Pimenov is the artist of the painting. Exhibition “Windows to Russia”

There have probably been times in your life when, after reading a writer’s story, you said:

“I feel as if I met good people close to me and learned a lot about their fate.

It seems that you will experience a similar feeling when you look at the works of the artist Yuri Ivanovich Pimenov, included in the selection of postcards contained in this cover.

Every painting, every drawing by Yuri Pimenov is a story about a person.

This is a story about a person’s life, about what his character is and what his destiny is, about how he relates to his work and his comrades, what he thinks about, who he loves, what he strives for.

And, as in any talented story, you don’t recognize this right away, but by thinking about it, looking closely, discovering more and more new details, new features that were not immediately noticed. The power of real art lies in the fact that, having closed a book or put a drawing aside, you return to it with your thoughts more than once, trying to feel and experience even more deeply what you have already experienced once.

What do the works of Yuri Pimenov, united in the selection that you will now see, tell about?

Let's start with the first of them - “New Moscow”.

The painting was made by the artist in 1937. Many years have passed since then. Over these years, our capital has grown and transformed; The spiers of high-rise buildings rose up, new areas, new neighborhoods scattered like mighty rivers. The cars running down the street have become different, the rhythm of traffic has changed, and the people themselves have changed.

And yet the picture has not aged. It is full of unfading freshness.

You see Moscow in it, fanned by the breath of novelty, as if taking the acceleration for new victories, new achievements. The power and charm of novelty are conveyed in the picture not only by the silhouette of a new building or architectural perspective, but by the deep, exciting poetry of the new, the poetry of creation.

A girl sitting behind the wheel of an open car drives around Moscow like her owner. Everything - confident, relaxed posture, free posture, gentle and strong hands lying on the steering wheel - is full of calm dignity, speaks of a solid and strong character. And it seems that the street, covered with a light haze, opens up before this girl, like the road of happiness, the road of the future.

Look at the woman who is standing on the damp plank platform of a small station, near the wet rails running into the distance - “Autumn Station”. Everything in this picture is still full of the menacing breath of war. The war is not over yet, its roads are difficult and alarming. A woman stands on the platform alone, with a duffel bag on her back; on the wet boards at her feet there is a bundle and a wicker purse. Where is she going, where has the war taken her from under her warm home? This lonely figure is stern, thoughtful, you feel in her a touching purity and, at the same time, deep and lasting spiritual strength.

If “Autumn Station” is shrouded in alarming darkness and harsh winds of war, then in the painting “Capital” everything is festive and elegant. The clouds filled with light are full of peace, the lush sculptural curls of the capital, the hanging scarlet wave of fabric, the slender figures of two girls working at the column.

These girls, dressed in overalls, whom we see against the background of the spring sky, do not at all look like the lonely and pensive heroine of “Autumn Station” or the driver driving a car along the street of new Moscow. And, of course, they are in no way similar to the young, clumsy girl, like a teenager, diligently washing a glass display case with a rag on the street along which people go to work early in the morning (“An Ordinary Morning”)

And, at the same time, they are all somewhat similar.

They are united by the inner purity, the poetry that permeates their everyday work, the elusive kindness that pervades their entire appearance.

Just like many other heroes of Yuri Pimenov’s paintings and drawings, they appear before you in ordinary everyday dresses, on ordinary everyday streets of the city. But the artist Pimenov has a magical gift:

to capture the poetic and beautiful in the ordinary, to see beauty and light in the ordinary.

Yuri Pimenov loves people, loves and understands their work, their soul. That is why his portraits, his stories about people are so convincing, so heartfelt. They are full of many subtle and reliable observations. And just as, looking at Pimenov’s landscapes, you feel their warmth and light, the moisture of the morning or the freshness of the wind, so, looking at a simple-minded snub-nosed girl standing with a rag at the window, or a tanned worker at a construction site in a sweater tightly fitting her statuesque figure and a pulled-down on the forehead with a scarf, you recognize in them the features of simple and beautiful heroes of our time, builders of peace on earth.

In any phenomenon of our life, Yuri Pimenov knows how to guess with extraordinary vigilance the soul of time, to grasp its mighty pulse.

This is an artist, highly gifted with sensitivity to everything new and poetic, with which our life is so rich.

