July 9 – day of memory of Ilya Glazunov. The famous artist did not three years ago. This year he would have turned ninety years old. The founder and rector of the Russian Academy of painting, sculpture and architecture, which bears his name, academician of the Russian Academy of arts, people’s artist of USSR, full cavalier of the order “For merits before Fatherland” Glazunov in his monumental canvases every time they presented their view of the world and Russia, whose tragic past and complex present gave him no peace. Not by chance in search of the secrets of the artist, it was compared to Dostoevsky.
Interestingly, seventeen years after visiting Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Glazunov decided to become a monk. Dissuaded the elder Tikhon blessed the young man in the artistic field, “to fight evil in the world.” This Covenant Glazunov moved into their paintings, many of which can be called a mystery. Perhaps the most famous of them – “Eternal Russia” – a large canvas showing the entire history of the country through its famous representatives. The tragedy of Russia is embodied in another of his landmark work “Cannibalization”. “After all, we are prodigal children before the great sold, raspletanie destroyed great Russia, whose sons we are,” – says the artist.
For the “mystery of the twentieth century”, written in 1977, the then Minister of internal Affairs of the USSR Nikolay Shchelokov threatened to send Glazunov in the camp. “Anti-Soviet thinking divorce? Will not pass! By what right do mock comrade Lenin? Why the Christ you have above all?” – shouted at him official. In the end, the artist was sent to the Siberian taiga on the construction of BAM, as if in a creative business, in fact in a “link”. As to the “Mystery”, for the first time in Russia in the perestroika it was published in “Moskovsky Komsomolets”.
world famous Glazunov gained after he created portraits of prominent contemporaries. He posed the great Italian Directors: Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, stars in world cinema: Gina Lollobrigida, Claudia Cardinale, Juliet Mazina, Innokenty Smoktunovsky, Tatiana Samoilova; the king of Sweden, Laos, Spain, Portugal, the Cabinet of General de Gaulle, the President of Italy, Sandro Pertini, President of Chile, Salvador Allende, Prime Minister of Denmark Jens Otto Krag, German Chancellor Willy Brandt, UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, Indira Gandhi. This is not a complete list.
Glazunov loved to repeat the words of the artist: “to Wake up of contemporary the stately images of the spirit.” From myself I added: “Great art lives forever, because it reflects the harmony of God’s world”.
