Look at the works of Nadi Rushova. Young genius Nadya Rusheva

Nadezhda Rusheva was born in the city of Ulaanbaatar in the family of the Soviet artist Nikolai Konstantinovich Rushev. Her mother is the first Tuvan ballerina Natalya Doydalovna Azhikmaa-Rusheva. In the summer of 1952, the family moved to Moscow.

Nadya began drawing at the age of five, and no one taught her how to draw, and she was not taught to read and write before school. At the age of seven, as a first-grader, she began to draw regularly, every day for no more than half an hour after school. Then, in one evening, she drew 36 illustrations for “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” by Pushkin, while her father was reading this favorite fairy tale out loud.

Exhibitions

In May 1964, the first exhibition of her drawings was organized by the magazine “Youth” (Nadya was in fifth grade). After this exhibition, the first publications of her drawings appeared in issue 6 of the magazine that same year, when she was only 12 years old. Over the next five years of her life, fifteen personal exhibitions took place in Moscow, Warsaw, Leningrad, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and India. In 1965, in issue No. 3 of the Yunost magazine, thirteen-year-old Nadya’s first illustrations for a work of art were published - for the story “Newton’s Apple” by Eduard Pashnev. Ahead were illustrations for the novels “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy and “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov and the glory of the future book graphic artist, although the young artist herself dreamed of becoming a cartoonist. In 1967, she was in Artek, where she met Oleg Safaraliev.

Movie

In 1969, Lenfilm produced the film “You, Like First Love...”, dedicated to Nadya Rusheva. The film is not finished.

Death

She died on March 6, 1969 in the hospital due to the rupture of a congenital aneurysm of a cerebral vessel and subsequent hemorrhage in the brain.

Memory of Nadya Rusheva

• She was buried at the Pokrovskoye cemetery in the first plot. A monument was erected at her grave, where her drawing “Centaur” was reproduced.
• Also, Nadya’s drawing “Centaur” became the logo of the Autonomous non-profit organization “International Center for Non-Fiction Cinema and Television “Centaur”, which is involved in the preparation and holding of the film festival “Message to Man”. The annual prizes of the festival “Golden Centaur” and “Silver Centaur” are based on the drawing. In 2003, a monument to the Centaur was unveiled on the stairs of the St. Petersburg House of Cinema.
• Education Center No. 1466 (former Moscow school No. 470), where she studied, is named after her. The school has a museum of her life and work.
• In the Caucasus there is the Nadia Rusheva pass.

Creation

Among her works are illustrations for the myths of Ancient Hellas, the works of Pushkin, L.N. Tolstoy, Mikhail Bulgakov. In total, the works of about 50 authors were illustrated.

Among Nadya’s sketches there are several that depict the ballet “Anna Karenina”. Such a ballet was actually staged after the death of the artist and Maya Plisetskaya danced the main role in it.

Her drawings were born without sketches, she always drew straight away, and she never used an eraser. “I see them in advance... They appear on paper like watermarks, and all I have to do is outline them with something,” said Nadya.

Nadya left behind a huge artistic legacy - about 12,000 drawings. Their exact number is impossible to calculate - a significant proportion were distributed in letters, the artist gave hundreds of sheets to friends and acquaintances, a considerable number of works for various reasons did not return from the first exhibitions. Many of her drawings are kept in the Leo Tolstoy Museum in Moscow, in the branch museum named after Nadya Rusheva in the city of Kyzyl, in the Pushkin House of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, the National Cultural Foundation, and the City Art Gallery of Sarov, Nizhny Novgorod Region. and the Pushkin Museum named after. Pushkin in Moscow.

More than 160 exhibitions of her works took place in different countries: Japan, Germany, USA, India, Mongolia, Poland and many others.

Cycles and work

• Self-portraits
• Ballet
• War and Peace
• Western classics
• A little prince
• Master and Margarita
• Animal world
• Pushkinian
• Russian tales
• Modernity
• Tuva and Mongolia
• Hellas

This girl lived a short but colorful life, and left behind more than 12 thousand works done in ink and ink. A brilliant young artist with a unique gift, she always lived the lives of those she painted. Having never made sketches, she immersed herself in her own world, where she felt absolutely free. Nowadays they rarely talk about the famous girl in the USSR, and I would like to remember the most interesting moments of her life and dwell in detail on her interesting work.

Biography of a young genius

On January 31, 1952, a girl with sad eyes was born in Ulaanbaatar. She was given the name Naidan (Nadezhda), which translates as “Immortal,” and, as it turned out, the parents seemed to have foreseen the fate of their baby. Her father was a famous theater artist, and her mother was a talented ballerina. Six months later, the family changed their place of residence and moved from the capital of Mongolia to Moscow.

