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This week at the Academy of Watercolors and Fine Arts 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 Sergei Andriyaka
May 15 - July 7, 2013
Moscow, st. Academician Vargi, 15
4th floor of the Administrative building of the Academy

This week a personal exhibition of works by Viktor Popkov "Painting, Graphics" was opened at the Academy of Watercolors and Fine Arts of Sergei Andriyaka.

No, I will not strive. No, I won't moan.
I will laugh quietly. I will cry quietly.
Quietly I will love, Quietly I will hurt,
I will live quietly, death will also be quiet.
If I am happy, if my god,
I will not swing, I will 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 hurt you. I will even endure meanness.
Have pity at least once in your life. Death! Will you come? I will not say anything.

Victor Popkov. About myself

In November 1974, the artist Viktor Yefimovich Popkov was killed by a shot from a cash collector when he approached the Volga car and asked the driver for a lift. Subsequently, the collector claimed that he acted according to the instructions. The artist was buried at the Cherkizovsky cemetery.

Then this terrible, ridiculous, in no way explainable story did not receive the proper publicity. And the Soviet government, trying to hush up the scandal, hastened to award the artist, who did not really like it, the USSR State Prize (posthumously). So at 42, the life of one of the most significant Russian artists of the second half of the 20th century was cut short.

Viktor Efimovich Popkov (03/09/1932 - 11/12/1974), laureate of the USSR State Prize, was born into a working class family. Studied at the Art and Graphics 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 harsh style. Popkov's painting is distinguished by drama, psychologism of images and situations, striving for philosophical reflection on life, rigor of compositions and rich color. In the period from 1956 to 1974, Popkov traveled to Baikal, Siberia, the Moscow region, the Vologda region, the North, where, according to his impressions, he created a series of works in oil, gouache, and pencil. In the West, he was called a dissident. His poignant social writings often irritated the authorities.

From the memoirs of Viktor Popkov: “I tried to write works that, at the first viewing, were perceived by some viewers as heavy, gloomy, permeated with a feeling of melancholy and oppression ... people, women-widows whom they did not want to see, their grief ... "

But the most important work of Popkov is his fate. Not a single advanced conceptualist has anything similar, and it is likely that they would give a lot for such a legend. A boy from a working-class family brilliantly graduated from the Surikov Institute, for the first big picture "The Builders of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station" was treated kindly by the authorities. At the age of 27, very early by those standards, he enters the Union of Artists of the USSR, in 62 he travels to Finland for the Festival of Youth and Students. In 67th he received an honorary diploma from the Biennale of Contemporary Art in Paris. Popkov, 30, even joined the committee for the awarding of the State and Lenin Prizes. There was a great social success.

And in parallel - alcohol, an attempt at suicide (he was literally pulled out of the noose by his father-in-law), a premonition of death. A couple of weeks before his death, Popkov brought his friends records: "Put music at my funeral." At the funeral next to the coffin there was an unfinished painting by Viktor Popkov "Autumn Rains (Pushkin)". Now it is in the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery.

A distinctive feature of Viktor Popkov's work is the parable character of his works. In the language of symbols, he writes a story, a novel, 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 creativity also lies in the fact that in the language of painting he was able to achieve an optimal result in his designs. Idea, color, composition, virtuoso drawing - everything is 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. As a director, he got used to the material and was imbued with sympathy for the characters in his canvases. Apparently, therefore, the emotional fullness of his canvases still resonates in the hearts of many viewers.

From memories of Viktor Popkov

“Popkov is one of the key figures in Russian post-war art. For several years he made a leap from the social to the existential ”(Jan Brook, Deputy Director of the State Tretyakov Gallery for scientific work).

“When you look at the paintings of Viktor Popkov, it is impossible to get rid of the memories of that shot and his early death, at 42. Popkov left us an eternal mystery: why? "

“Some said: the system was strangling, stagnation and creative lack of freedom were imminent. But death is such a big event, it cannot be measured or explained by political reasons. Be that as it may, life was clearly a burden for him, 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 huge bright halls - everything: those that have been awarded the State Prize, and those that have yet to be appreciated by critics and descendants, ”wrote the famous journalist and writer Zhanna Grechukha.

March 9 of this year would have marked 81 years since the birth of the artist Viktor Efimovich Popkov. There is no museum in Moscow yet, but a memorial to Viktor Popkov has been working for a long time in the Mytishchi Art Museum.

The artist's name is significant in the fine arts of Russia. They still write about him, make films, and make his personal exhibitions. The State Tretyakov Gallery and the Russian Museum have more than 150 works by the master. The attention to the person of the painter is not accidental. Everything related to Russian national culture is of great interest. And Popkov's creativity is deeply national. For him, his native land was not an empty concept. Everything concerned the tribune artist: both the joy and the pain of society. All his programming canvases are about this. "Father's Overcoat", "Widows", "Northern Song", "Builders of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station", "The Brigade is Resting" and many other paintings are modern and will now and will always be. Because the themes raised by the artist are so ambitious that they cannot be attributed to any specific time. For example, the painting “Summer. July ”, conceived here in Mytishchi, where he spent his childhood and youth. The native land served as the image for many of Victor's paintings: "Two", "Mother and Son", "Sick Child", "Klyazma River", "Students in Practice", "Expectation". The house in which the Popkovs lived, at 30 Silikatnaya Street, is no longer there, but numerous drawings, sketches, sketches have remained in the history of the city thanks to the painter. For a long time, there was a birch in that place, which Victor brought in a hat from the forest and planted. But time did not spare her either.

