkov. This is the testimony of that grace, which Victor Efimovich invested in his lobby.

Victor Popkov. About myself

My day. 1960.

Builders of the Bratsk HPP. 1960-1961

Memories. Widow. 1966.

Schinel father. 1972.

Two. 1966.

Now to learn not only to speak, but also to see.

Maxim Kantor.

Brigade is resting. 1965.

Life - Sometimes it seemed to the ass - she acquired the features of a ridiculous farce. And since it is so, to avoid search, not truth, no, oblivion - at the bottom of the glass I could not. Attempted suicide. Premonition of early death. Two weeks before the death brought the records to friends: "Put the music on my funeral."

Death - also ridiculous. And in this absurdity, the inexorable flow of fate is heard by chance.

He should not have been on this day in Mo-Snel. He was going to leave. But did not leave. At 11 o'clock in the evening, on November 12, 1974, Victor Popkov caught the car on the street of Gorky. Taxi did not stop. Having adopted in the taxi in-cassation "Volga", the artist tried to stop her. The collector (as it turned out afterwards, he was drunk) shot and threw a deadly wounded man by Umii on the pavement. The Popkov Hospital was brought as the Bundy-Ta who committed a robbery attack on the collection machine, and only later the circumstances of the "attack" were able to clarify thanks to random witnesses.

A good man was grandmother Anice. 1973.

And already at 2 o'clock in the morning, according to "Voice of America", they were transferred that "KGB colonels killed by the famous Russian Hu-devil ass". During the civilian memorization and in Horon, "provocations" were waiting. But there were no provocations, Cro-I was alone: \u200b\u200bentering the hall of the house of artists on Kuznetsky Bridge, where the civilian memorial service was held, people saw a picture of Popkov "A good man was grandmother Anusya." A few years ago, when the picture for the first time you were, in the house of artists, the ass, it was here that I wanted to place it. Then they did not give. Dali now.

Return. 1972.

Pock. 1959.

In November 1974, the collector shot to the emphasis killed the artist Viktor Efimovich Popkov. The car with a killer immediately disappeared from the crime scene. Being arrested, he stupidly repeated, which acted according to the instructions. Then this terrible, ridiculous, not explained by the story did not receive due public public. And the Soviet government, seeking to lean the scandal, hurried to award the artist who did not really complain, the State Prize of the USSR (posthumously). So in 42, the life of one of the most significant Russian artists of the second half of the 20th century broke out.
Viktor Efimovich Topkov's end of the institute. V. Surikova became a notable phenomenon in the artistic art of the country. Three of his work from the graduation series were bought by the State Tretyakov Gallery, they wrote about him in newspapers and journals. In 1966, he was awarded the honorary diploma Biennale at the exhibition of works of young artists in Paris for the work of "Haldday", "Two", "Family Bolotomy. "
The witness works of the artist caused irritation among representatives of power. Maybe therefore, in the west it was called a dissident.
Victor Popkov was a deep national artist. His patriotic things concerned all aspects of life in society and people close to him. He, as a director gained in the material and penetrated with sympathy to the characters of his cloths. Apparently, therefore, the emotional fullness of his canvases still finds a response in the hearts of many viewers.

A distinctive feature of Viktor Popkov's creativity is the parable nature of his works. The language of the symbols he writes a story, a story, a romance with plastic lines, spots, colors, invoices, achieving virtuoso execution techniques. In his canvases there is always a mystery and mysterious attractiveness. The strength of his work is also in the fact that he knew how to achieve the optimal result in his plans. Idea, flavor, composition, virtuoso drawing - all at the highest professional level.

"My Day" 1968. GTG

One of the most significant works were the epic works of the artist from the "Mezen Widow" cycle: "Memories. Widow "," Northern Song "," September on Mezeni "," Northern Chapel "," Songy, "One", "Old age" and others. Already the names of the paintings carry in themselves and empathy, and the inner pain of people who have passed the burdens, suffering and undeservedly forgotten.

The work of this master still worries and raises genuine interest not only in Russia. Victor Popkov was awarded the title of the laureate of the State Prize, documentary films were listed about him, albums were published, books. In the Tretyakov Gallery there are 90 works of the artist, more than 20 works - in the Russian Museum.

Victor Popkov "About yourself"

"Builders of Bratsk" 1960-1961

"Memories. Widow" 1966 GTG

"Memories. Widow" 1966. GTG. Fragment

"Aunt Fenia died. Mount" 1968

"Northern Song" ("Oh, how all her husbands poured to war ..."). 1968.

