Complete autobiography of the artist T Mavrin. Works by the artist T Mavrina. Wisdom lives here
An exhibition of works by Tatyana Mavrina opened in the Open Club gallery in Moscow.
Wartime cityscapes and floral arrangements from 1970-90 are presented.
This exhibition features the works of T.A. Mavrina from two periods of her life: wartime city landscapes and flower arrangements of 1970-90.
The first part is wartime Moscow. This is what she wrote in her diaries: “Life has completely changed. There is nothing and nothing to write canvases on. And a new series “Old Man” began. What disappeared from the bombings in Novgorod and Pskov became very close and dear. These years 1942-1945 include watercolors and gouaches - Moscow, Zagorsk. On blue paper, small.
Since no identification could save one from suspicion of espionage, the person drawing is a strange figure; one had to train one’s memory and draw from memory. Color is easy to remember, shapes and proportions are more difficult.”
Mavrina wrote in her book “Moscow. Forty forty”: “I didn’t find my new topic right away. Once, driving along Sretenka, from the bus window I saw a 17th-century church hidden among houses and fences. Its tented bell tower stood right on the street. On Easter days, a virtuoso ringer (it was said that he was the brother of the conservatory professor A.F. Gedike) played “The Heart of a Beauty” on its bells. The bell tower was no longer there, and the church could have been destroyed by bombing. How can I help beauty? I must quickly sketch everything that has been preserved in Moscow, I thought, at least let it remain on paper. The Sukharev Tower didn’t let me down; it told me where to look. I began to walk around Moscow almost every day and slowly draw.”
Throughout the war she painted Moscow; the folders contained a lot of watercolor and gouache sheets on paint-drinking gray-blue paper or cardboard.
T.A. Mavrina created a unique chronicle of the monuments of Moscow, the city of “forty forties”. In these works T.A. Mavrina feels the air, the colors, the innocence, the aroma of time, which are preserved only in the memory of people of the older generation.
During the war and in subsequent years, Tatyana Alekseevna walked all over Moscow, from street to street, along alleys and outskirts, and was able to capture many beautiful monuments, churches, monasteries, old Moscow mansions, quiet courtyards and rickety houses that preserved the charm and beauty of a provincial, not metropolitan the way of life of that distant, now forgotten, Moscow life.
The subjects of urban landscapes include the whole of Moscow, but first of all these are the places closest to Sukharevskaya Square: Sretenka, Meshchanskie Streets area, Samoteka, Tsvetnoy Boulevard, Trubnaya Square, Petrovka, Nativity Monastery, and then more distant ones: Kolomenskoye, Izmailovo, Medvedkovo, Varvarka , Fili, Khamovniki, Lefortovo, Arbat lanes and, of course, the Kremlin towers, St. Basil's Cathedral, Red Square. All stories are recognizable and require no comment.
From Moscow at T.A. Mavrina has 75 years of life together. Here she found a profession, here her talent blossomed, here she created all her paintings and books.
The second theme of this exhibition is flower bouquets.
Throughout her years, T. Mavrina loved to depict compositions with fresh flowers. She created many picturesque bouquets in the 30s of the last century, in the 50s-70s, when she worked only on sheets of paper using watercolor and gouache techniques, and, of course, in the last years of her life, when this theme began to predominate in her work.
Collected together, they give the impression of a bright flowering garden. Over the years, the technique and composition of the works changed; Having studied and absorbed the techniques of folk peasant painting of Gorodets, Vyatka, Polkhov-Maidan, Mavrina began to paint rich, fantastic bouquets of flowers, reminiscent of her childhood and the colorful life of Nizhny Novgorod. The bright colors of her works are complemented by decorative details reminiscent of the large annual Makaryevskaya fair in Kanavin, on the low bank of the Volga, where there were colorful bazaars and shops, as Kustodiev depicted them.
On her sheets with bouquets of flowers, black horses, ladies in blue crinolines, smart fellows and birds now often appear - either doves or fabulous geese-swans. All bouquets are bright, cheerful, colorful. “And whoever makes people laugh is worth the light.”
In the late 70s and early 80s, Tatyana Alekseevna often used fragments of icons that decorated the walls of her apartment as a background, background for flower arrangements, as, for example, in the work presented at the exhibition: “Autumn. Still life with George" (1982).
Most often, the objects of her still lifes are autumn bouquets with yellow leaves, late flowers and branches of trees and herbs brought from forests and fields near Moscow. The colors of the plants are reproduced in a restrained green-yellow palette, and the details of the icons are highlighted by the black outline and red ocher of the clothes of saints and angels. During these years, Tatyana Alekseevna began to transfer icons from her collection to state museums in Moscow and Leningrad. By depicting icons on sheets with bouquets, she seemed to be saying goodbye to them and preserving their images as a keepsake.
