Translated material
I respect Russians
Yura Trofimov was a dandy in his youth. Believe me, it was not easy for him to be a dude in the late 50s in Alapaevsk. He had clingy trousers and a canary lift, and he moved around Alapaevsk on a bicycle. This caused indignation among the relevant authorities. But that's not all. Yura began to draw pictures. And not just any, but abstract ones! And at that time he worked in the blast furnace shop. And he showed all the workers these pictures of his. And he finished the game. He was summoned to the KGB and told unequivocally that if he did not stop drawing, he would be imprisoned. This was serious. Yura came home, sat down near the window, resting his cheek on his hand, and thought sadly. He was very scared. But he wanted to draw more than ever. But I really didn’t want to sit. Moreover, his father, who took Berlin, died of wounds in the early 50s, his mother was already retired, he remained the only breadwinner for her and his four sisters and brothers.
And then Yurina’s mother Anna Ivanovna Trofimova, seeing how worried he was, sighed and said: “You know what, Yurka, let me start drawing too! Let them put us together.” And she really started drawing. These were simple and very beautiful pictures.
After some time, serious artists Brusilovsky and Mosin drew attention to her. Moreover, they immediately noted the aesthetics and understanding of color. Anna Ivanovna drew every day and gave her pictures to those who liked them. One and a half thousand of her works were taken by the founder Ivan Danilovich Samoilov to the Nizhne-Sinyachikhinsky Museum. They were kept there in a chest and almost all of them became damp and died. Then, in some incomprehensible way, in the late 80s, an exhibition of Trofimova’s works was a great success... in Paris! And visitors perceived these pictures as a bright, wonderful discovery.
In 2004, Yura gave me a whole folder of wonderful pictures of Anna Ivanovna for the future museum. And Yulia artptiza and I made Trofimova’s album, which became the first in the series “Unknown Russia. Masterpieces of Naive Art.” And now Salavat salavat_fa has designed her works for me, and some of them are on display at the Museum of Naive Art ( Art Bird gallery ).