"Northern Song" 1968, fragment

"Monastery in Borovsk" 1972

"Roznikov dinner" 1966-1969

Kimzha village 1969. Perm Art Gallery

"Chapel in the village of Zehnovo" 1972

"A good man was grandmother Anice" 1973. GTG

"The work is over" 1972

"Schinel Father" 1972. GTG

This peculiar genre picture completes the series of pictures about the war. This is a self-portrait of an artist dedicated to his father - Efima Akimovich Popkov, who died at the beginning of the war. On the sketch to the picture - an excerpt from the latter, probably, Efim Akimovich's emails Wife Stepanid Ivanovna Popkova:
"Our part is under Smolensk. Fights are heavy. Stesha, pass the Chouvilkina Masha that Fyodor died. Yesterday it was still alive. Died with me. Stesh, today fight again. If something happens to me, take care of children and yourself. (Words "I'm kissing, your mouth, 21 Oct. 41" crossed out.) Kiss a firmly dumb, Wit and Kolya. Stesh, now in battle. I will finish after the fight ... "

Did not finish.

Farewell words of the father formed the basis of the design of the painting "Sinel Father". His deeply personal memories of the father of the ass put himself in a row with the northern widows, connecting his own destiny with their damned grandi lonely. Widow seems to be floating out of gray-green, under the color of the soldiers of the background of the background and become next to him, trying on the father's chinel.

"Once in the evening, he came to me in her father's overcoat, dropped to the floor with the wall and told how I cried today, working on the picture," recalls the K. Friedman's scene.

Of course, this Soldier Shinel is not Efim Akimovich, but she belonged to the father of his wife Victor Popkov, the artist Clara Kalinicheva, was kept in the family as a relic, and at the same time was used for business in all necessary cases.

Popp with a clear and clear-shaped picture of the picture for a long time, the central figure itself was not given. He changed her position several times, turn a head, a hand gesture, even clothes, trying to find a faithful color relationship and with the color of the soldiers of the soldier, and with a picture of the painting. Not only consonant tones, but also contrasting. The final point was a bright purple stain on the palette. By the way, the meaningful reception, which he introduced and in the picture "Northern Song". There, the final point was the red greean flower on the windowsill.

Some art historians see in the "Sintel Father" echoes of the former disputes about the connection of generations. It must be said that such a problem for Popkov did not exist. The connection of generations he experienced blood. He fell a huge love for the mother, to the deceased father, respect for senior artists, but the problematics of his work is much wider than compassion to relatives and relatives.

"The ass is one of the key figures of domestic post-war art. For several years he made a jump from social to existential." Jan Brooke, deputy director of GTG for scientific work.

But the most important thing of Popkov is his fate. There is no advanced conceptualist, and, quite likely, they would give a lot for such a legend. The boy from the working family brilliantly ends the Surikovsky Institute, for the first large picture of the "Brother HPP builders" over the authorities. At 27, by those standards, it is very early, entering the USSR CXIs, in 62nd it goes to Finland at the Festival of Youth and Students. In the 67th receives an honorary diploma of the Biennale of Contemporary Art in Paris. The 30-year-old ass even entered the Committee on the award of state and Leninist premiums. There was a great social success.

And in parallel - drunkenness, the attempt of suicide (his literally out of the loop pulled the father-in-law), the premonition of death. A couple of weeks before the death of the ass brought to his friends the records: "Put the music on my funeral."
At the funeral near the coffin there was an unfinished picture of Victor Popkov "Autumn rain (Pushkin)".

Victor Popkov is an artist-painter and schedule, the author of talented peculiar work, many of which are presented in the Tretyakov Gallery. I survived a terrible war in my paintings, he handed over the harsh reality and inner courage, followed by the years not for the country. He forced the audience to compare his heroes and admire them, empathize and admire.

Childhood

Popkov Viktor Efimovich (1932 - 1974) was born in Moscow, in the family of peasants. Father and mother, from the early years, accustomed to severe work, moved from place to place in search of work.

Victor Popkov was a second child in a large family of four kids. The news of the death of the Father in war arrived when the future painter was nine years old, and his youngest brother - several months. Mother, at the request of his beloved husband, devoted all her children, never married. But I put the guys on my feet, it was given a proper education.

The Ass Family was friendly, but poor. The children loved her mother and, seeing her hard work, tried to listen to everything and disappoint. Understanding that they are connected by indishible blood bonds, the guys grew along almost without quarrels and disagreements, always ready to come to the revenue to each other and provide the necessary support.

Mother, Stepanida Ivanovna, adored his babies and tried to raise them in rigor, but tenderness.

This seemingly happy childhood was overshadowed by several more tragedies (in addition to the death of the father and permanent need).

The death of the younger brother, a universal pet, left an indelible mark in the soul of Viktor Popkov. He could not even attend the kid's funeral.