In early works and in compositions with flowers of the post-war period, we always see strict subordination to style - these are flowers in a vase, in a mug, in a glass jar against the background of a table or drapery fabric. In her later works, especially those created in the last years of her life, when, due to age, the world around her had narrowed for the artist to the size of her apartment, on graphic sheets flowers appear against the backdrop of a city landscape with pieces of the day or night sky, or even village landscapes, popping up before her eyes like memories of past travels. The boldness of colors, the richness of the palette and, finally, femininity literally captivate the viewer of these works.
T. Mavrina’s works of recent years amaze the viewer with their inexhaustible variety, a lively look at familiar, many times reproduced, but always individually unique subjects. On her sheets you will not find monotony, the use of the same color schemes and techniques. They can be considered as series, “suites”. This musical term is perfectly suited for the perception of these works, in which the space is saturated with bright images, and the colors reproduce the harmony and rhythms overheard from nature itself.
Gallery "Open Club"
Address: Moscow, st. Spiridonovka, house 9/2 (entrance from the yard).
The nearest metro stations are “Barrikadnaya”, “Tverskaya” and “Pushkinskaya”.
Opening hours for this exhibition: daily from 16:00 to 22:00, except Wednesday - day off.
Free admission.
Tatyana Alekseevna Mavrina – Russian artist, illustrator, painter and graphic artist. Born on December 20, 1900 in Nizhny Novgorod in a family of teachers, a famous teacher and writer, zemstvo figure A.I. Lebedev and A.P. Mavrina. She studied in Moscow at Vkhutemas (1921 - 1929) with R.R. Falka, N.V. Sinezubova, G.V. Fedorov. From 1929 to 1931 was part of the group of artists “Thirteen”. In 1930, she took her mother’s surname – Mavrina. At the same time she married graphic artist N.V. Kuzmina. In the 1930s, she was engaged in painting, painted watercolors, and worked as an illustrator (works by Balzac, Hoffmann, France, Zola, Lermontov). Many easel works of that time are close to French post-impressionist movements. By the end of the 30s, painting in Mavrina’s work was being replaced by graphics as a more dynamic art form. During the war years, the artist made graphic (drawings, watercolors, gouache) series - “Russian cities, architectural monuments and landscapes,” including views of Moscow. In them Mavrina found the main theme of her work for the coming decades. She traveled a lot. The large multi-year cycle “Through Old Russian Cities” (1942-1967) was inspired by trips to Zagorsk (now Sergiev Posad), Uglich, Rostov Veliky, Alexandrov, Suzdal, Pereslavl-Zalessky. She often worked in mixed media - tempera, gouache, watercolor - which allowed her to fully realize her innate sense of color. Over the years, the artist’s style has changed. After the war, Mavrina turned to the world of folk art. She chose a path that bypassed the method of socialist realism - in the direction of Russian folk art, creating her own, “Mavrinsky” style - decorative, colorful, joyful, mischievous. At the same time, Mavrina was engaged in illustration. She has illustrated and designed more than 200 books. But even in this field, her path was not smooth; she was often accused of formalism; her books had difficulty getting published. Mavrina also worked in the field of theater and cinema; She had a literary gift and created several essay books about folk art and travels to the old cities of Russia. In 1975 she was awarded the USSR State Prize. In 1976 she was awarded the international G.-H. Andersen. In 1981, Mavrina was awarded the title “Honored Artist of the RSFSR”; in 1987, her work was awarded a gold medal from the USSR Academy of Arts. In the last years of her life, Tatyana Alekseevna Mavrina, no longer leaving home, continued to work with passion and life-affirming energy, remaining true to her life-loving and active nature. She died in Moscow on August 19, 1996, and was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.
T.A. Mavrina about creativity(From the book “Tatyana Mavrina. Jubilant Color”): In the fifties, earth and sky became the theme of landscapes and books. The roads captivated me - in the blue eyes of spring, when the sky of sounds and rook wings flows onto the pinking trees. The days of arrival and departure of rooks are the most noticeable every year, very noisy in the spring, noticeable in the fall. Living graphic patterns in the sky. And the road itself runs as if alive - “small streams forded, deep rivers floated, wide lakes went around” (this is from the fairy tales that I was fascinated by at that time). Thus, ancient architecture gave rise to a passion for folklore. I took up fairy tales after the war. I started making books for children's publishing houses.
You don’t even remember when you memorized the prologue to “Ruslan and Lyudmila,” it seems that you were born with it. First there was Pushkin, then fairy tales. I decided to make fairy tales during the war, captivated by Zagorsk’s pink towers, mentally drawing Pushkin’s “golden cockerel” on the then broken spiers instead of simple weather vanes. But I haven’t yet wandered around Moscow streets to my heart’s content, looking at all sorts of antiquities, and haven’t traveled around old cities; I didn’t look enough at folk art in museums, books, and villages; I didn’t picture all this to my heart’s content, I didn’t take in the fairy tales.