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 plastic. He always said: "When the soul hurts or rejoices, then a real work turns out." Many artists ask themselves the question: "What would Popkov write now?" The work of the master 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 the Russian national original art, because now it is a painful 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, it is necessary to create or large thematic canvases, or series. "

Once, after working on the sketch, he decided to swim in the Klyazma near the Church of the Intercession in Tarasovka. When I came out of the water I saw a scribbled obscene word on my landscape. Two teenagers stood nearby and laughed. The artist in their hearts gave them a slap on the head, and they brought their fathers, ready to pounce on Victor. He tried to figure out how they were raising their children, but it was useless.

Art critic G. Anisimov once showed me an album presented to him by Viktor. The album contained drawings and sketches by R. Gamzatov, E. Yevtushenko, D. Shostakovich, the Aleksandrov song ensemble in full force and others made during his work in the Lenin and State Prize Award Committee, of which he was a member at the beginning of the 1960s. 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 the vote on the award of the prize to A. Solzhenitsyn. E. Vuchetich recommended the young artist not to bury himself and not show self-will 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. It was the time of the thaw, when many young creative personalities believed in the freedom of creativity and hoped that it will always be so. After all, they, young actors, writers, artists, were entrusted with the work in the Prize Committee. Deceived by expectations, they did not lay down their arms and continued to fight the communist ideology that dominates creativity. V. Popkov, ardently speaking at meetings and congresses, sometimes only later realized the danger of his actions. In the painting "Sunday", he allegorically portrayed himself squeezed by grayness and dreaming of freedom. Party instructors who host exhibitions often did not hang V. Popkov's paintings for political reasons, and he came up with a symbolic system of images, where through a parable he could speak about what he could not but write about. He portrayed himself lying naked on a rooftop above the city with a bottle of wine and looking at the freely flying pigeons. He explained to me the meaning of his plan as follows. Naked because he is open to everyone and sincere in his work. He identifies with the white church, sandwiched by the gray roofs of the city, and envies the freedom of the pigeons.

Everyone who had to write about Popkov agreed that in all his work the purity and conscientiousness of the soul, agitated personal intonation, direct or indirect self-portrait are striking. Without this there is no artist Popkov.

He, by his nature as a righteous man, could not accept in any way that a person could be slandered, publicly doused with mud, branded with shame when there was no reason for this. Lying to his nature was simply unacceptable.

As a teenager in the village, he decided to butt with a local bull, and he hit him on the bridge of the nose with a horn. Barely survived. In fact, he struggled with power all his life. And she did not 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 seems that everything that happens was happening right in front of him, to which he was a witness. The painting "My Day" is evidence of this. He portrayed 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, having 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 was 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. I remembered my father who died at the front. His teacher E. Kibrik once asked: “Victor, in your painting“ A good man was grandma Anisya ”people are covered with a raincoat, but there is no rain. Why?" “Rain in the shower,” Popkov replied. One of the most iconic paintings of the painter - "Autumn rains. Pushkin ". There were many options for sketches after a trip to Mikhailovskoye: Pushkin was aiming with a pistol at his image in the mirror, he was depicted falling, lying. 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. Down stairs, flying autumn leaves, puddles of rain. The picture turned out to be the last on the painter's easel and, perhaps, the most poignant in its autobiography.

“Tarusa. Sunny day. Was at the grave of Vatagin, Paustovsky, Borisov-Musatov. Holy graves. The memory of them is bright. What conclusion could I draw today? They were greedy for life. They wanted to live and understood perfectly well that there would be peace. They weren't prudes to life. They loved life and lived it fully, both spiritually and physically, within the limits of nature released to everyone.

And now I understand that in order to be remembered with gratitude after your death, you need to have the courage to live in torment, 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 both body and spirit. But the most beautiful body is in youth, and the spirit is 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 and body and spirit. Teach to rejoice while we live. Forget thoughts about violence against life. "

Almost 38 years have passed since the artist's death, but scarlet carnations still fall on the snow at his monument in Tarasovka. Many books and articles have been written about Viktor Popkov, films have been made, and television programs have been made. The paintings are kept in large museums, art galleries in Russia and abroad. Collectors consider it an honor to have works by Popkov. This is evidence of the grace that the artist put into his canvases during his lifetime. And the significance of this grace is more and more essential every year, because the love for the artist's work multiplies in his works.

Yuri Popkov, artist

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Viktor Popkov is an artist-painter and graphic artist, the author of talented original works, many of which are presented in the Tretyakov Gallery. As a child, having survived a terrible war, in his paintings he conveyed the harsh reality and inner courage, which he watched in the difficult years for the country. He made viewers feel compassion for and admire their heroes, empathize and admire them.

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 several 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 to everything and not upset. Realizing that they are connected by unbreakable blood ties, the guys grew up together almost without quarrels and disagreements, always ready to come to each other's rescue and provide the necessary support.

Mother, Stepanida Ivanovna, adored her babies and tried to educate them 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, everyone's favorite Tolya, left an indelible mark on the soul of Viktor Popkov. He could not even attend the kid's funeral.

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 the help that arrived in time.

But, despite all the sorrows, Viktor Popkov grew up a kind and friendly child, generous and sociable.