The second bright unforgettable shocks occurred a little later, when Bull attacked Vitu and threw him to the ground. The boy managed to escape thanks to the promincing assistance.

But, despite all the sorrow, Victor Popkov dear and friendly child, generous and sociable.

First steps on a creative path

At school, the boy was distinguished by special adjacent and diligence. From the smallest years, it developed a desire to create on paper. Vita liked to follow the manifestation of the drawing on the then "shodks" (transferable pictures), for which he spent all his pocket money, as well as watch the work of a neighbor-artist, which painted watercolor, but someone's name, unfortunately, we are not known.

Stepanida Ivanovna, the first greeted in his son to work with a brush, began to encourage the child's desire to create. She took him to an art school and helped to enter the Moscow Graphic School, sincerely praised him, inspired to creative feats and gave the thoughtful tips.

And the boy wrote everywhere and everything. His early sketches covered a variety of objects and events - these were trees, and at home, and people.

Art workshop teachers also considered talent in a gifted student and paid additional attention to him. Under short etudes from a personal album of a novice artist, it was possible to see that learning in the cityhouse went to his advantage: meaningful qualitative work, mostly landscapes and still lifes appear on the change of amateuric sketches.

Formation of creativity

In 1852, Victor enters the Surikov Institute at the Faculty of Graphics. And although it did not fit the desires of a young man (he wanted to learn from the painting department), still such a state of affairs has favorably affected his further creative activities. Knowledge and skills found in the Graphic Faculty reflected in his not re-exquisite manner of the painter.

Now Popkov Viktor Efimovich, the biography and creativity of which was actively revived with entering the higher educational institution, begins to create vigorously. It works in hard, seemingly unfavorable conditions: in a small barrack, where five more people live with him - Mother, younger sister and elder brother with his wife and child. Tesne, poverty, malnutrition - then Master satellites.

Sometimes it was necessary to write in the unheated corridor, in different boots, eating only a piece of bread with bass. But it did not affect the creative process. Victor Popkov worked selflessly, talented, confident, regularly. His magnificent talent was noticed almost instantly, a gifted student was awarded at first elevated, and a little later - the Stalinist scholarship, which he almost to a penny gave the needs of relatives.

Travels

Since 1956, Victor Popkov has been committing prolonged creative vigi in the country, in search of the original material for work and expressive angles. He visited the delightful, grand production construction projects, realized the entire enormous scale of the work, recorded many ordinary, routine plots, which subsequently "opoethized" and glorified. Unlike its fellow students who were looking for picturesque bright places and images, a novice artist focused his vision at the prose-friendly ordinary compositions. This is a concrete, pouring a solution with water, or two workers on the background of huge locomotive wheels.

Victor worked vigorously, lively, as if he was afraid not to have time, trying to keep on paper every episode of severe work. Student Exhibition of Etudes, held in one of the trips to Pepling a lot of accurate talented works of Viti Popkov.

In his paintings, a "stern style" prevailed reflection in the laconicity of parts, realistic images, dryness of shades.

It was thanks to creative trips on construction sites, Viktor Efimovich was able to become a popular artist depicting on his canvases of ordinary work workers during his heavy monotonous classes.

"Builders of the Bratsk HPP"

After a trip to the construction of a hydropower station in Bratsk in 1960, a wonderful original picture of Bratsk builders appeared. A young artist has long thought out every detail of the web - background, color, alignment of images, an angle.

No wonder the back plan is black, it focuses on drawn figures, and not on events or incidents. For the artist, it was the main properly to present his heroes and show their strength, courage, self-confidence. The builders of Bratsk are dusty, tired of work, but they are beautiful in their diligence and harsh, restrained energy.

It is noteworthy that in the original form on the canvas were depicted workers with squals on their hands, since most workers on the Bratsk hydroelectric station were prisoners. But, realizing that in such a form, the leadership cannot release a picture to the exhibition, Viktor Efimovich removes camp tattoos.

Since then, the artist becomes famous. He fell in love with the people, recognized critics. And Viktor Popkov, the paintings of which buys the Tretyakov Gallery and prints the advanced newspaper, continues to work fruitfully and delight the public with new original works, living modestly and armsily, almost poorly.

Flowering creativity

"Working theme", reflected in other colorful paintings by the artist, was not the only one, to which Viktor Efimovich's ass turned during his creative inspiration.

A change of "Brigade is resting", the "Bridge in Arkhangelsk" the moral and psychological plots of ordinary human relations come. The ass connects different artistic styles, experiments with color effects. These are dramatic everyday episodes, found the display in the canvas "quarrel", "Divorce", "Family of Botodoxy", "Two".

