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

Vasiliev's creative heritage is multifaceted and varied and includes more than 400 paintings and drawings: portraits, landscapes, surreal compositions, paintings on fairy tales, on themes of ancient and modern Russian history. The deep symbolism of the painting, combined with the original color scheme of the canvases - the extensive use of silver-gray and red and their shades - make Vasiliev's paintings recognizable and original.

Born in Maykop (Adygei Autonomous Okrug) during the German occupation of the city. The artist's father Alexei Alekseevich Vasiliev was the chief engineer of one of the factories, and during the war he was an active participant in the partisan movement. After the war, he was sent to establish production at the Vasilyevsky glass factory, in the village of Vasilyevo near Kazan.

The upbringing of children (Konstantin and his two sisters) was carried out by the mother, Klavdia Parmenovna, who collected a good library at home and introduced the children to the masterpieces of world culture and art.

Since 1949, the family lived in the village of Vasilyevo. Konstantin began to draw early, at the age of 11 he passed the competition and was enrolled in the Moscow secondary art boarding school at. In 1957 he transferred to the Kazan Art College (1957-1961), from which he graduated with honors, having received the specialty of a theater decorator. His graduation work was sketches for the play-tale of A. N. Ostrovsky "The Snow Maiden".

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

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

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

He also worked in the genre of landscape and portrait (Swans, 1967; Northern Eagle, 1969; At the Well, 1973; Waiting, 1976; Man with an Owl, 1976). Author of a graphic series of portraits of composers and musicians: Shostakovich (1961), Beethoven (1962), Scriabin (1962), Rimsky-Korsakov (1962) and others; graphic cycle to R. Wagner's opera Der Ring des Nibelungen (1970s).

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

Konstantin Vasiliev died tragically - he was hit with a friend at a railway crossing by a passing train. It happened on October 29, 1976. He was buried in the village of Vasilyevo.

They buried Konstantin in a birch grove, in the very forest where he loved to visit.

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

The source of inspiration for Vasilyev was the Icelandic sagas. He carefully studied this book, making notes, from which it is clear that his main attention is drawn to the so-called tribal sagas, a kind of description of the life of the remarkable Icelanders of the 9th-11th centuries. He is attracted by the mysticism of fate: the heroes of the sagas, as a rule. perish, which is preceded by prophetic dreams and omens. The strength of the spirit of these people, the expectation of death and readiness for it became the theme that the artist began to display.

