At first glance, the pictures presented in this article do not seem worth paying special attention to. The thing that can make you take a closer look at them is the story of their author, the blind Kharkiv artist Dmitry Didorenko.
Dmitry was not blind from birth: he lost his sight after blowing himself up on an old German mine while searching for the remains of soldiers who went missing in World War II. Before that, Didorenko was already known as an artist, but the tragedy that happened crossed out all his hopes for the future. To get Dmitry out of depression, one of his friends offered to organize an exhibition of the artist's old works. It was this event that prompted our hero to take up the brush again - he wanted to prove that he was still an artist, even if he had lost his sight. At first, his work was not much like paintings, but many hours of practice gave their results: Dmitry began to paint again.
“When I first saw the work of Dmitry Didorenko, I felt ashamed of how often we complain about life and its injustice towards us,” says Valentina Myzgina, director of the Kharkiv Art Museum. “After all, all this time we continue to see the world around us, and Dmitry cannot see it, but he does not complain, but works.”
The artist admits that the plots of the paintings come to him by themselves, sometimes even in dreams, and he only has to choose the best of them. And the most important thing for him is to see the results of his work, no matter how paradoxical it may sound: “I see what I draw as clearly and legibly as others. The only difference is that I do not use my eyes, but use my heart.
Artistic
5 famous painters who lost their sight
Loss of sight is a tragedy for any person, but for a painter it is a real drama. Which of the famous Russian masters had to go through this test? We remember with Sofia Bagdasarova.
Dmitry Levitsky (c. 1735 - 1822)
There were three great portrait painters in the Russian Empire of the 18th century during the time of Catherine the Great - Levitsky, Borovikovsky and Rokotov. Which of them deserved the nickname "Russian Gainsborough" - they periodically argue. Levitsky, like the favorite favorites of Elizabeth Petrovna and Catherine II, was a Little Russian. He came from a family of a priest. In the 1770s and 80s, Levitsky was extremely popular: he portrayed the entire St. Petersburg nobility, including the imperial family. Powdered beauties in masquerade costumes, rouged actresses with artificial flies, brilliant cavaliers in swamp-colored camisoles - this is how we imagine our 18th century ...
By the end of the century, he was forgotten: a new era had come, Levitsky seemed old-fashioned. Only in 1807, the old man was remembered again and invited to teach at the Academy of Arts, where Kiprensky, in particular, studied with him. Levitsky died at about 87 years of age (the exact date of his birth is unknown). It is believed that he lost his sight 10 years before his death: his last painting is dated 1812. By the way, his old competitor Rokotov also, they say, went blind in his old age.
A couple of weeks before the death of the artist, his wife, through the St. Petersburg Vedomosti, puts up for sale the last painting left in his studio - John the Baptist. After the funeral, the elderly widow turns to the Academy of Arts with a request to help her with 600 rubles (a debt for the ceremony), writes about Levitsky's long illness, significant expenses for medicines and about the mortgaged house. The Academy, in response, limited itself to only formal sympathy. In the hands of the old woman were the widowed daughter and granddaughters without dowries.
Mikhail Vrubel (1856–1910)
The greatest master of Russian Art Nouveau has died at the age of 54. He lost his sight and died in a mental hospital where he spent the last eight years of his life intermittently.
Signs of imbalance in this genius could be seen early. Already at the age of 29, he boasted to a friend of the scars on his wrists. Vrubel cut his veins because of unhappy love for the wife of the customer Emilia Prakhova, whose face looks at us from the fresco "The Virgin and Child" in the Kyiv St. Cyril's Church.
In his youth, and then in his mature years, Vrubel led a bohemian, hectic lifestyle. The first symptoms of the disease appeared in him at the age of 42, when he was already happily married to the singer Nadezhda Zabela. Gradually, the artist became more and more irritable, self-confident, violent and verbose, he drank a lot and squandered. In 1902, the family persuaded him to see the psychiatrist V.M. Bekhterev, who diagnosed "incurable progressive paralysis", which was then treated with very cruel means, in particular mercury. Soon he was hospitalized with symptoms of an acute mental disorder. Vrubel remained in the clinic for a long time, although he improved several times and returned home. Then there was the death of a young son, the onset of hallucinations ...
At the beginning of 1906, Vrubel began to have atrophy of the optic nerve. In February 1906, the master became completely blind. In the winter of 1910, he deliberately caught a cold and died of pneumonia in April.
Konstantin Korovin (1861–1939)
The friend to whom Vrubel showed the scars on his wrists in 1885 was the artist Konstantin Korovin. By an unfortunate coincidence, he was also destined to go blind, however, since Korovin was distinguished by a rare love of life, mental and physical health, only at the very end of his life.
In 1922, the most famous "Russian impressionist" left Soviet Russia and settled in France. The peak of his fame had long passed, neither portraits nor theatrical works were in demand anymore. The agent who took his paintings out of Russia for the purpose of organizing an exhibition disappeared without returning a single canvas. The family lived in dire need: Korovin complains in letters that he even took an engagement ring to the loan office. The wife had tuberculosis, the son tried to commit suicide. To distract his son from gloomy thoughts, Korovin began to share his memories with him; later, when the artist became weak (including his eyes) and was forced to leave painting, he began to dictate his memoirs while lying in bed. The memories were followed by stories. So at the age of 70, Korovin became a writer, and everyone noted with surprise that he had a gift for literary activity no worse than for painting. They began to print it in emigre newspapers, pay fees, which at least made life a little easier for the family.
