Older people remember greeting cards with fun cartoon themes. The author of these good fairy-tale pictures was the artist Zarubin Vladimir Ivanovich, the Soviet animator, with the participation of which about a hundred drawn cartoons were released. Postcards - Vladimir Ivanovich's hobby, which at one time became his main work. The postcards of the artist Zarubin brought joyful expectation of a miracle not only into the lives of children, but also adults. On each eve of the holidays, each house in a huge country was waiting for vivid images with cartoon animals, which the children redrawed, cut out, and collected postcards. Today, Zarubin's postal miniature is published in printed catalogs and collections, and his series of old postcards is of particular value to collectors.
short biography
Vladimir Zarubin became an artist quite late because the war prevented him from getting the proper education and professional skills. Vladimir was born in the Oryol region, the village of Andriyanovka, in 1925. His father, a road engineer, had a good library and often brought home books on painting. For Volodya, this was the first introduction to art.
The family moved to the Donbass, to the city of Lysychansk, where the Zarubins found the Great Patriotic War. Two Volodin older brothers went to the front, and he, the youngest in the family, was barely sixteen. When the Nazis occupied the Donetsk region, Volodya, like many other teenagers, was driven to Germany for forced labor. There, in the camp, the young man remained until 1945, the moment of the liberation by the American allies. Having reached our occupation zone on the territory of eastern Germany, Vladimir joined the army as a shooter. Then he became interested in drawing seriously.
Demobilized in 1949, Zarubin returned home, and after some time went to his older brother, who lived in Moscow. In the capital, Vladimir got a job as an artist at a factory. There he met his future wife, draftswoman Nadezhda Ulyankina.
Multiplier work
Perhaps the biography of the artist Zarubin would have remained inconspicuous, but in 1956 there was a sharp turn in his fate. Having learned about the recruitment at the Soyuzmultfilm studio for art courses, Vladimir entered there and after training began working as an animator. He participated in the creation of 97 famous cartoons such as “Mowgli”, “Wait a minute!”, “Once upon a time there was a dog”, “The Secret of the Third Planet”, “Vasilisa Mikulishna”, “The Adventures of Vasya Kurolesov”, “Argonauts” and many others beloved by the Soviet children.
The leadership has repeatedly noted the work of Vladimir Ivanovich and often called him the best animator in the country. In the late 1970s, the artist Zarubin became a member of the Union of Cinematographers. In 1982, Vladimir Ivanovich suffered a first heart attack, after which he worked mainly at home.
Postal Thumbnail
Even while working at a film studio, the artist carried out orders to illustrate children's books and postal products, such as envelopes, calendars and postal cards. But work on postcards especially captivated the artist Zarubin. Each of his pictures is like a frame from a cartoon, and at the same time it is a finished plot with its own story and characters. The artist’s favorite theme was the New Year, the most fabulous and magical holiday. Other motives for his postcards are congratulations on March 8 and his birthday, and after the perestroika, Christmas and Easter themes appeared.
In 1962, Izogiz Publishing House issued the first postcard of the artist, a year after the flight of Yuri Gagarin into space. It was a New Year's greetings with a picture of a rocket and an astronaut, a popular theme of the time. Zarubin continued to reflect the space theme in postal miniature, each time the images were dedicated to significant events in Soviet cosmonautics. In total, Zarubin created about 250 samples of postcards and over 70 envelopes, the total circulation of which exceeded one and a half million copies.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, Vladimir Ivanovich constantly collaborated with a small publishing house. In June 1996, after a conflict over the payment of Zarubin’s work by management, the artist died of a repeated heart attack.
Greeting Cards Today
Interest in the pictures of Vladimir Ivanovich did not disappear. Now sets of his postcards are being published, a printed catalog has been published, and on the Internet, postal products designed by the artist are widely represented for collectors-philokartists. Photos of artist Zarubin’s postcards are popular in electronic form; they captivate thousands of people. Users on the Web send images to their friends along with congratulations, as once their parents sent out postcards. And over the years, the pictures of this wonderful artist invariably evoke the kindest feelings and smiles.