Illustrations for the stories of Evgeny Charushin. Evgeny Charushin and his unique animal world
November 11, 2016 - the 115th anniversary of the famous naturalist writer, artist Evgeny Ivanovich Charushin.
The books for children that he created during his lifetime brought joy to more than one generation of young readers and taught them to love the mysterious world of animals and birds. Evgeny Charushin is the first animal artist that kids get to know. The stories of Bianki, Prishvin, Marshak's poems with his illustrations open the world of nature to them. Several generations have grown up, getting acquainted with the animal world through Charushin's books. Funny kitten Tyupa, puppy Tomka, Mishka, who after the death of his mother "became a big bear", accompanied their childhood. The famous “Children in a Cage” by S. Marshak and E. Charushin made them forever friends with a tiger cub, striped horses, and a long-tailed kangaroo.
The images of a bear, a wolf, a lynx, a deer, and other numerous inhabitants of the forests entered our consciousness as the artist saw and painted them. How much warmth and love the artist has in his drawings! It is impossible not to recognize Charushin's hand, his books are original. “Tyupa, Tomka and Magpie”, “Nikitka and his friends”, “Bears”, “Volchishko”, “Faithful Troy”, “Cat Epifan”, “About big and small” ... Those who are preschoolers with passion have long become parents leafing through books written and illustrated by the artist. Now, with their children, adults remember their favorite pages of stories and fairy tales from childhood.
The Charushin family lived widely and very amicably. Musicians, artists gathered in the house, and the house itself was filled with unusual things brought by little Zhenya's uncle from China, Vietnam, Japan, and Sakhalin. Here is what the famous graphic artist N. Kostrov, also Vyatich, recalls: “ Zhenya grew up in a family that was a little provincial, a little old, intelligent, in a family where there were ideals, and honesty, kindness, friendship were the norm of life. My father is an artist-dreamer at heart: an honest worker, in love with his work, kind, sympathetic, an example of duty and responsibility. Mother is strict and demanding, loved animals ". For the rest of his life, the artist retained a childish attitude and childhood memory: “I am very grateful to my family for my childhood, because all the impressions of it remained for me even now the most powerful, interesting and wonderful. And if I am now an artist and a writer, it is only thanks to my childhood.”
Mother, Lyubov Alexandrovna (nee Tikhomirova), loved music and played the piano well. At family holidays, little Zhenya played the violin in a duet with his mother. She taught the child “to look and marvel at the power and beauty of nature and all its diversity and magnificence…” The spacious house where the family lived was surrounded by a garden, which was looked after by the mother. There she grew special varieties of currants and cherries with very large berries. The boy loved to go with her to the forest to collect flower seeds, dig up various plants, in order to plant them later in his garden. In the cold Vyatka, she grew tulips and hyacinths under the snow, planted potatoes in ant heaps, which grew as large as a human head. The boy took an active part in his mother's work: My mother is an amateur gardener. Digging in her garden, she did wonders... Of course, I took an active part in her work. Together with her, I went to the forest to collect flower seeds, dig up various plants in order to “domesticate” them in my garden, fed ducks and black grouse with her, and my mother, who loves all living things very much, passed on this love to me.
The parental home with a huge, overgrown garden was densely populated. “All my childhood was spent in the forest, in the garden, in the field and garden, among wild animals and domestic animals ... » How many different animals lived in their rustic two-story house! " Chickens, piglets and turkeys, which have always been a lot of trouble; goats, rabbits, pigeons, a guinea fowl with a broken wing, which we treated; my closest friend is the three-legged dog Bobka; war with cats that ate my rabbits, catching songbirds - siskins, goldfinches, waxwings, chasing pigeons ... My early childhood is connected with all this, my memories turn to this. « Here are the bright, memorable moments from my childhood - recalled Evgeny Ivanovich. - Putting the newly hatched chickens in a basket, the mother puts them on a warm Russian stove to “dry”. The chickens are swarming, squeaking, and I am lying on the stove and watching ... Bobka - a three-legged cripple dog - was my bosom friend. He was always on the stairs. Everyone stumbled and scolded him. I caressed him and often talked about my childhood griefs. We had cats, jars of fish, birds in cages. On the windows thickets of flowers - mother's favorite thing ».
« Chickens, geese, pigeons, goats always walked in the yard with us and with the neighbors. Hunters sometimes brought a shooting grouse, a squirrel. It was very interesting to feed them, to observe what they are, how they walk ... My grandmother gave me a Bear. Only I never saw this Mishka. I had a sore throat, and when I recovered and went to see, I see that Mishka's grandmother is no longer there, and my grandmother is almost crying. He is stupid, Mishka, small. He dismantled the lampshade on the lamp, began to play with the pillow and released all the feathers. And my grandmother gave it to me. I had a tame squirrel - Afonka. She built herself a nest on skis, which were suspended from the wall like a shelf. Hedgehog Borka, who had a terrible enemy - a brush. He fought with her. If you run a brush across the floor, Borka will immediately rush at her and growl and snort. Pichugi - siskins and carduelis. And forty. And the wolf is not real, but the little wolf Proshka.
In childhood, everything favored the development of unique abilities in him. The Charushins lived in a cozy quiet Vyatka, the future animalist will remember that there were a lot of game and live shooters in the bazaars. (Like his friend, the great storyteller Yuri Vasnetsov, also Vyatich, he will remember the Dymkovo toy and painted arches for the rest of his life). Charushin began to draw early. “It was just, apparently, peculiar to me, how to talk, sing, play pranks or listen to fairy tales. I remember how I listened to fairy tales with a pencil and drew during the story. Drawn by an aspiring artist "mostly animals, birds and Indians on horseback" , running to the stuffed workshop, located near the parental home, or watching your home "zoo". " The artist in me was born, after all, earlier than the writer. The right words came later." he said. His painting abilities were first noted by the famous Russian artist A. Rylov, who was visiting the family. He advised Charushin and his friend Yu. Vasnetsov to enter the Academy of Arts.
Zhenya loved to read, climbing a tall tree near the house. His favorite reading was books on animal life - Seton-Thompson, Long, Biar. One day his father gave him 7 heavy volumes of A. E. Brem's Life of Animals for his birthday. He saved them and reread them all his life: "I read it avidly, - Charushin recalled, - and no Nat Pinkertons or Nick Carters could match Brem." Impressions from nature were formed not only from the books read.
Zhenya's father often left home and always took his son with him. " I traveled a lot with my father,” Charushin wrote in his brief autobiography. - We traveled day and night, through forests and meadows, in snowstorms and autumn bad weather. And the wolves chased us, and the wood grouses were scared away from the tops of the pines. And the sunrise, and the morning fogs, and how the forest wakes up, how the birds sing, how the wheels crunch on white moss, how the runners whistle in the cold - all this I loved and experienced from childhood. ... I learned to look and marvel at the power and beauty of nature, all its diversity and splendor ". On trips, he spent a lot of time with foresters, experienced hunters, artisans. This communication enriched his memory with their jokes, fairy tales and funny stories. They incredibly diversified his work, which very accurately conveyed all the charm and beauty of folk life and language. From early childhood, he went hunting with his father, but he never shot at animals. I went hunting with the hunters. They let me carry a gun. I was interested not to shoot, but to see who lives and what he does ».
The boy grew up mischievous and cheerful. His tricks, witty and inventive, were born from indefatigable imagination, inexhaustible energy, inquisitive mind, talent. And there was never any evil or cruelty in his mischief. “Reading stories about Nikitka, we notice that Nikitka's world is strikingly similar to the world of the author himself. And, as Charushin himself once did in childhood, Nikitka gets to know this wonderful world, full of novelty and bright, joyful sensations. Once, for some misconduct, his mother put him in a corner behind a screen. As time went on, little by little the family became worried that the child had been standing in the corner for too long: there were his shoes under the screen. When the screen was removed, it turned out that Zhenya was not there. Only shoes stand... Love for nature almost led to the death of Eugene. At the age of 6, he contracted typhoid fever after he decided to eat what birds eat. Fortunately, the disease was cured: At the age of six I fell ill with typhoid fever, because one day I decided to eat everything that birds eat, and ate the most unimaginable filth ... Another time I swam across the wide river Vyatka with the herd, holding on to the tail of a cow. Since that summer, I can swim well ... "
At the age of six, the boy was sent to the Commercial School. A local artist A. Stolbov, who worked there as a drawing teacher, noticed a talented boy and said that he needed to study painting. A year later, due to the indefatigable nature, the parents were forced to transfer their son to the first male gymnasium. After the revolution, it was transformed into a secondary school. " The school where I studied was unusual. Both girls and boys studied together. At first, the guys studied in the alphabet class - they showed the letters there, went to the preparatory class - they taught to read there, and from the preparatory about - to the first class. We had modeling lessons in all classes. Take as much clay as you like and mold whatever you like. The artist Alexey Ivanovich, our beloved person, conducted modeling lessons. He did not interfere with us in anything, he helped us as best he could, although he himself never took our modeling in his hands. Kolyapo studied with me. I don't remember his last name. Maybe he was Kolya Potanin or Kolya Polunin. And we called him Kolyapo - it's easier that way. My name was also different - not by the name of Zhenya. There was a girl in our class - also Zhenya. I did not want to be called girlish and called myself Yen or An. We were all four or five years old then. Kolyapo sculpted Indians, robbers, I also sculpted robbers. But I liked to sculpt animals. I sculpt some animal and say: “Here you are, you are fat, clumsy, but you have to run fast, otherwise someone will eat you ». There was an acquaintance with Yuri Vasnetsov, which became a lifelong friendship. They were connected by Vyatka, love of art, hunting passions and hobbies.
