In the beginning painting was

Yuri Khrzhanovsky at the Museum of Personal Collections

The case of Yuri Khrzhanovsky (1905-1987) is unique: in painting he had the opportunity to combine the Russian avant-garde, fragments of the Silver Age and the Soviet Great Style, and in life - the talents of a musician, artist and actor. A rare combination of talents forced Khrzhanovsky to constantly choose between painting and performing arts. Book and poster graphics were replaced by pop music, cinema, jazz, and then animation, in which he became famous for his voice-over work. But in the beginning there was painting, learned from truly great teachers - Malevich, Petrov-Vodkin and Filonov. It was also at the end of his life, when age forced Yuri Khrzhanovsky to move away from the cinematic and pop noise and fuss. For the first time, the Moscow Museum of Personal Collections has collected the art archive of an extraordinary master.

Entering the hall, you immediately notice the non-standard nature of the exhibition: a number of small paintings and drawings break up the huge, four-meter canvas “Siberian Partisans”, placed in the center of the MLK atrium. The exhibition is worth going to at least for this painting alone. It was miraculously preserved behind a plinth in the workshop of Boris Gurvich, a friend of Khrzhanovsky’s youth. And it was painted in 1927 for an exhibition of students of Pavel Filonov’s school (“Workshop of Analytical Art”, MAI) in the Leningrad Printing House. The hall and foyer of the former Shuvalov palace on Fontanka were then decorated with paintings on the theme “The Death of Imperialism,” and among the twenty giant canvases of the MAI association, Khrzhanovsky’s painting was recognized as one of the best. This very specific manifesto still attracts today in an unusual manner, where Filonov’s “analytical” principle is multiplied by Kustodiev’s decorativeness. Two boys in Budenovkas stopped in the middle of the village near a woman washing clothes. All around, in the snowy world, peaceful life flows: a man drags a sled with a barrel, women carry rockers with buckets, horses pull carts of firewood, a cat arches over the open door of the hut. The almost domestic existence of “glorious warriors” in the old regime looks strangely apolitical in the context of the general mood of that time to depict labor and other feats. The specific elaboration of the faces and hands of the characters, whose vessels were drawn under the “removed” skin using Pavel Filonov’s method, may have been perceived at that time as dangerously exotic. According to legend, the skinny dog ​​that looks like a dinosaur in the foreground was painted not by the author of the picture, but by Filonov himself, who was helping his students meet the deadline. Filonov had to save the painting of a student who was torn between painting classes and jazz rehearsals.

The beginning of the career of the painter Yuri Khrzhanovsky is typical for artists of his generation: in Irkutsk, where he spent his childhood, he imitated Roerich and Cezanne, in the 20s he carefully looked at his teachers and Leningrad graphic artists. Khrzhanovsky turned to the method of expressionism in themes that were especially passionate for him, requiring compassion: in the cycles “The Death of the Theater. Meyerhold", "Flowers for poets of tragic fate" and "Flowers for victims"; in works on the theme of the Great Patriotic War - “1914... 1941...”, “Old Women (Katyn)”, “Anti-Fascist Requiem”.

Perhaps the best thing at the exhibition is a series of sketches for the cartoon “Butterfly,” which was conceived and realized in 1971 by the artist’s son, a classic of Russian animation, Andrei Khrzhanovsky. Subtle color drawings with myriads of butterflies hovering around the film’s hero look even more convincing than numerous variations in the spirit of abstract expressionism.

Let us not judge harshly an artist who left the path of a professional for other arts. This is largely due to the desire to gain greater creative freedom. Khrzhanovsky participated in performances of the Leningrad Theater of Miniatures. He performed in divertissements, worked as a puppeteer and sound imitator, and tried himself as a director. He became friends with Erast Garin, starred as the Organ Grinder in his film “Marriage”, where he was also a production designer, as in Kozintsev’s “Trilogy about Maxim”. He played in the Moscow jazz ensemble and on the stage of the Hermitage Theater, and in 1939, having become a laureate of the 1st All-Russian Variety Artists Competition, he finally moved to Moscow. Working at the Theater of Miniatures and the Music Hall, he toured the whole country and performed in front-line brigades during the war. Already in the 50s, he began dubbing films: in the voice of Yuri Khrzhanovsky, White Bim Black Ear and the characters of “Kashtanka”, “Mowgli”, classic cartoons “An Extraordinary Match”, “The Gray Neck”, “Boniface’s Vacation” speak...

An acquaintance with Yuri Khrzhanovsky will be incomplete without studying the catalog published for the exhibition moving to St. Petersburg (to the Russian Museum). It is valuable for publishing the memoirs and letters of the hero himself. A lively ironic mind, the gift of a memoirist and criticism determine the style of the notes “Years of Study,” in which Yuri Khrzhanovsky pays tribute to his teachers - Malevich, Filonov, Matyushin. Talking in detail about their pedagogical methods and dispelling myths, he fascinatingly talks about the legendary exhibition of 1927 in the House of Press, about the Mayakovsky evenings held there and the performances of the theater reformer Igor Terentyev. And the book ends with the memoir section “The Blue Bus” - Andrei Khrzhanovsky’s memories of his father.

Elena TITARENKO