And whatever Pimenov does, whatever he thinks about, he first of all strives to capture and capture the features and spirit of the time in which we live, to tell about this time in his own way, talentedly, soulfully and always truthfully.

And when you get acquainted with the works of Yuri Pimenov, you involuntarily think that the master who created these poetic, beautiful paintings is not only a talented artist, but, probably, also a kind person in love with life.

Tatiana Tess

Since the mid-1930s, Pimenov, one of the founders of the Society of Easel Painters, worked on a series of paintings about Moscow, among which the canvas “New Moscow” became especially popular. The artists worked with sincere enthusiasm to create a new Soviet mythology, which required other forms. The painting “New Moscow” fully corresponds to the spirit of the times. The composition is designed as a frame captured by a camera lens. The author focuses on the figure of a woman driving a car, which was an unprecedented phenomenon for the 1930s. The viewer seems to be sitting behind her and watching the new morning Moscow from an open car. The monolithic bulk of the newly erected Gosplan building, the free avenue and the vastness of the squares, the scarlet letter of the recently opened metro - all this is a renewed Moscow. Color, playing with many shades and tones, moving strokes convey the movement of the car and the vibration of the light-air environment. The impressionistic style of painting gives the work freshness and elegance - this is exactly how the new capital, and with it the new Soviet life, should have been perceived. However, the year in which this painting was created clearly contradicts the optimistic theme of the “bright path.”

An ordinary morning. 1957 State Russian Museum. Leningrad

Embankment in Aegina. Greece. 1958

Autumn station. 1945 State Russian Museum. Leningrad

The girl and the bridge. 1955

Morning windows. 1959

New numbers. 1963–1964

While preparing a lecture on the life and work of Yuri Pimenov at the beginning of December last year, I discovered that there was quite a lot of brief and scattered information about him on the Internet, but I could not find any more or less complete material. So the idea arose to publish some materials that were collected in the process of preparing the lecture. I used not only textual sources - essays by Igor Dolgopolov, memoirs of Alexander Labas and Yuri Pimenov himself, but also transcribed video recordings made in the early 70s.

Yuri Pimenov managed the almost unthinkable: while remaining true to himself, he created works that were understood and accepted by everyone. Filled with living, pulsating light, movement, dynamic and elegant in their own way, his paintings still fascinate both fans of Western and modern art and staunch supporters of academic realism.

He managed in some incomprehensible way to convey sounds and smells... “The smell of rain and hot asphalt. The aroma of violets and the stuffy breath of diesel fuel. Snow drifting on a darkened street. The freshness of a blooming garden... The silence and languor of spring. The fumes and roar of the Moscow summer . The joy of a winter evening, blue-blue, beckoning with the warm lights of the windows. The beauty of an autumn morning, decorated with drops of dew. The rustle of new dresses. The click of heels on boards thrown over puddles... The first sounds of the orchestra. The whisper of a silent hall. The singing of the wind in the forests of new buildings and the laughter of girls - plasterers and painters... The sigh of an actress and the magical light of the footlights... The ringing of the phone, promising separation... This whole stream of sounds, smells, colors covers you when you enter a world complex and simple, full of poetry and everyday life, joys and sadness. The world of a reverent feeling of the unusualness of ordinary life, giving us new discoveries every minute, every day - the world of creativity of the artist Yuri Pimenov" (I. Dolgopolov "Pimenov").

But if the artist’s paintings are known, then the details of his life are somehow not very good.

The future artist was born on November 13 (26), 1903 in Moscow, in the family of assistant attorney Ivan Vasilyevich Pimenov and Klavdia Mikhailovna Pimenov, who came from the Moscow merchant family of the Babanins.

Moscow childhood... Games with friends in Zamoskvorechye, school... Pimenov was not good at mathematics, but he was an excellent drawer. This did not go unnoticed. Art teacher Alferov helped the gifted boy get a job at the Zamoskvoretsk drawing school. Plasters, still lifes, nature. First trips to the Tretyakov Gallery. Savrasov's "The Rooks Have Arrived" - first love.

