The artist Zhutovsky died, whom Nikita Khrushchev furiously scolded and sincerely forgave

“How could you, such a handsome young man, write such shit?” – Nikita Khrushchev shouted at the artist Boris Zhutovsky in the Manezh when he came to the exhibition dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the Moscow Union of Artists. The author shrugged. “Two years for logging!” – threw the Secretary General to one of the assistants. Zhutovsky replied that he had already been at logging sites, and in the portrait he depicted himself in a “transformation”. This emotional scene became the most colorful in the history of art in the 1960s. No less surprising is the fact that two years later, when Khrushchev was removed from power, he met with Zhutovsky and apologized. After that, he was able to exhibit again. But the master is known not only for this. In the early 1970s, the artist decided to paint his most monumental painting, composed of hundreds of pencil portraits, called The Last People of the Empire. There are not so many politicians among the heroes, but many poets, actors, artists. All are written from nature. On the evening of March 8, Boris Zhutovsky died at the age of 90, leaving behind a large-scale portrait of the Soviet era in his faces.

The story of the Manezh played a cruel and good joke on Boris Zhutovsky at the same time. On the one hand, because of her, he was on the “black list” for several years, on the other hand, it brought him fame. However, Zhutovsky himself treated that historical incident with Nordic calm and irony. His memoirs, however, shed some light on the scandal at the Manezh and on the whole situation in the art world of that time. And it has a double bottom. Yes, and the whole fate of Boris Iosifovich helps to look at this particular historical moment, its prerequisites and consequences, in a panoramic way. It was not for nothing that he called himself a “collector of time”, and many of him – at the suggestion of Fazil Iskander, who came up with the name for Zhutovsky’s main book – the last artist of the empire.

The future artist was born in 1932. He studied at the book department of the Polygraphic Institute, where the very authors who were branded in the 30s for the so-called formalism taught. After graduating from the institute, he was sent by distribution to the Urals – to a book publishing house. And there he did not escape the “black mark” – formalism: the editor-in-chief perceived one of his drawings as a forbidden avant-garde. Although, judging by the memories, the avant-garde came out of inexperience. After that, the artist lay face down in a pillow for two weeks, and then returned to Moscow and went to Eli Belyutin’s New Reality studio. Life itself has placed him at the forefront.

In 1962, he became a participant in an exhibition at the Teacher’s House, which was then hastily transferred to the Manege and supplemented with works by other authors. Why did it happen? Context is important here. 1962 was the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which had been escalating since the spring and entered its most acute phase in the fall. The exhibition of avant-garde artists at Taganka was covered by foreign journalists. “The next day the whole world learned that there was contemporary art in the Soviet Union,” Zhutovsky recalled. “Someone called Mikoyan, who was in Cuba.” The supreme power, apparently, decided to take advantage of the hype to confirm: yes, yes, there is, the USSR is freer than it might seem. In the art environment, there was another struggle, Zhutovsky noted: between representatives of the “severe style” (Nikonova, Andronova, etc. – the famous “Nine”) and the Belyutin avant-garde – for the leadership of the Moscow Union of Artists. “I had four works, and Khrushchev looked at everything, then walked again, and then Ernst Neizvestny jumped up to him, and he had the work “War,” Zhutovsky recalled. One of the henchmen whispered something to Khrushchev – and away we go … The bomb accidentally exploded not in Cuba, but right in the Manezh, fortunately, not nuclear …

“Who turned up, and that in the face … As soon as one of the” nine “MOSH, Andronov, began to talk about the Belyutins, they say they are shit. The “Nine”, which sought to remove the former, monstrous leadership of the Moscow Union of Artists, settled accounts with us, although they and we were smashed in the Manezh … The conspiracy against Khrushchev began exactly in 1962. Nikita Sergeevich himself told me how Ilyichev, from among the members of the Central Committee, aimed for the seat of a member of the Politburo. Together with Ilyichev, many apparatchiks were fed up with his understanding of agriculture. And in order to defame the full program, they skillfully started dealing with culture. I was present at all Khrushchev’s meetings with the intelligentsia and watched this panopticon of fear, sycophancy, lies and settling accounts, ”the artist recalled. It seems to be an accident, but in fact – the butterfly effect.

What then, when everyone who turned up got a hat? Zhutovsky woke up famous, but he could no longer exhibit and publish. However, he got out – he signed the work with other names. During those few years of immersion in the underground, he deeply rooted himself in the environment of “unofficial artists”, made friends with everyone. By the way, it was Zhutovsky who introduced Eduard Limonov to creative Moscow when he had just moved here from Kharkov. He earned money by book illustration and painted portraits – only from nature. Either in color or black and white, but always accurate and characteristic. The style is closer to the Renaissance than to the avant-garde.

In the 1970s, when the artist had already ceased to be vilified in the official press and was allowed to exhibit, he decided to collect them in a book, for which the title was invented by Fazil Iskander: “The Last People of the Empire”. The publication was published only in the early 2000s, and more than a hundred portraits went there, although the artist painted more than 300 of them. Among them are Joseph Brodsky, Vladimir Vysotsky, Vladimir Kornilov, Ernst Neizvestny, Bulat Okudzhava, Andrey Sakharov, Boris Slutsky, Viktor Shklovsky, Mikael Tariverdiev, Peter Kapitsa, Alfred Schnittke. There is also Nikita Khrushchev, who later told Zhutovsky: “Forgive me for what happened. Someone took me there. And so I walk around this exhibition, suddenly one of the great artists (that is, in his understanding of the great ones) says to me: “Stalin is not on them!” I got mad at him and started yelling at you. And then people took advantage of it.”

The artist depicted a variety of characters of his era. There are among them, for example, General Sudoplatov, behind whom the assassination attempt on Trotsky, counterintelligence attacks, Polish officers in Katyn, death laboratories throughout the country. “Everything is here – talents, victims, servants, murderers,” the author said. It is hard to believe that such expressive and quite realistic portraits were created by the same “abstractionist” from the Manege. “The Last People of the Empire” is, in fact, a collective self-portrait of Zhutovsky himself, who happened to find his way in the Soviet empire. “Based on the portraits I painted, one can get an adequate idea of ​​the Soviet era. The style itself, the nature of the drawing bear the stamp of the times,” he said.

Strange coincidence or pattern? In 1997, an article appeared in one of the newspapers, written by the artist himself in memory of his late grandmother. In it, Zhutovsky describes pages from a tear-off calendar that she collected. Their content is varied – from a soup recipe to the manifesto of the Communist Party. And on each – handwritten postscripts about personal events. Such a kaleidoscope – from the general, private, everyday life and philosophy. Similar to the creative method of Boris Zhutovsky – it was not for nothing that he called himself a collector of time. For some reason, very often in this selection of environments. At the end of this essay, the author wrote: “I wonder if I will also die on Wednesday?” He just passed away on Wednesday.