"Mezen widow"

Incompretful glory brought his popkove in the "Mezen widow" (the end of the 1960s - the beginning of the 1970s), in which he reflected individual character and tragic fate of a woman on each canvase. Each work strides with its realistic identity and squat painting. And although the paintings "Waiting", "old age", "one" are performed by tragic pain and oppressive melancholy, yet they need humanity in order to awaken in it humanity and kindness in relation to the post-war feminine and loneliness.

The topic of historical events occupied a significant place in the work of the artist. His revealing "Chekist" and "Call on the door" was given by the era of inexplicable bloody repression, and the "Schinel Father" and others were transferred to an insurmountable tummy sadness for those who would never return from the front-line Dali.

Tragic death

Working on the historical and poetic topics, Victor Popkov begins his legendary painting "Autumn rain", where he portrayed the Great Pushkin against the background of a crying element. Work on the web artist came to Pushkin Mountains.

November 12, while on business in the capital, Victor Efimovich with friends comes to a parked Volga to ask the driver to pass them down. But the car turned out to collectatorial. Because of the recent sensational robbery, the guards who received the orders to shoot in case of danger, opened fire. The artist was mortally wounded.

At his funeral, there was an unfinished picture "Autumn rain" near his funeral.

Personal life

Popkov Viktor Efimovich was married to his classmate on graphic school Clara - a talented artist, a real friend of life. With her, they passed poverty and deprivation, they lived in the same apartment with the mother-in-law and the test, they worked in the same room, together their son.

Clara Ivanovna was a very light and courageous man, she devotedly loved her husband, helped him at the time of his depression and desightened, gave practical advice.

In addition to such beautiful mental qualities, a woman possessed bright talent and skill. She became a popular popular master of the children's book, worked with the Publishing House "Kid", took an active part in the Allied and international exhibitions.

"In disbelief were conceived,
in disbelief, we survived ...
Negation. How to live denying?
How to go, deny yourself? How to save, denying you, his, yourself "?"
It is difficult to believe, but these painful questions sound in the diary of a person who became a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR, without reaching the thirty-year-old age, which wrote the grandiose paintings on the harsh labor of the builders of the new world without God, the artist who was welcomed by the Soviet Nomenclature and Criticism. He welcomed to that time, while the soul of the artist did not feel thirst for the other depth and other meaning.

Illusion thaw

Moscow artist Victor Popkov. Photo Evgenia Cassina and Vladimir Savostyanov / Photoxronics TASS /.

Victor Popkova has never opened to live "slightly", work "slightly". This spending went to the maximum from childhood: at school - solid five and in the family nickname "holly", in the Surikovsky Institute, when classmates did in three or four jobs as theses, the ass prepared thirteen, and becoming a professional artist, even in custom Works squeezed himself up to drop.

Childhood Popkov is a factory communal in the Moscow region of Mytishchi, not far from the station Chelyuskinskaya Yaroslavl Railway. Parents, yesterday's village inhabitants, moved here in the thirties. Hard life, the need - mother alone raised children: the father died at the beginning of the war. Popkov's mother, Stepanida Ivanovna, recalled like Victor boy, first seeing artist for the street for the first time, immediately began to ask her to her disciples, and the mother, a simple, illiterate woman, inner ever trusting his son, did not prevent his desire, and soon they were together With his friend enrolled in the factory art studio. The fate of Popkov is the case clearly pronounced, since childhood of the audition.

He entered the art at the end of the fifties, in a short period of Khrushchev thawed, when "after the long and harsh Stalinist winter", the optimists expected reforms in politics - the liberalization of the regime, and in art, the influx of fresh air was felt, the desire to go beyond officially approved, Zaradnogo Stalinsky Socialism . Directed by Mkhat Leonid Leonidov Back in his thirties recorded in his diary: "What is realism? It's true. What is socialism? This is the truth that we need. " Rather, it would be noted - the truth that was needed by the authorities and which was straightforwardly affirmed through art.
The thaw inspired the illusion that it is possible to live and do freely - then the cult of the personality of Stalin, rehabilitated many artists and science, repressed under Stalinist mode. The opportunity to read Ahmatov, Yesenin, who were not printed in the thirties and forties, to get acquainted with the modern flows of Western European painting - the word, it became possible to touch the cultural tradition, access to which was blocked by hard ideological control during the Stalinist Board.
It was the time of romantics, social optimism, when hundreds of thousands of young men and girls were sent to master the virgin lands, on the shock construction of communism under the accompaniment of painting songs like "Communism is the youth of the world, and to build it with young."