“It is sometimes difficult to believe in the role of this or that painting in the artist’s fate, but we can say with confidence that the truth, intimacy, and soulfulness of Savrasov’s writing sank deeply into the soul of the future master,” wrote Igor Dolgopolov. “Then he more than once copied paintings by different artists, copied carefully. He was very fond of landscape compositions by Levitan, Somov, Benois... Years would pass, and he would find a new affection, he would spend whole days in the Shchukin collection, admiring the canvases of Renoir, Degas, Monet. True, this love of his for the Impressionists would come later for him "It will cost a lot. He will be reproached and worked through for this more than once."

Seventeen-year-old Yura Pimenov comes with a folder of his sketches, drawings and copies to the famous artist Sergei Malyutin. The master looked at the work and took him to his workshop. So Yura Pimenov entered Vkhutemas.

1920-1924 - time of study at Vkhutemas: “I studied with Malyutin, Shemyakin, Falileev and am very grateful to them. But for most of the Vkhutemas time I studied with Favorsky and - perhaps without the right - I want to consider myself his student... Vladimir Andreevich Favorsky was a huge and unusually bright man. He was characterized by high nobility, masculinity, and genuine humanity" (Yu. Pimenov).

Here are Pimenov’s early works:

Pimenov himself spoke about that time:

"The first years of Vkhutemas. The first meeting in the first year with Andrei Goncharov, with whom we immediately quarreled, and then all our lives, to this day, we have been friends, although we always continued to argue. In these young years, we were not given advances for painting - and in general we were not paid for painting. We made money... in a newspaper, in a magazine, by making signs and designing decorations. The nights when Andrei Goncharov and I worked in his large apartment in an old house on Myasnitskaya will never go away from memory. In the same room His two younger brothers slept in their beds, and we, at a large round table, made a dozen illustrations a night.

I must say, these were now fashionable “collages”, a kind of mixture of photomontage and drawing.

So, we, two guys, without further ado, glued and painted until the morning... And in the morning the first passers-by appeared outside the window, city life began...

But let's return to Vkhutemas. Those were hot days. We, Vkhutemas students, made noise in the auditorium of the Polytechnic Museum during the poetry reading, supporting Mayakovsky and Aseev. They made noise at Meyerhold's performances... But they didn't only make noise. We learned about skill."

Since 1923, the artist made illustrations for the magazines “Airplane”, “Krasnaya Niva”, “30 Days”, “Soviet Screen”, “Prozhektor”, etc.).

However, easel painting was still in first place for Pimenov during this period. He was interested in the painting and its possibilities. And in his artistic searches, Yuri Pimenov was not alone; His like-minded friends who studied at Vkhutemas with him had a great influence on the formation of his creative views: Andrei Goncharov, Alexander Deineka, Peter Williams, Sergei Luchishkin. “The first years of Vkhutemas. The first meeting in the first year with Andrei Goncharov, with whom we immediately quarreled, and then we were friends all our lives, although we always continued to argue... Sasha Deineka... We were connected by great friendship at that time, and it was no wonder. When we look at Deineka’s early, first paintings, the youth of our state and the youth of our generation stand before our eyes” (Yu. Pimenov). At the First Discussion Exhibition of Associations of Active Revolutionary Art (1924), among other VKHUTEMAS youth, the “Group of Three” was even presented, consisting of Alexander Deineka, Andrei Goncharov and Yuri Pimenov: “This is indeed a very homogeneous group, the members of which can be talked about all at once. Their paintings are full of movement, not a single figure is at rest, every form is shown in development. This is a very characteristic feature of urbanism... The influence of V. A. Favorsky is very noticeable on all of them... And we would call them expressionistic realism” (A. Fedorov-Davydov, 1924).

After some time, this group became the core around which the famous Society of Easel Painters (OST) was formed, which created a whole separate movement in Russian art of the first half of the twentieth century. The famous art critic and art historian Yakov Tugendhold wrote in his article “At Exhibitions” (1925): “Not so long ago, our left-wing youth, going too far, completely boycotted painting in the name of producing utilitarian structures or, at best, allowed purely abstract pictorial quests... young people, who form the basis of OST, have come to the conclusion that the painting as such has not outlived its usefulness, that it is precisely this painting that resonates in the soul of the mass audience who so widely visits museums.”