Friends were attracted to Zhenya by simplicity and openness. At the age of fourteen, Charushin and his friends organized a union of poets and artists with the cheerful, clumsy name Sopohud (Union of Poets and Artists). At the age of 15, with members of the union, he published a magazine with the same name. For the magazine, he wrote, in his own estimation, "clumsy and heavy-handed" poetry, however “Finding the right word eventually came in handy for me ... - Evgeny Ivanovich admitted, - and these magazines are very funny, for children, but they greatly influenced my work. True, with poetry he did not work out. Drawings are another matter. And in his drawings, most often there were all the same dogs, bears and other wonderful animals.
After graduating from high school in 1918, Charushin was drafted into the Red Army. He managed to avoid being sent to the front thanks to his ability to draw. He was appointed as an assistant decorator in the cultural enlightenment of the Political Department of the headquarters of the Red Army of the Eastern Front. Returning home in 1922, having served 4 years, almost the entire civil war, he decided to study as a professional artist. In Vyatka, one could study only in the decorative workshops of the Vyatka Provincial Military Commissariat. But it was not serious, the Gubernia Military Commissariat could not give a real school of drawing. Young Charushin understood this, and in the fall of that year he left for St. Petersburg. The cherished goal of any aspiring artist is the Academy. At the entrance exams to the Academy, the famous artist K. Petrov-Vodkin gave him the highest mark in drawing. And Evgeny Charushin entered the faculty of painting at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (VKhUTEIN), where he studied for five years, from 1922 to 1927, with A. Karev, A. Savinov, M. Matyushin, A. Rylov. Charushin studied in a class led by the artist A. Karev. It was he who prompted Evgeny to try his hand at animalistics - drawing animals. He studied with such artists as Valentin Kurdov, Nikolai Kostrov, Yuri Vasnetsov, with whom he rented a room on Zverinskaya Street. There was a zoo nearby, where they ran to draw animals. The young artist liked to dress according to fashion at that time. According to the memoirs of his close friend Valentin Kurdov, Charushin then “Walked in golfs and colorful stockings, wore a fawn hat and a colorful, dog fur, short fur coat.” In 1924, taking advantage of the advice of Vitaly Bianchi, together with Nikolai Kostrov and Valentin Kurdov, he set off on an exciting journey to the Altai.
He graduated from this respected institution in 1927, describing his studies there as "the most fruitless years for me" . Evgeny seemed uninteresting in the search for something new in painting, and drawing in the academic style, in his opinion, was simply boring. He preferred this to paint pictures with animals seen in the bird market and pet stores. In parallel with his studies at the Academy of Arts, he worked in the children's magazine Murzilka, where he got a job in 1924. After graduating from the academy, there was a short-term, only for a year, conscription into the army, service near Luga in the 58th rifle regiment.
In 1926, Charushin was invited to Detgiz, which was led by O. Kapitsa and S. Marshak. There Charushin met the young writers V. Bianchi, B. Zhitkov and E. Schwartz. A creative union of writers and artists gathered around the poet S.Ya. Marshak and the remarkable draftsman V.V. Lebedev. He, a well-known artist at that time, really liked the drawings of animals by Eugene, who received all kinds of support in his person.
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| Y. Vasnetsov, V. Lebedev and E. Charushin |
In 1928, he began to collaborate with the magazines "Ezh" and "Chizh", and also designed Bianchi's story "Murzuk" by order of the Leningrad State Publishing House. These illustrations attracted the attention of book graphics professionals, and one of the drawings (with a lynx) ended up in the Tretyakov Gallery. It is not clear who alarmed the little lynx, but by the bend of the back, by the springy paws, it is noticeable that the enemy is approaching. The kid swelled his mustache menacingly, fluffed out the tip of his tail. And we are captivated by the indomitability masterfully conveyed by the artist, the life force of a small lynx that did not get scared, did not give up and is ready to fight.
They sat in the editorial office for a long time: they thought, argued, joked, recalled interesting cases. Charushin also told about the birds and animals that he happened to see in his native Vyatka forests. After listening to Charushin, Marshak said to the artist: “But you are also a writer! You must write." Charushin tried to write short stories for children about the life of animals. In 1930, " filled to the brim with childhood observations and hunting impressions, with the ardent participation and help of S.Ya. Marshak, I began to write myself ».
His first own book with words was the story "Shchur" (1930). It was distinguished not only by its vivid and accurate description of animal characters, but also by its excellent sense of humor. At the same time, the story was kindly condescending, soft and mischievous. Following the first story, others followed, which were illustrated by their author. His first books - "Free Birds", "Different Animals" - are still picture books without text. “Schur”, “Bears”, “Volchishko”, “Hedgehog” are short, with a simple plot of the story in pictures. Maxim Gorky spoke very warmly about the stories of the novice author. Creating the image of an animal, the artist was able to highlight its most characteristic features. Charushin's drawings are distinguished by freshness, the ability to look at the beast, as if for the first time in his life. Yevgeny Ivanovich could not stand poorly drawn animals. He believed that in a children's book, drawings should be alive, breathing, and did not like, arguing that he was not engaged in illustration, but in painting cold, dead contours. Before the war, Yevgeny Ivanovich created about two dozen books: "Chicks" (1930), "Volchishko and others" (1931), "Round" (1931), "Chicken City" (1931), "" Jungle "- a bird's paradise" ( 1931), "Animals of hot countries" (1935), and also continued to illustrate other authors, among them, M.M. Prishvin, A.I. Vvedensky ... Before the war, he created about two dozen books. Charushin entered children's literature with his own theme, with his special voice of storyteller and writer, with a cloudless, joyful vision of the natural world, full of sun, movement, colors, and discoveries. In addition to working in publishing houses, Yevgeny Ivanovich actively collaborated with children's magazines - Murzilka (since 1924), Hedgehog (1928-1935) and Chizhom (1930-1941); made wall prints for children, sometimes working without advances or fees.
1928 was a happy year for Charushin and was marked by a successful marriage to fellow countrywoman Natalya Arkadyevna Zonova, who studied singing in Petrograd. The atmosphere of the parental home - friendly, cordial, with a somewhat patriarchal relationship to eternal moral principles - will be preserved in the family of Yevgeny Ivanovich himself, when he begins an independent life in Leningrad and finds a wife for himself, as is often the case with talented people, a faithful and devoted assistant , and he will bring up his son and daughter in the same traditions. When the son Nikita was born, the young father only spoke about him, which is why he received the nickname "crazy dad". In the book Nikitka and His Friends, published in 1938, he made his son the protagonist of most of the stories. There are many images of Nikita. Everyone will be fine in his house, first in one room, and then in a spacious apartment on the embankment of the Fontanka River, house 9 - and a hunting dog (Charushin, like his father, was an avid hunter from childhood), and cats Pune and Tyupe, and little wolves and foxes. He brought them from the zoo, which he often visited. He created a microcosm in his house, similar to the one that surrounded him in childhood. Everyone was comfortable here. The house of Yevgeny Ivanovich was always full of birds and animals: oatmeal, tap dance, quail, parrots, cats, dogs, hares, hedgehogs, there were even a fox and a wolf cub. Peculiar residents of the Charushinsky apartment became heroes of stories and drawings for kids. The 30s are a happy, intense time in Charushin's life. Someone calculated that in ten years Charushin made 2.5 thousand images of various animals and birds. By drawing the beast, he usually created a finished work of art. It is not for nothing that his works adorn the exposition of graphics in the Russian Museum.