Already at the age of four, Nadya Rusheva showed her remarkable talents as a painter. It was her father who played a huge role in her fate. Having noticed a unique gift, he tried to do everything to ensure that his daughter developed it. A professional painter read fairy tales to the girl, and she drew her favorite characters on paper and did this on her own initiative, since no one taught her this art. After she picked up a pencil and paper, the girl never parted with them again. In her works there is a whole world created with a fountain pen. “I see them, they appear on paper like watermarks, and all I can do is trace them,” Nadya said about her drawings.

The young artist had a real flair: she amazingly conveyed the character of the characters, accurately depicted the costumes of past eras and was never mistaken, although she did it intuitively. The girl’s impressions of the magical stories she heard and observations of those around her were preserved on paper.

Young Nadya Rusheva made more than 30 beautiful drawings for one of her favorite fairy tales. "The Little Prince" by Exupery charmed the girl, and she was ready to listen to the philosophical story again and again.

Favorite author

However, the little genius’s favorite author was Pushkin, and when her father read to her “The Tale of Tsar Saltan,” the girl immediately began to draw. She created many amazing works and never used an eraser. It seemed that her hand was tracing lines invisible to someone else’s eyes, already drawn on the paper. Each laconic image accurately revealed the character of the heroes, and such illustrations for the fairy tale were created once and for all. Young Nadya Rusheva never changed anything in her works. Her masterpieces are pure improvisation inspired by reality.

Pushkinian by Nadya Rusheva

Pushkin became the whole world for the young genius; it was he who awakened in her the sleeping instinct to create. While working on the image of the poet, she tried to feel the atmosphere of a past era. She felt it, imagined the people around her, their surroundings, and all the drawings from this series were specially made with sharply tucked goose feathers.

Researchers who compared the drawings of Rusheva and Pushkin concluded that their writing style is very similar. Nadya draws with the same ease and grace, but her work shows an individual style. She remains herself and improvises easily.

Nadya Rusheva, whose biography and work never ceases to excite her most devoted fans, sought to understand the inner world of the great poet and constantly delved into the topic. She depicted Pushkin the lyceum student, his fellow students who rebelled against the informer Piletsky, paid attention to love lines, created portraits of her beloved women, and painted the poet with his family.

Of particular interest are the works telling about the last hours of Alexander Sergeevich’s life, and the work of the little genius cannot be squeezed into the framework of ordinary talent. Her drawings indicate a special talent that the girl possessed: she clearly saw what was not given to others, and was transported to past eras, becoming a participant in distant events. And such an accurate depiction of the 19th century was not explained only by a rich child’s imagination.

Before starting work, Nadya wandered around significant places, turned to the work of genius and absorbed the atmosphere of the 19th century. By the way, many of her works are in the State Pushkin Museum, and live drawings can be seen in the public domain.

Series dedicated to Ancient Greece

Even in the earliest drawings, the hand of a true artist is visible with his unmistakable sense of selecting beauty and elegant language. Nadya captured the most dramatic moments and depicted them on paper.

A novel that had a great influence on the girl

Another series of amazing drawings made by a brilliant girl is dedicated to the events that took place in Bulgakov’s novel. Following her father’s advice, the schoolgirl read the half-disgraced book in one sitting and became eager to depict the characters of the complex work on paper. “Approaching a blank slate, I already know exactly what my heroes will be,” admitted Nadya Rusheva.

“The Master and Margarita” is a literary masterpiece that inspired her creativity, and before starting work, she walked through the places described in the novel.

Strange coincidences

This fact is curious: after the death of the girl, Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova, dreaming of a complete publication of the book, became concerned with the problem of high-quality illustrations. She went to visit the Rushevs, and Nadya’s father showed his daughter’s impeccable drawings. The elderly lady was speechless when she discovered the incredible resemblance of the depicted Margarita to herself, although the artist did not know the writer’s wife.

And on the Master’s hand there was a ring - a copy of the family jewelry that Bulgakov himself wore. It is unknown what forces prompted the young genius to draw exactly this. According to researchers of Rusheva’s work, she was a real seer, capable of looking into the past and future.

Fame in the USSR and abroad

Already at the age of 12, there was an exhibition of works by a young artist who subtly perceives what is happening. It was a real triumph! The entire Soviet Union learned about the girl.

Her works were exhibited abroad, and the foreign press wrote enthusiastically about the young artist. Many did not like such laudatory reviews, and some openly expressed the opinion that the girl’s talent was not as great as it was presented, and an ordinary schoolgirl should not be extolled so much. However, fame did not spoil the girl, because she was always a person devoid of arrogance, looking for hidden meaning everywhere. Disciplined Nadya Rusheva was distinguished by a strong character, inherited from her ballerina mother, and at the same time she was a very gentle person who understood the shades of good and evil.