The ass, together with other artists, also went to shock construction sites - Irkutskaya HPP, the Bratskaya HPP, made endless etudes, sketches, "looking out for life." At Vecina, a number of paintings from the series "People of Coles" wrote. Early works of Popkov "Spring in the Depot" (1958), "to work" (1958), a series "Transport" (1958) quite consisted of official ideological settings - to declare in the art of the great victories of communism, to glorify people of labor - builders new life. There was no internal conformism for him, there were no intellectual or moral temptations. "The artist is designed to write about the big phenomena of life" - there is such a formula in the diary of Popkov, then he sincerely admired the big scale of the building, sought to "fight" labor energy, youth, and he himself had a "wings" of his youth, was enthusiastic, open New trends in society.

Bread for flag

In 1961, Popkov writes the painting "Builders of the Bratskaya HPP", which became the canonical product of the so-called "harsh style", one of the hedgeons, whom Victor Popkov himself was. The artists of the harsh style as a whole were inscribed in the system of Soviet artistic "production", but they portrayed people's people, labor weekdays are more "harsh", vital, without compact compartment with its declarative campaign.
In the picture "Bratskaya HPP" in the foreground, against the background of black sky, as if against the background of the black curtain, there are workers in a row - restrained, courageous, volitional. The sky is "curtain", front, "icon" figures of workers - this image can be read as "His Majesty working class on the forefront of history," and then it becomes obvious to the desire of young popkov to escape from the prosperity, the ordinaryness of the genre scene to the semantic generalization, the desire is not So much draw, how much to "understand life with a brush in your hands."

The artist Eduard Bragovsky, who the ass showed the "fraternal hydroelectric station," recalled: "He was terribly upset when he saw that no one praises that we were indifferent. "Such a wonderful picture, and you are silent?" - offended ass ". Against the background of the discoveries of modern European painting, the picture of Popkov, some "progressive" brothers on the workshop, seemed obsolete and stylistically, and thematically. Popkov vary only shows that he put a much more soul to work than is usually required for passing customs.
The picture will buy the Tretyakovka, the ass will begin to go to international exhibitions, will live the takeoff of fame, when "he was given any contract for any painted." For him, publications were important about him in newspapers, transmission to radio - success gave the necessary confidence in herself, spread the wings. Popkov was not thirty when he became a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR, and soon he was invited to the Committee on Leninsky and State Prizes. Early career takeoffs promised great prospects. But by the mid-1960s, the "thaw" sued. Almost all the conquests made by the Soviet culture in a short period of thawed, were subjected to a serious opal. Began to waste back. Power, including the orthodox-official part of the leadership of the Union of Artists, sought to keep under the root of any "meaningless creative quest."

But the ass could no longer live, without noticing deep contradictions in society, could not exist within the framework of predictable, in all respects of prosperous, official. Sad was his reflections of that time: "Or you will draw the flag and get a salary today, buy your mother's bread, or you will not get anything, but you will create as you want." He did not go underground, did not become part of the arthritis, but ceased to be "faithful", and the gate to the East of Soviet culture was half a closed for him.

What are the widow talking about

For some time, he refers to lyrical subjects, to chamber, psychological work - "Bolotoder's family", "Two", "Three Artists" - in them the private life of a simple, unbearable person. In this desire for the camera, devastation, fatigue from Soviet rhetoric and ideology, which lost its inner filler, is the trait of time, many artists, cinematographers, writers left "big topics." However, the nerve, the energy of Popkov did not allow to linger in this niche for a long time. "Being in the idea of \u200b\u200bfree and free, to be a creator, a hooligan, anything, but listen to my impulses and trust them."

In 1966, he rides a creative trip to the north, to the Mezen, and the famous "Mezensky cycle" begins there. Picture "Memories. Widow "- one of the central cycles.
Removing the room in the house in one of the old women in the village on the Mesten River, the ass witnessed the village gatherings: "To the hostess, where I lived, they came somehow her friends. They sat for a long time, remembering the past, drank Bragu, ate a cake, a cod with a plunder and gradually, forgetting about me, the whole left in that distant, when the life for them just started. " For household, prose scene, the desert of the fates of these village women opened the thief: "Yes, how is it? Why are they alone? And where are their husbands, children? Where are the happiness to which they had full right? And only I, a random person, one witness to their Babi, damned, lonely share. All their lives, all their youth sailed now with my eyes. " After this meeting, Popkov is born the topic for a new picture.

On a large canvase, five rustic old women are depicted, in their way there is intentionally there is nothing from the cozy, home-made grandmothers, where the grandson-kudryash and the milk covers on the table. Here is the opposite: silhouettes of figures are clearly outlined, the shapes are inclised from the tree, the folds of the clothes are placed large, lines are straight. Lucky an old woman in the foreground seems to be descended from the icon board, resurrecting an ancient icon painting images of the saints of martyrs. No bay details of life, and the image itself rises from illustrative narratives, from the existent limit to the poetic building, to the symbol - this level of the symbol, the parable of the ass first introduced into Soviet art 1960-1970.