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How did Vasiliev and his friend Arkady Popov end up there? Why was the family not informed about the death of Konstantin for two days, although all the documents were with him? And how did the most famous artist die today? Many still believe that it was a murder.
But if there was a crime, then there must be a criminal case? Having called the press center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Tatarstan, I heard a quick and peremptory answer to my question: "Vasilyev was stabbed to death in an electric train and thrown out of the car." "Do you have proof of this?" - "Of course! Send an official request." A request (and more than one) was sent, but, alas, the answers did not bring any clarity to this dark story.
“I inform you that the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Tatarstan does not have information about whether a criminal case was initiated into the death of the artist Konstantin Vasiliev. This crime was committed on the territory served by the linear department of internal affairs, on railway transport. Crimes of this category are registered in Volga-Vyatka department of internal affairs on railway transport with deployment in Nizhny Novgorod.
Head of the Information Center under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Tajikistan, police colonel R.R. Fakhrutdinov".
“I inform you that in 1976 the prosecutor’s office of the Kirovsky district of Kazan did not initiate a criminal case into the death of Konstantin Vasilyev. The materials on the facts of the death of citizens for the specified year were destroyed due to the expiration of the storage period.
Prosecutor of the Kirovsky District, Senior Counselor of Justice O.A. Drozdov.
I could not remember anything about this case and the former transport prosecutor of the republic, Yuri Gudkovich, whom I had found. There were no eyewitnesses to the very moment of the death of the artist. A few days after the incident, the dispatcher and track workers said that two young people were hit by the locomotive of the Omsk-Moscow fast train. Both were allegedly drunk. With a monstrous blow, they were thrown tens of meters on different sides of the path. A bottle of port wine was found in the pocket of Vasiliev's coat. Whether alcohol tests were done in the morgue is unknown: the protocols of the forensic autopsy have long been destroyed.
What did two friends forget on Lagernaya two stops before Kazan? Did you get off the train on purpose to buy a bottle at the railroad store, which was open until night (in those years, alcohol was not sold after 8 pm)? At the wake there were persistent conversations that someone else was with them that evening.
Even if the immediate cause of his death is a ridiculous traffic accident, it cannot be said that the tragic outcome was so accidental. The artist was "killed" prudently and methodically, as they could then deal with an original talent that did not fit into the generally accepted framework: they were not allowed to see the audience, they were not accepted into a creative union, into the Khudfond, they were not supported by state orders. Lack of money and poverty killed him: in order to somehow feed himself, he painted posters and slogans at a local glass factory.
Of course, Konstantin had envious people. Several dozens of artists participated in that same Zelenodolsk exhibition, and in the guest book there are entries exclusively about his paintings - and how enthusiastic! He was not only envied, he was also ... suspected! At the beginning of 1976, together with his friends, he was summoned to the Black Lake (in Kazan, this is the address of the KGB building, which had recently burned down). One of them, Gennady Pronin, recalls: “Why were we invited there? One of the neighbors ratted out that we were listening to fascist marches. Kostya was a fan of the monumental, sublime style in art. Take his portraits of Marshal Zhukov, paintings based on Wagner, ancient sagas... And this style was also vividly expressed in the old German marches written long before the Nazis. they could not know, but the newsreel was ours, Soviet: the documentary film "Ordinary Fascism" by Romm - we really watched it more than once.
And how could Vasiliev be an anti-Soviet? His father is a party worker, he served as a partisan during the war. But, in my opinion, no one has so vividly expressed on canvas the secret life of the Russian national spirit under the icy breath of the so-called stagnation. In general, Vasiliev broke out of genre formats: not a portrait painter, not a landscape painter, not a writer of everyday life. He, like Vrubel, is a painter of the Spirit! In general, the KGBists “sewed” an “organization” for us, and we were just a company of people who love real art, literature, philosophy.”
Soon after this, the artist died, and this gave reason to associate his death with the machinations of the then all-powerful organization. Meanwhile, the father of Arkady Popov, who died with him, served in the state security system, and in no small rank. They say he tried to conduct his own investigation into the death of his son in hot pursuit, but even he failed.
The finest hour of the artist came after his death. In September 1977, an exhibition was opened at the Kazan Youth Center, which he had never been honored with during his lifetime. Two months to the pictures was a real pilgrimage! Then - the film by Leonid Christie "Vasilyev from Vasilyev", which was shown at the Rossiya cinema for about six months - an unprecedented case in documentary filmmaking! The paintings triumphantly traveled through the exhibition halls of Moscow, the country, abroad...
After a resounding success hit the untimely deceased countryman, the Kazan Museum of Fine Arts decided to purchase his works and asked his mother to evaluate her son's paintings. Claudia Parmenovna completely trusted the evaluation commission, which consisted mainly of Konstantin's colleagues. Her decision sounded like a death sentence for the paintings: it was not recommended to buy them as "having no artistic value." True, they advised to take it for state storage. The paintings were demolished in the storeroom of the museum, a lock was hung on the door. And they would have been gathering dust there, perhaps to this day, if not for Colonel Yuri Mikhailovich Gusev, a tanker, a war veteran, a front-line newspaperman. Shocked by the canvases he saw at one of the Moscow exhibitions, he vowed to elevate their author to the place he deserved in Russian painting. In full dress, with all military regalia, he, along with Konstantin's sister Valentina, appeared at the Tatar Regional Committee of the CPSU. And after this visit, the paintings were returned to the family.
But all this was already after the death of the nugget artist. Did anyone help him while he was alive? Gennady Pronin drove a covered MAZ-500 to his house for a new one, 1975, loaded the paintings into the back, pushed Kostya into the cab, and they moved to Moscow, where Svetlana Melnikova, an employee of the Society for the Preservation of Monuments, promised them to arrange a meeting with Ilya Glazunov. They were met by the wife of Ilya Sergeevich (they lived then on Arbat Square), asked to unpack the paintings brought from the frost. Glazunov, without much interest, looked at one and the other ... Interest in his eyes ignited only when the wrapping paper was pulled off the "Northern Eagle". “Master,” Pronin recalls, “somehow immediately came to life: “Come on, come on, let's do it again. More!" Then he began to examine the canvases carefully and for a long time. Silently. Then he picked up the phone: "Now I will call the Minister of Culture." Half an hour later, the Deputy Minister of Culture of the RSFSR really appeared in the apartment (I forgot his last name), to whom Glazunov showed Kostin's paintings. "Here is a talented Russian artist. Lives in Kazan. They clamp him down there. Let's support!" And addressing Kostya: "I have to leave here for two weeks to Finland. Wait for me in Moscow. And we'll arrange everything."
But Vasiliev did not get to Glazunov again. In anticipation of the return of Ilya Sergeevich, he wandered around the capital, spent all the money, and ate random orders. In general, having toiled for several months, Konstantin returned home empty-handed, throwing pictures at random acquaintances. Then the writer Vladimir Dudintsev saved them from being plundered. “Here, mother, is all that your son has achieved in Moscow,” Kostya said guiltily upon returning Claudia Parmenovna, holding out a net of oranges to her.
On that fateful day, when he left his house forever, in his room stood a huge canvas just finished, as yet untitled. Presenting a new canvas to his friends, he asked them not only to express their opinion, but also to suggest a name. On his last canvas - a bearded old man against the backdrop of dense forests, over his head he holds a whip, on the whip of which sits a yellow-eyed sleepless owl - a symbol of wisdom. At the feet of the elder, the flame devours an ancient scroll with the Old Slavonic inscription KONSTANTIN VASILYEV drawn on it, and the smoke rising above the fire twists into a young oak sprout.
After going through many options, friends settled on the name "Man with an owl." As the author himself would call his picture, one can only guess. After all, in fact, this is his last visionary self-portrait, an attempt to guess the future fate of Russia.