Diversity of talent

Researchers admired her unique talent and noted that there is no such example in the history of art. Such early creative explosions have been observed among musicians and poets, but this is the first case among artists, because all childhood and adolescence should be spent mastering the skill. And the brilliant girl created from an early age.

The diversity of her talent is simply amazing! She was interested in everything and unerringly selected the most important from the boundless cultural wealth. All lines are completed in a single stroke of the pen. She worked with ink, which does not tolerate correction, and occasionally painted works with watercolors. The artist Nadya Rusheva always correctly chose the only bend, smoothness, and thickness that were necessary in a particular version. And such confidence in the hand is incomprehensible. It seems that little is drawn, but so much is said, and in each drawing, which can be called a painting, a special atmosphere reigns.

Her talent cannot be measured by ordinary categories, and such an early maturation of her mind speaks only of her genius. Nadya's talent is limitless, and the author fearlessly addresses a wide variety of topics and life phenomena. She devolves books, and each one gives birth to a thirst to embody on paper the images born in her imagination. Rusheva created illustrations for the works of Chukovsky, Kassil, Gaidar, Shakespeare, Bazhov, Rodari, Blok, Nosov, Verne, Hugo and many other writers and poets.

Laconicism that touches the soul

It is surprising that there are few means by which excellent results are achieved. For example, the work "Invictus" evokes awe and compassion. Nadya does not draw the barracks and wire of the Auschwitz concentration camp; the paper depicts a face - emaciated, suffering, on which only the coals of the eyes live. There are no details here that would tell about the atrocities of the Nazis, but in this work the viewer understands everything even without them. It is amazing how the girl was able to express the deep images of our century and past eras at such a young age.

Loneliness of a genius

The dearest people to the talented girl were her parents. Due to her unique gift, she did not have close friends, and only shared everything that worried her with her mother and father. She spent a lot of time at various exhibitions and museums, and read serious literary masterpieces with great interest. For example, Nadya Rusheva dedicated more than 400 illustrations to Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.”

A schoolgirl, wise beyond her years with innate culture, once said: “You can’t live for yourself. You have to burn. It’s very difficult, but it’s necessary.” She spent her spiritual wealth, giving herself to people without reserve. And this is the main sign of true talent.

Documentary

A documentary film called “You as First Love” was dedicated to the young artist. At the beginning of 1969, the girl spent a lot of time at the Lenfilm film studio, walked around the beautiful city, got acquainted with its rich history and architectural monuments. She recalled that it was the most wonderful time in her life.

Forever 17 years old

On the eve of the tragedy, Nadya returned to Moscow. Early on the morning of March 6, the artist, full of new ideas, was getting ready for school, but suddenly lost consciousness. The family did not have a telephone, and the father rushed to the hospital. Without regaining consciousness, the girl died at the age of 17, and her death caused shock among all people, and many refused to believe in her death. Nadya Rusheva, whose cause of death is indicated in the medical report, suffered from a cerebral aneurysm, and at that time such a disease could not be treated. No one knew that the girl had a disease with which people live for no more than nine years, and fate gave her seventeen.

Memory

She was going to enter VGIK to study as a cartoonist, but fate had its own way. Nadya, who gained immortality after life, is buried in the Pokrovsky cemetery, and her drawing of a cute centaur is depicted on the granite monument.

The name of the artist who baffled venerable art critics was not forgotten. A new planet, discovered in 1982, was named in her honor; in Moscow there is a school named after Nadya Rusheva No. 1466, where she studied. It houses a wonderful museum where you can see the original works of the girl, her things, and hear stories about the life and work of the sorceress, who created more than 12 thousand works.

The talented girl is remembered in Tyva, because her mother was one of the first ballerinas of the republic, and in 1993 the Nadya Rusheva Museum was opened in the city of Kyzyl. Here you can get acquainted with the drawings given by the girl’s parents and once again admire her immortal talent.

Moscow competition

Today, the artist’s work, unfortunately, is almost forgotten. There is still no single center, but the Moscow authorities tried to attract the attention of young talents and organized a city drawing competition for Nadya Rusheva in 2003. Over the entire period of its existence, more than 30 thousand schoolchildren took part in it, and a rich fund of children's works of artistic value has been accumulated. The competition is held as a real celebration of art, which provides a unique opportunity to exchange experiences.

The mystery of a genius

I would like to end our material with the words of Academician Likhachev, who wrote that this is exactly the kind of art that the people need. The brilliant girl penetrated into the realm of the human spirit and sought to show as much as possible. No one knows where Nadya got her amazing knowledge of eras and people at such a young age. And this question will forever remain unanswered...