From the first days of the war, Charushin, like many other artists, was mobilized to work on propaganda posters. Only in 1942 he and his family were evacuated from Leningrad to their homeland, to Kirov (Vyatka). Disorganization, deprivation of the war years (they lived in the bathhouse of Yuri Vasnetsov, where Nikita painted the stove with firebirds). Charushin's wife sang in hospitals for the wounded, he worked hard ... He painted posters for the TASS Windows, painted pictures on a partisan theme, designed performances at the Kirov Drama Theater. During the years of evacuation, Charushin's bright pedagogical talent manifested itself when he taught drawing to children. In Kirov, for the first time, he creatively got acquainted with Russian folk tales about animals. In 1942, alone, without assistants, he painted about 400 square meters of the walls of the kindergarten, turning the walls of corridors and rooms into lawns, copses, populating them with heroes of fairy tales. He also painted the foyer of the house of pioneers and schoolchildren. For a long time, Evgeny Ivanovich Charushin was considered only an animal painter. But during the war, in Kirov, he painted fairy tales. These were mostly lithographs, printed on the reverse side of inferior sheets of time sheets and hand-coloured. In the drawings, the Charusha hares frolicked, this time dressed in colored skirts, a rooster rushed, harnessed to a carriage with hens and chickens, a handsome cat with a game bag and a gun went hunting, his fluffy hair was silvering, and the wolf bloodthirsty peeped at the little goats frolicking around a smart mother goat. In order to somehow brighten up the meager hungry life for children, the artist, himself at that time exhausted from constant malnutrition, made prints of drawings of fabulous animals from a lithographic stone. Then some of the drawings were included in the book "Jokes", composed by him together with his cousin poetess E. Shumskaya and published by Detgiz in 1946.
These works are in the artist's archives, which were carefully kept by his son Nikita. Among them there is a cat-hunter, standing on its hind legs, holding a gun in its front. A handsome cat with silvery fluffy fur is very similar to a natural cat, only a little bit fabulous. Books were written in the evacuation - the series "My First Zoology". In addition to working on books, he created a series of prints with images of animals. In 1945 Evgeny Ivanovich returned to Leningrad. And again he worked on books and drawings. In 1945, E. I. Charushin received the title of Honored Worker of the RSFSR.
The 50s were not easy in the life of Charushin. He avoided direct accusations of formalism, but he had to give in and adapt to the new requirements. All this was depressing. The only new book was "Big and Small" - short and playful instructions of bird and animal mothers to their children. A success in these years was the book "Why Tyup does not catch birds." Cats generally played a significant role in the artist's work. Already in one of his first books, with especially carefully executed drawings (he wrote it in 1930, since then becoming not only an illustrator, but also a storyteller), Charushin depicted the silhouette of a black cat Vasya, hunting for a raspberry squint. And in years to come, when Charushin will be very famous, he will dedicate two books to his beloved kitten Tyupa: "Tyupa, Tomka and Magpie" and "Why Tyupa does not catch birds." And then the playful kitten will turn around with might and main. The charm, the sense of smell of this creature has no limits. How much variety in his movements and postures! Here Tyupa catches birds: "... I will grab, I will catch, I will catch, I will play ...". According to these verbs alone, it is not difficult to imagine a restless kitten. The drawings themselves and their arrangement are full of movement. The fluffy clumsy figure seems to be moving through the pages of the book. Here Tyupa jumps, plays pranks, then calms down next to her mother. But here the kitten is again in a jump, he moves to another turn, and there the birds sing on a branch. And why was the kitten named Tyupa? This is because he is typing: "tup-tup-tup."
“I learned from childhood to understand the animal - to understand its movements and facial expressions. It’s even somehow strange for me now to see that some people do not understand the animal at all. ”
, said the artist. There is a tiny fluffy kitten lurking in the corner of the page. The back is arched, the tail is a pipe, the ears are upright. I just want to stroke it, run my hand along the page, along the fluffy warm skin. In order for the animals to turn out to be as furry and fluffy as in life, Evgeny Charushin used a special way of depicting - that's what it is called: the Charushin method. Sometimes Charushin used only a black pencil. But what a wealth of shades! Even a black drawing seems colorful, colored. The pencil left thin, sharp strokes, small dots, and then the animal's fur became light, silvery, shimmering. I want to stroke the animals, their fur is so warm and fluffy. It is necessary to draw with a poke with a hard semi-dry brush. Charushin was an excellent animal painter. He essentially created a new type of animalistic book for children - a short story about a small animal for young children. Charushin's secret was not only in his artistic and literary talent, but in his childish attitude, which he always kept. The world of animals was also his world, that's why his drawings were so lively, bright, talented, that's why more than one generation of young readers looked at his drawings with fascination and read his stories.
Sometimes it seems that drawing animals for Charushin is not hard work, but simply an integral part of his essence, like the ability to sing or breathe. However, behind every drawing in the book is a vast experience in observing wildlife and tireless work. Charushin paid great attention to natural sketches, observations, and a deep acquaintance with the text. Sometimes it took several weeks before the form of the whole book was found. He even admitted that illustrating other people's texts is easier for him than his own - then there are fewer disputes between the writer Charushin and Charushin the artist. Working at Detizdat, he illustrated more than 100 children's books - works by K.I. Chukovsky, M.M. Prishvina, G.Ya. Snegirev - writers-hunters, connoisseurs of the forest, passionate nature lovers. And approach, as before, close
It is now banned...
Nikita Evgenievich recalled how, as a child, he fantasized with his father, dreaming of visiting India and Africa in order to get to know tropical animals better. But such a journey did not happen: in the last years of his life, a leg disease deprived Yevgeny Ivanovich of the opportunity to move. Seriously ill, he did not stop working: a week before his death he completed illustrations for the book by S.Ya. Marshak "Children in a Cage". The seriously ill Charushin died on February 18, 1965, he was only 64 years old. He was buried at the Theological Cemetery. A few days later he was awarded a gold medal at the International Book Fair in Leipzig for new illustrations for S.Ya.Marshak's poems "Children in a Cage". It was a European recognition of a Russian artist.
His son Nikita also became an artist. A strong draftsman, a connoisseur of the natural world, he still did not surpass his father. In 2000, Nikita Evgenievich Charushin was awarded the title of People's Artist of Russia. His daughter, Yevgeny Ivanovich's granddaughter, Natalya Nikitichna Charushina, also became an artist. She studied a lot, brilliantly graduated from the Academy of Arts with a wonderful thesis "Niels' Journey with Wild Geese", published the first, very well-made book "On All Four Paws" and also illustrates books. The youngest representative of the dynasty, Zhenya Charushina-Kapusta, is also an artist. In this dynasty, several generations follow the difficult and beautiful path of art.
E.I. Charushin wrote about 50 books for children, mainly from the life of animals. Cycles of illustrations for seventy books, thirty of them for his own stories, were created over three decades of active creativity. Charushin's works have been translated into many languages of the world. His illustrations, prints, porcelain sculpture, books were exhibited at international exhibitions in Sofia, London, Paris. Charushin's books are still interesting and attractive. Their total circulation exceeds sixty million copies. They are widely republished, translated into foreign languages and read not only in our country, but also in France, Africa, Japan, England, Italy, Germany, USA, India, Bulgaria and other countries. " All my love for animals, birds, for my native nature turned out to be very, very necessary. There is no more happiness, for the artist and for the writer, than, creating your favorite images, experiencing them and knowing at the same time that this is a matter that all the guys need. ».
Charushinsky stories - funny and sad, heroic, funny, instructive, amazing - awaken the first deep feelings in children: attention, participation, tenderness, affection, care for the weak. They can broaden the horizons of the child, enrich his spiritual experience, instill a sense of responsibility for a living being. They will teach to observe animals, to be tolerant of them, to take care of them. Books by E.I. Charushin help to develop ecological consciousness, understand, protect and appreciate native nature. In the stories of the writer, the child is given an idea of the richness of species of birds and animals. Understanding that it is in childhood that the foundation of a person’s worldview is laid, Charushin wrote: “My task is to give the child an extremely integral artistic image, to enrich the artistic perception of the child, to open to him new picturesque sensations of the world…” With this creative task, the artist coped brilliantly.
Why is his art so modern today, on the eve of the Year of Ecology? Is it not because it expresses good-heartedness, compassion for our smaller brothers? Nature conservation has become one of the most acute problems of our time. We are talking about a new ethics, the concept of good and evil in relation to nature. But it cannot exist without the ecological alphabet. And any alphabet begins with the basics and enters the consciousness in the very first years of a person's life. And the first conductor of such knowledge, ideas are books seen and read in childhood. The books of Yevgeny Charushin have yet to be among them for a long time. He always addresses his young reader with this appeal: Looked at the pictures? Have you read this book? Did you find out how animals and birds teach their children to get food, to save themselves? And you are a man - the owner of all nature, you need to know everything. Enter the world of nature! Enter attentive and inquisitive, kind and courageous. Learn more, learn more. For this we exist, so that you grow up skillful and kind, so that all nature turns into a great Motherland for you.
