Nyssa paintings. Georgy Nissky: biography

Part five, the last... In the 60s, Georgy Grigorievich completely abandoned the combination of various genres in one canvas and worked only in landscape. But in his landscape, the technically clear thinking of the time is felt more than in canvases with deliberately “industrial” motifs. “To understand what is happening around you today, to understand what you are participating in, not to fall out, not to splash out of the era - this is very, very much in our work”

He was an artist in search. The construction of his last works is completely indestructible, does not tolerate the slightest movement. But with all the external rationalism, downright mathematical clarity, it never seems like a cold, calculated arrangement of objects and spots on the surface of a sheet or canvas.

Taken from kykolnik

http://kykolnik.livejournal.com/977731.html

Tsyplakov Viktor Grigorievich (Russia, 1915-1986) "Portrait of George Nyssa"

A. Deineka in the preface to the album of paintings by Nissky wrote: “His works are not types of certain places that exist on our planet, but a kind of standards of forests, glades, villages. Precisely because Nissky's works are always based on a broad generalized idea, they sound epic.

Sleigh, a lone pedestrian - subtle details of the famous painting. Guess which one?

Winter plain. Tall, half-naked pines are stuck into the wide and high sky. But, despite this eternal silence of nature, untouched by man, a red plane rapidly traces the gloomy dark sky. Two forces oppose each other, but a relatively small, but all-conquering in its swiftness creation of human hands overcomes the calmly self-confident elemental force of nature.

1963 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Foothills"

One reproduction is widely circulated, the other is from a magazine.
Which of them is closer to the original has not been found, because both:

1963

1963 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "At the grave of a friend"

1963 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Ussuri Bay"

1960

“Somewhere I was running, but now my step has become more measured and quieter” Georgy Nyssky

1960 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Winter Evening"

1961 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Night near Moscow"

1965 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Winter Evening"

1960s Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Evening"

Vladimir Vorobyov, in one of his essays, recalls that Nissky had an interesting little dog named Radish, I don’t know what breed, small, shaggy and very smart. She looked like a White Bim Black ear with a “hairstyle” “I see you, you don’t see me”, a pockmarked off-white color, exactly the same as a radish just pulled out of the ground. Friendly and curious, she, however, obeyed only Zhora. They did tricks with him to the delight of the children who gathered in the harbor. With one trick, Zhora won countless bottles. It consisted in the fact that Zhora offered a dispute that Radish would hang on a tree branch, holding onto it with his teeth, for a given time, for example, an hour. At the same time, it was allowed to influence Radish in every possible way so that she would unhook, but without the use of hands and objects. On command or with the help of Zhora, Radish clung to a branch and began to hang. No matter what they did to her: they called her, and they drove her, and teased her with sausage - nothing helped. In exceptional cases, she only, without opening her teeth, growled at the irritant. And only at Zhora's command did she release the branch. The children really liked this attraction. Then Radish had a daughter, Chuka, an even brown-brown color. And the attraction was complicated: Radish clung to a branch, and Chuka to a radish tail. Entering the subway with dogs, not like now, was strictly prohibited. But Zhora traveled by metro with Radish. He had a small suitcase with holes for air. Zhora put him on the ground and said: "Redechka, we are going by subway." And she made herself comfortable there.

Once, together with Zworykin, I visited his exhibition on Kuznetsky Most and there I witnessed a fantastic spectacle. Nyssa had prepared watercolor pictures the size of a postcard. Perhaps they were written by his students. They depicted a seascape with a shore and bushes in the foreground. Nissky handed them out to his acquaintances as autographs, but before that he made several strokes with a black brush, either in gouache or ink: brightened the twigs of the bushes and pebbles in the foreground, put the birds above the water. And before your eyes a miracle happened: the landscape acquired volume, went into the distance.

1963 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) “Evening. Moscow region"

1960s Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Prichal"

1966 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Embankment"

1960s Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Yachts near the coast"

1964 (?) Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Out to sea"

1960s Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Still life with Vyatka toy"

Nissky was in love with Russian antiquity. He visited Rostov, Vladimir, Novgorod, Pskov. Once with Mikhail Petrovich Konchalovsky Nissky came to Suzdal to study sketches. Konchalovsky immediately sat down to write, and Georgy Grigoryevich, out of habit, went to wander.

On the slope of one of the surrounding hills, a guy in polished boots and a pink silk shirt was sprawled on the grass, he threw the bicycle to the ground and laid his shaggy blond head on the frame. A girl in a white dress sat humbly next to him. The goats at the foot of the hill were sniffing at an abandoned motor scooter. In the sky, as if with chalk, a jet plane drew a complex parabola. Life went on.

When Nissky tried to write all this in a workshop in Moscow, something turned out wrong. The details made it difficult to perceive the whole.

And then a miracle happened. First, a plane flew out of the landscape of Suzdal and took a white trail with it, then a scooter left the canvas behind it, and the last reluctantly left a handsome guy, taking a bicycle and a girl with him. Only the goats remained, and the young women, and the hills. And at the end, the moon appeared in the daytime sky.

