Unknown Natalia Gundareva: Paints of life and watercolors of a famous actress

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

This actress was known and loved, it seems, by all citizens of the Soviet Union. Natalia Gundareva played in such a way that her heroines became close and understandable. Her incredible talent was combined with amazing human qualities. She did not tolerate familiarity, but was ready to help any person. And no one knew about another talent of the national favorite. Natalia Gundareva throughout her life did not part with a brush and paints.

The color of life is red

She has been painting all her life, since childhood. During school years, these were some incredible ladies in chic outfits, and Natasha's mother sincerely thought that in the future her daughter would become a fashion designer. Later, the future actress picked up watercolors and painted with inspiration. Her drawings were quite professional, although she did not study painting specially. In the watercolors, you can see the whole passionate nature of the actress, for the open and juicy red color seemed to symbolize her life and bright, lively nature.

She could turn any incident into a joke, and even condescendingly laughed at her own heroism. So it was on the day when, during the filming, she saw a truck that lost control of the director Leonid Maryagin rushing. Maryagin himself did not notice the danger, the actress just threw herself on the thin director and fell on him with her whole body so that both flew to the side of the road.

Later, Natalya Gundareva laughed merrily at the incident and rejoiced, like a child, at her rather large weight. If she were thin, could she really budge a man? Although the usually curvaceous figure was the subject of incredible suffering for the actress. That was all she was: funny, charming, very spontaneous and at the same time purposeful, and sometimes quite tough.

All her life she was looking for her true love, at times she was exchanged for falling in love. But still, fate was favorable to her, and Natalya Gundareva met someone who became her husband and faithful friend, beloved person and caring father. Mikhail Filippov did not appear in her life suddenly, he came to the Mayakovsky Theater, where the actress worked, made friends with her former classmate and colleague. And then together they began to arrange all sorts of practical jokes that Natalya Georgievna loved, and over time they realized: they need to be together.

Mikhail Filippov himself recalled how they met at a time when he was "with a broken wing." Natalia Gundareva found him, healed and taught him to fly again, simultaneously turning his life into a real fairy tale.

She lived in red, the color of fire, creativity and joyful reincarnation, she loved to play pranks on her colleagues, organized noisy celebrations, which she herself directed and painted. She painted her own and others' roles, subtly feeling the characters and mise-en-scenes. At each rehearsal, she invariably appeared with a notebook, sketched and jotted down ideas.

Natalya Georgievna possessed some completely irrepressible temperament, but in her work she never allowed herself to improvise during the performance, considering them sloppy. And for all her love for red in paintings, she did not like this color in clothes. Only at one of her weddings did she appear in a bright red dress and the same hat. In other cases, the actress preferred to dilute open paints.

The color of loneliness is blue

In her life, it seemed, there was never a place for loneliness in the full sense of the word. There were friends, fans, hobbies, colleagues and a whole army of viewers waiting for her to appear on the screen. Nevertheless, for a long time she remained a person seeking her own very simple and cozy happiness.

Before meeting with Mikhail Filippov, she was twice married, was carried away, looked for, was disappointed. Of course, the greatest passion of the actress was work, to which she sometimes gave herself without a trace. She carried all her inner experiences and sufferings to the altar of the profession, collecting her emotions and feelings as if in a piggy bank. Natalia Gundareva embodied in her roles not only the director's intention, but also her own vision.

Only sometimes, completely devastated by the brilliantly played role, she allowed herself to think about the loneliness that seemed to her as an elderly Russian lady who found herself in Paris without relatives, relatives, friends. This lady stood at the window and cried when it snowed … Loneliness for her was somehow blue.

The color of wisdom is brown

She herself was like a woman in the fall, in which dark colors were added every year. Not sad, but deep, even deep. As in her painting, depicting some earthly woman, almost a Madonna. Natalya Georgievna often played ordinary women in the cinema, as she herself noted “Dashek, Klasek and Plaszek”. And only in the play based on the play by Edward Radzinsky "I am standing at the restaurant …" as if a new facet of her work was opened. The play, in which there were only two heroes - he and she, Sasha and Nina.

The actress considered the role of Nina to be different from all her other images in the theater and in the cinema. As if she had worn lilac all her life, and then she was advised to try on yellow. And he suddenly approached her. In this performance, she played not an ordinary woman, but her fate. Maybe Nina was in this brown watercolor? Strong, mocking, not broken by loneliness?

If Natalia Gundareva lived longer, she could add other colors to the deep brown. Would play adult wise women of age. In the one that she herself was always afraid of, with which she fought, as with being overweight. She did not want to grow old, there was no place for helplessness and weakness in her life. But there was age-old wisdom, as if absorbed by it from each of its roles. She did not live a very long physical life. And at the same time she lived hundreds of women's destinies, combining them into the face of her Madonna, which darkened over the years, but did not lose its liveliness and the very love of life that was in the actress herself.

She has been painting all her life. She painted flowers that she loved very much. She filled a white sheet with paints, got rid of fatigue, applying red color with wide strokes. The color of your life.

Sometimes in life it happens that a person feels like a wounded bird with a broken wing. It cannot take off, but lies at a crossroads and waits for nothing. Suddenly, gentle, warm hands raise him, surround him with care and affection, nurture him and teach him to fly again. This happens not only in fairy tales. So it was when Natalia Gundareva and Mikhail Filippov met.