But the Motherland is the smell of pine and spruce, and the aroma of the fields, and the creaking of snow under the skis, and the blue frosty sky ... And if all this cannot be expressed in the words of a writer, an artist’s brush comes to the rescue
". Charushin combined two skills, two talents - a storyteller and a draftsman. And both of them were given to children. Now many children's books with colorful, gaudy drawings are being published. But how different are the animals on them from the Charushinsky ones! Instill in children good taste and the right idea about animals. Passing by the shelves of a bookstore, be sure to give your child the joy of first discoveries along with the magical world of Charushin!
Creativity Evgeny Charushin, humane, kind, pleases several generations of young readers, teaches children to love the magical world of birds and animals.
Charushin Evgeny Ivanovich, whose biography is presented in this article, is a graphic artist and writer. The years of his life - 1901-1965. On October 29, 1901 Evgeny Charushin was born in Vyatka. His photo is presented below.
Evgeny Ivanovich's father, Charushin Ivan Apollonovich, is a provincial architect, one of the best architects in the Urals. More than 300 buildings in Izhevsk, Sarapul, Vyatka were built according to his designs. Like any architect, he was a good draftsman. The family of Ivan Apollonovich lived very amicably. Artists and musicians often gathered in the house. Parents from childhood instilled in their son
Favorite book Charushin
Yevgeny's favorite reading material was books about our little brothers. "The Life of Animals" by A.E. Brem was for him the most dear and beloved. He cherished it and read it all his life. The fact that the novice artist depicted more and more birds and animals has a significant share of Brem's influence. Charushin began to draw early. The novice artist went to the stuffed workshop, which was located nearby, or watched the animals at home.
"Sopohud"
At the age of 14, he and his comrades organized the Union of Artists and Poets "Sopokhud". From a young age, Eugene wanted to capture what he saw in order to preserve the rapidly changing world. And drawing came to the rescue. Yevgeny Ivanovich said that the artist was born in it earlier than the writer. Somewhat later came the right words.
Work in the Political Department of the headquarters, study at the Academy of Arts
In 1918, Evgeny Charushin graduated from high school in Vyatka. He studied in it together with Then Yevgeny Ivanovich was drafted into the army. Here they decided to use him "according to his specialty" - they appointed him as an assistant decorator in the Political Department of the headquarters. After serving 4 years, almost the entire civil war, Yevgeny Ivanovich returned home only in 1922.
He decided to study to be an artist. In winter, he studied at the workshops of the Vyatka Gubernia Military Commissariat, and in the same year, in the fall, he entered the VKHUTEIN (Petrograd Academy of Arts), the painting department. Evgeny Charushin studied here for five years, from 1922 to 1927. His teachers were A. Karaev, M. Matyushin, A. Savinov, A. Rylov. However, as Yevgeny Ivanovich later recalled, these were the most fruitless years for him. Charushin was not interested in the search for a new word in painting, as well as academic drawing. It was much more pleasant to go to the bird market or the zoo. The young artist at that time liked to dress in fashion. According to the memoirs of Valentin Kurdov, his close friend, he walked in colorful stockings and stockings, and wore a short, colorful coat of dog fur.
Travel, work in the Leningrad Gosizdat
Taking advantage of the advice of V. Bianchi, in 1924 Evgeny Charushin went to Altai on an exciting journey together with Valentin Kurdov and Nikolai Kostrov.
In 1926, Charushin went to work at the Leningrad State Publishing House, in the children's department, which was headed by the famous artist. In those years, the artists were tasked with creating fundamentally new books for the little inhabitants of the Soviet Union, highly artistic, but at the same time informative and informative. Lebedev liked the drawn animals of Charushin, and he began to support him in every possible way in his creative searches.
Collaboration in magazines, first illustrations for books
Evgeny Ivanovich by that time (since 1924) had already worked in Murzilka, a children's magazine. A little later, he began working at "Hedgehog" (from 1928 to 1935) and "Chizh" (from 1930 to 1941). In 1928, Evgeny Charushin received his first order from the Leningrad State Publishing House - to issue the story "Murzuk" by V.V. Bianchi. The very first book with his drawings attracted the attention of both young readers and connoisseurs of book graphics. An illustration from it was acquired by the State Tretyakov Gallery itself.
Charushin illustrated several more books in 1929: Free Birds, Wild Beasts, How a Bear Became a Big Bear. In these works, Evgeny Charushin's outstanding skill in conveying the habits of animals was fully manifested. An orphaned little bear sitting on a branch; a ruffled crow about to peck at a bone; wild boars wandering with babies... All this and much more is drawn expressively, brightly, but at the same time capaciously and concisely. The artist, creating the image of an animal, was able to highlight the most important, characteristic features.
The first stories of Evgeny Charushin
Many illustrations were made by Charushin Evgeny Ivanovich. The works of Bianchi, as well as S. Ya. Marshak, M. M. Prishvin and other famous writers with his drawings, attracted many readers. At the same time, at the insistence of Marshak, he tried to compose short children's stories about the life of animals. His first story appeared in 1930 ("Schur"). Already in this work, not only an excellent knowledge of the characters of various animals was manifested, but also a sense of humor. In all the other stories of Yevgeny Ivanovich, one can also feel a mischievous, then soft, then a little ironic, then a kindly condescending smile. Charushin Evgeny Ivanovich is an illustrator and writer who sought to understand animals, their facial expressions and movements. The accumulated experience helped him convey this in words and illustrations. There is no fiction in what Evgeny Ivanovich created - animals always do what is characteristic of them.
New books by Charushin and illustrations for them
Charushin Evgeny Ivanovich, whose paintings were very famous at that time, began to illustrate his own compositions: "Different Animals" (1930), "Volchishko and Others", "Nikitka and His Friends", "About Tomka", "About large and small", "My first zoology", "Vaska", "Cubs", "About the magpie", etc. However, this turned out to be the most difficult, since, by his own admission, Evgeny Ivanovich, it was much easier for him to illustrate other people's texts than own. In the 1930s, Charushin was recognized as one of the best artists specializing in children's books. At that time, its design had already developed into a separate direction in art. M. Gorky spoke very warmly about Charushin's stories. Working in the technique of color or monochrome watercolor drawing, Evgeny Ivanovich recreated the whole landscape environment with one light dynamic spot. His stories about animals are elegant and lexically simple.
More about the work of Charushin
Charushin treated his readers with great respect. He was glad that the animals he painted were liked not by editors and critics, but by kids. Considering Charushin's books, we can safely say that both the illustrations and the texts themselves reflect the whole, unified inner world of their creator. Drawings and stories are informative, concise, strict and understandable to anyone, even a small child. In the collection "Chicks" (1930), consisting of short stories about owlets, corostels, and grouse, Evgeny Charushin skillfully highlights the most catchy and memorable features of the characters.
Charushin knew the habits of animals very well. In the illustrations, he depicted them with extraordinary specificity and accuracy. Each of his drawings is individual, in each of them the character is depicted with his own special character, which corresponds to a particular situation. Charushin responsibly solved this problem. He said that if there is no image, there is nothing to depict. Charushinsky animals are emotional, touching. Background and environment are barely hinted at in his early books. The main thing is to show the animal in close-up, while not only creating an artistic image, but also depicting the hero as truthfully as possible. Yevgeny Ivanovich did not like animals that were poorly drawn from the point of view of biology. He also believed that drawings in a children's book should be breathing, alive. Evgeny Charushin did not like Ivan Bilibin, believing that he was not engaged in drawing, but in painting dead, cold contours.
From the many textures, the picturesque images of Charushin's animals are formed, which skillfully convey the fur of the beast, the feathers of the bird. It was most convenient to create picturesque in texture, complex drawings precisely in the technique of lithography. Most often, the artist used natural pastel colors. He did not recognize lithographic rules and laws, temperamentally drawing a pencil, scratching a lithographic stone with a razor and a needle. Many times Yevgeny Ivanovich could glue the missing parts in the drawing or cover them with whitewash.
Evgeny Charushin created about 20 books before the war. His biography was marked by the appearance of the following works: 1930 - "Chicks"; in 1931 - "Volchishko and others", "Chicken city", "Round", "Jungle - bird's paradise"; in 1935 - At the same time, he continued to illustrate such authors as S. Ya. Marshak, V. V. Bianki, M. M. Prishvin, A. I. Vvedensky.
War years
Charushin during the war was evacuated from Leningrad to Kirov (Vyatka), to his homeland. Here he created paintings on partisan themes, painted posters, designed performances, painted the walls of the kindergarten and the foyer of the House of Schoolchildren and Pioneers, and taught children to draw.