1964 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) “On a boat. Evening"

1964 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "The Veil on the Nerl"

Vladimir Vorobyov: “Once a story happened to Nyssky that influenced him so much that his creative style completely changed. On December 22, 1959, the artist Kokorekin (1906-1959) brought the plague from India to Moscow. There were few diseases, but the noise was great. Kokorekin lived in the same house with Nyssky, and they were great friends. The next morning after his arrival, Kokorekin left the house, and at that time Nyssky was doing prophylaxis for his Moskvich in the yard. They were already ready, according to the old habit, to hug and kiss, but Zhora's hands were in nigrol, and they only agreed to see each other in the evening. In the afternoon, Kokorekin was taken to the hospital, from where he never left. A few people still got infected. Zhora was very worried about this loss and the fact that only an incredible accident saved him. For some time, they say, he even drank a lot, and when he returned to the paintings, he was already a completely different artist. His paintings became more stylized, as if the breath of something cosmic appeared in them ... "

Chebakov Nikita Nikanorovich (Russia, 1916-1968) "Portrait of the artist Georgy Grigorievich Nissky" 1962

At the end of his life, Georgy Georgievich was seriously ill for a long time. He had no family, and he spent his last years
in a nursing home. The painter died on June 18, 1987; buried in Moscow at the Kuntsevo cemetery.

Georgy Grigorievich had no heirs. A significant part of his works has disappeared, and their fate is now unknown...

October 1941. Moscow.

The tanks are heading west. On them in white sheepskin coats - soldiers. Stocky, with stern, weather-beaten faces. Troops on the Moscow boulevards. Bonfires are burning. On Sverdlov Square in the goats of a rifle. Militia rallies are taking place in the Hall of Columns. The sky of Moscow is buzzing from explosions of anti-aircraft shells. Alarms follow one after another...

“In the memorable heavy winter of 1941-1942, when the sky near Moscow was lit up with flashes of shots, and heavy tanks were moving westward, clanging their tracks, I stood for a long time and looked at the darkness over the Leningradskoye Highway; its straightness was cut through by anti-tank barriers, in the intervals of which tanks retreated, carrying on their steel backs their Russian soldiers in sheepskin coats, in helmets frosted with frost and breath. I didn’t write sketches, I only felt and looked, and then I ran to the workshop to draw and compose. And he wrote the thing himself, without noticing it, somehow not for long, in two days. The selection of impressions was very strict. Everything random, all commentary details were discarded.

1942 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) “To defend Moscow. Leningrad highway"

In the difficult days of the defense of Moscow, Nissky experienced a hitherto unknown storm of feelings, his poet's heart was confused and excited to the limit, and here is the return - the epic painting "To Protect Moscow" was created in fifty hours.

Critics often reproached the artist for the "quickness" of writing pictures. They, obviously, were unaware of what a deep spiritual process preceded, prepared the final "creative salvo" of the master.

The viewer sees the city prepared for battles. But not because the artist depicts the attributes of defense in detail. All of them are reduced to one anti-tank barrier cut off by the edge of the picture, through the gaps of which, in the distance, as in a panorama, a chain of the same barriers is visible. But with this detail, Nyssa symbolizes the impregnability of the capital. And the snow-covered road leaving into the distance with bare trees on the side of the road seems to be reliably guarded. And tanks with soldiers create a sense of readiness for defense.

1941 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "In the workshop"

1942 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) “Moscow. Dynamo"

In February 1942, Deineka and Nissky went to the active army, to the Yukhnov region. An endless Russian snow-covered plain with ragged black wounds from explosions, charred skeletons of houses, mangled equipment and corpses soldered into the snow. The enemy is defeated, thrown back from Moscow.

Nissky keeps a front-line diary. “If only you could truly understand with your heart. There is more hope in the eyes. They see it right<...>To select only the main thing ... The rest, which is literary, is to clean up, clean up confidently, ruthlessly.

Returning to Moscow, Nissky works hard. By order of the Central Naval Museum, he paints a series of thirteen paintings dedicated to the exploits of Soviet soldiers and sailors: "Torpedoing an enemy ship by a submarine", "Over the Barents Sea" and others. There is absolutely no external heroism of pre-war works here.

1943 Nissky Grigory Grigoryevich (Russia, 1903-1987) “In the sea. Warship"

1942 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "The defeat of the Nazi caravan by ships and aircraft of the Baltic Fleet"
The canvas was painted jointly with Shtranikh Vladimir Fedorovich (1888-1981)

1942 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Seaborne assault"

1942 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Black Sea Fleet"

1942 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Sevastopol"

1942 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Attack of torpedo boats"

1942 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Volley"

Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Out to sea"

1942 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "TASS Window No. 588. For the Glory of October!"
text author Vasily Lebedev-Kumach

1944 Nissky Grigory Grigoryevich (Russia, 1903-1987) "At the pier"

Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) “Sevastopol. Evening"

During the war, the feeling of love for the Motherland matured and was filled with special warmth. Behind the word "Motherland" rose not only the grand scale of the country, but also small corners where a person was born, grew up, where he fought. The concept of homeland has become more lyrical. Everyone has felt it in one way or another. And the landscape painter should have been imbued with this even more than others. Especially an artist of such sharp and deep vision as Nyssa was.

1942 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Morning at the airport"

Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "The feat of the hero of the Soviet Union P. A. Pologov"

There are many different emotional shades in his landscapes of the first post-war years, but all these works are full of great human warmth and appeal to the viewer's heart. They may like it or not, but they cannot leave a person indifferent.

