Vasily
Grigorievich Mitin

Information about the artist from the resource:
http://adminnovod.ru/index.php?text=interesnye&mun_usl

Vasily Grigorievich is a local nugget, born in the village of Mokhovoe, Novoderevenkovsky district, Oryol region.
Painting is nowhere specifically studied. And where was the study when the childhood years fell on the war? But even in the first class the school drawing teacher inspired the boy. “To be you, Vasily, an artist,” he declared, considering his still life with a ficus. The boy believed it. And the rest of his life he considered himself an artist. And no mistake.
He loved to draw as he remembers. And he did it always and everywhere with great pleasure. And when he served in the army, and when he worked in the district House of Culture, painting the backdrops for performances of the local amateur theater. In 1957, Vasily Mitin was invited to work as an artist at the Shatilov Agricultural Experimental Station, where he skillfully designed the Honor Boards, and once he was entrusted with a purely scientific work to carefully paint the ears of wonderful wheat and other promising varieties of grain crops on a demonstration stand.
But the soul demanded more. Mitin, coming home, eagerly pounced on oil paints. The first luck with a ficus determined the fate: still lifes began to appear, then landscapes. The lack of art education was more than compensated for by sincerity and spontaneity. The finished works became more and more, and Vasily decided to show them first within the walls of the rural club, then beyond. Since then, amateur artist Vasily Mitin - participant of many regional and All-Russian art exhibitions of folk art.
With his brush and oil paints, the author reproduces, with almost documentary accuracy, the most terrible moments of his childhood, scorched by war.
Vasily Grigorievich wrote them in the last 10 years, but he never showed them anywhere. It was necessary to give the output of the pain. The scary turned out pictures.
- I saw it all with my own eyes. Then the world turned upside down. But I was just a boy ... But I decided: I need to tell about it. Let today's boys and girls see what our generation has experienced and how terrible it is - the war.
Memories still do not give rest to Vasily Grigorievich. He nervously pulls the button on his shirt.
- I saw the first fascist in October 41st. I was then twelve years old. At home, the mother, Catherine Nikitichna, then already a widow, and two sisters, Maria and Anna. There was also an older brother Peter, but he disappeared in the first days of the war somewhere in the west of Ukraine. Our hut stood on the edge of Moss at the fork in the road. And the Germans put up a post here. It was scary and funny to look at these warriors. Stand on duty for half an hour and run to us in the hut to warm up. Bare-handed, they climb straight into the stove for a pot with a stew.
Thus was born the painting "Fascist machine-gunner." She has a crooked thin-faced fascist in huge felt boot covers, where the Germans climbed right in their boots. They said that such boot covers were the invention of Hitler himself, who wanted to conquer Russian frosts.
Next picture "Robbery". On it, two Germans are dragging belongings out of the hut and putting it into a cart. Particularly trying a fat fascist in black glasses, whose face does not leave a malicious smile.
- Yes, all this happened before my eyes! - Mitin smiled sullenly.
He accurately depicted how the Nazis plundered his home: they devastated all of my mother's chests, and kicked the boy with all his strength so that he would not hang out under his feet.
He became a little Vasily Mitin and a witness of bullying his uncle Yakov Frolov. Emptying the house, the Germans found the form of a Soviet officer, which his son left before the war. The Germans kicked out the old man barefoot in the cold in one underwear and forced several hours to split wood for the kitchen. Immediately near here, they threw two of his little grandchildren into the snow, before whose eyes the entire execution took place. It is impossible to look at the picture “Fiends” without a shudder.
Another terrible story told the picture "The death of children." She depicts a woman with a bloody baby in her arms. It was a forester Natalia Gracheva. A Nazi plane dropped cluster time bombs near the village. Curious guys are interested in a terrible find. And then an explosion struck. Among the dead were two children of Gracheva.
And here are some bright memories of childhood childhood. In one picture - Soviet tanks in the field, surrounded by local residents.
“I remember that in early July 1943, a small column of our tanks appeared on the outskirts of Mokhovoy, which was moving towards Novosil,” says Vasily Grigorievich. - How much was joy! The villagers fled with bread and salt, and some with knitted socks.
In September, a creative meeting of Vasily Grigorievich Mitin with the youth of the region will take place in the RCC Khomutovo. The children's truth of his paintings will most likely become a revelation for the current generation. And the current exhibition Mitin decided to supplement the best works of peacetime. Soon, both famous lilac bouquets, a surprisingly lyrical portrait of the mother at the spinning wheel, and the painting “Christmas night”, famous among the masters of the naive genre, will be exhibited here.