A brilliant artist singing epic Russia is the property of the nation. His works are complete and harmonious. In his youth, experimenting with styles, Konstantin Vasiliev still finds his own - authentic, unique.
Childhood
The future artist Vasilyev Konstantin was born in a very difficult time for the country. On September 3, 1942, his native Maykop was occupied by the Nazis. The artist's father was an active participant in the partisan movement. Mother was left alone with the baby in her arms. During the war, she even got to the Germans, but, fortunately, the execution was avoided. The first years of the life of little Bone were hungry and cold. After his father returned from the war, the family moved to a small village near Kazan. Here the future artist spends his youth, and here for the first time he is seriously interested in drawing.
Kostya, living in difficult conditions, was often ill - he grabbed pneumonia after pneumonia. So, during another illness, his mother gave him a box with pencils. Little Konstantin Vasilyev treasured them very much and, keen on creating drawings, quickly recovered. He was very different from most boys of his age - he did not drive football and did not play hide and seek, but devoted all his time to drawing in solitude and tranquility.
Youth
The family was sympathetic to Kostya's passion for painting, and already at the age of eleven he entered the Moscow Art School. Teachers immediately note the talent of a gifted child and contribute in every way to its development. However, Konstantin was not destined to finish the Moscow school. In 1957, Vasilyev’s father became seriously ill, and he was transferred to the Kazan Art College. According to another version, the transition to the Kazan school was caused by the indignation of teachers by the work of Konstantin. During the Khrushchev thaw, Vasiliev became interested in modernism and surrealism. The school director asked the parents to pick up the guy so that he would not corrupt the younger generation with his interests and discipline.
During this period, the artist experiences unrequited love and more and more goes into himself, becomes a recluse, devotes a lot of time to classical music and painting.
Maturity
After graduating, Vasiliev Konstantin works as a teacher in a secondary school. He teaches drawing and sketching. In parallel, he works as a graphic designer. The artist's life was cut short early and tragically. In the fall of 1976, under mysterious circumstances, Konstantin Vasiliev fell under the train.
Creation
After turning to the avant-garde movements, the artist dwells on classical realism. Over time, Konstantin Vasiliev, whose paintings are filled with heroic epics and fairy tales, becomes a real poet of Slavic culture. But he turns not only to epic Russia, but also to the Scandinavian epic, mythological subjects, and Irish sagas. In addition, the artist Konstantin Vasiliev depicted the heroic themes of the life of peoples, and also often turned to the subjects of the Great Patriotic War.
Many art critics call Vasiliev the successor of Vasnetsov's work for original Russian motifs. But there are also skeptics who consider the artist’s genius bloated from scratch and skillfully promoted by lovers of the Russian national idea. Critics speak of excessive ideality, "licked" pictures.
But the artist also turns to painting, to portraits. A clear color scheme, balanced composition, neat strokes characterize the work of Vasiliev. Each fragment of the picture is an independent finished work. The artist’s works are simple, static, accessible to perception even by people not experienced in art. They differ in their internal balance and a certain solemnity.
Museum of the artist
The last years of his life, Vasiliev spends in the country, in the village of Lianozovo near Moscow. Here in 1998, the museum of Konstantin Vasiliev was opened. And 11 years later it was unexpectedly closed. This turn of events happened due to the fact that the former summer residence of the artist is in close proximity to the local park of culture and recreation and forest belt. Raiders who wanted to build houses here laid eyes on such a prestigious land. In order to remove from its path the museum, which interferes with the realization of ideas, a fire was even set up. The museum and some of Vasiliev’s works were damaged by the flame, and the paintings were transferred to Konstantin’s sister for storage.
However, thanks to the efforts and efforts of the public organization “Vasiliev’s Club of Art Lovers”, the museum, bearing the proud title of Slavic culture, was reopened to visitors in 2012.
At the moment, the museum named after Konstantin Vasiliev presents ethnographic expositions and exhibitions of contemporary artists singing the ancestral Russia.