One of the earliest post-war landscapes by Nyssa "Evening on the Klyazma" (1946). Already by it one can judge how the artist now sees his native land. Calm water cut by a sunset path. The blue stripe of the coast in the distance. And beautiful yachts, so dear to the master's heart. Warm yellow-brown gamma enhances the barely audible note of evening elegiacity. The composition of the painting, its clear construction, where there is nothing superfluous, not a single detail can be removed or moved, also speaks of the growth of skill. At the same time, there is nothing external here. The artist sees easier and deeper.

A passionate yachtsman, Nissky is endlessly in love with the water. The expanse of lakes and reservoirs, the wide expanse of the Volga, the mysterious waters of the northern rivers, stormy sea waves - the artist constantly returns to all this in his work.

1946 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "On the bridges"

1947 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "On the Pestovsky reach"

1949 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) “In the rain. On the Pestovsky reach"

1949 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Water holiday"

1946 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "On the seaside"

1949 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "Albotros"

1946 Nissky Georgy Grigorievich (Russia, 1903-1987) "In the dock"

One of the best paintings of this period is "Belarusian Landscape" (1947). Long before the war, in 1935, in his native Belarus, the artist painted a sketch, on the basis of which twelve years later he created this work. “Belarusian Landscape” is essentially a wide panorama of the places native to the artist. The panorama is also emphasized by the compositional construction: the railway approaches the very cut of the picture; it seems to come out from under the viewer's feet and lead him far along the railway track, past the semaphore, across the bridge, along a wide wooded plain, where trees with leaves the color of early autumn approach the metal rails. Due to the low horizon line, the space seems immense, and the road - endless. But, skillfully introducing details that are almost imperceptible at first glance - grazing cattle, a lineman, the artist, as it were, brings the whole vastness of space closer to a person, makes the landscape more intimate.

Planes are flying over the fields. Locomotives run along the tracks. Ships and yachts cut the waves. The highway is calling. And nearby, quiet spruces doze, the night sky hangs, the sunset path connects the shores of the port bay. Some pictures are romantic excitement. Others are lyrical softness, the most subtle shades of human experiences. If we consider the works of Nyssa in chronological order, then among those performed recently, one can see those in which both of these principles are closely intertwined, mutually penetrate. As a result, a completely new artistic image is created, sounding like a broad epic poem about the Motherland.

A romantic, acutely feeling the beauty and grandeur of labor that transforms the face of the earth, and at the same time a heartfelt lyricist - such is one of the outstanding painters of our country, Georgy Grigorievich Nissky. At exhibitions, his works, among many other canvases, are immediately recognizable by the special, inherent to him alone major sound and emphasized modern view of the world. “Sea expanses traversed on warships of all fleets among remarkable Soviet sailors, snow-covered forests near Moscow, skied, expanses of reservoirs near Moscow, canal ribbons, the Volga expanses, the Moscow and Rybinsk seas, sailed, lock towers, yacht races, romance of evening railway stations, steel double strands of tracks with ruby ​​lights of signals, bindings of viaducts and swing bridges surrounded by the smoke of steam locomotives - this is all the new geography of my Motherland, changed by the will of people. You need to see, reveal its beauty and show it to millions of new people with new thoughts and new feelings, with their cheerfulness, their lyrics and optimism. The landscape of the Motherland has been changed, it is no longer Levitanian - it is joyful and major, and a modern artist needs to see it, see it with a new feeling, a new heart and new eyes, and make it with new hands, otherwise it will not be today, ”the artist writes in his autobiography, this is how he formulates tasks for himself, his students and fellow artists, such a worldview permeates his work.

Nissky is one of the leading landscape painters. In the way he organizes the composition of works, he emphasizes the correlation of objects, in the very rhythm of the individual parts of the work and the whole, one can see the worldview of a person of the middle of the 20th century with his new ideas about space, scale and pace. The beauty of nature and the beauty brought into nature by man merge together for the artist. And his works, despite the fact that in them the activity of people is most often not directly shown, are full of the dynamics of human actions, they sound like a hymn to the creator man.

Georgy Nissky "Moscow. Sorting", 1954

The works of Nyssa summarize those impressions and reflections on what he saw that travel and campaigns bring him. He himself writes: "In the Far East" - noticed from the window of a fast moving train. The bristles of the forest on the ridge of the hill, the airfield with the planes quickly flashed by. I didn’t manage to draw anything, I didn’t manage to make a sketch either. The rest is in the idea and vision from memory ... "Moscow Region" skied the whole winter, and when I felt that the thing was assembled in me and solved, I quickly wrote it in the workshop.

The special properties of his work include the fact that even in the smallest landscape, a modest and at first glance does not stand out from many others, the corner is perceived as part of the vast expanse of his native country, as a separate theme of the powerful and heroic symphony “Broad is my native land”.

When people talk about Nyssa, they most often remember its landscapes with running railroad tracks, silhouettes of semaphores, and running trains. This is indeed one of his favorite motifs. Most likely, the roots of this affection are still in the first childhood impressions.

Georgy Grigoryevich Nissky was born on January 21, 1903 at the Novobelitsa railway station, a few kilometers from the Belarusian city of Gomel. At this station he spent his childhood. He inhaled the mixed, pungent smell of coal smoke, engine oil, and hot metal. He admired his favorite hero - a locomotive driver. He liked to maneuver on a steam locomotive along the branched station tracks. The interests of the family, the father - a railway doctor - worried little about the boy. Just as little worried about him at the time of childhood and art. He didn't think about it at all. Nyssky encountered drawing for the first time only in the gymnasium and studied it in the lessons without enthusiasm, although even then he was already helping his comrades in this. Only in 1917, a fourteen-year-old high school student, did he seriously begin to think about the profession of an artist. V. Zorin, who at that time lived near Novobelitsa, pushed him to this. Zorin told the teenager about Russian painters, especially about those who worked at the beginning of the 20th century: about Levitan, Vrubel, Petrov-Vodkin, Roerich. Zorin for the first time revealed to the young man the features of Russian art with his immersion in human psychology, introduced him to the works of the best Russian masters, and advised him to do it himself. The future artist wore his first landscapes and still lifes to Zorina, he listened to his first professional remarks from him.