During the period of OST's work, Pimenov was captured primarily by sports and industrial motives. In his works, he monumentalizes, in general, everyday scenes, cuts off all that is superfluous and elevates what is depicted on the canvas to the degree of absolute, using the technique of visual montage. With such a view of the surroundings, a certain schematicism (graphicity) is inevitable, which, however, gives Pimenov’s works the purity and conventionality necessary for the correct balance of perception, thus balancing the sometimes overly realistic and tangible Pimenov space. By the way, years later the artist himself in his early works was not satisfied with precisely this imperfection of plasticity, a certain coldness, rationality, and sometimes somewhat schematic design of the works inherent in OST.

But not only the theme, but the entire structure of their art, the Ostovites wanted to make it cutting-edge. This is what German expressionism seemed like, with its harsh, sometimes grotesque visual language. Pimenov writes "Invalids of War", with eyeless masks instead of faces (1926), ascetic skeletal athletes ("Running", 1928)

In 2011, during an auction at Sotheby’s in New York, the graphic “The Pianist” (1926) was paid $602,500.

In 1927, Yuri Pimenov received the jury prize at the Exhibition of Art Works for the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution for the painting “Give Heavy Industry!”

Here is how the artist Alexander Labas described Pimenov in the 1920s:

“Pimenov was very active, fast, lively, cheerful, laughed a lot, loved to chat about trifles, loved to dress up and show off. There was an impression that he did everything without thinking, on the go, with a smile, sometimes with a grin, he loved to laugh at someone, joke, and then all this was instantly forgotten, and he was already talking and laughing about something else. But among the empty childish conversations, Pimenov showed serious notes of a thinking and analyzing person. Sometimes he even surprised me, they really did not correspond to the first impression. And the more I got to know him, the more I saw exactly this side, his ability to synthesize and weigh everything based on great imagination. His paintings were somewhat graphic, which was not something I liked, but the images had an undeniable effect. His keen sense of modernity was fully developed.”

In January 1931, the OST split; the separated part of it formed a new group “Izobrigada”, which included Pimenov. The program of the new association declared: “Our previous practice, which took place under the conditions of the old OST, carried elements of petty-bourgeois and bourgeois influence... Having broken with the other part of OST, having admitted our mistakes, we are faced with the task of getting rid of the shortcomings... we believe that the basis of the association of artists should be be a class orientation in their work. Therefore, we will strive to strengthen the proletarian sector in art...”

It must be said that at OST exhibitions, art criticism paid quite a lot of attention to Pimenov’s work. At first they mostly praised it, characterizing it as “excellent, clear graphics” (F. Roginskaya, 1926) and noting that, for example, “in such things as “Cinema Posters” and “In the View of the West” by Yu. Pimenov ... the most ordinary material life is given in such a sometimes unexpected revelation, which indicates a very intensive processing of the acquired material into images of art” (I. Khvoynik, 1927). However, by the end of the 1920s the attitude of criticism had changed. In 1928, I. Grabar noted that the artist “somehow moves little forward,” and in 1931, G. Geronsky, in the article “Attack with a Brush,” complains that “Yu. Pimenov, trying to free himself from formalism, does not find a way...”, and advises him to break with formalism more decisively.

1932-1933 was a difficult period in the artist’s life. The well-known “Resolution on the restructuring of literary and artistic organizations” (1932) was issued, which immediately stopped the activities of all associations, including the “Isobrigady”; Pimenov was mercilessly pecked by criticism and became seriously ill.

What kind of disease it was is not really known. However, in “Memoirs of Contemporaries” by Alexander Labas, I managed to find a brief mention:

“His whole illness began with a bite from a rabid dog and, as you can see, despite the fact that he was vaccinated, he was not sure that it would give a positive result. He then told me with little hope: “If I live, but this is unlikely.” But nature and youth took their toll, and a few years later, Yura’s strength and will to live returned, and he enthusiastically took up his work again.”

Pimenov himself wrote about that time:

"...It was my difficult time. My nerves were gone, I couldn’t work at all. In addition, professional troubles befell me: one book that I illustrated was recognized as formalistic for its drawings, and I found myself without money and without work , because after this book they didn’t give me work in magazines, and we subsisted on the money that my wife earned as a stenographer.”