Charushin Evgeny Ivanovich: a brief biography of the post-war years
The artist returned to Leningrad in 1945. In addition to working on books, he began to create a series of prints, which depict animals. Charushin became interested in sculpture even before the war. He painted tea sets, and then, already in peacetime, he created animal figures from porcelain and even entire decorative groups. He tried a different approach to the design of children's books. Perspective began to appear in Charushin's drawings, space began to be designated. The technique also changed: he began to work with watercolors and gouache, but not with broad strokes, but working very carefully on small details. In 1945, Charushin became an Honored Artist of the RSFSR.
The last book he illustrated was "Children in a Cage" by Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak. Charushin's works have now been translated into many languages of the peoples of the former USSR, as well as a number of foreign countries. His prints, illustrations, books, porcelain sculpture were exhibited at exhibitions in Paris, London, Sofia. The total circulation of Evgeny Charushin's books exceeds 60 million copies.
On February 18, 1965, Yevgeny Charushin died in Leningrad. He was buried at the Bogoslovsky cemetery.
"... The artist in me was born, after all, earlier than the writer. The necessary words came later."
"I want to understand the animal, convey its habit, the nature of the movement. I'm interested in his fur. When a child wants to feel my little animal, I am glad. All this must be observed and felt."
Russian artist, writer, sculptor.
Born in 1901 in the Urals, in Vyatka in the family provincial architect Ivan Apollonovich Charushin. From a young age, Eugene wanted to preserve such a rapidly changing world, to capture what he saw.Drawn by an aspiring artist in his own words" mostly animals, birds, and Indians on horseback". Little Zhenya Charushin's favorite reading was books about the life of animals. Seton-Thompson, Long, Biar - these are his favorite authors.
After graduating from high school in 1918, where he studied with Yuri Vasnetsov, Charushin was drafted into the Red Army. After serving 4 years, almost the entire civil war, he returned home and decided to study as a professional artist. Evgeny Charushin entered the faculty of painting at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (VKHUTEIN), where he studied for five years, from 1922 to 1927, with A. Karev, A. Savinov, M. Matyushin, A. Rylov.
The first book illustrated by Yevgeny Ivanovich was V. Bianchi's story "Murzuk". It attracted the attention of not only young readers, but also connoisseurs of book graphics, and the drawing from it was acquired by the State Tretyakov Gallery.
For three decades of active creativity, Evgeny Charushin created cycles of illustrations for almost a hundred books, thirty of them for his own stories. All stories and drawings by Yevgeny Charushin about the life of animals are imbued with subtle humor, humanism and sincere love for nature. His amazing work pleases and fascinates with its kindness more than one generation of young readers, teaches them to love the world of animals and birds.
The works of Yevgeny Ivanovich Charushin have been translated into various foreign languages, and his drawings have been exhibited in many countries. Including visited London, Paris, Copenhagen, Athens, Beijing and other cities of the world. The total circulation of the writer's books exceeds 60 million copies.
Books with illustrations by the artist
The article tells about the biography of Charushin E.I., a children's writer who writes about the world of animals. The main works, the activity of the creator as an artist in the genre of "animalism", the features of the transfer of the habits of animals by word and brush are considered.
Charushin's biography is filled with funny moments. Perhaps it was the events that took place as the future writer matured that determined the further path of his work.
He was talented not only in writing, but also in graphics - Charushin acted as an illustrator for many children's books.
Charushin Evgeny Ivanovich - animal painter and children's writer
Eugene's father, a well-known architect of that time, passed on to his young offspring a love of art, a great interest in depicting the world through drawing, and outstanding abilities that determined the formation of his son as an artist depicting animals.
Illustration by E.I. Charushin to the story by V. Bianchi "The First Hunt"
Evgeny Ivanovich illustrated Bianchi's stories, worked a lot on other books, created portraits of animals for children.
As a children's writer, Eugene has tried his hand at creating many works, such as fairy tales and stories about animals. The peculiarity of his creations was extraordinary dynamism, the transfer of action by verbs (in the story "Foxes"), an accurate reading of the habits of the inhabitants who inhabited the animal world.
Subsequently, the writer moved away from simple sentences, but in his texts one can find a lot of onomatopoeia by animals, which makes them inimitable for the perception of a child.
Brief biography of children's book illustrator
Years of life: 1901.11.11 - 1965.02.18.
The children's writer was born in 1901, on October 29th (old style), in the city of Vyatka. His birthday was marked by the arrival of a talented person in the world around him.
Parents of E.I. Charushin
His father was a famous architect, and a creative atmosphere reigned in the family, which favorably affected the growing boy. Not far from the family lived the Vasnetsov family, with whose son, a famous artist in the future, Yevgeny was friends throughout his life.
In 1918, Charushin graduated from high school and went to serve in the Red Army. After four years from that date, in 1922, he returned to his native city.
In the same year he entered the faculty of painting at the Art Academy of Petrograd, where he learned the basics of drawing for five years. In 1927, Evgeny Ivanovich completed his education at an educational institution and began working at the State Publishing House, at the Children's Department.
Thanks to V. V. Lebedev, who greatly influenced the young man, he began to actively work on his own style and illustrate many books by famous Soviet authors. In addition to strangers, he worked on his own, using his talent to depict the life of animals.
In 1930, Yevgeny Ivanovich began working in literature for children as a writer. He created almost two dozen books, earning praise from M. Gorky with his talent.
In 1941, in connection with the outbreak of war, he was evacuated from St. Petersburg to Kirov. Here he began to draw patriotic posters, paint pictures, design performances in the Kirov Drama Theater. Four years later, he returned to the Leningrad region. He was engaged in graphics, sculpture, animalistics, created prints.
In February 1965 he died. It happened on the 18th.
Evgeny Ivanovich's parents
- Father - Ivan Apollonovich, chief provincial architect, who created more than three hundred buildings in different cities.
- Mother - Lyubov Alekseevna, amateur gardener.
Childhood
Thanks to his father, Eugene loved drawing since childhood. Ivan Apollonovich instilled in his son a love for artistic creativity, which predetermined the life path of the young talent.
In addition to the priest, an important role in the development of Charushin as an artist was played by his friend Vasnetsov, who was a frequent guest in their house.
With his mother, Zhenya went to the forest a lot, observing the nature of his native land. This gave birth to a love for the living world in him. The boy read a lot about nature, he especially liked books about animals.
Having become older, the boy began to actively work on transferring wildlife to a paper sheet, making drawings of animals with a brush.
Education and upbringing
In addition to self-education with the help of books, Yevgeny Ivanovich's parents played an important role in this action, thanks to which the little boy understood his preferences. His mother instilled a love for nature, his father - for painting.
However, in addition to family education and self-education, Charushin studied a lot in the direction he was interested in.
In the army, he actively worked on the creation of hand-drawn images, after which he entered the St. Petersburg Academy in the art direction in 1922, where, in addition to education in his profile, he actively attended classes with another teacher.
The training lasted five years, after which (1927) Evgeny Ivanovich graduated as a certified specialist.
The first book with illustrations by Charushin
The first work of Evgeny Ivanovich, as an illustrator, was the design activity based on the story of V. Bianchi "Murzuk".
Having come to work in the Children's Department of the State Publishing House, the young artist showed his drawings to V. V. Lebedev, who noted their extraordinary liveliness, as a result of which he recommended his paintings to Bianchi. In addition to Vitaly, the young man created illustrations for the works of S. Ya. Marshak and M. M. Prishvin.
First stories
With the suggestion of S. Marshak, the young man tried to write his own stories, where he told young children in detail about the life of animals.
Before the start of the war, he created at least 20 books, among which were Volchishko and Others, Chicks, Chicken City, Animals of Hot Countries, etc.
After the war, returning to Petrograd, he actively continued to work with children's prose.
Famous works of Charushin
The following can be distinguished:
- “How the Boy Zhenya Learned to Speak” (from the cycle “About Zhenya”);
- "About Tomka";
- "Yasha";
- "Who lives like";
- "Bears";
- "Schur";
- "Oleshki";
- "Wolf";
- "Travelers".
The heroes of Evgeny Ivanovich are often children who interact with animals. Often representatives of the animal world have qualities that delight the writer. For example, the raven in the story "Yasha".
The last years of life and death of the writer
He managed to create many illustrations for books in the post-war years, and also changed his drawing technique. His pictures gained perspective, space was designated.
Also, Evgeny Ivanovich begins to paint with gouache and watercolor, working through small details.
However, Charushin has been very ill lately. At the age of 64, he died. This happened in 1965, on February 18, in the city of St. Petersburg. The last refuge of a talented person was the Theological Cemetery.