The 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. Vitya liked to follow the manifestation of the drawing on the then "conversions" (decals), on which he spent all his pocket money, and also to watch the work of a neighboring artist, who painted with watercolors, but whose name, unfortunately, we do not know.

Stepanida Ivanovna, who was the first to discern in her son impulses to work with a brush, began to encourage the child's desire to create. She took him to an 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 - trees, houses, and people.

The teachers of the art workshop also considered the talent in the gifted student and paid additional attention to it. From the short sketches from the beginning artist's personal album, one could see that studying in the art studio did him good: meaningful high-quality works, mainly landscapes and still lifes, appeared to replace amateurish sketches.

Formation of creativity

In 1852, Victor entered the Surikov Institute at the Faculty of Graphics. And although this did not correspond to the wishes of the young man (he wanted to study at the painting department), nevertheless this state of affairs had a favorable effect on his further creative activity. The knowledge and skills acquired at the Faculty of Graphics were reflected in his non-refined manner of a painter.

Now Popkov Viktor Efimovich, whose biography and work were actively revived with admission to a higher educational institution, begins to create energetically. He works in difficult, seemingly unfavorable conditions: in a small barrack, where five more people live with him - a mother, a younger sister and an older brother with his wife and child. Tightness, poverty, malnutrition - the then companions of the master.

Sometimes I had to write in an unheated corridor, in different felt boots, eating only a piece of bread with bacon. 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 awarded at first an increased, and a little later - a Stalin scholarship, which he gave almost to a penny to the needs of his relatives.

Trips

Since 1956, Viktor Popkov has been making long creative voyages around the country in search of original material for work and expressive angles. He visited delightful, grandiose industrial construction sites, realized the entire colossal scale of the work, recorded many everyday, routine subjects, 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 over the solution, or two workers against the background of huge locomotive wheels.

Victor worked energetically, lively, as if he was afraid of not being in time, trying to keep on paper every episode of hard work. The student exhibition of sketches, held in one of the trips to the city, was full of many precise talented works by Viti Popkov.

His paintings were dominated by a "harsh style", which is reflected in the laconicism of details, realistic images, dryness of shades.

It was thanks to his 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 difficult 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 "The Builders of Bratsk" appeared. For a long time, the young artist thought over every detail of the canvas - background, color, arrangement of images, foreshortening.

No wonder the background of the picture is black, it focuses on the drawn figures, and not on events or incidents. The main thing for the artist was to correctly present his heroes and show their strength, courage, self-confidence. The builders of Bratsk are dusty people, tired of work, but they are wonderful in their hard work and harsh, restrained energy.

It is noteworthy that in its original form, the canvas depicted workers with tattoos on their hands, since most of the workers at the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station were prisoners. But, realizing that in this form, the leadership 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, critics recognized. And Viktor Popkov, whose paintings are bought by the Tretyakov Gallery and published by a leading newspaper, continues to work fruitfully and delight the public with new original works, living modestly and cramped, almost poor.

The flowering of creativity

The “working theme”, reflected in other colorful paintings by the artist, was not the only one that Viktor Efimovich Popkov addressed during his creative inspiration.

“The Brigade is Resting” and “The Bridge in Arkhangelsk” are being replaced by moral and psychological plots of simple human relations. Popkov combines different artistic styles and experiments with color effects. These are dramatic everyday episodes that are reflected in the canvases "Quarrel", "Divorce", "The Bolotov Family", "Two".

"Mezen widows"

His cycle “Mezen's Widows” (late 1960s - early 1970s) brought Popkov incredible fame, in which he reflected on each canvas the individual character and tragic fate of a woman. Each work is striking in its realistic originality and stocky picturesqueness. And although the paintings "Waiting", "Old Age", "Alone" are filled with tragic pain and oppressive melancholy, they are still necessary for humanity in order to awaken in it humanity and kindness in relation to the post-war female grief and loneliness.

The theme of historical events occupied an essential place in the artist's work. His revealing "Chekist" and "Doorbell" denounced the era of inexplicable bloody repressions, and "Father's Overcoat" and others conveyed an irresistible painful sadness for those who will never return from the front line.

Tragic death

Working on the historical and poetic theme, Viktor Popkov begins his legendary painting "Autumn Rain", where he depicted the great Pushkin against the background of the crying elements. The artist came to Pushkinskie Gory to work on the canvas.

On November 12, while on business in the capital, Viktor Yefimovich and his friends come to the parked Volga to ask the driver to give them a lift. But the car turned out to be a collection vehicle. Due to the recent high-profile robbery, the guards, who were ordered to shoot in case of danger, opened fire. The artist was mortally wounded.

At his funeral there was an unfinished painting "Autumn Rain" next to his lifeless body.

Personal life

Popkov Viktor Efimovich was married to his classmate at the graphic school Clara, a talented artist, a real 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 depression and despondency, and gave practical advice.

In addition to such wonderful spiritual qualities, the woman had a bright talent and skill. She became a popular and popular master of children's books, worked with the Malysh publishing house, and took an active part in allied and international exhibitions.

BIOGRAPHY

Born in 1932 in a working class family. Studied at the Art and Graphics Pedagogical School (1948-1952) and the Moscow Art Institute named after V.I.Surikov (1952-1958) under E.A.Kibrik. Lived in Moscow. He was killed by a shot from a collector when he approached a Volga car and asked the driver to give him a lift. Subsequently, the collector claimed that he acted according to the instructions. Buried at the Cherkizovsky cemetery.