“In my life, my wife helps me extremely. She is always my best model,” recalling my works done over many years, I see her figure, then her hair or hands, they are not at all the same, but something always reminds me of that feminine which was closest."

“She always gave me the right advice - when it was necessary to make the most honest, and therefore the most correct decisions. And she helped me in difficult times of illness and in the years of failure that are obligatory for an artist. And she simply lived nearby, got up in the morning and got dressed, she helped stage complex theatrical productions, made excellent costumes for the theater herself, bathed children, washed dishes, wore very cheap dresses when there was no money at all, and good dresses when money appeared, bathed in the river, undressed in the evening, going to bed. And Renoir said: “Whether a naked woman will emerge from the salty wave or get up from her bed, whether she will be called Venus or Nini, no one will invent a better one.”

At one time I worked a lot in the theater as an artist. I have always loved the theater, but then I recognized it, so to speak, from the inside. I recognized the intense rehearsal hours and the empty stage at night with the dim lamp on duty; workshops where theatrical costumes and delicate ballet tutus are made; I recognized wonderful actors who, transforming before our eyes, created complex and subtle images; I saw how theatrical light transforms people, stage space and scenery into a special and extraordinary world.
And I really wanted to try to convey my impressions associated with working in the theater, with what I did there and what I saw.
Added to this were the impressions of the circus and cinema, and together everything turned for me into an image of spectacle, into a very real world and at the same time always with a touch of some mystery.”

“With each new work in the theater, I again and again felt the happiness of touching this eternal source of joy. There is one more, very important subtlety in my relationship with the theater, because it was the theater that gave me
a lot of work in that now long time when my painting “didn’t go well”, when I was studied for being “impressionistic” and accused of thousands
non-existent formalistic sins. Then the theater simply helped me live. It was my daily bread, it was also my love."

All these events forced the artist to take a fresh look at his own work. As before, he sought inspiration in the noisy, rapidly changing, newly built world around him.

In the mid-1930s he painted the triptych “Workers of Uralmash”

But now, in the 1930s, the main theme of his work is the city - its construction sites, streets; people are new, young, cheerful.

They remember that Pimenov spent hours walking around Moscow or could go to one of the towns near Moscow and study the local streets and landscapes there. “I love these new quarters,” said Pimenov. - In their incompleteness, even in their malfunctions, there lives a young soul of novelty...

New cities, regions and neighborhoods give birth to their own special poetry, a special character of life. The ground begins to be unraveled in the new location, and the slow and steady movement of huge cranes appears on construction sites...

1937... Muscovite Pimenov paints a programmatic canvas in which he reveals to the viewer a new landscape of the capital - “New Moscow”

Summer day, heat. The new houses of Okhotny Ryad are melting into the gray haze... Today, when there are dozens of twenty-story buildings in Moscow, these first construction projects of those years seem, perhaps, small. But in those distant days, the reconstruction of Okhotny Ryad was a symbol of Moscow's newness. The warehouses and shops disappeared forever and gave way to white buildings that evoked a sense of pride among the Muscovites of that time.

“New Moscow”... A wide open window into life... A car runs easily along the asphalt of Sverdlov Square. A colorful kaleidoscope of a crowd of people and lines of cars unfolds before the eyes of the driver - a young woman with a short hairstyle (as you can see, fashion has returned to normal after a third of a century), in a light summer dress. Throughout Pimenov’s painting there is a sense of passion for life. It comes in carnation, crimson and white colors attached to the windshield frame. In the shine of the asphalt and in the trembling of scarlet flags in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions. In the glare of the sun playing on the polished bodies of cars, and in the motley mosaic of a crowd of pedestrians... The secret of the charm of Pimenov’s canvas is in the movement that permeates every stroke in the picture. True, this fragmentary impressionistic brushstroke aroused the anger of some art critics, who at that time considered artists like Renoir or Degas to be formalists. But, I think, it’s hardly worth debating these mistakes of critics, who tend to make mistakes at times, like all mortals...

