The magic lace of Tamara Yuf's drawn fairy tales: Why Soviet collectors were chasing them

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In Soviet times, lovers of books and book illustrations asked when they heard that someone was going to Petrozavodsk: "Bring something with Yufa!" This meant - a book with her illustrations. In our spoiled time with well-designed books, her drawings still thrill readers. And it is not surprising: each of them in itself is a fairy tale embodied.

Tamara Chvanova, as the artist was originally called, was born in a village near Yelets. Her mother graduated from lace-making courses and at one time earned her living with the famous, like a spider web or snowflakes, Yelets lace. Much later, from the illustrations of Tamara Grigorievna, many will have a feeling of lace weaving, spiderweb patterns.

Tamara's early childhood was in the war; life was hard. But at school age, she moved with her family to live in Yelets and entered an art school: in the village it was impossible to think about such entertainments! In the village, Tamara mostly read, sometimes swallowing a book in a day, and the library refused to give out a new book earlier than ten days later: there were too few of them for everyone. Sometimes it was lucky, and something unread was released on the sixth day.

After the Elets school, it turned out to be surprisingly easy to enter the Leningrad Art and Pedagogical School. In general, Tamara went to Leningrad after her first love and already on the spot met a new love: a guy with a strange, funny surname Yufa in the Russian ear. Yufa was going to become a poet, but Tamara infected him with a passion for painting, helped him to study, and he became no less famous artist than she. Because of the same surnames, they were even confused: they got married in their last year.

After college they gave me a choice of where to get a job assignment. Tamara chose Ladva in Karelia; she heard from a young artist that Karelia is amazingly beautiful. Indeed, she liked the landscapes of Ladva much more than the Leningrad streets. True, he met the city unkindly. The school, which was supposed to give out the apartment, was closed; in the collective farmer's house, which served as a hotel, all the seats were occupied by the Petrozavodsk football team. Pregnant Tamara and her young husband Mikhail somehow spent the night in a haystack. Tamara worried all night: will the wolves come? The place looked so wild, so pristine in its beauty!

The school, where Tamara got a job as an art teacher, gave a "apartment" in an old wooden house to a good one, in two bright rooms, easily heated. Soon a daughter, Margarita, was born. True, the marriage did not withstand the test of a child, and after a while Mikhail found himself a new love: it is somehow easier to love without diapers. Tamara took a part-time job - to lead a circle in the house of culture. In general, everything went to the fact that she would live the most ordinary life of an art teacher.

It is not known what prompted her, but once Tamara Grigorievna collected drawings that she painted in gouache at her leisure for the soul, and went with them to Petrozavodsk, to the publishing house "Karelia". I went and thought: who is she to meddle among professional illustrators? It may be that no one. Then, the artist decided, she would tear apart the drawings. Nothing.

But in the editorial office, when they saw Yufa's gouache, they gasped. How cool it would be to arrange children's fairy tales like this - but they are only according to plan next year … But no! So far, no one has undertaken to illustrate the tales of Pentti Lahti: Finnish literature was considered an amateur. But Tamara had already fallen in love with the north so much that Pentti Lahti fascinated her. After his fairy tales there was "Kalevala", there was Prince Igor, there was a lot more. Each book with her illustrations turned into a masterpiece. Nobody expected this from a young, country-born art teacher.

Tamara was invited to participate in an exhibition of young artists and later told something funny: the venerable painter Pavel Korin stopped in front of her paintings and exclaimed, here, they say, there is a Russian artist! He was corrected: not an artist, but an artist. Lives in Karelia.

The very fact that her paintings are really being considered, discussed, for some reason surprised Tamara. She went to see it herself, with the support of a friend. And I saw a real crowd near my paintings. The audience quite competently discussed her style, and also argued: is the artist a man or a woman? Some of the spectators were convinced that such perfection, such coldness can only be masculine. A friend, who was standing next to Tamara, shouted: yes, here the artist herself is standing! Many did not believe it. But after a couple of years not a single Unbeliever Thomas remained. “Are you going to Petrozavodsk? Bring me something with Yufa!"

Tamara Grigorievna is still alive. She continues to work, exhibit, and give interviews. Living at the same time with such an artist seems as miraculous as her paintings are.

Chance sometimes decides a lot in the life of an artist, and anything can raise him to the top of his career, how the Russian ambassador made an Italian the most beloved artist in Turkey literally in passing.