WORKS

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

"Builders of Bratsk" (1960-1961), State Tretyakov Gallery
Northern Song (1968), State Tretyakov Gallery
"The Bolotov Family" (1968), State Tretyakov Gallery
"The Brigade is Resting" (1965), Union of Artists of the USSR
Father's Overcoat (1972), Tretyakov Gallery
"Two" (1966), State Tretyakov Gallery
"A good man was Anisya's grandmother" (1973), Tretyakov Gallery
"Widows" (1966)
Self-portrait (1963)
“Autumn rains. Pushkin "(1974), State Tretyakov Gallery, unfinished

Several of Popkov's works were included in the collection of the Institute of Russian Realistic Art (IRRI).

MONUMENT

The gravestone at the artist's grave was installed at the beginning of 1975. The sculptor is Alla Pologova. His mother, brother and sister are buried next to the artist.

USSR State Prize (posthumous) (1975)

The Mytishchi Museum of History and Art has a memorial room for the artist; sketches of his paintings, graphic works, sketches, photographic documents are kept.

Mother - Stepanida Ivanovna (November 8, 1909 - September 8, 1986)
Father - Efim Akimovich (1906-1941)
Brothers:
- Nikolai Efimovich (January 8, 1930 - April 1, 1978), son Yuri Nikolaevich (born January 12, 1954), granddaughter Daria Yurievna (born 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 Sergei Nikolaevich (born November 14, 1958), grandson Nikita Sergeevich (born November 22, 1988)
- - Wife - Klara Kalinycheva (born August 30, 1933)
  - Son - Alexey Viktorovich (born January 24, 1958)
  - Granddaughter - Alisa Alekseevna (born 1984)

POPKOV VIKTOR EFIMOVICH (1932-1974) - RUSSIAN PAINTER AND GRAPHIC

No, I will not strive. No, I won't moan.
I will laugh quietly. I will cry quietly.
Quietly I will love, Quietly I will hurt,
I will live quietly, death will also be quiet.
If I am happy, if my god,
I will not swing, I will 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 hurt you. I will even endure meanness.
Have pity at least once in your life. Death! Will you come? I will not say anything.

Victor Popkov. About myself

Viktor Efimovich Popkov is a prominent representative of the generation of the sixties. He entered the history of Russian art swiftly and brightly. Immediately after graduating from the Institute. Surikov Victor Popkov has become a notable phenomenon in the fine arts of the country. Three of his works from the diploma series were bought by the State Tretyakov Gallery, they wrote about him in newspapers and magazines, and were filmed on television.

At the age of 33, Popkov became a member of the committee for the awarding of the State and Lenin Prizes, in 1966 he was awarded an honorary diploma "Biennale" at an exhibition of works by young artists in Paris for the work "Noon", "Two", "The Bolotov Family".

My day. 1960

Victor Efimovich Popkov- heir to the great tradition of Russian realism, papproved by Petrov-Vodkin or Korzhev, Popkov worked in such a way as to make the everyday detail and everyday scene a symbol of being in general.
The palette of Viktor Efimovich is almost monochrome, he often uses icon-painting techniques (gaps in the work with faces, solid colored backgrounds), his drawing is angular and sometimes rushed, but the main thing in his paintings by Popkov is that the artist has something to tell the viewer about.

They managed to forget Viktor Popkov - the memory of him was overshadowed by endless avant-garde promotions, auction successes of progression, indistinguishable variegated products of the "second avant-garde" - handicrafts of the decorative market of the new bourgeois.

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 as a social ideal during the years of Soviet power - without ever being 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, are responsible for society - that is, for the elderly and children.

With naivety and fearlessness - because a sentimental expression in art is dangerous, it is easier to be a cynic - Popkov painted old women and children; it is a rare case that an artist painted so many babies and helpless old people - at that time avant-garde artists often drew win-win stripes and wrote "Brezhnev is a goat", but few dared to love. Do you know who the Collective Actions group or the Mukhomory group loved? So they themselves did not know either. When drawing a child, it is easy to make a thing vulgar, and Popkov often lost his temper - but continued to draw; sometimes he got masterpieces.

Memories. Widows. 1966

Truly educated and intelligent people were engaged in conceptualism, drawing was considered outdated. Everywhere in the intelligent companies, tired 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 gallery owners from Miami - the essence is critical about what kind of art to be, and what should be the abyss. Through their efforts, painting was declared an anachronism. Lively young men took up installations, and Popkov with his old-style brush looked ridiculous.
Not only did he strive to paint a picture, in these pictures he painted people of no interest to anyone - village widows, clumsy men, children of the outskirts, Soviet citizens. It was such blatantly unfashionable creativity, shamefully sincere. Well, imagine a person who comes to an intelligent house where they read Kafka and say that he loves his Motherland, and his dad took Berlin. It's a shame, right? And Popkov just talked about it - and did not hesitate.

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 - in contrast to music or, for example, philosophy - fine art has the ability to create a person, to endow an image with unique physical features. It would be difficult to reconstruct our world according to the works of the decorative avant-garde, but according to the works of Popkov, it is possible. From now on, the hero of Viktor Popkov exists in the world, just as there is the hero of Petrov-Vodkin (a working intellectual) or the hero of Korin (a confused priest), the hero of Falk (the city's lifeless intellectual) or the hero of Filonov (the proletarian-builder of the world).

