Translated material
The main picture
The name of the artist Clement Redko (1897-1956) today is known mainly to specialists. His painting “Uprising” (GTG) is one of the most mysterious works dedicated to the October Revolution.
In the “Tretyakov Gallery” this work Redko entered directly from the collector and expert on the painting of Georgy Dionysovich Kostaka, who on the back of the picture made the inscription: “The picture of the century, the greatest work of revolutionary Russia. George Kostaki. Moscow, April 14, 77. " In accordance with this assessment in the large apartment of Kostaki, the picture of Redko always hung, so this canvas was available to the narrow circle of artists and art historians. The “simple” Soviet viewer saw an “uprising” only in 1987.
Clement Nikolaevich Redko was born in 1897 in the city of Hill (then - Lublin province) in a peasant family. He studied and worked in the workshops of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, and later studied with Alexandra Exter and Vasily Kandinsky. Clement Redko was the surroundings of artists, whose work unfolded in the interval between 1923 and 1935; Together with S. Nikritin and A. Tyshler K. Redko, he was one of the leaders of the “Productionists” group and sought to revise the foundations of fine arts themselves.
Like many of his peers, Redko worked on the design of revolutionary holidays and was in social terms quite in demand. He met Lunacharsky and, with his help, realized the cherished dream of every artist - in 1927 he went on an official business trip to Paris. There, Redko worked as an artist of the exhibition department of the USSR trade representative office, collaborated at Mond and exhibited a lot.
The “French” works of Redko show more confident skill than the author’s face, some kind of their own style. These are paintings, as if obviously focused on the "salon".
Redko returned to the Soviet Union in 1935, i.e. Already after the liquidation of all art groups. For some time he worked in TASS. The post -war fate of Redko was determined by the fact that in 1948 he was expelled from the Union of Artists as a “cosmopolitan”, which succumbed to the influence of Western culture, so that Redko earned the leadership of an amateur art studio at the agricultural academy named after K.A. Timiryazeva.
In 1987, the exhibition “Art and Revolution” was prepared in the Tretyakov Gallery on the Crimean Val, and there the “uprising” was first shown to the modern viewer.
As two decades later, the general director of the Tretyakov Gallers told Irina Lebedeva, then the picture made a stunning impression. According to her, this impression is especially enhanced in additional lighting-in particular, when photographing work, red color looks blood-red.
Redko left a large archive, including a whole array of preparatory work for this picture, which was first called the “RCP”, and then the “uprising”. From the diaries of Redko (they were, albeit with bills, were published in 1974) it can be seen that the artist began to write this picture after the death of Lenin, which was a huge personal event for Redko.
Talking about the "uprising" on the Radio "Echo of Moscow", Irina Lebedeva quoted the diary recording of Clement Redko:
“January 25, the 24th year: Lenin died, it seems that the revolution has died, so much the charm of his intense personality. The seventh year of creation, in which all joys and suffering merged with Lenin. Lenin walked and led the people to the struggle. How many times my thoughts turned to Him, the man-genius of the mind and heart, whose strength of the spirit exceeded the main division of time. <...> ” [1].
In order to perpetuate the memory of Lenin as the leader of the revolution, the artist chose aesthetics far from his “projection” searches, but, apparently, emotionally adequate to his mood and artistic skills.
Today, “uprising” is perceived by us as “self -retentioning prophecy” and horrifying.
And Clement Redko was shocked and fascinated by the "greatness of the day" - and, as we know, he is not alone ...