Korovin died at the age of 77 from a heart attack in Paris, 10 days after the start of World War II.
Vladimir Yakovlev (1934–1998)
For visually impaired artists in the 20th century, it still becomes easier. Art no longer requires maximum realism and precision. Emotions are more important - we see them in the works of nonconformist Vladimir Yakovlev, a prominent representative of the unofficial art of the 1970s, who is often put on a par with Anatoly Zverev.
The grandson of the Russian impressionist-immigrant Mikhail Yakovlev, this artist did not receive a special education. He finished only four classes at school - due to a thyroid disease. At the age of 16, Yakovlev almost completely lost his sight, the disease was called "keratoconus" - a degenerative non-inflammatory disease of the eye (curvature of the cornea). Then schizophrenia began: from his youth he was observed by a psychiatrist and from time to time went to psychiatric hospitals.
Yakovlev was not completely blind, he just began to see the world in a completely different way: this is noticeable in his works, in which there are recognizable shapes of objects. However, his world has been simplified to primitivist contours and a few bright colors. Somehow, in the basement workshop, some Italians wanted to buy his signature flower, but only on the condition that the artist would sign the picture in front of them. Yakovlev flared up and ran into another room. Then it turned out that he simply forgot how his own surname is spelled - through "o" or "a".
In his old age, he wrote with his face almost close to the surface of the work. In perestroika, a special fund was established to take care of the sick master. In 1992, the almost 60-year-old artist at the Institute of Eye Microsurgery Svyatoslav Fedorov partially regained his sight - curiously, this did not affect the style. The works remained recognizable, only more elaborate. For many years he did not leave the psycho-neurological boarding school, where he died six years after the operation.
Timur Novikov (1958–2002)
Leningrad underground artist, founder of the New Artists group, and then the New Academy of Fine Arts. A friend and concert designer of Sergei Kuryokhin and Viktor Tsoi, a friend of Boris Grebenshchikov, Sergei "Afrika" Bugaev and Vladimir Solovyov. The owner of the ACCA apartment gallery, which opened in 1980 - seven years before the filming of the film of the same name, where, by the way, he also flashed.
Of all the disability diseases, it is blindness that is considered the most difficult in its characteristics. Some visually impaired give up, but there are those who, despite their illness, continue to fight and create. A vivid proof of this is 4 artists who did not leave their profession.
KEITH SALMON
British artist Keith Salmon traveled for a long time to different parts of the United Kingdom - from Wales to Scotland, whose contrasting landscapes and nature inspired the artist to create his striking works. A few years ago, the artist was diagnosed with diabetic retinopathy, due to which he became blind, but this only contributed to the development of his artistic vision. His landscapes are beautiful, abstract and recognizable by their use of vibrant color.
JOHN BRAMBLITT
John Bramblitt is an American artist whose work is rendered in vibrant arrays of color and classic American iconography. He became blind ten years ago due to complications from epilepsy, but this did not stop him from creating, moreover, the artist became an inspirational figure for all the disabled in his home state of Texas.
SARGY MANN
In his thirties, the British artist Sargy Mann began to go blind from cataracts, but despite this he is another artist who has not abandoned his calling. His perseverance paid off and today his paintings sell for more than £50,000. The artist said that, having become blind, his works became more complex and mysterious. The artist, unfortunately, passed away on April 5, 2015.
JEFF HANSON
A strong color palette and sophisticated technique is what immediately catches the eye when seeing the work of American artist Jeff Hanson. Using repeating geometric shapes, he draws inspiration from the natural world.
Mixing paints, artist John Bramblitt compares himself to a culinary specialist who adds the right amount of ingredients to the dish exactly according to the recipe. And all because Joan cannot see what the result of his efforts is. He blind, but paints pictures, feeling by touch what paints he uses and how he puts strokes.
John Bramblitt is a talented artist who doesn't know what his paintings look like. He lost his sight due to epilepsy, symptoms of the disease first appeared at the age of 11, and by the age of 30 he had lost his sight. It seemed that life had lost its meaning, because all the dreams turned out to be untenable, and plans for the future were destroyed. The artist recalls that he had a severe depression, and he did not see a way out of this state.
It took John Bramblitt a year to overcome despair. He decided for himself that he would find a way to paint, no matter what it cost him, and really learned how to work with paints, applying strokes so that they were palpable to the touch. According to John himself, his first drawing was completely clumsy, but the fact that he was able to connect the disparate lines together and create a coherent image gave him confidence. It was a spark of hope in the dark world of his despair.
Since then, the artist has been improving his skills, and today in his collection there are many bright, dynamic paintings that delight the audience. Joan Bramblitt lives in Denton (Texas, USA), he is well known not only in America but also abroad.
Getting to work, the artist first thinks over the composition in detail in his mind. Materials John Bramblitt also selects especially: he claims that different colors of oil paints have a different consistency. For example, white paint is thick and resembles toothpaste, while black is thinner. In addition, the tubes in the workshop are signed in Braille, so that John can find out which color he is holding in his hands.
The talented master has been painting for more than 10 years, over the years he has been repeatedly talked about in the press, he has received awards at various competitions and exhibitions. And John Bramblitt himself admits that to some extent he is even grateful to fate for being blind. Starting to fight the disease, he discovered a real talent in himself, managed to fulfill himself and find a purpose in life.
A similar story happened with Dmitry Didorenko from Kharkiv. The only difference is that he went blind after being blown up by a German mine during the Second World War. The world that comes to life on his canvases is another revelation. See for yourself by watching.
