VENUS OF KOMSOMOL
B.A. RASTSVETAEV (1904-1992)
He wrote fantasy novels about invisible steamers and lizards on unknown planets. His paintings were painted on cheap paper, wallpaper, colored pencils, watercolors and gouache. Boris Andreevich Rastsvetaev, a bright artist from a provincial town, who did not allow his talent to develop. The opening of the exhibition of his works "Venus of the Komsomol" will be held on May 25 in Gallery "Open Club".
The themes of Rastsvetaev's works are consonant with the ideas of futurism and revolutionary times. The exhibition in the "Open Club", in addition to traditional landscapes, presents fantastic plots with the participation of steam locomotives and bizarre structures. The conceptual basis of the exposition is paradoxical female images, portraits of mysterious beauties with impassive eyes. In these drawings, there is a longing for a kind of ideal, the search for a woman of dreams - the inaccessible Venus of the Komsomol ... Boris Andreevich was married four times and each time unsuccessfully. The communist cult of the body was not alien to Rastsvetaev: he ran, did physical education and wrote theoretical works on a healthy lifestyle.
Rastsvetaev is a man of the future. Reflections on the galactic origin of man and his cosmic destiny constantly appear in the artist's notes. A pacifist, in his diaries he writes: "I was not attracted by the word" war "<...> I was afraid of an open penknife, I never took it with me to school, so as not to injure anyone unintentionally."
Marat Verkholantsev, who collected the master's legacy, subsequently passed the collection over to the family of Anastasia Geydor, who now provides it to the Open Club for the exhibition, asks the question: “Was Rastsvetaev a happy or unhappy person? I must say that, rather, he was a happy person: he did what he liked - he painted, played music, admired nature, and ran. He found the strength to give up work, which took him a lot of time and did not allow him to do what he loved. "
Boris Andreevich Rastsvetaev was born in 1904 in the Tver region and spent most of his life in Vesyegonsk. Thanks to Gogol's immortal pen, the small town “adorned” by the honorable city fathers with a huge prison building became, thanks to Gogol's immortal pen, a symbol of the absurdity of provincial life.
The life story of Rastsvetaev fits organically into the Gogol mythology of the provincial town. The extraordinary talent of Boris Andreevich was not understood by the Vsegons - they considered him an eccentric. His passion for literature, playing music, drawing and athletics turned out to be beyond the comprehension of his fellow countrymen. Having tried his hand at a variety of professions, since 1936 Rastsvetaev has been engaged in decoration. Financial inspectors call him in their sheets "a lone handicraftsman without a motor." He was paid little, but he put all his soul and all his strength into the business; he did not work for a prize, but for art. The simple-minded and lovingly executed works of the self-taught artist replenish a worthy series of masterpieces by "primitivist artists" such as the customs officer Russo, Pirosmani, the peasant Chestnyakov ...
Text and photo: Maria Pudalova