I think further, checking my decision since 1944 to paint what I see and what I love. And this decision remains in force. Everything that I love and draw will disappear, is already disappearing, must be preserved. I love and always admire the landscape with ancient architecture or villages. Or just forests and fields, but I’m less successful at that. I love and admire and want to preserve the products of human hands, perhaps this is how it should be explained that, being a Vkhutemasovka, brought up in the French school, which is under my skin, after the war I no longer returned to “pure painting”, but made illustrations to my delight , using all the methods of the impressionists. Whether I'm saying anything new, I don't know. It doesn't even interest me. We must preserve everything we see to the best of our ability. The more I do, the better.
I like Bunin. After him, you can love life more and see everything more sharply and interestingly, just like after the Impressionists and Van Gogh and Matisse - the earth was transformed in the eyes of people and became breathtaking! They showed how to look, and what you see is your business.
Mozart has a saying that goes something like this: I was in a bad mood and therefore I wrote beautifully, directly and seriously. Today I am in a good mood and write randomly, crookedly and cheerfully.
ON THE. Dmitrieva about the work of T.A. Mavrina(From the article “Tatyana Mavrina: cheerful wisdom”):
Mavrina, it seems to me, has achieved that creative freedom, that coordination - to the point of complete fusion - of the work of thought, eye and hand, in which the rational part of the artist’s work is reduced to a minimum and the work flows as if in the rhythm of breathing. Here something may turn out better, something worse, but it is always organic for the artist.
The artist's expressive vision was brought up on close contemplation of reality and never breaks away from reality. She does not find it acceptable not only to “suck a picture out of one’s finger,” but even to “suck it out of the soul.” The observed fragment of reality determines everything - the composition, color combinations, mood. Unlike many artists, Mavrina does not think or think about what she will write in advance: she sets off on a journey - and the road itself bestows plots, motives, and suggests their interpretation. But all this falls on the canvas of personal vision, which has become second nature over many years, so Mavrina’s work cannot be confused with anyone else’s: whether she depicts Kostroma or Athens - this is her hand, her handwriting, her spiritual prism, through which everything she sees is refracted . And openness to new and new visual impressions, impulses coming from the outside, protects against self-repetition. Despite the definiteness of her individual style, Mavrina’s sheets are inexhaustibly diverse. First of all, the sonorous rich color makes them so vibrant. Or the opposite: love of life is expressed by color. The sense of color, like a singer’s voice, is given by Mavrina by nature. There is no need to over-exaggerate the role of folk art in shaping its flavor. Of course, Gorodets painting, icons, and popular prints suggested something to her, prompted her to the idea of open color, to search for a “big sound.” But there is not the slightest “primitivism” in her color schemes - they are complex and sophisticated. Coloristic harmony is more difficult to achieve when working in open color than in tonal painting; multicolor should not turn into variegation. Each sheet by Mavrina has its own complexly organized scale. She says: “The artist should probably have the feeling of a carpenter building a house with two hands and an ax, without nails. A song-like construction, when one part holds the other. In the painting, too, each color props up the other, rests on the other.”
Mavrina’s completed sheets can be viewed individually, as an independent painting. But their real meaning is realized in their entirety: it is a continuously flowing stream, interlocking links. Series, suites are not Mavrina’s invention; Starting with the impressionists, modern art has chosen the principle of seriality. The era that gave birth to cinema perceives the world dynamically, as a stream of changing states. Mavrina seems to have little interest in cinema as such, but her artistic worldview is cinematic in its own way, and the genre of travel experiences provides the best opportunities for this.
Mavrina's drawings are a kind of rapid artistic shorthand; Continuing this comparison (conditional, of course), her colorful sheets can be likened to a transcript. The sketch already contains the future picture - composition, solution of space, figures. But many drawings do not have an auxiliary, but an independent meaning: masterful works of graphic art, possessing the main quality of this art - a sense of living line. Mavrina’s linear language, honed by many years of daily practice, is confident and free. I have never seen T. A. Mavrina draw, but I imagine the pace and rhythm of her pencil movements - like a bow in the hands of a virtuoso. If somewhere the drawing seems careless, then the carelessness is masterly - it is not from inability, but from an excess of skill, which gives the right to impudence and “mistakes”. The lines zigzag, curl, and merge. With a light, confident stroke, without lifting the pencil from the paper, figures are depicted from very complex angles - a horse in full view or a fox running. (Mavrina is inimitable in drawing animals.) Movement is also expressed through lines. When Mavrina notices that a flying bird can teach graphics, it’s not just a joke. Something from the trajectory of the whimsical flight of a swift or a lark, from their “strokes” in the sky, passed into her drawings.
Mavrina Tatyana Alekseevna is the only Soviet artist awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Prize for her contribution to illustrating children's literature. On these New Year's days she would have turned 116 years old. According to the surviving information, the girl, who later became a famous painter, was born on December 20 (the old 7th). As an adult, she invariably took a couple of years off herself on occasion. This is probably where the dates of birth come from: 1901, 1902. A cheerful, smiling person, a master of colossal efficiency, is how her contemporaries characterize her.