Two. 1966

Popkov's hero is a resident of the blocky districts of the outskirts, a husband and a father with a small salary, which is enough for him - but he doesn't need too much - he will not know what to use it for; he is a relative of the heroes Vladimov and Zinoviev; he 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 a fish", in the words of the hero of "Three Minutes of Silence".

This is a bad fate, an uncomfortable fate, and Popkov's paintings are sad - not decorative. The modern bourgeois will hardly appreciate his paintings. Popkov was a real artist, and the authenticity was expressed in the fact that he was an uneven artist - sometimes overly sentimental, sometimes corny. In the best things - a great realist, in the best (there is one canvas where an old woman is sitting in the corner of a hut) - a great painter.

In Popkov's paintings, the icon motif is exceptionally strong - he insists on the kinship of realistic (someone might say: socialist realist) painting with icon painting. His ideas about pictorial masonry are as artless and simple as those of a provincial icon painter, and what he paints for can be expressed in exactly the same words that describe the reason for the emergence of the icon.

Time did not help to discern this artist. He seemed not modern enough, our toy, fake time does not like everything real, but we wanted something colorful and daring: they forgot him for the candy wrappers, just like his European contemporaries, Guttuso or Morandi, had forgotten, these artists have to be rediscovered. The language itself has been lost - there is no art critic who would be able to analyze a painting, a paint layer, the movement of fingers today. Art was stupid for a very long time, curators were produced instead of art critics.

Now we have to learn not only to speak anew, but also to look anew.

The team is resting. 1965

Life - sometimes so it seemed to Popkov - acquired the features of an absurd farce. And as long as that was the case, it was not possible to avoid the search for - not the truth, no, oblivion - at the bottom of the glass. Attempted suicide. Premonition of imminent death. Two weeks before his death, he brought his friends records: "Put music at my funeral."

Death is also ridiculous. And in this absurdity, by chance, one can hear the inexorable tread of fate.

He shouldn't have been in Mo skwe 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. Taxis didn't stop. Mistaking the "Volga" for a taxi, the artist tried to stop her. The collector (as it turned out later, he was drunk) shot 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 on a collector's car, and only later the circumstances of the "attack" were clarified thanks to bystanders.

Anisya's grandmother was a good person. 1973

And already at 2 o'clock in the morning the Voice of America reported that "the famous Russian artist Popkov had been killed by KGB colonels." During the civil funeral service and after the funeral, "provocations" were expected. But there were no provocations, except perhaps one: entering the hall of the House of Artists on Kuznetsky Most, where the civil funeral service was taking place, people saw on the stage Popkov's painting "A good man was Anisya's grandmother." Several years ago, when the painting was first displayed in the House of Artists, Popkov wanted to place it here. They didn't give it back then. They gave it now.

Return. 1972

Almost 38 years have passed since the artist's death, but scarlet carnations still fall on the snow at his monument in Tarasovka. Many books and articles have been written about Viktor Popkov, films have been made, and television programs have been made. The paintings are kept in large museums, art galleries in Russia and abroad. Collectors consider it an honor to have works by Popkov. This is evidence of the grace that Viktor Efimovich put into his canvases during his lifetime.

“In unbelief they were conceived,
we survived in disbelief ...
Negation. How to live in denial?
How to go by denying yourself? How to save, denying You, Him, Himself? "
It's 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 wrote grandiose pictures about the harsh work of the builders of a new world without God, an artist who was welcomed by the Soviet nomenklatura and criticism. She greeted him until the artist's soul felt a thirst for a different depth and a different meaning.

The illusion of the thaw

Moscow artist Viktor Popkov. Photo by Evgeny Kassin and Vladimir Savostyanov / TASS photo chronicle /.

Viktor Popkov never managed to live "lightly", work "lightly." This waste of oneself to the maximum went from childhood: at school - solid fives and in the family the nickname "big-headed", at the Surikov Institute, when classmates did three or four works as diploma works, Popkov prepared thirteen, and becoming a professional artist, even in commissioned works squeezed himself to the drop.

Popkov's childhood - a factory communal apartment in the Moscow region town of Mytishchi, not far from the Chelyuskinskaya Yaroslavl railway station. Parents, yesterday's villagers, moved here in the thirties. Difficult life, need - mother raised her children alone: father died at the beginning of the war. Popkov's mother, Stepanida Ivanovna, recalled how Viktor, as a boy, when he first saw the artist at the easel on the street, immediately began to ask for her as a student, and his 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. Popkov's fate is a case of a clearly expressed vocation heard from childhood.

