To Build and Live: Victor Popkov's works show Soviet life

Heroic builders of the Bratskaya HPP, tired sleeper-layers and cheerful Komsomol women, and at the same time - grief-stricken widows, mystical old women and angels. Soviet artist Viktor Popkov is usually associated with the so-called severe style. However, his work, of course, does not fit into the procrustean bed of generally accepted classifications. In the year of the 50th anniversary of Popkov's death, the Tretyakov Gallery opens a major retrospective in a new building on Kadashevskaya Embankment and shows the painter's legacy in all its diversity. "Izvestia" evaluated the exposition among the first.

From the Peredvizhniki to the USSR

The building on Kadashevskaya Embankment opened only about a month ago with a major retrospective of the Itinerant painters. Viktor Popkov's exhibition is the second project in this building, and it is located right under the first exposition, on the floor below. This neighborhood is symbolic in its own way and valuable for the curators. For all the aesthetic, ideological and genre distance between Popkov and the realist painters of the second half of the 19th century, they have something in common: emotionality and compassion. Their art is human, it is about people and for people.

A historical parallel can also be drawn. Just as the Peredvizhniki were caught between the academicians, who were disconnected from reality, and the Miriskusniki, who sang of an even more conventional decadent beauty, Popkov, on the one hand, opposes himself to standard socialist realism, and on the other hand, does not join the pure experiment of the non-conformists. In other words, Popkov, like Repin, Perov, Kramskoy and Ge, strives for the truth of life. And this is more important to him than all the external formal aspects.

Flowers with life: what is interesting about the retrospective of "Russian Van Gogh"

An exhibition of works by non-conformist Vladimir Yakovlev turns out to be a reflection on the nature of genius

The piece that made him famous - "Builders of Bratsk" - is placed at the exhibition in the back of the hall, but exactly opposite the entrance, so that it is almost the first thing a visitor sees. Five lined-up figures of workers (the view from below gives them monumentality) set a serious mood and help to understand at once what was the essence of the severe style. The heroes of such paintings are engaged in hard work on the virgin lands and allied construction sites, and this work is not idealized, as on cheerful May Day posters, but also is not filled with tragic pathos in the spirit of "Burlakov on the Volga". Life as it is.

However, even here Popkov finds unexpected turns. In the painting "A Boy is Born" we see workers on the railroad, who, having thrown shovels, rushed to look at the baby in the hands of one of the employees. One can see social criticism in the plot, because all the characters are female and they are clearly engaged in hard labor. But there is also another meaning, which is born from the contrast between the dark, dirty-colored clothes of the adult characters and the light-colored doll with the baby. The symbolism is clear: this is who gives the sleeper-layers hope and meaning; this is who they pave the way to the future for.

Love, family, faith

Popkov is generally amazing in these modulations - from seemingly straightforward, rigid, even ruthless realism to symbolism. In the program piece "Father's Overcoat", where the artist himself tries on his father-in-law's soldier's overcoat (it is hopelessly large for him), the foreground scene, drowning in darkness, is shaded by a metaphorical background: crimson female silhouettes borrowed by the painter from his own painting "Memories. Widows" (it is also presented in the exhibition).

The theme of the plight of women who lost their husbands in the war runs through a number of Popkov's works. And here the tragedy of the country is intertwined with personal grief. But even talking about seemingly purely private life, Popkov rises to generalization, sometimes acquiring metaphysical features. The painting "Two" depicts a girl and a man lying on the grass, but she seems to be floating above him (we recall Chagall's masterpiece "Above the City", where the heroes, however, fly together). Another canvas is placed nearby, which in such a neighborhood is perceived as a continuation of the story: now three people - he, she and the child - are settled on the ground. The woman has a book, next to the child an apple (from the tree of knowledge?). Religious connotations are reinforced by the angle: it is a view from heaven.

But if we consider all the family plots to be part of one story, it has a sad ending. The finale of the cycle is "Divorce. Svetlana, Mom, Dad and Grandma" - another top of Popkov, where, however, metaphysics gives way to a heightened psychologism. We almost physically feel the oppressive silence. All the screams, hysterics, tears are over. In the woman's eyes there is desperate doom, the girl who is clinging to her in prostration is looking somewhere with an unseeing gaze. Opposite is the hunched figure of a man with an impenetrable face. And in the depths of the frame - a humble grandmother in felt boots and with a kitty cat, apparently the mother of one of the spouses.

Popkov has many strengths, but he rises to the level of genius thanks to compositional solutions. What but an insight from above can explain the extraordinary idea to paint the view of a child at the entrance to the chapel not from the street, but, on the contrary, from inside the building? So that in the doorway we can see the figure of the boy and the mountainous countryside behind him, and above the doorway (and therefore directly above the lonely hero) - a fresco with three angels? The threshold turns out to be the boundary of two worlds, but it is here that they interlock and appear as if on the same plane. This example is not the only one.

A long way home

It is natural to call Viktor Popkov a Soviet artist - he lived his whole life in the USSR and was not even a dissident. However, it is impossible not to pay attention to how big a role in his art was occupied by the religious beginning. What, in general, non-Soviet (though by no means anti-Soviet) his intonation became, especially in recent years. Having vividly reflected his epoch, he took a step further. And his monumental multi-meter painting "A Good Man Was Grandmother Anisya" painted a year before his ridiculous death - a funeral scene with almost expressionistic tear, but at the same time and peaceful wisdom (paradox) - speaks, of course, not about a particular time, but about eternal.

At the exhibition, it was placed at the very end of the route, on the wall dividing the round rotunda in half. And on the reverse side of this wall and the far side of the rotunda are works from Pushkin's cycle - a lyrical postscript to the narrative that invites one to reflect on the parallels between the fates of the poet and the painter.

In total, the exhibition shows about 200 works by Popkov, including a large number of graphics from the artist's family collection, which are not known to the public at all. And although the curators complain that out of 60 museums, with which a dialog was established, in the end it was possible to take exhibits only from 13, there is no sense of dramatic losses and lacunas. Probably, the retrospective could have been even larger, even wider in terms of genre and thematic coverage, but the key things are shown, the main motifs of creativity are outlined. And most importantly, the versatility of Popkov's legacy has been revealed. Now it is obvious to everyone that it is not only and not so much severe style.

Interestingly, first in Venice, then in London: the project, work on which began back in 2014, was shown abroad (in a much more compact form) and for various reasons could not bring it home. And now everything has finally come together. However, the curators hope to continue Popkov's exhibition research in the future and see the current retrospective as the beginning of a conversation rather than a final summary.