Georgy Nissky "Sweat lineman", 1958-1959

Until that time, technology had occupied the boy's imagination - a passionate, childlike passion for the creation of human hands. However, this did not prevent love for the discreet, but sincere beauty of the Belarusian forests, rivers, fields. “I still love my native landscape with the unquenchable love of childhood,” the artist writes. — A semaphore, a run-up of rails going around a bend in the forest, a noisy forest with mast pines and the boundlessness of Belarusian fields with snow drifts. I grew up in the wild, everything was mine: the hot glow of the rails on the track bindings, long freight trains, water pumps and warehouses, shunting locomotives, swamps overgrown with vines, golden forest streams, spring floods, raft decks on the mirror of the lake, the squeal of sawmill saws, golden cubes of sawn forests, the smell of sawdust, the heat of hot July in the silence of the forest and pensive copses under the tablecloth of January snow ... ”From these words, written by a mature master, it is clear that even from childhood impressions that are firmly embedded in memory, there is a connection in his work of a romantic beginning, based on admiration for the power of a human creator, with a lyrical, inspired by love for their native places.

Systematic studies began for Nissky in Gomel, at the M. Vrubel Fine Arts Studio, which was led by the artist A. Bykhovsky. Studying was combined with work in warehouses, on a railway line. Nissky's talent was discovered very soon, and in 1921 he was sent to Moscow to study at the preparatory faculty of VKhUTEMAS (Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops). In 1923 he moved to the painting faculty.

Georgy Nissky "Airfield", 1961

VKHUTEMAS in those years was not only a kind of university of fine arts, but also production workshops. The famous Arkhipov, Mashkov, Konchalovsky, Falileev taught here.

VKhUTEMAS students were presented with the right and opportunity to freely choose any workshop and any profession. “There was reason to get confused or even go crazy in this incredible kaleidoscopic mixture of forms and trends, schools and disciplines that VKHUTEMAS brought down on our young, hot and inquisitive heads, which erupted at us from museums of new art, literary rallies, conversations and speeches of the apostles right and left art. But I remember very well that many of us, before whom all these paths and all roads in the art of painting were open, chose living life as the basis of creativity, painting as a means of expression and revolution as the main theme, ”wrote the old Vkhutemasov Y. Merkulov.

VKHUTEMAS met the young Nyssa with a seething political and aesthetic passion. In the first years after October, artists frantically searched for ways to reflect the new life. New forms were needed to express the content of hitherto non-existent concepts. Teachers and students experimented, explored different paths. The works of representatives of the new Western art: Picasso, Cezanne, Matisse and Russians: Tatlin, Malevich, Konchalovsky were discussed with enthusiasm.

The young, ardent enthusiasm that reigned within the walls of this new academy of Soviet fine and applied arts threw its students to the design of propaganda campaigns, mass festivals, and theatrical productions. “The streets are our brushes. Squares are our palettes,” these words of V. Mayakovsky were the life practice of VKHUTEMAS in the 20s, where every future artist clearly imagined the political significance, role and place of art “in the working order”. No wonder the great proletarian poet Mayakovsky was the favorite poet of the Vkhutemas. Students' love for painting was combined with a love for sports, which was cultivated in VKhUTEMAS as an element of educating a harmonious personality, and it is difficult to say what young Nissky preferred. In any case, at first he spent most of his time in the gym, and passed the tests in fits and starts.

In painting, he did not immediately find his way, he rushed from sample to sample. However, through his passion for various contemporary masters and various creative manners, he stubbornly searched for his own paths in art, and the fact that these searches were not in vain was already clear from the diploma painting “The Revolt of French Sailors in Odessa” (1928). Sincere excitement of feelings, passionate and impetuous fighting pressure, his own, deeply personal, alien to any textbook attitude characterized this first work of a novice painter. All this, despite the lack of skill, imitation, captivated and forced to believe in the future of the artist.

The choice of the "marine" theme is not accidental. While still a student, in 1928, Nissky traveled to the Black Sea, which has since become a part of his life. From this trip, he brought watercolors and gouaches, which he showed at one of the exhibitions. The sea more than once became the main scene in his paintings, or even the main character. Although Nyssky was never a marine painter in the proper sense of the word.

During this period, the artist became close to the OST (Society of Easel Artists) group.

The Society of Easel Artists, which arose in 1924, was the first truly serious artistic association of young people. The Ostovtsy set themselves the task of creating modern and most economical forms of painting in which one can depict a synthetically modern city with its primacy of technology: factories, mines, radio installations, etc. The search for conciseness, the desire for dynamic composition, emphasis on professional skill, the revival of the easel painting with its completeness, "made" were the result of new requirements for art by life.