70 years of creativity
Mavrina Tatyana (1900-1996) lived in the world for almost a century. Her childhood passed under the Tsar, her youth and maturity - under Soviet rule. They say about people like her: “I’ve seen a lot.” The difficulties of critical periods did not affect her positive worldview. Over seventy years of painting and book illustration, she created a whole gallery of beautiful, memorable literary images.
It seemed that there was not a child in the Soviet Union who did not admire the sight of the beautiful Tsar’s daughter who died from Chernavka’s treat. The book “The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights,” designed by Tatyana Alekseevna, was published in 1949. The country learned and remembered a style of writing close to primitivism, ancient Russian and folk art.
Once upon a time, the impressions of visiting the Epiphany Fair in Nizhny Novgorod sank into the girl’s heart. As a mature person, Lebedeva recalled how she admired the toys: loaded carts were coming from beyond the Volga. She admired the sight of the unharnessed horses covered with frost needles, on which they brought her favorite Semyonov and Gorodets toys.
The choice was so great that it was dizzying. The kids walked and chose until they turned into “numb figures.” The love for folk toys influenced the work of the graphic artist.
Dreams Come True
The “test of the brush” in a new field turned out to be successful. The artist Tatyana Mavrina left a rich legacy: she designed more than 200 books to the highest standard. Most of it is “Mavrinskaya Pushkiniana”. Remember the three girls under the window, spinning late in the evening, their matchmaker, Baba Babarikha, and other colorful characters in “The Tale of Tsar Saltan.”
Or a graceful, learned cat on a golden chain near a spreading oak tree... The artist has created a special world: reverent, awakening imagination, pushing for reflection. He is a piece of our childhood. There is information that Mavrina Tatyana Alekseevna dreamed of writing illustrations for Pushkin’s fairy tales back during the Great Patriotic War. Despite the devastation of the war, she saw fairy-tale images everywhere.
From Nizhny to Moscow
Familiar with the work of the classic from a young age, on the ancient spiers of Zagorsk pink buildings (Zagorsk was called Sergiev Posad from 1930 to 1991), the artist mentally depicted the Golden Cockerel from the fairy tale of the same name. However, the graphic artist decided to seriously engage in illustrating Pushkin’s works only after the Great Victory.
Who is she, Tatyana Mavrina? The biography of the representative of the cohort of the Russian Soviet intelligentsia is not a secret. Born in Nizhny Novgorod. Father's name was Alexey Ivanovich Lebedev. The teacher and writer gave his daughter his last name. But in 1930 she took a pseudonym - her mother's maiden name.
Hereditary noblewoman Anastasia Petrovna Mavrina, like her husband, was engaged in teaching (she was the director of the Nizhny Novgorod Gatsissky School for girls from poor families). Alexey and Anastasia had four children - three daughters and a son. They were raised to be diversified and instilled with a love of literature, art, and music.
Life in the capital
Tatiana is the most famous of her sisters. Her younger brother Sergei went down in Soviet history as a scientist who stood at the origins of the computer industry. The noble family moved from Nizhny to Moscow in 1920. The girl studied at the famous creative school Vkhutemas-Vkhutein (higher artistic and technical workshops and institute). She studied the work of French artists.
At a certain stage of my student life I became interested in folk art (I was interested in icon painting, popular prints, tiles, gingerbread boards). Mavrina Tatyana gradually formed her own pictorial language, where color “sounds” openly, the world is wide and decorative, and the compositions are bold. The development of the artist was helped by teachers N. Sinezubov, G. Fedorov, R. Falk.
The glorious "devil's dozen"
In 1929, an exhibition was held in Moscow, in which 13 artists took part. The creative group of young supporters of drawing “at the pace of nature” was called “Thirteen” (according to the number of participants). Young Lebedeva and her future husband and colleague Nikolai Kuzmin were part of the cell of deniers of “Gothic kinks and mental instability.”
After becoming spouses, in the winter they lived in a small room on Sukharevskaya Square in Moscow. They preferred to spend the warm period of the year at their dacha in Abramtsevo. There they probably found the healthy and joyful way of life that they stood for. And they wrote in the genre of “quiet art.” Mavrina Tatyana created expressive and picturesque (sometimes with an erotic overtone) easel works. They attracted the audience's attention.
Essential state of life
The art of the 1930s featured chamber and ceremonial realism. Due to strict censorship and ideological pressure, many artists (including Mavrina and Kuzmin) turned to intimacy, depicting landscapes filled with love for their native land, scenes of family life (everything that was outside the literary and ideological framework).
Group "13" developed its own graphic style. Soon a split occurred within the community and it disintegrated. However, in the mid-1930s, the style finds of the “devil’s dozen” became firmly established in book and magazine illustration. Tatyana Mavrina's paintings mostly belong to this period. The works are reminiscent of French post-impressionist movements.
Collector and creator of miracles
The last time the artist painted with oil paint on canvas was in 1942. It was the painting “Dancing on the veranda of the club.” After that, by her own admission, a different life began. But the strong woman did not despair due to the lack of paints and fabric for painting. She opened a simple notebook and drew Moscow with a pencil. I walked the length and breadth of the capital. After the fiery forties of the twentieth century, Tatyana Alekseevna became interested in collecting icons, clay toys, trays, and embroidered works. With Nikolai Kuzmin, they put together an enviable collection of folk art objects.