There are many people whose talent is discovered in early childhood. However, not all of them become famous and gain worldwide fame. Many remain unknown geniuses who are forced to barely eke out their miserable existence. But there are also individuals who, on the contrary, die early at the peak of their popularity. Nadya Rusheva belongs to them exactly. This is a little 17-year-old artist with a tragic and at the same time happy fate, which we will talk about in our article.

Birth, adolescence and youth of a little artist

One can only speak positively about the forever young 17-year-old girl, who was destined for such a short but very bright fate. She is a little sunshine, who during her lifetime caused only delight. Nadezhda was born on January 31, 1952 in the family of the talented master of fine arts Nikolai Konstantinovich Rushev and the first Tuvan ballerina Natalia Doydalovna Azhikmaa-Rusheva. However, Nadyusha did not grow up as an ordinary child.

An inexplicable urge to draw

The girl developed a penchant for drawing in early childhood. At the age of five, the baby’s father began to notice one interesting feature: as soon as he began to read fairy tales aloud, his daughter immediately jumped up, ran away somewhere and returned with a pencil and paper. Then she sat down next to him, listened carefully to her father’s voice and carefully drew something on paper. That’s how little by little Nadya Rusheva began to draw.

School and drawing

Parents loved Nadyusha very much, so before school they tried not to “fill their child’s head” with the exact sciences and humanities. They did not specifically teach her to write or read. When the baby was seven years old, she was sent to school. This is how Nadezhda first began to master the sciences, learn to write, read and count. Despite her fatigue and workload within the school curriculum, the girl still found time and spent half an hour a day after school on drawing.

The artist’s interest in Russian fairy tales, myths and legends of Ancient Greece, and biblical parables has not dried up over the years. At this age, Nadya Rusheva continued to combine her favorite pastime, drawing, with listening to evening fairy tales performed by her dad.

The first record for the number of pictures

One day, Nadya, as usual, sat and listened to her dad, who read for her “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” by A.S. Pushkin and traditionally made sketches. When Nikolai Konstantinovich’s curiosity took over and he decided to see what the girl was drawing there, his surprise knew no bounds. As it turned out, while reading the fairy tale, Nadyusha created as many as 36 pictures that corresponded to the theme of the work. These were wonderful illustrations, the simplicity of the lines of which amazed the imagination.

What are the features of Nadya Rusheva’s drawings?

The main feature of Rusheva’s painting was that during her young career the girl never made sketches or used a pencil eraser. The artist preferred to create her masterpieces the first time. And if something didn’t work out for her or she wasn’t satisfied with the result, she simply compressed it, threw out the picture and started over.

According to the youngest talent, she heard or read some story, took a sheet of paper and already mentally saw what image to draw on it.

Nadya Rusheva (biography): recognition among adults

First exhibition and first life experience

The efforts of the Soviet artist Nikolai Konstantinovich Rushev were not in vain. When Nadezhda was 12 years old, with his help her very first personal exhibition was organized. How much joy and positive emotions she brought to a fifth-grader who dreamed of becoming a famous cartoonist!

And although many critics were wary and somewhat distrustful of the schoolgirl, who did not have a diploma from a specialized art school and extensive life experience, this did not repel, but, on the contrary, became a certain incentive for the artist. Nadya Rusheva (her photo can be seen above) did not abandon her hobby, but continued to develop and improve her abilities.

However, along with the unexpected popularity, practically no changes occurred in the girl’s life. She still continued to go to school and study, hang out with her friends, read and draw a lot.

Creation of a new series of illustrations

At the age of 13, Nadya Rusheva created a new series of pictures that are illustrations for the work “Eugene Onegin”. To the surprise of all relatives, friends and acquaintances, the teenage girl managed to combine two incredible things: not only to depict people corresponding to a certain historical era, but also to even convey their mood.

Drawings are a ray of Hope

Nadezhda Rusheva's paintings are ordinary pencil or watercolor sketches, which are a set of contours and lines. As a rule, they were almost completely absent of shading and tinting.

According to the famous sculptor Vasily Vatagin, Nadya Rusheva painted paintings with simple lines. However, they were made in such an easy technique that many experienced, adult painters could envy such skill.

If we talk about the artist’s characters, they are so carefully selected and drawn that, looking at them, you are simply amazed. Her mythical characters are not evil at all. On the contrary, they are kind and are designed to evoke only positive emotions.

According to the girl’s dad himself, she was good at capturing the mood of the authors who wrote this or that work, and also transferring it to paper. Centaurs, mermaids, gods and goddesses, characters from the Bible and fairy tales seemed to come to life under the pencil of a talented artist. It’s a pity that Nadya Rusheva passed away early. Death overtook her at such a young age. We'll tell you more about how this happened below.