The desire to know the world of animal fauna was so great that the future writer often found himself in funny situations as a child.
Here are some of them:
- One day, he decided to understand how birds feel when eating a specialized food, and ate it from their feeder. As a result of this action, the boy fell ill with typhoid fever.
- Several times Yevgeny's fellow countrymen saw him swimming across the river along with the cows that were fording it.
- The writer's surname goes back to the name of pastries "Charusha".
Conclusion
Yevgeny Ivanovich was a very talented person, whose life and work made a huge contribution to the development of children's prose. An analysis of the works under his authorship reveals a great love for young readers, the natural world and the animals that inhabit it.
Biography
Evgeny Ivanovich Charushin(1901-1965) - Soviet graphic artist and illustrator, sculptor and writer.
Born in Vyatka, in the family of an architect; I have been drawing a lot since childhood. After graduating from school, he was drafted into the Red Army, where he worked as an assistant decorator at the headquarters of the Eastern Front Army. In 1922 he returned home, studied for some time in the decorative workshops of the Vyatka provincial military registration and enlistment office, then moved to St. Petersburg. There he graduated from the painting faculty of VKhUTEIN, in parallel with his studies he attended the Workshop of Spatial Realism by M.V. Matyushin.
From 1927, Yevgeny Charushin began working with the Children's Department of the State Publishing House, where at that time the children's book reformer was the art editor. The first book illustrated by Charushin was Murzuk. Under the influence of Lebedev, Charushin soon developed his own recognizable style, in which he designed numerous children's works - both by other authors, and his own short stories about animals and nature, including “What kind of animal?”, “A terrible story”, “Amazing postman ”,“ Yasha ”,“ Faithful Troy ”,“ Epifan the Cat ”,“ Friends ”, a series of stories about Tyupa and about Tomka.
With the outbreak of war, Charushin evacuated to his hometown of Vyatka, painted posters for the TASS Windows, painted partisan-themed paintings, and designed performances at the local drama theater. In 1945 he returned to Leningrad, where he continued to work with children's books. He also made prints, worked with porcelain sculpture, sculpture, and created paintings for porcelain dishes.
The last book designed by the artist was the book "Children in a Cage".
What made a big impression on me as a child still excites me now. I want to understand the animal, convey its habit, the nature of the movement. I'm interested in his fur. When a child wants to stroke my little animal, I am glad. I want to convey the mood of the animal, fear, joy, sleep, etc. All this must be observed and experienced. Most of all, I like to depict young animals, touching in their helplessness and interesting, because they already have an adult animal in them.
I am very grateful to my family for my childhood, because all the impressions of it remained for me even now the most powerful, interesting and wonderful. And if I am now an artist and writer, it is only thanks to my childhood.
My task is to give the child an extremely integral artistic image, to enrich the artistic perception of the child, to open to him new picturesque sensations of the world ...
Children's consciousness is overflowing with images that are born in it continuously. The task of the leader is to push these images, to help them imprint on paper, and for this you do not need to be an artist at all. The joy of creativity shared with the child, the joy of his discoveries in drawing, in creating an image, supports the child in the process of work, gives him self-confidence.
“Both, and were very good animal painters, but Charushin created his own, unlike any other images of birds and animals. No one has felt the soft fluffy texture of the animal, the plasticity of its movement, and, of course, rarely has anyone been able to draw a bear cub, a wolf cub, a chick so cool. With their touching defenselessness, there is no conventionality, sweetness, no lisping with children. The artist respects his little viewer.
At the heart of Charushin's creative method lies a close study of nature, continuous work with nature, a highly professional attitude to the plane of the sheet, on which the image is a living, expressive spot, and, most importantly, incredible demands on oneself. A hunter who knew every bird in the forest, every blade of grass, who observed the heroes of his drawings in the wild, he, moreover, constantly and a lot of drawing in the zoo.
His apartment was inhabited by dozens of birds and a wide variety of animals, domestic and wild. They were models, and, probably, no one, after Chinese and Japanese artists, could so gracefully, with two or three touches, depict a ruffled crow or a puppy with its uncertain movements of thick paws.
(c) V. Traugot "The Magical World of the Charushins"
“Poetic vigilance is the real talisman of Charushin, the magic lamp of Aladin.
In the light of it, everything that Charushin writes about - animals, birds, trees - everything becomes so amazing and extraordinary, as it happens only when, in childhood, when human eyes see the world for the first time.
And it was this initial visual acuity, this inspired, wary attention that Charushin managed to preserve.
If he did not have this remarkable property, any of his stories, perhaps, could simply melt in the hands of the reader - so fragile, so weightless is its plot core.
But under the light of Aladin's lamp, the simplest story can turn into a wonderful one.
Charushin does not tend to be a reteller of someone else's material. In creating popular science stories, any conscientious popularizer who is far from the real Charushin, as from earth to heaven, can successfully compete with him.
And what does Evgeny Charushin need these fur coats from someone else's shoulder? His talent is to see with his own eyes, to speak with his own language.
And his language is almost always obedient to him, expressive and precise. It was not for nothing that he began his writing path with captions for pictures, that is, with such a literary form in which the word should go side by side with the drawing, not at all inferior to it in realism and concreteness.
Yevgeny Charushin developed his own language, economical and lively, capable of appealing to the reader's imagination with every word.
Moreover, he also created some kind of his own literary genre, fully corresponding to the characteristics of [his] talent.
The genre does not yet have a name. Charushin's creations are sometimes called stories, sometimes essays, sometimes detailed captions for drawings, sometimes notes from the artist's diary.
And all this is partly true. But it would be more correct [of all] to call them "lyrical portraits", if only such a loud name befits portraits of a parrot, deer, lynxes and cubs.
(c) Tamara Gabbe "Eugene Charushin" (Literary newspaper, No. 5, 1940)
Buy books with illustrations by Evgeny Charushin
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Name First hunt
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Name In our yard
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Name hedgehog running along the path
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Name Vorobishko
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Name chatty magpie
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Name Bear - fisherman
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Name Big and small
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Name Children in a cage
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Name bear hunting
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Name How did the little bear scare himself?
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Name Who lives like
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Name Who knows what
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Name Teddy bear - big bear
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Name Bear - Baska
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Name Children in a cage
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Name About Tomka
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Name Friends
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Name Vaska, Bobka and Rabbit
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conversations
Charushin brought his own into the fairy tale - a deep understanding and feeling of the psychology of animals and the ability to convey it as sharply as, perhaps, no one but him could. Therefore, he comparatively rarely, only where there is absolutely no way around it, resorts to methods of direct humanization of animals: he puts them on their hind legs, dresses them in human costumes, etc. He prefers to exaggerate the real manifestations of animal psychology - in plasticity, pose , movement, in the look at last. The tactful fusion of facial expressions and movement of an animal with the facial expressions and movement of a person - a merger that gives the right to the similarity of the muzzle and face, the body of an animal and a human body - allows his fairy-tale heroes to exist, as it were, between his own completely real heroes of stories and stories and such completely fantastic , like, say, Yuri Vasnetsov. What silent dialogues he sometimes arranges - a Bear with a Wolf, a Cat with a Fox, a Dog with a Wolf. These are dialogues of expressive looks and poses, expressive in themselves, without humanizing gestures. And with what a fearful, intensely painful expression, the Wolf, leaning out of the tower, looks at the approaching Bear: everything, the end - will now crush.
T. Gabbe "Eugene Charushin"
There are not so few books intended for young children in the world. Usually these are fairy tales, short but rather instructive storytellers, pictures with captions and poems with pictures. Growing up, a person firmly forgets these books, and only a few of his first fairy tales and poems forever remain fairy tales and poems for him. Nothing can be done about it - all sorts of verbal needlework, temporarily fulfilling the position of poems, stories and fairy tales, die off very quickly. As soon as they play their modest role - they explain to the child why and why it snows, they provide him with a dozen new words - and the end of it. They live for a long time, only real poems, fairy tales and stories are remembered for a long time, things with a self-sufficing artistic conception, with their own poetic task. But these books are rarely produced. Not every writer, even a talented one, manages to combine the specific requirements of his little readers with the requirements of art common to all literature. Therefore, the characters of such writers, their makeup, their appearance seem to us especially interesting. After all, it is their books that fall into the hands of children before all others; they are the first to introduce literature into human life. Evgeny Charushin, artist and writer, belongs to this happy category. Almost all of his books - and he wrote about twenty books - are addressed to the youngest readers, to those who would more correctly be called listeners and spectators. The area in which he works is the most "childish".
