Life path in one century: the difficult fate of "Girls with a nucleus" by Samokhvalov

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

The Tretyakov Gallery is a museum, in the halls and storage rooms of which one of the world's largest collections of Russian fine art is kept: tens of thousands of paintings by artists who created at different times. This review will focus on one of them - the painting "Girl with a Core" (1933) by the famous Russian Soviet artist, painter and graphic artist - A. N. Samokhvalov. He created many images of people carried away by the element of a completely new life in the young country of the Soviets. Real people have always become heroes of his canvases. And the "girl with the nucleus" too, and she is still alive.

Few people know that the heroine of the painting by AN Samokhvalov "The Girl with the Core" is a real character. Moreover, she is not only still alive, but also recently celebrated her 100th anniversary. And despite his advanced age, he still remembers his life and his meeting with the artist Samokhvalov.

“A century-long life path is like a very long marathon - very few people manage to reach the finish line.

Distant Germany. Berlin. Special day. Children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren gathered - they are waiting for the hero of the occasion. Yes, such a date does not often happen in a person's life. A whole century passed on this land - I involuntarily thought about how she lived, what she did, what legacy she left.

She went to the mirror: she gazed intently at the appearance of a little woman, battered by life. A sadness ran over his wrinkled face. From the mirror looked an old woman with a pale wrinkled face, with a look full of wisdom and warmth, with hairs on her head thin and white - like fluff, like a dandelion, with a thin neck, bent shoulders under the burden of past years. And hard-working hands could tell a lot …

Suddenly, a wave flooded with memories, carrying away in those distant years of serene youth, when one believed in a bright future, grandiose plans were built. As if just recently she married her beloved boyfriend, gave birth to a baby. It seemed that happiness would be eternal, but the villainous war instantly destroyed all hopes for a happy life.

Pictures of those windbreak events that crippled fate suddenly surfaced before my eyes: both the evacuation from Leningrad to the Urals together with my daughter and husband, who was soon taken into the labor army, and the goat-nurse Zinka, who did not let her die of hunger, and how she worked in the mines of Miass, and then in the geological office in Kyshtym, she fainted from hunger and chronic fatigue.

And how, after the war, with my daughter in her arms, returning to destroyed Leningrad, she received an order: to get out of the city in 24 hours. After all, a German woman is an enemy of the people!

I had to return to the Urals again, and soon, together with my husband, go to a special settlement in distant Central Asia. Give birth and raise two more children there. And after living half a century, in a city on the Syr Darya, until the age of 72, I had to work in the planning and economic department of a large enterprise at a responsible job. And when the children decided to leave for distant Germany, it was already under 80, but without hesitation I went with them …

And also in life there was an unforgettable May 1933 and a summer cottage village - Marienburg, which is near Gatchina, where parents rented a dacha from quite famous artists - father and son Ferentsev. Spring reigned around, awakening feelings and excitement of youth. On summer grounds, brass bands played in the evenings, inviting young people.

Behind him almost 17 years and, it seemed, the whole life ahead, filled with romance, patriotism and irrepressible optimism.

And there was a fateful meeting by the lake. A middle-aged man who was visiting the owners of the dacha, as it later turned out to be an artist, unexpectedly offered to pose for his painting. In those years, there was a craze for sports, being a very good athlete, she was fond of athletics, skiing, jumping into the water from a springboard, had a beautiful athletic body. This, probably, attracted and inspired the painter at that time, and later she learned that the stranger was a well-known artist at that time A. N. Samokhvalov, who always painted his paintings only from nature - real people, and not collective images.

Subsequently, Samokhvalov recalled working on the picture: "This purposeful gaze of sparkling eyes, this new rhythm of movements, these features of the new in the daily life of young people - I looked at them with passionate enthusiasm." This is how the "Girl with the Core" appeared, which is still kept in the Tretyakov Gallery.

It was the brightest page in the life of a young Soviet country of the same age, who lived in an era of grandiose events. But how many years have passed since then …

Yes, memory is still a strange thing. The older you get, the more life experience becomes suddenly more relevant, the events of bygone days emerge from oblivion: what was yesterday and what was 50 years ago suddenly turns out to be on the same linear plane.

So I still walk the earth with a lively mind and a clear head, reading books and newspapers, being interested in politics, remembering by heart the phone numbers of my relatives, and I correspond with the last surviving classmate from St. a valuable reward - as a memory …"

She drove away the memories, shook her head, brushed off a tear that was quietly running down her cheek and quietly walked, because they were waiting …

Life goes on.

Yes indeed old age is given to a person - as a gift, not everyone is given to live to see such deep wrinkles and gray hair. And many are wondering when does it come? A partial answer can be found in confession-reflections of an American Phyllis Schlossberg.