Exhibitions and new achievements of the girl

Over the next five years, many publishing houses, as well as representatives of the arts sector, became interested in Nadezhda’s works. During this period, 15 new exhibitions of the young artist’s works were held. They were successfully held in Poland, Romania, India, Czechoslovakia and other countries of the world. Among Nadyusha’s paintings were illustrations of ancient Greek myths and legends, fairy tales and works of Soviet poets and prose writers.

Bulgakov's work in the creative life of Nadezhda

A special touch on Nadezhda’s life path was a series of illustrations she made while reading such a landmark as “The Master and Margarita.” At that time, the girl had just turned 15 years old.

For those who do not have the information, the main characters of this novel are vivid prototypes of the author himself and his beautiful wife. Without even realizing it, Nadya Rusheva intuitively sensed this similarity and did everything possible to transfer her thoughts to paper.

An extraordinary passion for ballet

Few people know that, in addition to literary works, the artist was also interested in ballet. Little Hope often attended her mother’s rehearsals and admired her grace during her performance. Once, Nadezhda even managed to draw an illustration for the ballet “Anna Karenina,” long before the music for this work was written.

Bulgakov's choice

When the author of today's sensational novel saw Nadya's illustrations, he was amazed by them. So he immediately decided to use them as effective illustrations for the book. So the young artist became the first fifteen-year-old author who was officially allowed to illustrate a novel. Later she illustrated the novel “War and Peace” by L. Tolstoy.

Unexpected death

No one could even imagine that Nadya Rusheva would leave this world so quickly and unexpectedly. The cause of her death, according to official data, was the rupture of one of the vessels followed by hemorrhage in the brain.

“Everything happened suddenly,” the girl’s father shared his impressions. - Early in the morning, Nadezhda, as usual, was getting ready for school, when suddenly she felt bad and lost consciousness. The doctors fought for her life for more than five hours, but they still failed to save her.”

And although the girl’s parents did not want to lose hope, the news of their daughter’s death completely unsettled them. For a long time, father and mother could not believe that their sunshine was no longer around. This is how Nadya Rusheva passed away. The cause of death was congenital aneurysm.

A lot of time has passed since the death of the talented artist, but even today her memory is alive in the hearts of connoisseurs of her work and other artists.

This amazing girl was born on January 31, 1952. The indicated date immediately catches your eye. Also on January 31, the famous fortuneteller Vanga was born. Only she was born 41 years earlier than Nadya Rusheva. That was the name of the girl, about whom the whole world was talking a few years after her birth.

The baby was born into a creative family. Father - Nikolai Konstantinovich Rushev (1918-1975) was a theater artist. Mother - Natalya Azhikmaa-Rusheva (born 1926) was a ballerina. The family lived in Ulaanbaatar. In the capital of Mongolia, the girl’s parents were engaged in teaching. The family left the distant eastern lands in the summer of 1952 and moved to Moscow for permanent residence.

The girl was given a name for a reason. In Mongolian, Nadezhda is Naidan, which means “ever-living”. Having named the child in this way, the parents turned out to be visionaries. Nowadays, the work of Nadya Rusheva is known to almost every cultural person, both in Russia and abroad.

The girl began to show her unusual drawing abilities at the age of 4. The father read fairy tales to the little girl, and she picked up a piece of paper and a pencil and began to draw fairy-tale characters. Nikolai Konstantinovich, being a professional artist, very soon noticed that his daughter had a real talent as a painter. He was forced to admit that he could not draw as well as Nadya.

In her drawings, the girl emphasized the characteristic images of fairy-tale characters, expressed the dynamics of movements, and what is most striking - she absolutely correctly depicted costumes of different eras and their colors. She did it intuitively and was never mistaken.

In her early years, Nadya Rusheva most loved the fairy tale “The Little Prince” by the French writer and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. She drew about 30 drawings for this work. One of the girl’s favorite writers was A.S. Pushkin. Once, while listening to “The Tale of Tsar Saltan,” Nadya drew about forty drawings on paper at once.

Taking a pencil in her hands, the girl quickly and accurately marked the image on the paper. It seemed that there were already invisible lines on the sheet. The child just circles them. At the same time, the young artist never used a washing eraser. She created the next illustration once and for all. Each of these creations was a unique image, surprisingly accurately revealing the image of a fairy-tale hero.

Nadya Rusheva dedicated a lot of drawings to A.S. Pushkin. She portrayed himself, his wife, and children. There are drawings telling about the last hours of the poet’s life. All these illustrations surprisingly accurately characterize the era of the first half of the 19th century. It seems that the young artist was a direct participant in those distant events.

Of course, such an accurate depiction of bygone days can be attributed to the girl’s rich imagination, but is that the only reason? Nadya’s creativity cannot be squeezed into the framework of ordinary talent. Her drawings indicate certain clairvoyant abilities, the gift of seeing what others cannot see.