What kind of girl is sitting behind the wheel of a convertible? Is it Lilya Brik, to whom Vladimir Mayakovsky brought a car from Paris, or the daughter of some people's commissar? Maybe this young woman is a symbol of new life? This picture reminds me very much of the scene of the heroine Lyubov Orlova flying over Moscow from the film “The Shining Path”: there she is soaring in a car from almost the same angle, and, of course, she is driving... Of course, there is a shade of social utopia in this picture too There is.

“New Moscow” has become a textbook; it can be seen in the Tretyakov Gallery along with other paintings by Pimenov. By the way, Pimenov’s works in the Tretyakov Gallery are next to Deineka’s works, in the same hall... So, fifty years after the first exhibition, these two masters are again exhibited side by side...

Motifs of “New Moscow” were used by the artist in a painting he painted in 1944 "Front Road".

The emotional content of the picture is built on the contrast between the image of a peaceful, changing Moscow, which had already become familiar to the Soviet viewer, and the city plundered and destroyed as a result of the fascist invasion, depicted in the painting “Front Road”.

This work, of course, is not as famous as “New Moscow,” but it is still known. And very few people are familiar with the fact that in 1960 Yuri Pimenov again returned to the theme of “New Moscow”.

I was really surprised when I saw this photo. I began to look for sources... Only one publication refers to the fact that a reproduction of this painting was published in the Ogonyok magazine. We managed to find out from the artist’s relatives that such a work actually happened. But where she is now is unknown.

The monumental panel “New Moscow” (also known as “Physical Parade in Moscow”) received the same name in 1939. The panel was intended for the final hall of the Soviet part at the World Exhibition in New York, dedicated to architecture and urban planning.

The panel was executed by a team of artists based on a general sketch by Yuri Pimenov. During the work, the panels were examined by architects Chernyshev, Zaslavsky, Zarubin and Iofan, making their proposals, and this is how it happened:

“A government commission, which included architects, came to accept the panel. The commission found that the people in the panel did not raise objections, but the architecture was not the same. It needs to be written anew and built based on different principles. The point is not how it is written ", - it is written beautifully, - but the point is what exactly is depicted, what houses are drawn, what size and character. The city of the future should look different. And what kind of architecture belongs to the future - there were different opinions on this matter. We have no clear instructions received, although the majority of architects spoke in favor of the classics.We had to cover very large areas with whitewash and rebuild columns and high-rise buildings, and most importantly, build architecture that no one had ever seen.<…>

The government commission came a second time and again said: people can be accepted, but the architecture needs a radical restructuring. After long negotiations between the architects, first among themselves, and then with Pimenov, they agreed that the side scenes, that is, the right and left parts of the architecture, would remain, and the centrally located buildings would go very far away, be immersed in an airy haze and become barely distinguishable. It took more kilograms of white and a week of hard work. Finally everything was finished and the government commission accepted the panel. It was wound up on a huge reel and sent to New York."

During the Second World War, Pimenov, together with another former OST member, Vladimir Vasiliev, worked on TASS Windows, and also created a series of works on military themes.

In 1943, he was sent to the North-Western Front, to the Staraya Russa region and to Leningrad; Another main theme in Pimenov’s work during this period was the depiction of heroes from the home front.

"Night Street"... Snow blowing... 1942. Blackout. Dead masses of houses emerge from the frosty darkness as cold ghosts.
The wind howls in the silent expanse of the icy street. Stubble, hedgehogs" ...
A blizzard tears the tarp off a truck as it speeds into the darkness. Strands of hair move, the ends of a scarf on a woman walking through Moscow at night. An uncertain blue light illuminates the stern, frozen face.
Who is she? Where is he going in this dark time? We do not know. We only know that night passes were issued at work. This woman is probably coming home from her shift. There is determination in her face. Replace husband, brother, win.
The iron structure of “hedgehogs”, through which the woman seems to pass, emphasizes the harsh rhythm of the canvas.

"...I now have a painting in my studio that I started painting. This is a picture about the military line of 41-42. About the Moscow military line. I even have a feeling that I should paint it. I should. Because I saw it , I felt it very well. I conceived this thing a long time ago, I tried to approach it, and now I’m working on it.
I remember Moscow streets very well - empty, with drifting snow.
This kind of drifting snow has remained for me since then a memory of the war. Such sharp drifting snow on the asphalt - how quickly it passes, quickly... People are walking. Somewhere they accidentally fall into the blue light - some face in a scarf, a bag, a hand... Somewhere the snow is highlighted, somewhere the snow is blown away, a black roof. The result is terribly deep shadows... All this created completely special plastic situations. Special plastic forms. And this was a completely special landscape of the city, which he seemed to know well, but it looked completely different. Moreover, he was tragically beautiful. It was a very special tragic beauty."

