I want to start the article about the artist with the fact that he was born in the Urals. But this place and the people living there are not so severe as serious, hardworking and beautiful. This is what is revealed to us in the paintings of Alexei Vasilievich. Aleksey Khramovās paintings seem to leisurely lead a tale about the Ural mountains, which appear in the artistās works either with a blue background, rocks or huge boulders creeping out into the foreground. And the Urals is famous for its dark green coniferous forests with flowering glades, its streams and rivers, meandering and gleaming between the banks, overgrown with grass and flowers, which sparkle with gems in the emerald grass ...
Artist Biography
In 1909, in the city of Belebey, near Ufa, in the family of the merchant Vasily Khramov and the daughter of the famous Ufa merchant Mikhail Andreevich Stepanov-Zorin, Praskovya Stepanova, a son was born, they called him Alexei. But the time was severe: the artistās father, Vasily Khramov, was shot, his mother, Praskovya Mikhailovna, was left alone with four children in her arms. This woman raised and raised them all.
In 1930, Alexei Khramov graduated from the art department of the College of Arts in Ufa. Draws a lot of oil on canvas. But in those days, only children of workers and peasants accepted to study at universities. More than one fate was corrupted by this decision of the government. So the artist Aleksey Vasilievich Khramov, who has merchant origin by parents, could not enter and study at the Academy of Arts as he wanted. Moreover, he was forbidden to sell paintings. Alexei Khramov earned pennies, and the family living in Ufa (the artist, his wife and two sons) had to live on more than a modest salary, which his wife, who worked as a teacher, brought to the house. But Alexei Vasilievich did not give up painting, he was actively engaged in public work.
He took a lively part in organizing the youth section of the Ufa Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia in 1928, participated in creating a partnership of Bashkir artists in 1932, created the Bashkir branch of the Union of Artists of Russia, opened in 1937, and was also a member of the board of this Union with 1937 and after the war.
War in the life of an artist
The war in the life of Alexei Khramov arose unexpectedly, turning all plans upside down. He went through it all. From 1941 to 1945. He participated in battles on the front lines and in the defense of Leningrad, in the battles near Stalingrad, crossed the Dnieper, fell into the enemy circle, stormed Koenigsberg. Alexey Vasilievich returned home only after defeating militaristic Japan. And the artist began to paint again. He came to the front no longer as a boy, so he managed to survive, but the war brought to his canvases a sense of fragility and insecurity of harmony and peace, without violating the brightness and color richness of the palette.
In the encyclopedias in the photo, Aleksey Khramov appears as a minted stern soldier of the Great Patriotic War, whose military merits are awarded the Order of the Red Star and military medals.
Post-war activities
Most of the paintings performed by the artist after the war relate to landscapes, but there are also successful portraits, still lifes and genre paintings. In 1974, Alexei Vasilievich received the title of Honored Artist of the BASSR. His works are exhibited at art exhibitions in the USSR and abroad.
But the soldiers who have gone through the entire war and who have been injured, shell-shocked and undermined their health do not live long. In Ufa on November 14, 1978, the artist died.
Artistic features of the works of Alexei Khramov
All the artist's works are flooded with the sun, regardless of the time of year or day. Even in the rain he has a roll call of bright green and red colors, shades of yellow shine. Even his sunset is warm, light and soft red. A large number of works by the artist Aleksey Khramov were performed as if by tapes, and the perspective is conveyed by their overlay. The brightness of the colors is muffled by the blurriness of the contour. On one of the paintings, the artistās favorite river Dema is orange, as it reflects the autumn dress of coastal herbs, bushes, trees.
There is another feature of the work: a large number of roads, not highways, not primed, but broken by wheels, ruffled by rains, uneven and long-long. This is a tribute to the war, the endless crazy roads driving infantrymen down the front roads, which the artist has seen a lot during the five war years. Only this memory of the fronts of World War II was let into his canvases by Alexei Vasilievich, all the other horrors and hardships of the battles remained in his heart.
Portrait of Salavat Yulaev
The work āSalavat Yulaev on a horseā (1959) is distinguished by a non-standard look at the leader of the rebelled Bashkirs, who sided with the Pugachevās Yaik Cossacks, although they were supposed to pacify the rebellion. In the portrait is not a giant athlete, not a majestic khan on a luxurious horse. An ordinary short horseman, a simple horse. But what is the pose of the rider! Confidence in the whole figure, in the leg, dressed in a stirrup, shod in a boot. And the look of Salavat is also good. This is a look into oneself, into the future. This is the view of an intelligent and kind person, which was Salavat Yulaev.
And Salavat was an improviser poet, his songs about battles with enemies, about the nature of the Urals and about love were passed from mouth to mouth for a long time, sang by sesens. Alexey Khramov knew this, knew about the ardent love of ordinary people for his hero, and was not afraid to take on the portrait. And he did it.
Artist's son
One of the artistās sons, Pyotr Alekseevich Khramov (1939 - 1995), was quite famous as a monumental artist. Its reliefs, murals and numerous mosaics can be seen in public buildings of Ufa and the cities of the republic: Salavat, Blagoveshchensk and others.
In addition, Peter Alekseevich is known as the author of the repeatedly reprinted novel "Monk".
Artist's legacy
The main judges of the artist's work are the audience. For a long time, the artist Alexei Vasilyevich Khramov was no longer in the world, and his work continues to excite, interest and delight. They have incorruptible sincerity, honesty and boundless love for the native nature of the Urals and its people. Artists find that in the works of Khramov there is both philosophy and theology, they combine spiritual and social. That is why exhibitions of his paintings are regularly held in the cities of his native Urals. The personal exhibition of Alexei Khramov in Moscow was held in 2003 and was a success.
The man had no students. None of the modern masters considers himself a follower of Alexei Khramov, an artist. Many contemporary artists prefer to deliberately complicate and decorate their canvases, work with photographs, each create in their original manner, which has no points of contact with the soulful and somewhere laconic paintings of the master, which are not distinguished by any expression or unusual color scheme. But the attentive viewer's gaze opens up the wonderful world of the artist Khramov, fragile, sensitive, correct and harmonious.