Chemistry Nikichs. The riddle of one picture

I entered the exhibition between it. On the 100th anniversary of the birth of Anatoly Yuryevich Nikich, a large-scale exposition was organized in the Tretyakov Gallery: “Artist Nikich. The world inside and life is outside. ” Painter, little known to the general public. He studied with Boris Johanson, survived the arrests of his parents (his father was shot in 1937), went through the war. He painted a lot and always - illustrated books, painted fabrics, wrote custom portraits. By 1960, his own artistic language was formed, Nikich’s paintings took an honorable place among the works of the sixties. Communicated among literary and artistic; She did not find people from science in a circle of communication, unless the mother worked at the Institute of Planting of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR before arrest. His work seemed to me not blond. So I would have run in passing the hall if my gaze had not stumbled upon the canvas (and he could not but stumble: the picture occupied half the wall and was absolutely not like anything else in this hall - continuous brushes, nasters, sketches, landscapes, household sketches).

The work was called "Chemistry" and was a realistic image of a chemical laboratory. The year of writing was 1964.

“Tell me,” I asked an exhibition employee, “where does this plot come from?” What and where the artist wrote? " “Yes, he came up with, he probably. His brother, however, was a chemist, but not for long, then he became a director. Well, he invented, he wrote from his brother’s memoirs, after all, Picasso placed the reproduction of Picasso, but she could not be in the laboratory. I accurately invented, according to the stories. ”

The fact that in the picture is not memories, it was obvious to me, like a chemist. Latra (laboratory vehicles), installation for high pressure synthesis, cunning appliances with distillations and drainers, wooden racks for drying dishes on a chemical sink are too precisely depicted; Yes, and still the rubber tubes have not been transferred exactly such, nasty red, color, as in the picture. Without errors, the names of the elements on the Mendeleev table are written. Well, in a bottle standing on a chemical table, there is definitely copper salt - this color can only have copper salts. He painted the picture, of course, from nature. But what served as a model? In which laboratory did the master create?

Not a brother, but the son of Anatoly Nikich was Oscar Anatolyevich Nikich-Krilichevsky. Director, screenwriter. He passed away early, in 1999, having only five years after surviving his father; He was not even sixty. I managed to create a dozen scenarios and make a couple of films. Few people will remember them today, but they were, they received awards. The first film shot by him, “Children”, was released in 1970.

And in 1964, in the very year when the painting “Chemistry” was written, the future director graduated from the chemical faculty of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov. Until the moment Oscar Nikich completely went into creative activity, he managed to work in chemistry - he was a laboratory assistant at the Institute of Chemical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, then a researcher at the Institute of High Tempenses of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

But what is still in the picture? Where is this laboratory in which the table hangs above the table, and the window opening is framed by shelves with chemical dishes?

The answer was found thanks to graduates of the chemical faculty of Moscow State University. Svetlana Kotova and Maria Brekhovsky saw that it was not a window opening to framed chemical regiments. The window is on the contrary, and the view from it is reflected in the glass of the shelves. In the extreme right corner - part of the facade that you can’t confuse with anything: the corner of the upper floor of the academic building located in Moscow on Vavilov Street. The laboratory in which the canvas was written is in its right wing. And although Oscar Nikich, according to available information, did not work there, but this, of course, is the Ineos of the Russian Academy of Sciences. A.N. Nesmeyanova.

Graduates of the chemical faculty, having carefully examined the picture, concluded that the canvas was written in the room where they were engaged in the synthesis of fluorological compounds; Perhaps this is the laboratory of academician I. L. Knunans. Yes, and Oscar Nikich himself, whose work in the chemical laboratory, probably inspired the artist, they recalled: already studying at the chemical faculty, he was actively engaged in creative amateur performances and, according to his memoirs, played at the student theater of Moscow State University.

The picture is still - until May 13 - you can see in the engineering building of the Tretyakov Gallery at an exhibition dedicated to the work of Anatoly Nikich. The canvas is the property of the VOOO “Union of Artists of Russia”.

Maria Khrushcheva,
cand. chem. Sciences, Faculty of Chemistry of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosova,
Department of Electrochemistry