The girl dedicated a whole series of her drawings to Ancient Greece. These are the Labors of Hercules, as well as the immortal works of Homer: the Odyssey and the Iliad. And again, all the graphic sketches surprisingly indicate that Nadya Rusheva was, as it were, a contemporary of those events. She absolutely noticed the spirit of ancient times, as if she lived among the Hellenes and looked at the world around them through their eyes.

The first exhibition of the girl’s drawings took place when she was 12 years old. It's 1962. By this time, Nadya had become widely known among artists. Vasily Alekseevich Vatagin (1883-1969), a graphic artist and animal sculptor, drew attention to her. Despite the huge age difference, these two people became friends, seeing real creators in each other.

The girl was distinguished by her strong character and self-discipline. She inherited all this from her mother. After all, for a real ballerina such qualities are simply necessary. At the same time, Nadya Rusheva was a gentle and kind person. She had a keen sense of the world around her, was well versed in its “shades”, empathized with good and had an unacceptable attitude towards evil.

Her father played the biggest role in the development of the girl’s talent. He was the first to notice the unusual gift and unobtrusively ensured that his daughter tirelessly developed it. His care and attention were very important to Nadya. It was her father who gave her the book “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov to read. This novel began to be published in the USSR only in 1966, although it was completed in 1940.

Nadya read the book in one sitting. After this, father and daughter walked through those places in Moscow that were described in the novel. Impressed by all this, the girl created a whole series of drawings dedicated to “The Master and Margarita.”

Illustration for the novel “The Master and Margarita”

It was the heroes of the immortal novel who became the last in the girl’s creative life. But before the fatal end, 15 more exhibitions of Nadya Rusheva took place. Her works have been exhibited in Moscow, Leningrad, Czechoslovakia, India, Romania, Poland, and the USA. Much has been written about Nadya in the press. True, not everyone liked the laudatory reviews. There were serious people who believed that a very young girl should not be praised so much. Fame spoils mature people, but here is almost a child with his whole life ahead of him.

Nadya’s fame has not spoiled her. By her nature, she was far from ambition, conceit, or arrogance. She was worried about completely different things, inaccessible to the understanding of most people. The girl looked at the world differently from those around her. In everything she looked for the inner meaning hidden from human eyes, and then tried to express it in her drawings.

Another illustration for the novel “The Master and Margarita”

Nadya Rusheva, due to her unusual gift, had practically no close friends. The most dear people to her were her father and mother. It was with them that the girl shared all the secret things that worried her in this world. The family lived in a small apartment on the outskirts of Moscow. The Rushevs didn’t even have a telephone. Nowadays, this is impossible to imagine, but in those years it was an ordinary occurrence.

Along with the unusual and mysterious, Nadya was an ordinary student of one of the Moscow schools. She did not like the exact sciences, but she gravitated towards literature and took an active part in the social life of the school. Her skills were simply irreplaceable in the production of wall newspapers. Naturally, this was used first by pioneer leaders, and then by Komsomol leaders.

The girl spent a lot of time with her father at various art exhibitions and museums. I read serious literary works with interest. After reading “War and Peace” by Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy, she dedicated almost 400 illustrations to this book. They surprisingly accurately reflected that difficult time for Russia.

The girl also created drawings dedicated to the ballet “Anna Karenina”. This work of the great Russian writer made a very strong impression on Nadya. In total, there are more than 10 thousand drawings, covering at least 50 works by various classics.

At the end of February 1969, the girl left with her father for Leningrad. In the city on the Neva, the Lenfilm film studio began filming a film dedicated to the young artist. It was called “You, like my first love...”. These were some of the most wonderful days in the girl’s life. She walked a lot around one of the most beautiful cities in the world, got acquainted with its history, architectural monuments, and museums.

At the beginning of March, Nadya Rusheva returned to Moscow. Early in the morning of March 6, 1969, the girl was getting ready for school. She was putting on her shoes when she suddenly fell to the floor. The father immediately rushed to his daughter, but she was unconscious. Nikolai Konstantinovich ran around the neighbors, but none of them had a phone. Then the man ran to the nearest hospital.

The ambulance arrived quickly and took away the girl, who never regained consciousness. Already on the operating table it turned out that Nadya suffered from a cerebral aneurysm from birth. In the 60s of the 20th century, this disease could not be treated. A few hours later the talented artist died. Her death shocked people. Many refused to believe it: it seemed simply incredible to die at the age of 17 at the peak of fame and creative growth.

Nadya was buried at the Pokrovskoye cemetery. “Centaur” was depicted on the monument. School No. 470, where the young artist studied, was named after the girl. A small planet discovered by astronomer L.G. Karachkina in 1982 is named in honor of Nadya Rusheva.