27.11.2014

Description of the painting by Konstantin Vasilyev “ Man with an owl»

The painting "The Man with the Owl" challenges humanity, provoking that his consciousness tried to understand the whole philosophy of being. The plot of this picture is very difficult, and not every person will be able to understand what its author wanted to tell. An old man is depicted in the center, he lived a long life, for which he received a lot of knowledge and gained wisdom. Now this venerable old man seeks to pass on all his knowledge accumulated over the years to new generations. He is a real Russian old sage, dressed in a long coat with fur trim, a shirt and trousers. Above his head he holds an outstretched hand, on which a mitten is worn. On it, spreading its wings wide, as if preparing to take off, sits an owl. Owl - a formidable symbol of wisdom, is an intermediate link between earth and sky, which connects them into one. The keen eye of a bird is directed into the distance, controlling everything that happens all over the world. The sage rises above the earth, clouds are visible below him. He is so old and wise that he takes with him on the road only a faithful feathered friend, a whip with which you can defend yourself from enemies and a candle that will light the way in the darkness. The old man looks into the distance, he tries to rethink everything that he had to endure, so that the further path would be without sins and mistakes.

The place where all the elements meet and unite is not accessible to every person, but only to those who have known wisdom and rethought the life path they have traveled. Just like this old man. This picture was painted by Konstantin Vasiliev shortly before his death and was, as it were, a kind of prophecy. This is evidenced by the burning scroll at the feet of the sage. This scroll bears the artist's initials. This once again confirms that only that creative thought that was born into the world from knowledge can end up in unearthly heaven.