The picture of "Widow" is the memory of war, and these five women, as different hatches of one soul - a tragic generalized image of a vuali share - how many of them, lonely olds mourned their dead husbands throughout the Russian land. Behind their shoulders, a multi-life life with heavy weekdays, ass focuses the hands of workers, disproportionately large - such cast-iron boilers and carry bags. Their children scattered through the world, and they themselves remained to live in a wandering-lonely village in the northern wilderness. A severe rich gray room corresponds to the easiest of life in the north. Each of the old woman left inside himself, remembering what the soul was spawned and the soul was pricked. But not sorrow and the memory of the already set the tonality of the whole picture. The ass lifts a note of sorrow to high vitality, filling the picture in red, with all its "juices" - scarlet, crimson, fire. "In the north, the landscape and the village in color are very restrained, and if a flower or a red dress appears, they look significantly and the impact of their outdoor expressive" (V. Popkov). And this red color in the outfits of the old woman, like a flash, becomes the basis for the perception of the image, otherwise the whole theme of the picture sounds ... "The tragity is joyful" - a favorite poppiest expression. "For me, the scene, which I portrayed in the picture, nor with whining, nor with hopelessness, no longer have anything. Widow, leaving mentally in a young, happy time, want to gain strength in the past for today and the day of tomorrow. It is a life-approval, although tragic in its manifestation. "

Widow, devoted experience of war, separation, deaths - red combines them into a single whole, here is the spirit of sisterhood. Behind the severity, the severity of these images, the disseminating red sounds the color of life, the hidden inner strength of these women is revealed, it is not by chance in the center of the composition - straight, as if the internally uncoated, who did not disliked the old woman.
And here the ass expressed something from the "main". Intuitively, on the touch, he approaches the theme of the Christian humble adoption and carrying his cross. Humbly, decently taking his own share, loneliness, all the life and life, which had to be taken out, the soul is spiritually filled - from here the inner strength of these old women, hence "the tragity is joyful." Let me in the corner instead of the icon, the portrait of Karl Marx - the detail is reliable: "The drawing with my mistress, who from her husband remained his conviction, his cleanliness of faith in a party, expressed in the holy guard and expensive portraits of Marx and Lenin in the corners of the horses" (V. Popkov .) In these portraits, the leaders were captured by contradictory time, but the entire way of the inner life of these village women goes not to the party Leninsky standards, but by century Russian religious sources.

At that time, write such a thing, in meaning of multidimensional, with symbolic subtext, was a challenge. The picture was accepted ambiguously, Popkov reproached in excessive gloominess and hopelessness, not covered by the entire depth of the plan.

For Popkov "Widow" - the topic is personal, before the eyes of the fate of his mother, who at the beginning of the war remained widow. According to the memoirs of the friends of Popkov, his mother was a man who personified meekness and humility. Stepanida Ivanovna was very pious, worked for many years in the church of the ringing, small, dry, she instilled in the son of kindness and calm. He comes to her before the start of a new job: "Mom, bless me."

"Where they sing, not moan"

In 1970, the ass ends the picture "Mother and Son", where she portrays himself and his mother. In the picture evening, filled silence in the room, a lamp with a lamp, reflected in the window; The son lies the patient and listens as the mother in front of the icon reads the Bible. Many art historians noted that in the image of the son he drives a reference to the icon image of the "Savior of the Unclean", here it is possible to roll-up with the eternal theme of Our Lady with the baby - the theme of the sacrificial maternal love and prayer petition for the son, which is destined to carry his cross. In the picture - the mother prays, the son is closely listened to her prayer, and the soul is taught to the Divine Word, he penetrates. Red lampshade, red cholesterol in clothes and in things create internal image tensions - here a focused comprehension of meaning.
The ass was not a church man, but there was a spiritual, "root" connection with the mother, which obviously nodded him, visually in the picture. This unity is again strengthened by the color decision - a combination of white and red in the image of a mother and son. Perhaps this particular intimacy with a believer mother was the source that the Christian subtext begins to sound in the work of Popkov, which, however, is more prone than clearly pronounced. But, it seems, the main thing is, here it was his own constant desire to "bite into life to learn, comprehend the basic laws of our being."
The storyline almost disappears in his works, a very thin mood appears, listening. The ass wrote that he wants in the paintings "along with concrete express something unclear, spiritual intangible."