In 1972, the ballet “Anna Karenina” premiered. The main character was danced by Maya Plisetskaya. The costumes were designed by Pierre Cardin. The ballet was a huge success. What was amazing was that Nadya painted ballet dancers in the same dresses that a few years later were created by a venerable French fashion designer who had certain feelings for Maya Plisetskaya.

No less striking is another fact. Literally a few weeks after the death of the talented artist, Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova came to the Rushevs. This woman loved M.A. Bulgakov very much and was the same lifesaver for him as his second wife Anna Grigorievna was for F.M. Dostoevsky. That is, she dealt with publishing issues and held in her hands all the financial affairs of the impractical writer.

It was thanks to Elena Sergeevna that the novel “The Master and Margarita” found universal recognition and was published. The main character of this immortal work, Margarita, was the prototype of Elena Sergeevna. Having met his third wife in 1929, Bulgakov began his novel at the same time. Now the woman needed to put a logical end to this epic that had lasted for 40 years.

The writer's widow was preparing a complete edition of the novel. Naturally, she wanted the text to be accompanied by appropriate illustrations of the highest quality. That’s why the elderly lady ended up in the Rushevs’ house.

Nikolai Konstantinovich laid out Nadya’s drawings, created by his daughter for “The Master and Margarita,” in front of Elena Sergeevna. Examining them, the elderly woman's face changed. In the drawing where the girl depicted Margarita, Elena Sergeevna’s facial features were clearly visible, although Nadya had never seen the writer’s widow. The guest was also shocked by the portrait of the master. The young artist painted a ring on the ring finger of his right hand. Bulgakov wore exactly the same one. The girl had no way of knowing about this.

What guided Nadya Rusheva when she created illustrations. What forces pushed her hand to draw exactly this and not something else. No one will ever know about this. There is no doubt that the talented girl had an amazing gift of soothsaying. After all, it’s not for nothing that she was born on December 31, like Vanga.

The imminent death of an amazing girl evokes a feeling of deep regret. She lived an embarrassingly short time. At the same time, it is necessary to take into account that with a congenital aneurysm of a cerebral vessel, children, as a rule, live no more than 8-9 years. Fate gave Nadya 17 years. The higher powers considered that the girl needed to stay on this earth. She completed some mysterious mission and only after that left the sublunary world. Well, let us be grateful for this to those who gradually control our destinies and decide when the natural end should come for each of us.

A small planet and a pass in the Caucasus are named after Nadya Rusheva, and her drawings are kept in many Russian museums. Nadya drew illustrations for Pushkin and Bulgakov, and Tolstoy, Greek myths and Russian fairy tales. Subtle, without drafts, in an adult way. “I see them in advance... They appear on paper like watermarks, and all I have to do is outline them with something,” explained the young artist.

Nadya was a classic Soviet prodigy - she was praised for her extraordinary abilities, intuition, sense of history, psychologism and fragile purity. The girl's exhibitions were held in Japan, Germany, the USA, India, Mongolia, Poland and other countries - more than 160 exhibitions in total. But despite her popularity during her lifetime, the artist had no snobbery, no star fever, no love of publicity.

"I work for future people"

“People need such art as a breath of fresh air. The brilliant girl had an amazing gift of insight into the realm of the human spirit...”, the academician said about Nadya.

Nadya (her real name is Naidan) was born in Ulaanbaatar in 1952. Almost immediately after the girl’s birth, her parents—the artist Nikolai Rushev and the first Tuvan ballerina Natalya Azhikmaa-Rusheva—moved to Moscow.

Nadya began drawing at the age of five - on her own, no one taught her.

In addition, the parents did not teach the girl to read or write until she was seven years old - they believed that the child should not be rushed. But the family always read a lot. Thus, the artist’s father recalled how in one evening, while he was reading “The Tale of Tsar Saltan Pushkin” to his daughter, she drew 36 illustrations.

Later, Nadya, not like a child, will consciously say: “I work for future people... In my images I reflect what I imagine while reading... It seems to me that a young artist should paint the way the impressionists did - according to impression "

"The Little Princes" and other books

In May 1964, the first exhibition of Nadya’s drawings was held - the exhibition of the Moscow fifth-grader was organized by the magazine “Youth”. The drawings were published for the first time that same year. And over the next five years, 15 exhibitions by Rushina were shown in Moscow, Warsaw, Leningrad, Poland, as well as in Czechoslovakia, Romania and India.

Nadya, meanwhile, dreamed of becoming a cartoonist and enrolling in VGIK or the Printing Institute.