With the end of the war, in 1945, Pimenov began teaching at the art department of VGIK, and in 1950, as an artist, he worked on the set of one of the most striking film designs of post-war Soviet cinema, “Kuban Cossacks.” Work for theater and cinema generally occupied not the least place in his life. Already in the 1930s, he participated in the creation of about 10 productions.

In 1947, Pimenov was awarded the USSR State Prize for the design of the play based on the play by B. A. Lavrenev “For those who are at sea!” (1946, Maly Theater, Moscow) and in 1950 - for the design of the play “The Wide Steppe” by N. Vinnikov (1949, Central Theater of the Soviet Army).

In the post-war years, Pimenov's easel paintings were dominated by landscapes, as well as sketches of Moscow life, where he paid a lot of attention to female characters. His favorite motif was the theme “woman - flowers”.

Both before and after the war, Pimenov also worked as an illustrator.

But what’s interesting is that just recently I saw these sketches for the first time - I can only be amazed at how delicately they are made. If we consider them outside the context of the book, these are completely finished graphic works...

Painter, theater artist, graphic artist, People's Artist of the RSFSR, full member of the USSR Academy of Arts, Yuri Ivanovich Pimenov (1903–1977) was one of the founders of the OST (Society of Easel Artists, 1925) - an entire chapter in the formation of a new art. His genre paintings, landscapes, and portraits poetically capture the working life of the country and its heroes.

Morning shopping

Pimenov, a lyricist, when he depicts his native Moscow, rejoices at the new city quarters; a lyricist when he paints a landscape, snow, rain, raindrops on glass reflecting houses and people; he is a lyricist when he portrays youth, enthusiasts and romantics - builders, students, saleswomen, crane operators; a lyricist, when he notices the cute, sometimes funny details of the new, under construction, tomorrow... Finally, the lyricist in his picturesque manner, silvery coloring, the lyricist in his love for rhythm, movement, light and flowing, progressive and, as it were, running away forms...

Roads
It would seem, what could be more familiar and ordinary than the streets? Cars are driving, pedestrians are hurrying somewhere...
The artist Yuri Pimenov walked along one of the Moscow streets. He didn't stand out much from the crowd of passers-by. Maybe a sports jacket with large patch pockets, a youthful appearance and a small album in his hand... The artist admires his hometown and paints it tirelessly.

...The thirties of the last century. The center of the capital is in the forests. On the site of the demolished two-story houses of Okhotny Ryad, construction is in full swing. The Moscow River is unrecognizable - they cover the banks in granite and build new bridges. Laying asphalt. Construction of the metro has begun. Metro construction workers - young guys and girls in helmets and overalls... They are moving houses to new places... The city is changing before our eyes.

Dispute

Stewardess

Morning in the city

Lyrical housewarming

New Moscow

Ordinary morning

The first fashionistas

Before the dance

Pouring rain

Wedding on Tomorrow Street

Bride

25/11/2017 00:08

Moscow, Vladimir Kazakov specially for AP-PA.RU The brilliant Russian artist Yuri Ivanovich Pimenov was born in Moscow on November 26, 1903 and passed away forty years ago.

Forty years ago, the brilliant Russian artist Yuri Ivanovich Pimenov passed away. Many people, even people far from art, are familiar with his painting of the 30s “New Moscow”. Where a woman drives a convertible through the capital, shining with new life. Yuri Ivanovich was born on November 13 (26), 1903 in Moscow, in the family of assistant attorney Ivan Vasilyevich Pimenov and Klavdia Mikhailovna Pimenov, who came from the Moscow merchant family of the Babanins.

In 1915, on the recommendation of the gymnasium drawing teacher Alferov Pimenov Jr., he was accepted into the Zamoskvoretsk School of Drawing and Painting. “While studying at the gymnasium, at the age of twelve I began going to Sunday school for drawing and painting. “He honestly painted the casts,” Pimenov later recalled. “I definitely decided to become an artist... At home I painted landscapes and copied from postcards of Serov and Somov.”