Together with her husband, she painted spinning wheels, small birch bark boxes (tueski), bottles, and made copies of popular prints, as if creating illustrations for fairy tales in reality. Thus, from object to object, decorated in a decorative, dashing manner, a master of folk art was born. In the 1950-1960s, the artist became interested in depicting nature. I traveled to Russian settlements, the chronicle of which dates back to ancient times.
Blue lights of cornflowers
It doesn’t matter where Tatyana Mavrina spotted the cornflowers on the window. The main thing is that the image appeared and lives on even after the death of the author. Looking at the painting of the same name, former Soviet schoolchildren recall the Russian language textbook they studied in primary school. Based on this bright picture, the children developed (and are developing) an interest in works of fine art.
Analyzing every detail on the canvas in detail, even today children describe how they feel and how they understand the artist’s idea. By depicting a window on the top floor, the master of the brush seemed to bring the audience closer to the sky. There is no sun above the roof, which is clearly visible to the person “in the room”. But the invisible presence of the luminary is revealed by golden clouds, reflections on the windowsill and a glass jar-vase.
Miracle ABC
Due to the fact that the objects in the picture (flowers, clouds, house) do not have clear contours, a feeling of unusual dynamics appears: everything changes position in space, as if melting from the heat. Simple blurry strokes, and what an effect! It’s as if we feel the warmth of the sun’s ray. The sky is such a clear blue that it is clear that it is a summer day. Flowers on the window, and not inside the room - like a roll call of living and inanimate nature. Clear “eyes” of flowers to match the heavenly blue. Perfect solution.
Some believe that Mavrina’s “ABC” is another version of illustration for fairy tales. The book for the little ones reflects the richness of folk imagination. By studying letters, our children learn a good joke, receive unobtrusive instructions, and enjoy miracles.
The primer is considered one of the masterpieces of which there are not many in children's book publishing. Those who have deeply studied and are studying the heritage of the Russian graphic painter claim: the pinnacle of creativity, sparkling with all its facets, is practically unattainable.
A unique plexus of miracles
An unusual book for children of primary preschool and school age, published in 1969, not as a simple textbook. The masterpiece was made by the Goznak Main Directorate (Moscow), which works only on orders of national importance. Fans and connoisseurs of printing remember this thin red cardboard, gold embossing on the lid, and the dust jacket drawn on a gold background.
What did Mavrina Tatyana Alekseevna call her work? "Fairytale ABC". No wonder: this talented woman could not live without a world where everything is a lie, and there is a hint in it, a lesson for dear children. Coloring the alphabet, the artist created a complex pattern from many fairy tales.
Learning by playing
A, b, c, d, e... The ladder to the sky of knowledge is simple-minded, cheerful, bright, reliable. It seems that in our diverse world (there are countless options for primers alone), this classic alphabet has no equal in accessibility, wisdom, and brevity. Children love word games. Mavrina Tatyana used this “trick”.
The images that inhabit each letter live and act in the same vein as their fairy-tale prototypes. Mastery of the highest class is to make sure that every line, every squiggle works for the comprehension of literacy. You can watch the swan geese fly all evening long (but Baba Yaga is against it), the boletus mushroom grow, Tsar Saltan’s fleet move, Dadon take the Golden Cockerel out of his bag.
Tatyana Alekseevna depicted the most famous and beloved fairy tale heroes not only in “encrypted form,” but also on separate pages. An eternal child at heart, Mavrina did not always give answers to riddles. She invited the children to solve them on their own.
Wisdom lives here
What a blessing that Tatyana Alekseevna Mavrina lived in the world! The master's paintings look like they came from a fairy tale. Fabulous illustrations, like fantastic paintings. Spirituality, which is so lacking in modern children. A fun hint where to look for the time-tested essence of life. There is an opinion that children brought up on the heritage of the Russian graphic artist feel more subtly, deeply, more sublimely.
"ABC" has been republished today. Korolevich Elisha, Sister Alyonushka, Emelya on the stove, Sivka-Burka Prophetic Kaurka returned to the virtual, catastrophically spammed world. Many parents admit: they really want their children to make friends with a book decorated by the hand of a real, thoughtful master. Some advisers make a remark: “If you like the “Mavrinsky style”.” We hope you and your children will like it.
Our pride and beauty
Let’s finish the story with what we said at the beginning: it is very difficult to list all the Russian cities where Mavrina Tatyana Alekseevna visited. Her visits were long remembered by the old residents of Zvenigorod, Pereslavl Zalessky, Yuryev-Polsky, Suzdal, Uglich, Yaroslavl, Kostroma. The result of creative travels is a book-album entitled “Roads and Roads”, compiled by the publishing house “Artist of the RSFSR” in 1980. It is based on 212 views of unique corners of Russia (watercolor, gouache).