He entered art in the late fifties, in a short period of the Khrushchev thaw, when "after a long and harsh Stalinist winter" optimists expected reforms in politics - 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 Socialist Realism? This is the truth we need. " It would be more correct to note - the truth, which was needed by the authorities and which was straightforwardly asserted through art.
The thaw inspired the illusion that it was possible to live and create more freely - then they debunked the cult of Stalin's personality, rehabilitated many workers of art and science who had been repressed under the Stalinist regime. It became possible to read Akhmatova, Yesenin, which were not published in the thirties and forties, to get acquainted with the modern trends of 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 sites of communism to the accompaniment of inspiring songs like "Communism is the youth of the world, and it should be erected 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." On the virgin lands he painted a number of paintings from the series "People of the Virgin Land". Popkov's early works "Spring in the Depot" (1958), "To Work" (1958), the "Transport" series (1958) fully corresponded to the official ideological guidelines of the time - to declare in art the great victories of communism, to glorify people of labor - builders new life. In this there was no inner conformism for him, there were no intellectual or moral temptations. "The artist is called to write about the great phenomena of life" - there is such a formula in Popkov's diary, then he sincerely admired the grandiose scale of construction projects, sought to "glorify" the energy of labor, 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 picture "The Builders of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station", which became the canonical work of the so-called "severe style", one of the founders, which was Viktor Popkov himself. Artists of the austere style as a whole were inscribed in the system of Soviet art "production", but they portrayed people of labor, workdays more "severely", vitally, without the pathos of socialist realism with its declarative propaganda.
In the painting "Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station" in the foreground, against the background of the black sky, as if against the background of a black curtain, stand in a row of workers - restrained, courageous, strong-willed. The sky - the "curtain", the frontal, "iconic" figures of workers - this image can be read as "His Majesty the working class in the foreground of history" to draw as much 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 outdated both stylistically and thematically to some "progressive" brothers in the workshop. Popkov's vulnerability only shows that he invested much more soul into the work than is usually required for custom-made items.
The painting will be bought by the Tretyakov Gallery, Popkov will start going to international exhibitions, he will live the rise of fame, when "he was given any contract for any handwriting." For him, publications about him in newspapers, radio programs 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 takeoff held great promise. But by the mid-1960s, the thaw had come to naught. Almost all the conquests made by Soviet culture in a short period of the thaw were seriously disgraced. The retreat began. The authorities, including the orthodox-semi-official part of the leadership of the Union of Artists, sought to undermine any "senseless creative quest".

But Popkov could no longer live without noticing the deep contradictions in society, could not exist within the framework of a predictable, in all respects prosperous, officialdom. His thoughts of that time were sad: "Either you will draw a flag and receive a salary today, buy your mother's bread, or you will not receive anything, but you will create as you want." He did not go underground, did not become a part of the artistic underground, but ceased to be a "faithful", and the gates to the establishment of Soviet culture were half closed for him.

What the widows talk about

For some time he turns to lyrical themes, to chamber, psychological works - "The Bolotov Family", "Two", "Three Artists" - in them the private life of a simple, undistinguished person. In this striving for intimacy, emptiness, fatigue from Soviet rhetoric and ideology, which was losing its inner filling, is reflected - this is a trait of the time, many artists, filmmakers, and writers then moved away from "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, whoever you want, 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". The painting “Memories. Widows ”- one of the central in the cycle.
While 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 flat cake, cod with a smell and gradually, forgetting about me, completely left in that distant time when life was just beginning for them. " Behind the everyday, prosaic scene, Popkov discovered the very depths of the destinies of these village women: “But how is that? Why are they alone? And where are their husbands, children? Where is the happiness to which they had every right? And only I, a random person, one witness of their woman's, damned, lonely lot. Their whole life, all their youth was floating before my eyes now. " After this meeting, Popkov has a theme for a new picture.

The large canvas depicts five village old women, in their image there is deliberately nothing from cozy, homely grandmothers, where next to them is a curly grandson and a jug of milk on the table. Here the opposite is true: the silhouettes of the figures are clearly outlined, the figures seem to be carved from wood, the folds of the clothes are marked out large, the lines are straight. The thin old woman in the foreground seems to have stepped down from the icon board, resurrecting in memory the ancient icon-painting images of the holy martyrs. No vain details of everyday life, and the image itself rises from the illustrative narrative, from the existential limit to the poetic structure, to the symbol - this level of the symbol, parables, Popkov was the first to introduce into Soviet art in the 1960s – 1970s.

The painting "Widows" is a memory of the war, and these five women, as different hypostases of one soul, are a tragic generalized image of a widow's lot - how many of them, lonely old women, mourned their dead husbands all over the Russian land. Behind them is a busy life with hard everyday life, Popkov accentuates the hands of workers, disproportionately large - such cast-iron boilers and sacks 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 saturated 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 the soul had gotten sick with and rejoiced in over the 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 sorrow to a high affirmation of life, filling the picture with 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, then they look significant and their effect is sharply expressive" (V. Popkov). And this red color in the dresses 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 portrayed in the picture has nothing to do with whining, despair, melancholy. Widows, leaving mentally in a young, happy time, want in the past to gain strength for today and tomorrow. This is a life affirmation, albeit tragic in its manifestation. "

Widows, singed by the experience of war, separation, death - the color red unites them into a single whole, here is the spirit of sisterhood. Behind the severity and severity of these images, discordant red sounds like 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 - a straight, as if internally unbent, not lost faith old woman.
And here Popkov said something of the "main". Intuitively, by touch, he approaches the theme of Christian humble acceptance and bearing of his cross. Humbly, with dignity accepting his widow's share, loneliness, all the hardships of everyday life and life that had to be endured, the soul is spiritually filled - hence the inner strength of these old women, hence the "joyful tragedy." Let the portrait of Karl Marx in the corner instead of the icon be a reliable detail: “a drawing from my mistress, who retained his conviction from her husband, his purity of faith in the party, expressed in the sacred and expensive portraits of Marx and Lenin in the corners of the hut” (V. Popkov .) These portraits of the leaders capture a contradictory time, but the whole way of the inner life of these village women goes not to party Leninist norms, but to the age-old Russian religious sources.

At that time, it was a challenge to write such a thing, multidimensional in meaning, with symbolic overtones. The picture was received ambiguously, Popkov was reproached for excessive gloom and despair, not covering the entire depth of the plan.