He writes "silence", "May holiday", "in the Cathedral" (1974). The latter, oddly enough, he conceived, being on a trip, in Germany, and ended in Russia. On the picture, the slant rays lit the temple, and everything around - in golden transparent choppers, all transforming heavenly gold. In a sign self-portrait "Schinel Father", he depicts himself trying on a soldier coin, symbolically asking a question to its contemporaries: is the military feet of their generation on the shoulder? Will there be enough internal strength, integrity, courage? "Autumn rain. Pushkin "- the ass worked on this completely amazing thing in Mikhailovsky, and it seems as if he wrote everything as it was, from nature: Pushkin saw, felt these Russians Dali, space, watched the fields, looked at the gray sky, in which the eternal autumn sadness melts , inhaled this air when "dlowed the autumn chlad." Here, a single image - the poet and Russia - land that generously eaten Pushkin poetic force.
This is not directly religious plots, but in these topics ass affects something inevitably important, "existence" in the inner life of every person.

In 1972, the North Chapel was completed. The picture withstood a terrible battle with officials from the management of culture, it was required to remove it. Popkov In general, in those years put up random, weak things, uncharacteristic for him; The Republican and All-Union exhibitions almost did not allow him. It was reached by curiosity: the famous poppots "father's chinel" did not want to include in the exhibition exhibition in a manneva on the grounds that the ass portrayed itself in imported boots. The main place where he could have been exhibited were small on the scale of the autumn and spring exhibitions, and there it was worthwhile to keep his work - "terribly got a lot of ass. Scary. Somehow very cruel. Ryano fought with formalistic, as they called, art. " The ass was looking all the time, experimented, but the main thing, "he was fascinated by everything that was alone, daring to comprehend the secrets of the human soul," the artist Igor Obrosov recalled.
"Northern Chapel" managed to defend. In the picture - the figure of the boy, frozen in the opening of the doors at the entrance to the chapel. He looks inside, as if "Ray from Paradise" touched the soul, and she froze from her feelings of reverence before the secret and beauty of heavenly landscape. The viewer sees only part of the temple paintings - three angels that have been bored with their cover of all incoming, written shiny, joyful scarlet color in contrast with silver blue northern.

Appeks for a long time he was fond of ancient Russian art and in 1964 even specially traveled to the medieval monastery of Ferapontovo, decorated with frescoes Dionysia to make sketching with frescoes. It seems that the contemplation of the visible image of heavenly beauty is only a step towards comprehending the life of the invisible, to the sacred measurement, to the opening of the very source of this beauty. The ass, like a boy in the picture, stood at the threshold of this discovery. Visiting, listening to this mystery - already participation. Poet Nikolai Rakkin, a contemporary Popkov, remembering his youth, wrote:

Let me not honor the saints and, at the church, looking,
not baptized
But when the bell tower called dwying copper,
I came in the floor, and I got humbly in the door,
And looked in the depth, immersed in dusk by a third.
Shouted the soul, and trembled a candle Merzian
And the rattling choirs overthrew the wave for the wave.
And everything mounted to me that I stepped on the limit of the Mirozdan
And that the eternity itself fired the lights before me.

So consonant with the mood of the poppiest painting! It seems that in this sign work, it monitors the way out of that spiritual deadlock, in which his generation turned out - these are people who have formed in the atheistic era, who have deprived of their faith, mystical experience of being, they walked in life as if to the touch, off-road, painfully feeling their Deadly from the light: "Specify me the edge where the lamp is light from the lamp, indicate the place I was looking for, - where they sing, and not moan, where the floor will not show," Vladimir Vysotsky wrapped in the microphone in those years.

As a trigger on a platoon

In poetry, painting, in cinema is not accidental at this time, similar images are born - in the song Vysotsky: "The image in the corner and those shivered", in Popkov in the painting "Silence" - the dilapidated churches with a leaky dome, Shukshina in the film "Kalina Red "- Flooded temple. In all, some kind of "dislocated" life, the tragic layer of centuries, bogobosity and ... Desperate longing for some other, explicit truth. In these votes, the era is the whole complexity of the internal self-determination of generation of 1960-1970.
Most of the intelligentsia of his generation existed on inertia, under the protection of state recognition and non-good laws of adaptation, but those who at least somehow thought, and besides, they had a talent from God, - they often fell into drink, approached the "edge", Without knowing how to know how to preserve from myself, your passions and from gazeful time. In 1966, at the last moment, the practice of Popkov pulled it out of the loop. Separation attack. Much then fell out - quarrels with his wife because of his swallows, endless constraints and obstacles of officials in relation to his work.

The ass was generally a man desperate, blowing, always sharp, unexpected. "All his work on the nerve was holding. Such was in life "(artist Igor Popov). Many of the friends remember his vials: "announced the landing for the train. It remained no more than three minutes. Viti falls the coin between the platform and the car. He descends down, raises the coin and closes back ", or when" in winter, separating from the company of friends, he descends from the bridge to the river, and goes on barely frozen ice. "

"He was always like a trigger on a platoon, a squeezed spring, ready to free up at any time," said art historian Grigory Anisimov.