Charushin writes mainly about animals. And books about animals, as you know, are of interest mainly to children and scientists. The average adult doesn't read about animals. However, if an adult opens the book of Evg. Charushin in order to read to his five-year-old son one of his stories, large printed on five, three or even two pages, then in the evening he will open this children's book again and once again read a short story about cubs, about a forest kitten or about rooster and about black grouse. He will read for himself and somehow smile especially well and remember something very sweet, old, which, perhaps, he never remembered. As if Charushin has the key to our most fragile and subtle memories, deeply hidden and very expensive.
But this does not mean at all that the books of Evg. Charushin, written by him for children, is liked only by adults and not liked by children. No, children really like them, no less than adults, and maybe even more. Evgeny Charushin managed to win a double victory. And in the annals of literature, and especially children's literature, this is worth noting, because there are not so many such victories on two fronts at all, and usually only wonderful books get them. What is remarkable about Charushin's little stories, these simple, uncomplicated stories that are sometimes even difficult to retell - they seem so elusive in their naive simplicity?
They do not contain any particular abundance of natural scientific information, as, say, in the books of V. Bianchi; there is none of that solid entertainment of a story-driven children's story, with the help of which O. Perovskaya wins her little readers, but, obviously, there is something more in them. Let's turn one of Charushin's books at random. It's called Seven Stories. Let's look at the first of them. It talks about how a hunter, somewhere in the wilderness, in a secluded forest clearing, noticed a kitten. The kitten plays alone in the grass, and the hunter looks at him from behind the bushes. He looks, looks, and suddenly, in horror, he rushes to run at breakneck speed. After all, this forest cub is a small lynx! As soon as he gives a voice, the mother lynx will come to the rescue, and then the hunter will be unhappy. This is the outline of this story, and here is the story itself:
“A brook flows in the meadow. And the grass all around is thick, multi-colored, multi-colored from flowers. Here the bees are working, and the bumblebee is buzzing. And at the pine tree, at the three-year-old, which is knee-deep in height, pushers push, mosquitoes. The whole bunch in one place bounce. And the clearing is small, like a small room, five paces wide, ten long. The wall around the currant grows, in the currant rowan, under the rowan - raspberries. And then a real forest surrounded the clearing. Spruce forest. Small, small kitten walks, big-headed kitten. The tail is short, not a tail, but a tail. The muzzle is bug-eyed, the eyes are stupid. And he is half a cat tall. The kitten is playing. He grabbed a long straw in his mouth, and he fell on his back and kicked the straw up with his hind legs. His hind legs are long, much longer than the front ones, and the feet at the feet are thick, with pads. Tired of the strawberry kitten. He chased a fly, then hit the flower with his paw. He grabbed a flower, chewed it and spat it out, shaking his head - apparently, a bitter flower hit. He spat, snorted, sat like that for a while, calmly, and suddenly noticed a cloud of pushers-mosquitoes. He crawled up to them, jumped and spread his front paws apart, apparently, he wanted to catch all the mosquitoes in an armful. I haven't caught one…"
And so on - more and more details up to an unexpected dramatic denouement, until the second when the hunter rushes to run away from the kitten, suddenly realizing that somewhere very close, behind the flowering bushes, death lies in wait for him. But the best thing in the story, the most poetic, warm, lively, is by no means in the denouement. Its center, its content, its task is the lynx itself, a large-headed, hilariously serious furry child in a forest clearing. It seems that none of his movements escaped the greedy, curious and enthusiastic eyes of the author. About him - and only about him - the whole story is written. And what was the story "Bears" from the book "Volchishko and Others" about, about what - "Bird's Lake" - from the book "Seven Stories"? Only about the cubs, only about the birds living in the zoo. After all, in essence, in these stories nothing happens at all, nothing happens. But the reader does not even think of demanding incidents or incidents from them. A newborn duckling, which, it seems, can still be stuffed back into an eggshell, a pop-eyed oleshek peeping out of its cage into the zoo, crucian carp frozen into a transparent piece of ice, and even ordinary moss, which “cracks underfoot like fire during the day”, and in the morning dew "it only hoots and blows bubbles" - all this in Charushin's stories in itself acquires the meaning of real events, all this for him is not decorating details, but the very essence of the action. And this action completely captures the reader, keeps him on the rise of a lively dramatic interest.
This ability to enliven the world, enrich it with events is the most essential quality of Charushin, and it is based on his extraordinary ability to see, on happy poetic vigilance. Poetic vigilance is the real talisman of Charushin, Aladin's magic lamp. In the light of it, everything that Charushin writes about - animals, birds, trees - everything becomes so amazing and extraordinary, as it happens only when, in childhood, when human eyes see the world for the first time. And it was this initial visual acuity, this inspired, wary attention that Charushin managed to preserve. If he did not have this remarkable property, any of his stories, perhaps, could simply melt in the hands of the reader - so fragile, so weightless is its plot core. But under the light of Aladin's lamp, the simplest story can turn into a wonderful one. Let's take another story by Charushin. It's called "The Rooster and the Black Grouse". This is one of his best stories, but its plot, as in all other Charushin things, is more than primitive. In early spring, the boy goes hunting. After spending the night in the forester's hut, at dawn he goes to the well to wash himself, and here he becomes a witness to an amazing scene. Before his eyes, a forest rooster - black grouse - flies over the fence and enters into a fight with a domestic rooster. In the heat of battle, the enemies do not notice the little hunter, and he catches the black grouse alive. That's all. And what did Charushin manage to make of this story! Its beginning is a real spring poem. So he brought his reader to the old city in the hills, to the rain-washed, grassy roof of an old house. What a huge spacious distance suddenly opens up before the reader. How captivating seem to him there, in the distance, and forests with copses, and meadows, and glades, and rivers with lakes. What a joy to lie on this roof and watch how migratory birds fly in flocks along the air roads, now high, now low. The reader barely had time to look at this blue world, and the writer had already taken him into the forest. Everything is different there, but not worse, but only more secluded and mysterious.
“... The forest is getting darker and damper. The light rests in strips on moss, on last year's berries, on lily-of-the-valley shoots. The moss tussock is covered in cranberries, like a beaded pillow. Nearby is a rotten, decrepit stump; so it crumbles with red flour. I look - in the very middle of the stump there is a hole, and in the hole there is a grouse feather, motley, striped - yellow and black. It can be seen that the grouse was bathing here in dry dust, floundering, lying on its side, flapping its wings, looking with a black chicken eye ... "
Fairy feather! It seems that it was not a grouse that lost him, but some unprecedented bird. Take it in your hands, and do not miss the amazing adventures. And here it is - an amazing adventure. A wild black bird, like a robber, jumped over the fence and unexpectedly found himself in a domestic chicken kingdom.
“Ko… ko… ko… ko… koko! said the rooster. And the kosach began to bend. He spread his wings, as if he were leading the ground with two sabers. ... The brows of the scythe are red like fire, and all of it is black-black, only white mirrors flicker on the wings, and the white undertail sticks out. ... And the rooster and the scythe began to converge closer and closer. According to all the rules of a cockfight, they began to converge. Both are roosters, only one is a forest rooster, the other is a domestic one!
I would like to rewrite the scene of this battle in its entirety, but the passage clearly speaks of the poetic quality of the whole. And such are almost all of Charushin's stories, which are based on his happy sense of reality, his recollective vigilance. But if only his amazing vision betrays the writer, if Aladin's lamp goes out even for a moment, do not expect good luck. For example, Charushin has a book "About Magpie". It belongs to the category of so-called "scientific fairy tales" that have long been part of the everyday life of children's literature and yet, for the most part, are rather dubious. Everything fabulous and miraculous is usually replaced by useful information, and useful information in a fairy tale is both uncomfortable and cramped. But it is possible, of course, to win the battle even in the most unfavorable positions, the victory from this only becomes more honorable. Did you manage to defeat Charushina this time? No, it didn't. He could not bring his main forces into battle - and lost. A fairy tale does not allow the narrator to participate on an equal footing with the characters in all its vicissitudes. She wants him to stand at a distance and calmly, almost impassively - from a hill - command the action. And Charushin cannot remain far from action. He looks at things like a five-year-old boy who looks at them for the first time. In this look, there is the greed of a hunter, and the inquisitiveness of a naturalist, and the disinterested delight of an artist. If you can’t look straight ahead, he won’t be able to see much, and, of course, he won’t be able to show much. That is why the book "Beasts of Hot and Cold Countries" failed to fully succeed. Charushin does not tend to be a reteller of someone else's material. In creating popular science stories, any conscientious popularizer who is far from the real Charushin, as from earth to heaven, can successfully compete with him. And what does Evgeny Charushin need these fur coats from someone else's shoulder? His talent is to see with his own eyes, to speak with his own language. And his language is almost always obedient to him, expressive and precise. It was not for nothing that he began his writing path with captions for pictures, that is, with such a literary form in which the word should go side by side with the drawing, not at all inferior to it in realism and concreteness. Yevgeny Charushin developed his own language, economical and lively, capable of appealing to the reader's imagination with every word. Moreover, he also created some kind of his own literary genre, which fully corresponds to the peculiarities of his talent. The genre does not yet have a name. Charushin's creations are sometimes called stories, sometimes essays, sometimes detailed captions for drawings, sometimes notes from the artist's diary. And all this is partly true.
