The village of the Kiev province — Odessa — Vienna — Paris. A normal route for a talented and moderately ambitious provincial artist. Well, where else to go if not to the cultural capital of Europe? There, where Montmartre, the Salons of the Independent, favorite impressionists and progressive audiences who have seen a lot, and therefore are not inclined to obscurantism. Looking ahead, I will say that a miracle will happen. In a few years, yesterday's shoemaker himself will become a prominent participant in these salons. And his personal exhibition in Paris will be paid for by the famous Baron Rothschild himself.

There will be a shock auction of Russian classics — works of important artists of the late 19th — early 20th centuries. There will be many amazing intersections in the fates of the authors. Almost all of the artists listed below were born in the Russian Empire. Almost all were artists of the Naval Department. Almost all emigrated in the 1920s. And, as befits a Russian artist at the turn of the century, everyone died in a foreign land — in France, in Montenegro, in Turkestan.

Myalavin is undoubtedly one of the first names in Russian art. He was a member of the “World of Art” and the “Union of Russian Artists” associations. A man of amazing and characteristic fate. Fame in Russia came to him after recognition abroad. Academicians of the Imperial Academy criticized his masterpiece “Laughter”. But at the world exhibition in Paris, it was given a gold medal. Besides, “Italians who understand nothing in art” bought a painting for their museum of modern art. There is no prophet in his own country. And at home, meanwhile, they continued to teach the artist content. Educate. And they were brought up to such an extent that Malyavin stopped showing his works. He was honored with a personal exhibition in Russia after the revolution. Ironically, it was not the imperial academicians who organized it, but the Bolsheviks.At first, the artist met the arrival of the new government with enthusiasm, and even created a series of portraits of Lenin. But he quickly became disillusioned and in 1922 left his homeland by cunning. The artist died in France, in Nice in 1940.

Before us is Nemukhin's work from a cycle dedicated to the leaders of the Russian avant-garde. He has Jack Mayakovsky. Jack Marc Chagall. In this case, it is a dedication to the figure of the theatrical avant-garde, director, theater innovator, reformer and experimenter Vsevolod Meyerhold. The figure is very complex, ambiguous and colorful. It is not without reason that Meyerhold was painted by Yuri Annenkov, Boris Grigoriev, Alexander Golovin and other outstanding portrait painters of their time. Malevich made the sets for his production of Mystery-Buff based on Mayakovsky's material. And Mayakovsky personally played several roles at the premiere instead of the actors who did not appear.

“I don’t want to scold — I’m just sorry for this person. He is just pathetic, unhappy pathetic. He got into a very unattractive story, and only because he turned out to be too grateful material for speculators visiting from abroad on the part of human souls... A vague, frightened, neurasthenic world appears in the artist's canvases. Sloping houses, crooked windows, herring heads, scrubbed walls of barracks — all this would look like an ordinary bias of the layman, if it were not mixed with pseudo-significant symbolism of nonsense”... And further in the same spirit. So the newspaper “Soviet Culture” wrote. Article “Expensive price of lentil soup”. June 14, 1966.

Among the dozens of artists of the Vladimir school of painting there are three pillars: Kim Britov, Valery Kokurin and Vladimir Yukin. The most expensive, the most famous. Pioneers and discoverers. Russian landscapes, painted in incredibly vivid colors, emitting light themselves, created a sensation in 1960 at the republican exhibition in Moscow. And, like the “Impressionists” after the “Salon of the Outcasts”, the term “Vladimirites” was fixed in our language after the exhibition “Soviet Russia”.

Belenok is a classic of disaster. Whirlwind. Panic realism. A lonely figure hiding behind a barrier. An anomaly hung in the air behind him. Anxious waiting for a denouement. The tension is growing and... This atmosphere is the main theme in the work of Petr Belenok. An artist of amazing fate. At the beginning of his creative career, he was a rather successful official sculptor in Ukraine. He made busts of Lenin for village councils. No end of work and endless stream of orders. Wealth in exchange for eternal provincialism. And he didn’t want to live like that. He preferred the freedom and independence of unofficial art instead of bureaucratic satiety. Who now remembers the sculptors of endless Lenin busts? But Belenok went down in history as one of the main artists of unofficial art.

NEMUKHIN Vladimir Nikolaevich (1925–2016) Dedication to Bulat Okudzhava. 1997. Wood tinted, metal. Underneath the pedestal are the author's signature, name and date: НВ Dedicated to B. Okudzhava. Vl. Nemukhin. 1997. A version of the sculpture from this series is reproduced on page 313 of the monograph “Vladimir NEMUKHIN. Painting. Graphic arts. Sculpture. Porcelain” (Moscow, 2012. BONFI). About Okudzhava. The father, the party organizer of Uralvagonzavod, was shot in 1937 on charges of attempting to assassinate his friend Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Mother was sent to camps in 1938. In 1942, as he turned 18, he volunteered for the front. They did not take him for a long time, and he begged the military commissar to send him. Mortar. He was wounded near Mozdok. Commissioned. After the war, he studied at the faculty of philology, worked as a teacher. In the 1960s, he began performing in the bard song genre.

Before us is not a picture, but the whole object of the master of melancholic realism, Yuri Kuper. The work is a virtuoso embodiment of the technique of sfumato, developed, as is believed, by Leonardo da Vinci. Sfumato is an Italian word for blurriness, nebula. The idea of the technique is to blur the outlines of nature in order to convey the air surrounding it.

Before us is the sculpture “Dedication to Paul Cézanne”, created by the nonconformist artist Vladimir Nemukhin. Why Cézanne? This is a beautiful story. Cézanne is one of the main innovators of the 20th century, the main figure of post-impressionism. And so distinctive that there is even the term “Cezannism”. In particular, our famous “Jack of Diamonds” (part of the Russian avant-garde) — Konchalovsky, Mashkov, Falk — all of them were at a certain stage Cezannists.