At the beginning of 1920, he showed S.V. Malyutin, then already a well-known master, his works, after which Malyutin took him to work in his workshop. 1920-1924 - the time of study at VKHUTEMAS: "... But for most of the VKHUTEMAS time I studied with Favorsky and - perhaps without the right - I want to consider myself his student... Vladimir Andreevich Favorsky was a huge and unusually bright person. high nobility, masculinity, true humanity"

“The first years of Vkhutemas. The first meeting in the first year with Andrei Goncharov, with whom we immediately quarreled, and then we were friends all our lives, although we always continued to argue... Sasha Deineka... We were connected by great friendship at that time, and it was no wonder. When we look at Deineka’s early, first paintings, the youth of our state and the youth of our generation stand before our eyes.”

In 1927, Yuri Pimenov received the jury prize at the Exhibition of Art Works for the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution for the painting “Give Heavy Industry!”

In the early 30s. Pimenov was mercilessly criticized for his formalism, and he became seriously ill.

“...It was my difficult time.

My nerves were gone and I couldn’t work at all. In addition, professional troubles befell me: one book that I illustrated was considered formalistic for its drawings, and I found myself without money and without work, since after this book they did not give me work in magazines, and we subsisted on the money that My wife earned money by writing shorthand.”

All these events forced the artist to take a fresh look at his own work. They remember that Pimenov spent hours walking around Moscow or could go to one of the towns near Moscow and study the local streets and landscapes there. “I love these new neighborhoods. In their incompleteness, even in their problems, lives the young soul of novelty... New cities, regions and neighborhoods give birth to their own special poetry, a special character of life. They begin to unravel the earth in a new place, the slow and steady movement of huge cranes appears on construction sites... How many different lives will later come to these houses.”

In 1937, Pimenov created one of his most famous works - the painting “New Moscow”, in which the artist’s updated, lighter, freer style of painting was fully revealed, with an almost impressionistic brushstroke and light.

During the Great Patriotic War, Pimenov worked on TASS Windows, and also created a series of works on military themes. In 1943, he was sent to the North-Western Front, to the Staraya Russa region and to Leningrad; Another main theme in Pimenov’s work during this period was the depiction of heroes from the home front.

With the end of the war, in 1945, Pimenov began teaching at the art department of VGIK, and in 1950, as an artist, he worked on the set of one of the most striking film designs of post-war Soviet cinema - “Kuban Cossacks”. Work for theater and cinema generally occupied not the least place in his life. Already in the 1930s, he participated in the creation of about 10 productions.

In the post-war years, Pimenov's easel paintings were dominated by landscapes, as well as sketches of Moscow life, where he paid a lot of attention to female characters. His favorite motif was the theme “woman - flowers”.

Since the mid-1950s, in addition to teaching at VGIK (until 1972) and working for the theater, Pimenov traveled a lot and wrote a lot under the impression of the countries he saw. He became seriously interested in literary work and published a number of essays: “Notes on the Work of an Artist” (1955), “A Beautiful Simple Life” (1956), “In the Moscow Region” (1956), “A Story about a Trip to London” (1962), “In Ancient and New India" (1962), "New Quarters" (1966); wrote the books: “The Year of Traveling” (1960), “The Art of Living or the “Art of Nothing”” (1964), “The Extraordinaryness of the Ordinary” (1964), “Flowers” ​​(1970), “The Mysterious World of Spectacles” (1974).

The 1960s and 70s were a time of state recognition. Pimenov became People's Artist of the RSFSR (1962), full member of the USSR Academy of Arts (1962), holder of the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1963), laureate of the Lenin Prize (1967) for the series of works "New Quarters" (1963-1966), People's Artist of the USSR ( 1970), Knight of the Order of Lenin (1973).

On September 6, 1977, Yuri Ivanovich Pimenov died in Moscow; he was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

Today, the work of Yuri Pimenov is in demand and appreciated. His “New Moscow” remains one of the most reproduced works of Russian artists of the first half of the twentieth century; his paintings are on permanent display in all major museums in Russia.