The Ostovtsy considered the artist to be a participant in socialist construction, who was obliged to create narrative and modern paintings not only in terms of visual means, but also in terms of content. Formulating their artistic platform, they wrote: “In the era of building socialism, the active forces of art should be participants in this construction and one of the factors of the cultural revolution in the field of reorganization and design of a new way of life and the creation of a new, socialist culture. Considering that only art of high quality can set such tasks for itself, it is necessary in the conditions of the modern development of art to put forward the main lines along which work in the field of fine art should proceed. The organizers and active participants of this artistic group were A. Deineka, P. Williams, Yu. Pimenov, A. Goncharov and others.

Despite the passion for the external side of the industry, the grandeur of technology, the artistic style of Western, especially German expressionism, the group as a whole played a positive role in the history of Soviet fine art. The serious passion of the young Nissky for the aesthetic concepts of the Ostovtsy can be traced in one of the early works “Ship Repair”.

The beginning of serious creative activity of Nissky is 1932, the year when the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks issued a resolution “On the restructuring of literary and artistic organizations”, which was decisive for the further development of Soviet art.

The 1932 resolution not only eliminated the organizational confusion. Most importantly, it called for the creation of truly artistic works, assigned artists an important role in building the culture of the new society. During the years of the first five-year plans, artists had to reflect the achievements of the country in their works. They had to see for themselves and show people in a small, barely noticeable, particle of the general pattern. They were supposed to help in shaping the spiritual image of the people.

This played a certain positive role in the formation of the artist's work, who was still taking his first steps in great art. The requirements of the party corresponded to the creative tasks that the young Nyssa set for himself.

The year 1932 was a milestone in Nyssky's work also because it was at that time that he was looking for those basic, fundamental features of artistic vision and ways for expressing this vision, which would remain in his art, develop and become decisive.

"Autumn. Semaphores" (1932). With this picture, the artist makes an application for a new hero of landscape painting, and for a new way of poeticization. Deserted. It's chilly. Ruffled sparrows, chilly pressed against each other, sat on the wires. But, despite the aching notes of a gray autumn day, the viewer does not have a feeling of despondency, because the expanse of the sky is huge, a steam locomotive runs briskly, puffing on smoke, along a long strip of railway track, which seems to have no beginning and no end. Semaphores work. Life is everywhere, human activity is felt in everything.

Georgy Nissky "Autumn. Semaphores", 1932

"Autumn" is an industrial landscape, compositionally clearly built. But how dramatically different is the artist's attitude to the industry here, in comparison with his earlier painting "Ship Repair". If the main thing there is a machine, despite the fact that a person is present in the picture, then here a person is present invisibly, in the creations of his hands. This makes them look energized. Both the locomotive, and the semaphores, and the strands of telegraph wires carry within themselves particles of human energy and strength, they act precisely as animate objects. This new poetics, born of socialist construction, contained, first of all, the innovation of Nissky the landscape painter, the artist of the most seemingly “non-partisan” genre.

And one more very significant feature appears in this landscape: in the clear rhythms and energetic tension of the offspring of the age of industry, there is no coldness at all. The artist looks for deeply lyrical notes in them, close to everyone, paints the whole scene with a very personal mood, coming, most likely, from affectionate childhood memories.

The painting "Autumn" was the artist's first creative application for his own place in great art. And the very next year he painted his second big picture in this style - "On the Way", full of special, spring vivacity, spring ringing joy.

Again there is no end to the rail run. However, unlike the previous picture, the viewer sees not only the length, but also the breadth of the roads. In the foreground is the once found semaphore. In the depths - the iron structures of the bridge, the smoke of the factory. And among all this “working” big industry, there is a woman in a white dress, which swells on her from the fresh spring wind, and the whole image immediately warms up, sounds like a joyful motive. The construction of the picture is such that the background looks like theatrical backstage, and the huge steel roadbed looks like a stage platform. Somewhat naive conventionality, some superficiality does not even cross out the previously initiated line of connecting the beauty of a human technical genius with the lyrical coloring of the creations of this genius.

When comparing these two paintings (“Autumn” and “On the Tracks”), their compositional similarity, the similarity of artistic techniques, the convention that comes from the lack of real skill, is striking. Having developed a certain composition, Nissky was afraid to retreat from it. Therefore, the artistic embodiment of his daring ideas turned out to be much paler than them. principles have been found. Now I had to learn how to implement them.

Georgy Nissky "On the way. May", 1933

"Learning, work - working, study." The artist made these words his motto for almost four years. He saw that "true craftsmanship, tradition and culture should be both a stimulus and a source of innovation." Youthful negativism, the rejection of the authorities of the art of bygone eras, has disappeared. It gave way to a careful study of the old masters. Nyssky tried to apply their technique in his works, but not blindly, but selecting in it only that which corresponded to his creative searches, which could organically enter into his own artistic style.

There were many sources for study. Poussin and Delacroix, Van Gogh and Cezanne and other major European masters of different centuries and styles. That is why the works written in 1933-1936 are made in a variety of manners, come from a variety of models and are more the fruits of the student's experimentation than independent works of art. These searches were not at all a belated reaction of an art graduate to various schools of world art. VKHUTEMAS in the 1920s, teaching to search and think, did not provide sufficient professional training. And in order to become a real master, you had to achieve it yourself.

Nevertheless, in the works of these years, so different in style, with traces of the study of different masters, the line found in the early 30s does not disappear. It was especially clear in the 1935 painting "Yacht", full of freshness and dynamics, with precise and subtle development of color shades of a windy day.