The traditional “About the Author” section contains text in several languages (including English, French, German). The book was published in Germany in encyclopedic format. Tatyana Alekseevna herself chose the sheets and built the layout. In 1976, for her work, she received the title of Laureate of the USSR State Prize and became an Honored Artist of Russia.
The following opinion of art critics (and simply concerned citizens) is interesting: often after the death of an artist, much of what he created fades and is overvalued. In this case, the opposite is true: the phrase “brilliant artist” can be pronounced without embarrassment, as it happens in life. The works of T. A. Mavrina are in all major museums in Russia.
Mavrina Tatyana Alekseevna
Mavrina Tatiana
(1902 - 1996)
The creative path of the painter, graphic artist, illustrator T.A. Mavrina began in the 1920s, full of innovative searches in art.
She studied at Vkhutemas - Vkhutein (1922-29). Together with several fellow students she participated at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. in the exhibitions of the “13” group, where the lively, fast pace of a bold sketch drawing was most appreciated. This lightness and freedom, an almost childlike spontaneity in handling color, line and form, were characteristic of Mavrina’s drawings and watercolors, and passed into her paintings and book drawings with a pen, which lay on the page in a transparent and subtle rhythmic pattern (“The Fate of Charles Lonseville” by K. G. . Paustovsky, 1933, etc.).
The desire for pattern and beauty was fueled by a love for Russian icons and works of folk art.
The artist travels through ancient Russian cities, drawing from life, but in such a way that the elegantly colored sketches seem fictitious, created by the author’s imagination. The result of Mavrina's many years of travel was the book-album "Roads and Roads", published in 1980, which contains watercolors and gouaches with views of protected corners of Russia - Zvenigorod, Uglich, Rostov the Great, Yaroslavl, Pavlovskaya Sloboda, Kasimov and other cities.
The artist knows how to be equally surprised by antiquity and newness, and look for their signs and interpenetration in everything. At the same time, she sees the surrounding reality through the prism of fairy-tale perception. And in book graphics, the artist’s favorite genre is the fairy tale.
Many times she illustrated for children fairy tales by A. S. Pushkin ("The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights", 1946; "Ruslan and Lyudmila", 1960; "At the Lukomorye", 1961), Russian folk tales. And every time in her books the colors became denser and brighter, the flat designs became freer and more patterned, the fairy-tale characters, especially animals, became more fantastic and funnier. She no longer draws them with a pen, but with wide strokes of the brush.
In 1969, Mavrina’s “Fairytale ABC,” amazingly colorful and rich in fantasy, was published. From start to finish, it was made by the artist with almost no explanatory captions, because the whole meaning lies in the illustrations themselves. Each letter has its own little fairy-tale plot. The ABC pictures are full of slyness and mischief, kindness and warmth, like all the artist’s art.
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Mavrina (Lebedeva) Tatyana Alekseevna (1900 - 1996). Painter, graphic artist. T. A. Mavrina spent her childhood in Nizhny Novgorod. There were four children, and they were raised as expected in intelligent families: reading and drawing, learning music and languages, attention to folklore and folk art, which seemed to surround and permeate their whole life. From these years, notebooks made by children in the Lebedev family have been preserved. It was a handwritten journal game. In 1921, Mavrina definitely chose fine arts - she entered VKHUTEMAS, where she studied with R.R. Falka, N.V. Sinezubova, G.V. Fedorov.
Later, the artist recalled this time as the happiest years of her life. After graduating from VKHUTEMAS in 1929, she joined the association Group "13" and became a participant in the association's exhibitions. In the 1930s, Mavrina was engaged in painting, painted watercolors, and made drawings. Many of her works of this time are close to French post-impressionist movements. Mavrina’s last painting on canvas with oil paints was painted in the summer of 1942 (“Dancing on the veranda of the club”). Mavrina called what began after this picture her new life. After the war, the artist rediscovered the world of folk art. She not only loved and collected icons, clay toys, trays and embroideries - with her husband, artist N.V. Kuzmin, she assembled a magnificent collection - Mavrina herself made copies of splints and spinning wheels, painted tueski, antique trays and bottles, and got used to the image of a folk craftsman. She created her own, “Mavrinsky” style - decorative, dashing, based on the principles of folk primitiveness. In the 1950s and 60s, the artist made numerous trips to Russian cities, making sketches and sketches for future works. My favorite theme was nature, “earth and sky.” A special place in the artist’s work is occupied by her cheerful and always sunny illustrations for children’s books. Made, as always, in folk style, they perfectly suit the plots of Russian fairy tales. In the late 1980s, Mavrina almost never left her home. Despite illnesses and illnesses, she devoted herself to her passion - painting, painting views from the window, still lifes, flowers. Her works of recent years are so plastically convincing and carry such a powerful energy charge that Mavrina’s later work can rightfully be placed on a par with the paintings of the greatest masters of the 20th century. Tatyana Mavrina's works are kept in almost all the largest museums in our country, including the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, the Saratov Art Museum and in private collections.