“Nadya read the novel for the first time in the summer of 1965, when she was 13 years old, and gave all her sympathy and empathy to Natasha and Petya Rostov and their loved ones. Now, three years later, her folders contained over 400 drawings and compositions. Among them are four full-scale sketches of memorable places on the Borodino field, where we were last fall. Her impressions from the Hall of the Patriotic War of 1812 in the Historical Museum on Red Square, from the “Gallery of 1812” in, from the Borodino Panorama and the Kutuzov Hut in Fili, from the “War and Peace” Hall in the Museum on Kropotkinskaya Street are indelible. Recently she saw three episodes of four of the grandiose wide-screen film (she didn’t like everything) and the two-part color Italian-American film “War and Peace” (she was under the spell of the actors: Henry Fonda, Mel Ferer). Yesterday I attended the opera at the Bolshoi Theater. And now March-April - “War and Peace” in 9th grade" ( from the diaries of Nikolai Rushev).

“Nadyusha suddenly transformed and matured!.. She put aside all other dreams and series of drawings, bombarded me with requests to get everything she could, and somehow immediately and enthusiastically began to create her swan song “The Master and Margarita.” ...Her plan seemed grandiose to me, and I doubted that she could fulfill it. It seemed to me too much for her and premature. After all, she was 15 years old at that time... And although Nadya wrote in letters to friends that “there was absolutely no time to draw”... she worked hard and with inspiration. The four-layer nature of the novel also suggested four graphic techniques: pen on colored backgrounds, watercolor fills, felt-tip pen, pastel and monotype. The integrity of the solution was preserved. She prepared for this work carefully. I also read the collection of Mikhail Bulgakov that I brought from the library" ( from the diaries of Nikolai Rushev).

After the girl’s death, Bulgakov’s widow, Elena Sergeevna, invited her parents to visit and carefully looked at Nadya’s drawings for “The Master and Margarita.”

“Only a week ago I found out that Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova is “Margarita,” and here we are with her, and the drawings are on the table. “Both we and Chudakova, who was present there, all understood that now had come a decisive moment in the fate of Nadya’s drawings,” Nadya’s father recalled. — By the will of fate, the first was a large vertical portrait, a drawing with a felt-tip pen on pink paper, the image of Margarita during her first meeting with the master: “Don’t you like yellow flowers?” A minute of secret silence... Everyone looks at her and is surprised to see that the clairvoyant Nadya intuitively conveyed a complete resemblance to her. Slowly and quietly Elena Sergeevna said: “This is amazing!”

“From her first drawings, attention was drawn to her: old man Gessen, a former cadet publicist, ordered her illustrations for his Pushkin studies, and there was a powerful symbol in the fact that the books of a ninety-year-old writer were illustrated by a twelve-year-old girl. The mischief and romanticism of her works were surprising for the time. And at the same time she was a quiet, bespectacled person - the more striking was the triumph of her gift: short, thin, dark-haired, not attracting any attention in the crowd of classmates. It’s a different matter if you look closely... ...We will never love anyone the way we loved Nadya Rusheva,” the writer later wrote in one of his articles.

Malchish-Kibalchish and space

“January 31 is Nadya Rusheva’s birthday. I kept this in mind during the flight. And he marked this day on the calendar with the letter “M” - Malchish. And now the time has come for a communication session with the earth. I showed “The Boy” and spoke in a few words about Nadya. This report from the orbital station was published in the “Time” program, which was watched by the whole country. We saw “The Boy” abroad too. They said that this was the first space vernissage in history,” the cosmonaut recalled in his book “From a Splinter to Space.” “And it was important to me that we, the cosmonauts, stirred up the memory of a talented person in people.”

During the whole month of flight they (the drawing and the photograph) were our companions.

I consider it a great success that I came up with the idea of ​​taking Nadya Rusheva’s drawing on the flight. In Malchish’s wide-open eyes there is humanity and fragility, but there is also strength and resilience. He is alive. Drawing not only helped us work in space, it lived next to us. Malchish-Kibalchish shared the flight altitude with us, he also shared the difficulties. The landing was difficult. While we were rushing around the virgin soil, unfastening the parachute, the drawing became wrinkled.”

Nadya Rusheva School Memorial Museum

On March 5, 1969, Nadya returned from a trip to Leningrad, overflowing with impressions and plans. She dreamed of drawing Lermontov, Nekrasov, Blok, Yesenin, Green and Shakespeare.

“On the morning of March 6, while putting on her school uniform, Nadenka suddenly lost consciousness... Doctors gave her injections for 5 hours and took her to the hospital... There, without regaining consciousness, she died from a cerebral hemorrhage...” (from the diaries of Nikolai Rushev) .

The artist was diagnosed with a congenital defect of a cerebral vessel - doctors were unable to help her. Nadya Rusheva passed away at the age of 17, remaining forever in the 60s.