In the picture "Yacht" something new appears already in comparison with the first works of this plan. It lies in the desire of the artist to get closer to nature, not limited to one author's fantasy. This is significant. The artist goes to the second stage of "self-education" - work in nature.

The need for this stage logically followed from his creative aspirations, because the artificiality, coming from the inability to convey nature, dried up the work, froze the emotionality of the idea.

At this time, Nissky worked on the painting "Meeting" with a large number of characters, depicting human relationships. Its action takes place in the Black Sea bay in the summer. In the foreground, a girl happily holds out flowers to a young sailor. It was necessary to show the mutual relations of the characters, the feelings that they experienced during this meeting, to convey subtle psychological nuances, on the one hand, and the riot of colors of the summer south, on the other. For a long time it was not possible to reflect all this, first of all, due to the lack of sufficient baggage of life impressions. The artist understood this. He left work on the painting and, in the company of F. Bogorodsky and G. Ryazhsky, went to Sevastopol to work on location.

Nyssa spent a month on campaigns along with the heroes of his picture. The second month persistently and stubbornly wrote sketches. He stubbornly searched for ways to convey the color diversity and richness of the shades of the world around him. Characteristic is the title of his article, published in the journal "Tvorchestvo" (No. 12, 1936), "In focus on nature." In it, he wrote: “Of all my sensations, impressions and memories, I chose the main and necessary, which, it seemed to me, contained the most true pictorial and plastic essence of things.” And further: “In a small, but correctly written etude, a large picture, not conceived in nature, is often revealed in a new way before you.”

Georgy Nissky "Meeting"

His work was enriched by direct life observations. In the best sketches of this time, made on the Black Sea, his achievements are clearly visible, especially in color. The artist's eye reacts more sharply to color, and the deliberate artificial "construction" disappears from the compositions.

Sevastopol taught the artist to see not only brighter, but also deeper. Returning to Moscow, he quickly rewrote the painting "Meeting". She turned out to be very young, cheerful and beautiful and brought the artist a bronze medal at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937, where she was exhibited among the best achievements of Soviet art. Indeed, it is felt not only the brightness of the idea, but also artistic skill.

With the painting “Meeting”, Nyssa showed that the period of the “second apprenticeship” was over. He proved his right to be called a master. “Nyssky attracts the viewer with the doneness and completeness of his paintings, in sharp contrast to the careless etude of the work of most of his neighbors on exhibition stands,” wrote Soviet critics in 1937, summing up his work.

Biography

Outstanding Soviet painter, graphic artist, muralist, illustrator. Member of the Union of Artists of the USSR. Laureate of the Stalin Prize of the third degree (1951). Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1958). Full member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1958). People's Artist of the RSFSR (1965).

Georgy Grigoryevich Nissky was born into the family of a station paramedic, at the small Novobelitsa station near Gomel in Belarus. His first teacher was the Vladimir icon painter Petrov. Zorin, a local artist-student, introduced Georgy Nissky to the works of the artists of the World of Art. In 1919, Nissky entered the Gomel Art Studio of the Gubpolitprosvet named after M. A. Vrubel, studied with A. Ya. Bykhovsky. With the zeal and enthusiasm of youth, the studios drew posters, painted portraits, created panels, and made sketches for decorating squares on revolutionary holidays.

In 1921 he was sent to Moscow and entered the preparatory courses at the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops (VHUTEMAS, 1923-1930). In 1923 he moved to the department of painting, where Robert Falk and Alexander Drevin became his teachers. In parallel with his studies, he worked as an illustrator and in a printing house, he paid a lot of attention to sports, in particular, volleyball.

In 1926 he met Alexander Deineka. At this time, under the influence of the style of OST and, above all, the work of his senior colleague - Alexander Deineka, as well as the French artist - Albert Marquet, a unique pictorial style of George Nyssa was formed, the features of which are conciseness, dynamics and penetrating lyricism of his landscapes.

In 1928 he made his first trip to the Black Sea to Novorossiysk to collect material for his thesis. The sea immediately captivated the young artist with its grandeur and romance; he met him in Novorossiysk during a storm. Since then, and for the rest of his life, Nyssa connected his art with the sea, it became the hero of many of his paintings. From the trip, Nyssa brought about twenty small watercolors and gouaches painted from the impression, which he showed publicly for the first time at the exhibition of the Group of 13 society. Nothing but youth united George Nyssa with this society, whose creative goals were unclear, and artistic life was fleeting.

In 1930 he graduated from VKhUTEMAS, his thesis - "The Internationale at Gilles-Bart". The uprising of French sailors in Odessa ”(TG), dedicated to the Black Sea rebellion. After graduating from VKhUTEMAS, he worked in the Special Red Banner Far Eastern Army (OKDVA), designed wall newspapers, battle sheets, and made posters and monumental panels (1930-1931).

In 1936, together with A. A. Deineka, F. S. Bogorodsky and G. G. Ryazhsky, he went to Sevastopol and Balaklava to study sketches, flew airplanes, went on military speedboats and on a submarine. In the spring of 1937 he made a trip to the Pacific Ocean, which resulted in such works of the artist as "Submarine", "Detention of a Japanese schooner", "Catch in the Far East".

In 1938 he participated in the largest art exhibition dedicated to the Armed Forces - "20 years of the Red Army and the Navy" with the paintings "Detention of the Japanese schooner", "Black Sea Fleet on maneuvers", "Submarine". His name is mentioned in all the numerous critical articles devoted to the exhibition by the central and peripheral press.