Mavrina was known and appreciated as a graphic artist and illustrator who embodied in her work many of the principles of Russian folk art, which she knew very well. Russian icons, popular prints, embroideries, and clay toys were of interest to her not only as collectibles, but also as examples of high artistic culture, a living language to which she turned. Her illustrations for children's books and Russian fairy tales, and albums of drawings made while traveling through Russian cities aroused great interest and were rightfully considered part of Russian art of the 70s and 80s.
The artist was awarded the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR, had awards and prizes, including the State Prize of the USSR.
And yet, as if an invisible wall separated her from official Soviet art. This “otherness” was felt by everyone - from the main artists of state publishing houses, who signed Mavrin’s books for publication with great reluctance, to the organizing committee of the international prize named after G.-H. Andersen, who chose Mavrina, practically the only Soviet children's book artist, as the winner of this prestigious award in the field of book graphics.
Tatyana Mavrina was born in 1900, although she herself always called the year of her birth 1902, and it was this incorrect date that was included in almost all reference books and biographies written during the artist’s lifetime. There was only one reason - female coquetry, the desire to appear a little younger. Her childhood was spent in Nizhny Novgorod, there were four children in the family, and they were raised as expected in intelligent families: reading and drawing, learning music and languages, attention to folklore and folk art, which seemed to surround and permeate her whole life. “The geography is fantastic from mountains, rivers, swamps, ravines, forests, all sorts of legends, old cities around: Suzdal, Vladimir, Yuryev Polsky, Murom, Gorodets, and there are picturesque folk crafts - Gorodets, Semenov, Khokhloma, Palekh, Mstera. The city is surrounded by folklore,” Mavrina recalled about her childhood feelings. From these years, notebooks made by children in the Lebedev family have been preserved. They contain poems and stories, drawings, watercolors. Playing with a handwritten journal awakened thought and creativity, giving rise to a feeling of the fullness of life, in which there was so much to comprehend and capture. From the fullness of childhood arose the feeling that “there is a lot of things around,” and this feeling will not leave T. A. Mavrina throughout her long life.
In 1921, she definitely chose fine art - she entered the “fantastic university VKHUTEMAS” and became recklessly interested in painting. Mavrina later recalled this time as the happiest years of her life. The French impressionists in the Shchukin and Morozov galleries became a real school of painting for her. And the end of the 20s dates back to her membership in Group “13”, participation in joint exhibitions and the search for her place in art.
But after the twenties came the thirties, and with them the dictates of the permitted path in art. During this tragic time for the whole country, Mavrina remained faithful to painting. In the spirit of the international pictorial tradition, the artists of Group 13 collectively hired a model.
Mavrina said that an artist equal in strength to Titian cannot be found among the Impressionists, but “all together the Impressionists will outdo them. They rediscovered the world of ideal harmony and everyday life.” Many of her works of this time are close to French post-impressionist movements. One of the paintings, painted in shining mother-of-pearl tones, is called “Imitation of Renoir” (1938).
Almost every day she painted or drew a nude female model, working in a variety of techniques. Imitations of Henri Matisse were replaced by life sketches in the women's bathhouse. Venuses in front of the mirror existed next to undressing women in underwear of that unforgettable blue color, which was characteristic of knitwear during the “building of communist society.” From this time, there remained many drawings and watercolors, several dozen canvases, which were kept literally under the bed for many years - the artist did not show them to anyone: after all, nudity was an unlawful, almost forbidden topic.
Only in the 70s, some of Mavrin’s “nyushki” (as she called them in a popular manner, playing on the French “nude”) began to appear at exhibitions, striking with their joyful life affirmation and raising the question: “Is it possible that an artist of the 20th century, having isolated himself from those around him, persistently praising the joy of being at a time when one of the cruelest tyrannies reigned?” Apparently, Mavrina allowed herself not to notice her, which was a desperate and decisive opposition to the general atmosphere of depression or hysteria.
The last painting on canvas with oil paints was painted in the summer of 1942 in the garden of the Red Army House and depicted dancing on the veranda of the club. Mavrina called what began after this picture her new life.
After the war, the artist rediscovered the world of folk art. She not only loved and collected icons, clay toys, trays and embroideries - with her husband, artist Nikolai Vasilyevich Kuzmin, she assembled a magnificent collection - Mavrina herself made copies of splints and spinning wheels, painted tueski, ancient-shaped trays and bottles, got used to the image of the folk masters This was a brilliant move, it gave her the opportunity to move away from the principle of socialist realism with its illustrative everyday life in the only direction allowed at that time - towards Russian folk art. Henri Matisse acquired his own style through his passion for folk art, and Tatyana Mavrina, starting from Matisse, turns herself into a folk artist, creating her own, “Mavrinsky” style - decorative, dashing, based on the principles of folk primitiveness.
For the artist’s creativity, natural impressions were necessary. In the 1950s and 1960s, she made numerous trips to Russian cities, making sketches and sketches.