It was indicative of his reaction to the input of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Pops then in protest, whether he was seriously, whether he was torn into the joke. On the offer to work on the KGB "politely" dodged: "Well, I will be happy to serve, but I drink!" He was one of the few who raised his hand and supported the nomination of Solzhenitsyn to the Leninist Prize, although to vote for him at that time demanded a certain courage. Always occupied 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 Birstein remembered the expressive scene: "In the column hall of the House of Unions, the Congress of the Union of Artists ended. We stood with Vitea and friends in the lobby and talked. Translation was heard. Presiding says that we are approaching the assessment of the activities of the past rule. There is an offer to recognize the work of good, and there is an offer to recognize the work satisfactory. When we heard it, Viti was no longer with us. He is like Gagarin with a red carpet with a mandate raised. Presidium in confusion. Victor rises in an energetic step to the stand: "I suggest work to consider unsatisfactory." He was the only one who said it was openly. His lightning reaction was remembered, when from a friendly conversation, it could be empty, it was instantly in the podium. "

Many noted that in the last year of his life, some kind of anxiety always hung over him, he seemed to anticipate the approach of something tragic. Max Birstein recalled that shortly before the death of the ass brought the stack of plates tied with a ribbon, and said: "I ask you to lose it on my funeral."

Victor Popkov died, trying to stop the car to get to the house. Accidentally approached the collector car, he was accepted for the robber and shot focus. Farewell took place in the artist's house on Kuznetsky Bridge. On the stage put pictures "Autumn rain. Pushkin "and" Good man was grandmother Anusya "- the last significant work of the Popkov, which he managed to complete before his death. Accidentally or non-randomly, but in this picture - the result of copyrighted thinking about death, the meaning of human existence. It turned out, wrote to Requiem himself.

"Now carry"

The picture opens in front of the viewer gradually. First, as a scene of the village funeral, but the whole scale of the idea gradually opens: here the greatness of the Earth and the significance and greatness of each human life, let and anyone unknown, Rustic grandmother Anice.
Large powerful oak as a tree of life, among his crimson foliage suddenly shine green leaves; The same semantic motive is repeated in the image of people: a group of young composite and in the color solutions are separate from the crowd of the old woman in black. Here, the eternal terrestrial circulation of fading the life and her new conception, which includes nature, and man. In the foreground, a child who cannot yet be in the essence of what is happening, he stands back to the grave and face to the viewer - life continues. Lighted by the yellow autumnal sun hilly land in the foreground covered with crimson leaves, and it is a "lush nature wilt" there is a movement from life to death. Autumn theme is traditional in world art - this is a note of sadness, elegances, overlap monitoring and harvest time and in the earthly, and symbolically in the spiritual sense - time to collect the seored. With the entire tragicity of what is happening the flavor of the canvas, the ringing, amber-gold gives all the work some enlightement. The grandmother Anusya was a "good man", and therefore her life is crowned with completeness, it is fruitful. Household reality recognizable in clothing, in the types, cemetery monuments. The funeral occurs in a small northern village and at the same time on a wide-hand background, in a huge world. The ass does not accidentally take an a bird's eye view and decides to write a "grandmother anus" as a color icon ... "Persons like in icons - ocon, modeling, space," - to go to a fundamentally different language - the language of metaphysical concepts, which for every century , out of time.

Interesting detail: there is no rain in the picture, and people under cloaks. "There is rain in the soul," wrote ass, "the security of the world from something negative."

At the exhibition "Grandma Anusya" passed unnoticed, as artists said, "not received 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 work all the time tried to talk about things of important, existing; I tried to intuitively break through the border of some spiritual closeness of my generation, which was figuratively wrote Vysotsky: "And on top of ice and below." But the value of the work of Popkov, with all his authority, was not fully clear for his contemporaries.

He died on November 12, 1974. Collectors defended themselves and argued that it was an attack. When it became obvious that the murder had happened, the artists who were with Victor in the last few minutes of his life were fought; For a while he was still alive.
Victor Popkov's mother recalls, Stepanida Ivanovna: "Kononili with a bell tall ringing. I did everything. Seminarians came. And they fought so! - All the temple trembled. Two hours fang. And the Battyan sermon how much spoke. And as they brought, I went, I hit the bell ... Now carry. "

The picture "Mother and Son" is involuntarily remembered - the topic of light and meaning, the theme of maternal love and prayer petition for his son, who is destined to carry his cross. Popkov your cross carried without a malignude. "A person who has been collecting conscience in art," art historian Grigory Anisimov wrote about him. The conscience is customary to be called the voice of God in a person, this voice and "charged" ass in life, the truth of this search splashed on his canvas.