Participated in a large-scale thematic exhibition "Industry of Socialism", which presented more than a thousand works. They occupied seventeen halls, grouped by theme. In the fourth and fifth halls, united by the theme "Industry strengthens the defense of the USSR", Nissky's paintings "Launching the Ship" and "In the Far East" hung. The first picture was especially popular with visitors, everyone who wrote about this picture noted the courage and originality of its compositional solution. Nissky interprets this significant event as a national holiday - this is answered by the bright color of the picture, which conveys both the summer blue of the sea, and the transparent blue of the sky, tinted with pinkish clouds, and the elegance of the coloring flags, with which the words “The Red Fleet will answer the blow with a blow” are typed.

In 1940, together with the artist Fyodor Reshetnikov, Nissky made a trip to the Baltic Sea. He made repeated trips to the Barents Sea, where the Great Patriotic War (1940-1941) found the artist.

In the pre-war years, G. Nissky paid attention to the poster, created sheets dedicated to the defense of the USSR: “And if the enemy has a thief's grip. Will enter the Soviet seas. The gunners will stand by the guns. Battleships will strike with a roar. Raising cast anchors ”(1940).

During the war Nyssa remained in Moscow. Worked in the TASS Okna defense poster workshop; remained true to himself - he made posters, as a rule, on a marine theme: No. 588 "For the glory of October!" (1942). In February 1942, together with his friend Deineka, Nyssky went to the active army, to the Yukhnov region. The artist kept a front-line diary and drew a lot.

The war caused a huge upsurge in Soviet art. The artists faced the noblest tasks: to strengthen the patriotism of people, to support their will to fight against the invaders. This could be done in works that captivate the viewer with the depth and immediacy of feeling, the persuasiveness of the form, capable of leading.

It was precisely such tasks that Nyssky solved in his work. He managed to cast his faith and will in victory into chased forms of such paintings as “Sevastopol”, “Fight in the Irben Strait” (1942), “Over the Barents Sea” (1942), “Sinking of Fascist Transport” (1942); to express their boundless love for the Motherland in magnificent landscapes: “Klyazma Reservoir”, “Bridge on the Canal”, “After the Rain”, “Moscow-Volga Canal”, “Night on the Canal” and others, continuing to develop the life-affirming theme of beauty in the harsh war years and majesty of native nature.

One of the best works of the artist of these years is the painting “In defense of Moscow. Leningrad highway. It was written shortly after the great battle for Moscow in the winter of 1942 and was exhibited at the Great Patriotic War exhibition in 1943.

The artist devotes graphic works to the same task, to which he again turns during the war years. Nissky creates separate sheets "Partisans in an ambush", "Before a sortie" and cycles of drawings on the topics - "Defense of Odessa", "Military Moscow", "Defense of Sevastopol". One of the artist's best graphic sheets "An anti-aircraft battery at Dynamo" from the "Military Moscow" cycle gives a complete picture of the features of his graphics of these years.

In the 1940s-1950s, Georgy Nyssky worked hard and created, perhaps, his best paintings - full of energy, light and air. It was he and Deineka who became the forerunners of a harsh style. His restrained in color, compositionally and tonally adjusted works are among the best realistic works of art of these years, in the USSR.

In 1951, for the paintings "Off the coast of the Far East", "Landscape with a lighthouse", "Port of Odessa" (all - 1950), the artist was awarded the State Prize. In the summer of 1953, he traveled on a yacht along the Volga, as a result, a series of lyrical Volga landscapes was painted: “Vitenevo”, “Volga. Evening”, “Volga. Yurievets”, “Kaira”. The rain has passed”, “Myshkin”, “On the Volga, “Pestovo”.

In addition to painting, Nyssky did a lot of design and illustration of books, and here he also remains true to the marine theme, illustrates books: P. Gavrilov - "On the Four Oceans", Boris Shatilov - "Nur-Eddin and his teachers", K. M. Stanyukovich - "Man overboard", Jack London - "Sailor of the first article", S. T. Grigoriev - "With a bag for death" (all - 1930); A. S. Novikov-Priboy - "Between Life and Death" (1930), "Tsushima" (1934-1935); “Stories about victories” (1932), I. Rahillo - “Wings of a Dream” (1933), L. Soboleva - “Major Repairs” (1937), “Sea Soul” (1943).

The artist participated in all major All-Union and All-Russian art exhibitions (1932-1966). In 1937, Nissky was awarded a bronze medal for the painting "Meeting" at the World Exhibition in Paris. In 1950, Nissky's first solo exhibition took place in the hall of the Moscow Association of Artists. In 1960, an exhibition of the master's gouaches took place in the exhibition hall of the Union of Artists of the USSR. In 1961, a personal exhibition of gouaches by Nissky opened in the halls of the USSR Academy of Arts. In 1963 - a personal exhibition on the sixtieth anniversary of the birth of the artist in the halls of the Academy of Arts of the USSR. In 1966, a personal exhibition of watercolors and gouaches by G. Nissky opened in Nizhny Novgorod (Gorky).