She trained her memory and her eye so much that at home she could easily reproduce the many colors of nature from hasty sketches made from life.
Animaisa Vladimirovna Mironova, her frequent confidante on these trips, recalls how at the very beginning of the 60s, in early spring, during a flood, she and Mavrina ended up in a small God-forsaken hotel. Early in the morning A.V. Mironova woke up and was surprised to find that Mavrina was not in the room. It turned out that Tatyana Alekseevna managed to persuade the fisherman, and on a fragile little boat in the middle of the Volga flood, she enthusiastically painted the sunrise. The artist’s words that “earth and sky became the theme of landscapes and books” accurately express the essence of her work of these years.
Tatyana Alekseevna Mavrina in her autobiography divided her life, as she put it, but “three lives”: the first - “from birth to VKHUTEMAS”, the second - Moscow, studying painting with Robert Falk, passion for the impressionists, participation in exhibitions of the Group “13”, the third — began during the war. But there was also a fourth - the last decade of my life.
At the end of the 1980s, Tatyana Alekseevna almost never left her home. The world has closed itself within the walls of a small apartment, covered with Mavrina’s favorite gold and silver paper. Those who happened to visit her house were amazed at the incredible inner strength that emanated from the thin ninety-year-old woman. This will to live seemed to protect her from the infirmities of old age - she saw practically without glasses, was in a clear mind, and even if she forgot something, it was never possible to say for sure whether it was forgetfulness or cunning.
Despite illnesses and illnesses, Mavrina devoted herself to her passion - painting - and painted still lifes as if she contained in them the inescapable power of her frantic nature. Her two windows - from one you can see a birch tree, from the other - a tree and a garage - became her Universe, through them she observed the change of lighting, the alternation of seasons, the rotation of the stars.
The artist asked to bring her flowers and, having received a bouquet as a gift, no longer hid her desire to quickly see the guest out and get to work. This is how daffodils appeared against a background of pink birches, tulips on a snow-covered window, and a beautiful pink gladiolus in the blue summer. It would seem that what could be simpler than the image of an ordinary bouquet on the windowsill?
However, these works are so plastically convincing, they carry such a powerful energy charge that Mavrina’s later work can rightfully be placed on a par with the paintings of Raoul Dufy and Henri Matisse. And one of the last still lifes, “Roses at Night” (1995), - wine-red flowers on a windowsill against a blue sky with the shining constellation Orion - can be called a tragic requiem before the inevitable departure into oblivion.
“Did time stand still or go backwards”—these lines from Rilke, familiar to us in Pasternak’s translation, begin Mavrina’s autobiography. The epigraph was not chosen by chance, just as there was nothing accidental in the fate of Tatyana Alekseevna. “Standing time” is the feeling that amazes you when looking at Mavrin’s late still lifes. The life-affirming power and color plastic energy of these works evoke associations not only with the art of the beginning of the century, but also with the creativity of a young man full of strength. Almost always, after the death of an artist, the significance of his work is overestimated. Often it begins to fade, “shrinks” and fades, to eventually turn into a line in a special edition. Much less often, death transforms ordinary epithets into sublime ones, and the word “brilliant,” which they were embarrassed to say during life, becomes just right. This seems to be what happened to Tatyana Alekseevna Mavrina.
Y. Yu. Chudetskaya
From the album “A Moment Stopped by Color”
“I go to bed on the mountains. I put six tales
in our heads:
one is talking
the other one asks
the third is ringing,
the fourth makes noise, the fifth laughs,
the sixth is crying."
In a certain kingdom, in a certain state, in a fantastic, motley and bright world, fairy-tale heroes created by the imagination of the artist Tatyana Alekseevna Mavrina live and act. Tatyana Alekseevna Mavrina was born in Nizhny Novgorod. A special place in her work was occupied by illustrating books for children. Answering the question why she illustrates fairy tales again and again, Tatyana Anatolyevna said that she had a love for folk art, folklore and history since childhood. The artist’s father, a teacher and writer, loved books very much and instilled this love in his daughter. The future artist knew many fairy tales by heart and drew pictures to go with them.
The artist believed that fairy-tale characters live not only in the “far away country,” but also among us. All it takes is a little imagination, and they will appear on the streets of ancient Russian cities. Therefore, every page of books with illustrations by the artist is magical. Good fellows gallop through the pages of books on mighty horses, huts on chicken legs stand in the deep forest, beauties live in high towers.
The artist not only drew illustrations for fairy tales, but also found a folk proverb that reflects the main idea of the fairy tale, and wrote its proverb with a brush above the title. She designed the title page very colorfully. It usually takes up a whole row of spreads in the book. Looking at it, you can see several fairy-tale scenes at once. “The meaning of a fairy tale is always the same – miracles,” Tatyana Alekseevna liked to say.
And her miracle animals came from pagan primordial times, from a magical distance, where the wolf served man and flew with him into the clouds. Tatyana Mavrina, like no one else, felt the magical nature of the Beast, its mystery, its connection with the Universe.