For Popkov, "Widows" is a personal theme, before his eyes 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 pious, she worked for many years as a bell ringer in the church, 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 and don't moan"

In 1970 Popkov completed the painting "Mother and Son", where he depicts himself and his mother. The painting shows an evening filled with silence in the room, a lamp with a lampshade reflected in the window; the son lies sick and listens as the mother reads the Bible in front of the icon. Many art historians noted that in the image of the son a link to the iconic image of the Savior Not Made by Hands is visible, here it is possible to call the eternal theme of the Mother of God and the Child - the theme of sacrificial motherly love and prayer for the son who is destined to carry his cross. In the picture, the mother is praying, the son attentively listens to her prayer, and the soul is accustomed to the Divine word, imbued with it. A red lampshade, a roll call of red in clothes and in things create the inner tension of the image - here is the 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 subtext begins to sound more and more fully in Popkov's work, which, however, rather shines through than is clearly pronounced. But, I think, the main thing here was his own constant desire to "bite into life, learn, 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 in his paintings "along with the concrete to express something vague, 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 oblique rays of the sun illuminated the temple, and everything around - in golden transparent reflections of everything transforming heavenly gold. In the iconic self-portrait "Father's Overcoat", he portrays himself trying on a soldier's overcoat, symbolically asking his contemporaries: is the military feat of the fathers 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 nature: Pushkin saw, felt these Russian distances, the vastness, the breadth of the fields, looked at the gray sky in which the eternal autumn sadness melts , breathed this air when "the autumn chill breathed." Here is a single image - of the poet and Russia - of the land, which generously nourished Pushkin with poetic power.
These are not directly religious subjects, but in these topics Popkov touches upon something inevitably important, "existence" in the inner life of every person.

In 1972 the Northern Chapel was completed. The painting withstood a terrible battle at the exhibition with officials from the department of culture, it was demanded to remove it. Popkov as a whole in those years was presented as casual, weak things, uncharacteristic for him; he was almost not allowed to attend republican and all-Union exhibitions. It came to curiosities: the famous Popkov's "Father's Overcoat" did not want to be included in the exhibition at the Manezh on the grounds that Popkov had portrayed himself there in imported boots. The main place where he could exhibit were small-scale autumn and spring exhibitions, and even there it was a huge effort to keep his work - “Popkov got a lot of it. Fearfully. Somehow very cruel. They zealously fought against what they called formalistic art. " Popkov was looking all the time, experimenting, but most importantly, “he carried along with him everything that was alive, not indifferent, boldly, to comprehend the secrets of the human soul,” the artist Igor Obrosov recalled.
The "Northern Chapel" was defended. The painting shows the figure of a boy frozen in the doorway at the entrance to the chapel. He looks inward with fascination, as if a "ray from paradise" touched the soul, and she froze from the feeling of reverence that overtook her for the mystery and beauty of the heavenly landscape. The viewer sees only a part of the temple murals - three angels overshadowing all those who enter, painted in a shining, joyful scarlet color in contrast to the silvery blue of the northern distance.

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 sketch 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. The poet Nikolai Tryapkin, a contemporary of Popkov, recalling his youth, wrote:

May I not honor the saints and, looking at the church,
was not baptized,
But when the loud brass called from the bell tower,
I went into the porch, and humbly stood at the door,
And he looked into the depth, immersed in the twilight for a third.
The soul froze, and the candle flicker trembled,
And the thundering choirs toppled wave after wave.
And it all seemed to me that I had 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 significant work he foresees a way out of that spiritual impasse in which his generation found itself - these are people who formed in the atheistic era, depriving them of faith, the mystical experience of being, they walked through life as if by touch, on impassable roads, painfully feeling their detachment from the light: “Show me the edge where the lamps are light, show me the place you were looking for - Where they sing, but don't groan, where the floor doesn't roll,” - Vladimir Vysotsky wheezed into the microphone in those years.

Like a trigger cocked

In poetry, painting, in cinema, it is no coincidence that similar images are born at this time - in Vysotsky's song: “The images in the corner and those are skewed”, in Popkov's painting “Silence” - dilapidated churches with a leaky dome, in Shukshin's film “Kalina red "- a flooded temple. In everything there is some kind of "dislocated" life, tragic breakdown of age-old foundations, God-forsakenness and ... desperate longing for some other, unearthly Truth. These voices of the era are full of the complexity of the internal self-determination of the generation of the 1960s – 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 thought somehow, and besides, had a talent from God - they often fell into a binge, approached the "edge", not knowing how, not knowing how to stay away from oneself, one's passions and from a godless time. In 1966, at the last moment, Popkov's father-in-law pulled him out of the loop. A fit of despair. Much then piled up - quarrels with his wife because of his hard drinking, endless constraints and obstacles of officials in relation to his work.

Popkov was generally a desperate, cocky person, always sharp, unexpected. “All his work was kept on the nerves. Such was the case in life ”(artist Igor Popov). Many of his friends remember his recklessness: “They announced boarding the train. There were no more than three minutes left. Viti has a coin falling between the platform and the carriage. He goes down, picks up a coin and climbs back ", or when" in winter, having separated from a group of friends, he goes down from the bridge to the river, and walks on the barely frozen ice. "

“He was always like a trigger on a platoon, a compressed spring, ready to be released at any moment,” art critic Grigory Anisimov recalled.