After the war, Nissky lived in the "Town of Artists" on Verkhnyaya Maslovka Street, his workshop was located next to the workshops of his friends of youth - Andrey Goncharov and Konstantin Vyalov. From his youth, Georgy Nissky devoted his free time from painting to sports - he played volleyball, professionally went in for yachting, twice won the title of Moscow champion in this sport. According to the memoirs of his contemporaries, Georgy Grigorievich had many friends and admirers of his talent. Unfortunately, he could not always refuse numerous offers to sit in a warm company, and thus became addicted to drinking. The artist had no family, for the last twenty years he was seriously ill and hardly worked, he died in a nursing home.

The work of Georgy Nyssa is a significant phenomenon in the history of Soviet art, it is characterized by optimism, clarity of feelings and thoughts, sensitivity to everything new in nature and life. The originality of Nyssa lies not in some kind of "special" artistic vision, but in the artist's ability to make his personal perception of nature accessible to everyone, artistic persuasiveness by the simplicity and completeness of his painting techniques.

Everything that the master worked on all his life is imbued with a sharp sense of modernity. He considered his main task to be the reflection in art of the spirit of the era, those moods that excite modern man. This is one of the most attractive features of the painting by the artist Nyssa.

The works of G. G. Nissky are in the largest Russian and foreign museum collections: the State Tretyakov Gallery (TG), the State Russian Museum (SRM), the Astrakhan Art Gallery of B. M. Kustodiev, the Buryat Museum of Fine Arts, the Azerbaijan Museum of Art. R. Mustafayeva, Volgograd Art Museum of Fine Arts, Voronezh Museum of Fine Arts, Voronezh Regional Museum of Local Lore, Institute of Russian Realistic Art (IRRI), Museum of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Irkutsk Regional Museum, Kabardino-Balkarian Art Museum, Kaluga Regional Art Museum, Art Gallery Yekaterinburg, Kemerovo Regional Art Museum, Kirov Regional Museum, Kursk Art Gallery, Museum of the Border Troops, Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum, Novgorod Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve, Perm Art Museum, Rostov Regional Art Museum, Ryazan Regional Museum, Sevastopol Art Gallery, Tverskaya art gallery, Tula Art Museum, Khabarovsk Far East Museum, Chuvash Republican Art Gallery, Central Museum of the Navy in St. Petersburg, Yaroslavl Art Museum, Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov, National Art Museum of Belarus, Kazakh State Art Gallery, Kiev Museum of Russian Art, Turkmen State Museum, State Museum of Kyrgyzstan, State Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan, Kaunas Art Museum, Tallinn State Art Museum, Lviv Art Gallery, Vilnius Art Museum .

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Nissky Georgy Grigorievich(January 21 (21), 1903 (19030121), Novobelitsa (Gomel) - June 18, 1987, Moscow) - Soviet artist.

Biography

Born in the family of a station doctor, at the small Novobelitsa station near Gomel. On the advice of a local artist Zorin, who saw Nyssky's drawings, he entered the Mikhail Vrubel Fine Arts Studio. In 1921 he was sent to preparatory courses at the Higher Art and Technical Workshops (Vkhutemas, 1922-1930). He moved to the department of painting in 1923, where Robert Falk and Alexander Drevin became his teachers.

He joined the Society of Easel Painters OST founded in 1925. It was during these years, under the influence of the OST style, as well as the work of Alexander Deineka, Albert Marque, that the unique pictorial style of George Nyssa was formed, the features of which are conciseness, dynamics, extraordinary lyricism and the seeming fantasticness of his landscapes. In 1930 he graduated from VKhUTEMAS, his thesis - "The Revolt of the French Sailors in Odessa".

The plots of Nissky's first known works, written in the early 1930s, are apparently inspired by memories of his childhood at the station, they are dominated by the railway theme: “Autumn. Semaphores" (1932), "On the Way" (1933), "October" (1933). However, in the second half of the 30s, the artist turns to the marine theme. Nissky painted seascapes (marinas), and in the 40s, naval battle compositions (“Maneuvers of the Black Sea Fleet”, 1937; “Sinking of Fascist Transport”, 1942; “On the Roadstead”, 1949). In addition to painting, Nissky illustrates a lot and in the illustration remains true to the marine theme: (“Tsushima” by Novikov-Priboy, “Sea Soul” by Sobolev).

In the post-war years, Nissky turned to the landscape landscape, he painted snow-covered forests, returned to the topic of railways. Stations and trains appear more and more often in his landscapes: (“Belarusian Landscape”, 1947; “Podmoskovye. February”, 1957) However, being a passionate yachtsman (Nissky owned a small trophy yacht), he still paints water expanses, but this time , the place of the sea is occupied by water bodies near Moscow.

Nissky travels a lot around the country, the impressions received by the artist on trips are vividly and vividly embodied in his canvases. For example, a painting seen from the window of a fast-moving train was reflected in the composition “In the Far East” (1963), for which the artist received a silver medal from the Academy of Arts in 1964, a triptych “Port in the North” (1956-1957).

George Nyssa is considered the founder of the so-called. harsh style. In recent years, Georgy Grigorievich was seriously ill and did not have the opportunity to engage in creativity.

He died in Moscow in 1987. He was buried at the Kuntsevo cemetery. He lived in the "town of artists" on Nizhnyaya Maslovka Street in Moscow.

Interesting Facts

When in 1934, during his visit to the USSR, the French artist Albert Marquet, who visited Moscow museums a lot, answered the question asked at the VOKS about which of the Moscow artists he liked best, and answered that he was very fond of Nissky's work “Autumn. Semaphores". After that, the artists said that Marche had a “nissian” taste.

Source: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissky,_Georgy_Grigorevich