But it would be most correct to call them "lyrical portraits", if only such a loud name befits portraits of a parrot, a deer, lynxes and cubs. However, not only deer and cubs are drawn to us by Charushin. We recognize in his portraits that strange, huge and sweet world that always surrounds the child, which once surrounded us at the first time of our life. The child feels at home in this world, and we are grateful to the writer for giving us back the original freshness of vision even for a moment. And this is the secret of Evgeny Charushin's double victory.
V. Traugot "The Magical World of the Charushins"
The magical surname Charushin has been familiar to me since early childhood, however, I am not original in this. The first book I remember was "Children in a Cage" autographed by Evgeny Ivanovich. I read it through and looked it through, and when the book fell apart into separate pages, the pictures from it hung on the wall of my room. The adults had a lot of Charushin's books, and they let me look at them, having previously punished me to handle them carefully. What books they were! A piercing feeling of meeting with childhood, with the wonderful world of animals and birds, with real art arises in me when I look again and again at such masterpieces as Wolf, Black Falcon, Free Birds, Like a bear with a big bear became”, “Schur”, “Strix”, “Magpie”, “Animals of hot and cold countries” ... you can list for a very long time. Now, having worked on book illustrations for more than forty years, I wonder how the drawings, which have been replicated in tens of millions of copies for seventy years, have not completely lost the qualities of high art, have not become the usual consumer goods? The cauldron where it was smelted was the Leningrad Detgiz - an amazing cultural phenomenon of the 20s-30s.
How many sparkling talents Lebedev, Tyrsa, Langina, Ermolaeva, Pakhomov, Vasnetsov, Charushin, Kurds, Marshak, Zhitkov, Schwartz, Zabolotsky, Kharms, Vvedensky, Oleinikov, Bianki and many, many others have gathered together. These were the innovators who made the children's book an extraordinary phenomenon of modern art, noticed and recognized all over the world. In this brilliant galaxy, Evgeny Ivanovich Charushin occupied a prominent and recognized place. Both Lebedev and Tyrsa were very good animal painters, but Charushin created his own, unlike any other images of birds and animals. No one has felt the soft fluffy texture of the animal, the plasticity of its movement, and, of course, rarely has anyone been able to draw a bear cub, a wolf cub, a chick so cool. With their touching defenselessness, there is no conventionality, sweetness, no lisping with children. The artist respects his little viewer. At the heart of Charushin's creative method lies a close study of nature, continuous work with nature, a highly professional attitude to the plane of the sheet, on which the image is a living, expressive spot, and, most importantly, incredible demands on oneself. A hunter who knew every bird in the forest, every blade of grass, who observed the heroes of his drawings in the wild, he, moreover, constantly and a lot of drawing in the zoo. His apartment was inhabited by dozens of birds and a wide variety of animals, domestic and wild. They were models, and, probably, no one, after Chinese and Japanese artists, could so gracefully, with two or three touches, depict a ruffled crow or a puppy with its uncertain movements of thick paws. The artist always remained faithful to his creative principle, the ideas of the Lebedev school, and these ideas and principles had a huge impact on the son of Evgeny Ivanovich - Nikita Evgenievich Charushin. I first saw Nikita with his father in 1947 at a dog show, but I heard about Nikita much earlier, and not only because he appears in many stories of Evgeny Ivanovich. Even before the war, in the conversation of the elders, I heard: “Charushin has a son of a genius, he already had an exhibition, and Tyrsa and Punin are delighted with his work.” At that time, children's drawings were exhibited extremely rarely. My childhood drawings at home were praised, which inspired me with confidence that I was already an artist. The names of Tyrsa and Lunin often flashed in conversations, I vaguely imagined their meaning, but I remembered the news of a famous peer. Then we met at the SHSH. Academic wisdom in the art school and at the painting faculty of the Institute. Repin Nikita Evgenievich comprehended stubbornly, but without great enthusiasm. In my opinion, he studied more in the forest, where from early childhood he was like at home. Like his father, he went to the zoo to paint and painted a lot in oils. The work of his father's comrades had, of course, a great influence on the young artist, but the main thing was communication with Vladimir Vasilyevich Lebedev. In the post-war period, the illustrious master lived very closed. Feeling offended by the impudent and completely unfair attacks of art criticism, he limited his social circle to a few old friends and rarely allowed new people to visit him. Nikita Evgenievich had the good fortune to use the advice and lessons of the great artist. A student of Lebedev is the highest title of the Honored Artist of Russia, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Arts Nikita Evgenyevich Charushin. The path of this artist was not easy. First of all, the son of a great artist is always jealously compared with his father, and you really need to have a Charushin character in order to continue creative searches and find more and more new solutions without renouncing anything he believed in. It is characteristic that Charushin created the main, milestone works in Moscow. He was attracted to work in Moscow Detgiz by Samuil Alyansky, the most famous editor, the first publisher of the poem "The Twelve" by A. Blok. In 1969, the book "Unseen Beasts" was published - a magnificent work that makes you remember the cave paintings of Altamira. Nikita Evgenievich made many books, despite the fact that his exactingness towards his own work turns the artist's work into real hard labor. It is enough to look at such works as "My First Zoology", "Let the Birds Sing" to make sure that he is looking for new ways, new colors. A revelation for me was his pen illustrations for Sokolov-Mikitov. In a black and white drawing, with amazing picturesqueness, the feeling of northern nature is conveyed, stingy, gray and beautiful. Recently, a superbly published two-volume work by N.I. Sladkov with drawings by Charushin is, without a doubt, the most significant book event of the last decade. In 2000, Nikita Evgenievich Charushin was awarded the title of People's Artist of Russia. I also met the artist Natalya Nikitichnaya Charushina a very long time ago, although she is quite young. In 1970, the Russian Museum hosted a grandiose exhibition of children's drawings. There were many good works, but now, thirty years later, I can only remember a large, bright, expressive portrait of Nikolai Ivanovich Kostrov. Confident, bold! Amazing resemblance! Probably, such an early development of artistic talent is in the genetic code of the Charushin family. After the first triumph, Natasha Charushina studied a lot, brilliantly graduated from the Academy of Arts with a wonderful graduation work “Niels' Journey with Wild Geese”, published the first, very well-made book “On All Four Paws” and ... What happened then, we, unfortunately, know well. Only the devastation and savagery reigning in our book publishing business can explain the fact that now we do not see new books by Natalya Nikitichna. However, the artist is young, she has talent, skill, will. She is Charushina, and that says it all. In 1970, Natasha was six years old, a little older now Zhenya Charushina-Kapustina, the youngest representative of the dynasty, whose beautiful drawings delight the eye in this exhibition. One involuntarily thinks about the fate of this dynasty, in which so many generations follow the difficult and wonderful path of art. The roots of this ascetic service, of course, are primarily in the family. Speaking of the Charushin family, one cannot help but recall Polina Leonidovna Charushina - the wife, friend, assistant of Nikita Evgenievich. She was an excellent technical editor. Polina Leonidovna made technical layouts for all the latest books by Evgeny Ivanovich Charushin and technical layouts for almost all books by Nikita Evgenievich.
“A family, a little old, intelligent, where there are ideals, and the norm of life is honesty, kindness, devotion to art,” these are the words of N.A. Kostrov described the family of Ivan Apollonovich Charushin, the chief architect of the city of Vyatka, the oldest participant in this exhibition. These words can be attributed without any stretch to the family of Nikita Evgenievich.
“It often happens that a person carries children's hobbies through his whole life. So it was with my father, an architect-artist. He remembers himself in childhood as a builder of houses, palaces and railway stations. And at the age of seventy-six, he builds with no less pleasure and enthusiasm, ”wrote Yevgeny Ivanovich in 1937. You better not say! It is to this wonderful artist who built a lot, designed even more, an idealist dreamer, that we are grateful that the House of Charushins exists.
Events
17.03.2014
As part of the Days of Children's Books in the Library of Book Graphics in St. Petersburg on March 20 at 19.00, the exhibition "Artists of the pre-war DETGIZ" opens. The exhibition presents illustrations, sketches, prints, lithographs, covers, books by masters of book graphics of the pre-war period.