His reaction to the introduction of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968 was indicative. Popkov then, in protest, either seriously, or in jest, cut his hair baldly. 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 it took a certain amount of courage to vote for him at the time. He has always taken 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 the expressive scene: “The Congress of the Union of Artists was finishing its work in the Column Hall of the House of Unions. We stood with Vitya and friends in the foyer and talked. The broadcast was heard. The chair says we are coming to an assessment of the performance 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's like Gagarin spanks on a red carpet with a mandate raised up. The Presidium is confused. Victor with an energetic step ascends to the podium: "I propose to consider the work unsatisfactory." He was the only one who spoke about it openly. I remember his lightning-fast reaction when, from a friendly conversation, maybe empty, he instantly appeared 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 presentiment 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 the car to get home. Accidentally approached the collector's car, he was mistaken for a robber and was shot at point-blank range. Farewell took place at the House of Artists on the Kuznetsky Most. On the stage they staged the pictures “Autumn rains. Pushkin "and" A good man was Anisya's grandmother "- the last significant work of Popkov, which he managed to complete before his death. By chance or not by chance, but in this picture - the result of the author's reflections on death, on the meaning of human existence. It turned out, I wrote a requiem to myself.

"Now carry"

The picture unfolds before the viewer gradually. At first, as a scene of a village funeral, but gradually the whole scale of the plan is revealed: here the greatness of the earth and the significance and greatness of every human life, albeit unknown to anyone, is the village grandmother Anisya.
A large, powerful oak tree like a tree of life, green leaves unexpectedly shine through among its crimson foliage; The same semantic motif is repeated in the depiction of people: the group of young people is compositionally and color-wise separate from the crowd of old women in black. Here is the eternal earthly cycle of decay of life and its new conception, in which both nature and man are included. In the foreground is a child who cannot yet 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 land in the foreground is strewn with crimson leaves, and this "lush wilting 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, the anticipation of parting and the time of harvesting both in the earthly and symbolically in the spiritual sense - the time to collect the seeds. For all the tragedy of what is happening, the color 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, in cemetery monuments. The funeral takes place in a small northern village and at the same time against the broadest background, in a vast world. It is no coincidence that Popkov takes a bird's-eye view and decides to write "Grandma Anisya" as a colored icon ... "Faces, as in icons - ocher, molding, spaces" - to switch to a fundamentally different language - the language of metaphysical concepts, which for every century , timeless.

An interesting detail: there is no rain in the picture, but people are under their raincoats. “There is rain in my soul,” wrote Popkov, “the world is protected from something negative.”

At the exhibition "Babka Anisya" passed unnoticed, as the artists said, "did not receive the press." This 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 was always trying to talk about important, real things; he tried to intuitively break through the border of a certain spiritual tightness of his generation, about which Vysotsky figuratively wrote: "ice from above and from below." But the significance of Popkov's works, for all his authority, was not completely clear to his contemporaries.

He died on November 12, 1974. The collectors defended themselves and argued that it was an attack. When it became obvious that a murder had occurred, the artist friends who had been with Victor in the last minutes of his life fled; for a while he was still alive.
The mother of Viktor Popkov, Stepanida Ivanovna, recalls: “They were buried with a bell ringing. She did everything herself. Seminarians came. And they sang so much! - The whole temple was trembling. We had a funeral service for two hours. And the priest spoke as much of a sermon. And when they brought it, I went and sounded the bell ... Now carry it. "

Involuntarily, the painting "Mother and Son" comes to mind again - the theme of Light and Meaning, the theme of motherly love and prayer for her 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, it was this voice that Popkov “sought out” in life, the truth of this search splashed out on his canvases.

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 cities in Siberia and major Soviet construction projects. Popkov painted pictures on the basis of impressions from travel - the most famous such work of the artist is "Builders of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station (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 complicated philosophical topics.
Victor Efimovich Popkov posthumously became a laureate of the USSR State Prize. Also, a posthumous exhibition of the artist's works was organized in the State Tretyakov Gallery.
The artist died on November 12, 1974, killed by a point-blank shot of the collector. The event was distorted in every possible way by the interested parties: the friends of the deceased artist, the protection of the collector ... In addition, the Voice of America radio arranged a verbal "stuffing", saying that "Popkov was killed by KGB officers": because of this, a civil funeral service for to the artist, the special services were afraid of possible provocations, and therefore they tried to prohibit 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 a friend of the artist, who offered to celebrate the signing of the contract in a cafe. During the celebration, two more friends joined the artists - the whole company sat in a cafe until late 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.
The drunk artists went out into the street and, under the leadership of Viktor Efimovich Popkov, immediately went to the collector's car parked on the opposite side of the road. It is difficult to say why Popkov decided to ask for a ride to the collectors: it is possible that it was some kind of drunken frenzy, or it could have happened that the artist considered himself such a significant person that the collectors had to obey him without complaint, spitting on their own duties.
As Popkov's contemporaries said, not burdened by the need for personal friendship with him, 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 attack was committed on a collector car: two collectors were killed on a deserted section of the highway, after which the collector service received a special order allowing firing without warning in a dangerous situation.
It is quite obvious that collectors carrying a large amount of money were very alarmed by the recent murder of their comrades, and then a group of drunks was breaking into the window of a company car, demanding to let them in and "give them a lift" ...

In 1972-1973, Viktor Efimovich Popkov, together with his wife, a famous artist, worked at Kenozero. Among others, below are some of the works that were created on joint creative trips with the artist's wife.