Known was Grishin primarily as a brilliant book designer, wizard magazine drawing. Sociable, witty, charming man. Illustrated writers that I loved: Leo Tolstoy, Flaubert, Kipling, Dumas. But the most famous was the publication of the popular science fiction Ivan Yefremov, Stanislaw LEM, Strugatsky brothers, drawn by the artist. No flight of fancy, either in quality or technique with Grishin in the 50-60-ies of the last century, it seems, was not equal among plots.
Grishin was lush mansions, no colorful decorative fabrics or expensive fine things, which often attracts the attention of painters. On the shelf to the workbench wizard in the test tube was kept "Sahara sand" in a porcelain jar, a shard of marble with the inscription "Corinth", next to the coral brought from the red sea.
Your watercolor of the Elegy, the artist created not a plot, logic swing, and the so-called "second sense". In the depths of his work can go on and on, for a scenic solution achieved all of the music organization works and the mysterious, of what, ultimately, we, the audience, is born the image of the author. That is probably why the watercolors Grishina, so clear in form, almost always there is something more. In all these yards, sidings, Windows, stacks, "green landscapes", paintings with the artist's favorite fish is seen as the beginning of SPACE, infinity, mystery, the inexhaustibility of the world. Poor our earthly time, as it suspends its run and begins another, a higher time, one which counts the universe.
Perhaps so felt time and Grishin, when I was creating my space of watercolors, where the sky looks empty, tall, clean. Space in times the master was still the realm of fantasy. But for an artist this far mysterious world was and remained a close, the world of his childhood. Before school the boy learned to read in the magazine "world Pathfinder", popular at the time publication, telling about the adventures and travels. Planets, stars, nebulae, pictured on the magazine pages were opened to him in his native Tula "miracolosa" as he called the firmament and the earth, the artist, who grew up in the village.
"In my childhood I had a lot of sky," — later recalled by the master.
The spring and autumn, the summer solstice, a starry August night, storm or snowfall, the artist was treated as a great cosmic phenomena. According to relatives, spent hours looking at the sky in the old telescope jointed pipe, which at one time were collected. Quietly arose in the night, left to wander around the city. Returned at dawn, explained: "I couldn't sleep. Not enough sky."
The space he lived, grew, capturing the soul of an artist. The penetration of the wizard in strange worlds, like no other, attracted the attention not only of readers — fans of science fiction. "The phenomenon Grishina" interested Agency staff, located on Lubyanka square when it still had the name of Dzerzhinsky. The artist was invited to the Lubyanka and asked from whom he gets information about the secret development of rocket technology. Grishin shrugged such developments, he was never interested in friends in secret organizations had not. Yes, the illustrations that are on the table, made them, but it is only a fantasy. Do not believe it. Advised to think, to remember. Suspicious of the illustration lying on the table as evidence, decided to "fix".
But with Nikolai Grishin after Gagarinskiy songs what happens is that he almost ceased to illustrate sci-Fi works. It seems that the artist paid for his prophetic gift a certain price...
Continued to write, stack, old houses, barns, and shortly before his death — the extraordinary beauty of the "green landscapes". In his best work the last time all felt the same "sense of Space"; the experience of himself and his destiny as the particles of the Universe.
(From the article Sergei Smorodina "Sleep art")
