Oleg
Alekseevich Dmitriev

Russia • Moscow • 1913−2009

Biography and information

Dmitriev Oleg Alekseevich, Soviet, Russian artist, was born on March 26, 1913 in Saratov. In 1942 he graduated from the Moscow State Art Institute. He died on August 19, 2009. The heyday of his work fell on the forties and eighties of the twentieth century. But he did not let out a brush with paints from his hands to a very old age and owned it better than a pen with ink. He left most of his creative heritage to people, transferred to museums, art galleries of our once large Motherland. Only the Solikamsk Museum of Local Lore, Oleg Alekseevich and his wife, Valentina Vasilievna Danilova, were presented with more than three hundred of their best works. In addition, their works are stored in the Museum of History and Reconstruction of Moscow, the Chuvash, Nizhny Novgorod art museums, the Saratov State Literary Museum named after Chernyshevsky, and the State Museum of Local Lore in Berezniki. And this is not a complete list of cultural institutions to which he donated his works. In the 13th issue of the Unified Artistic Rating, Oleg Alekseevich Dmitriev was assigned category 4A (professional artist with creative potential.

Detailed biography

Oleg's father, Alexei Evdokimovich Dmitriev, was born in a peasant family in the village of Dubasovo, Saratov province. In the life of his parents, in the recent past, serfs, with the release of the will of big changes did not happen. The established order was violated by Alexei, at the age of twelve he ran away from home and was hired as an assistant to a stoker at the railway station in Saratov. About how a teenager from the village where the hut was drowned "in the black", managed to get an education and become an inventor in many cities of Russia, information was not preserved.

Adelaide’s father, an impoverished nobleman, Gavrila Konstantinovich Butkovsky, by mistake, left without a livelihood, did not immediately find an interesting high-paying job. Luck came when he was offered to take the position of teacher and director in the newly opened school, where they were going to train highly skilled workers. Adelaide's mother, Elizabeth Wittmann, ran a farm, raised children and sewed hats, which were sold in her small shop. Adelaide from early childhood was distinguished by outstanding musical abilities, but she could not reach the heights, at the age of sixteen she became a music teacher.
Alexey and Adelaide met by chance, through a mutual friend. Brought them to music. Alexey sang well, he learned with Adelaide and performed the entire repertoire, fashionable at that time, more than once. But creating a family with a noblewoman-dweller was not an easy task for him. Other brides were welcomed by their parents: a merchant's daughter, Popovna. They reconciled only after the appearance of grandchildren. Leonid was born in 1910, Oleg in 1913. Grandmother fell in love with Alexei’s children, took care of them, and indulged.

In 1916, Alexei and his family moved to Abkhazia. Here, in a modest house with a plot, they lived safely in the most difficult years, the land, as you know, feeds. Children grew up in abundance, love and attention of adults. Oleg early showed the ability to draw. Wildlife, among which he grew up aroused imagination, developed imagination. He tried to express his worldview with drawings, painted them with juice of flowers and berries. But bright colors quickly turned into dirty spots. He learned how to make real paints himself when, while studying at the Sukhumi industrial technical school, he became interested in chemistry. The experience gained while working in a chemical laboratory was also useful to him in the manufacture of the first etchings. His brother, Leonid, helped him assemble the printing press, and the girlfriend of his youth, Valentina Danilova, led the process. In the early thirties, she already graduated from the Tiflis Art Studio of Professor M. I. Toidze and the Tiflis Academy of Arts under the direction of E. E. Lansere and N. A. Charlemagne. She showed the finished printed sheets and other works of Oleg to her teacher, Professor Toidze, and asked for an assessment. Moses Ivanovich said that the young man whom she takes care of is talented. But she, Valentina, should take part in his fate, help not lose her gift.

In 1935, Oleg entered the fourth year of the Oryol Art Technical School, and a year later transferred to the last year of the Moscow Art School in memory of 1905.
In 1936, Oleg and Valentina Danilova entered into a legal marriage. Their life together began in the small room of the Novodevichy Convent, where Valentina lived with her mother.

In 1937, Oleg became a second-year student at the Moscow State Art Institute of Fine Arts. He dreamed of working with paints, but empty seats were on the "schedule", and painting was allocated for many hours. Oleg graduated from the last course in Samarkand, where the institute was evacuated in the fall of 1941. In 1942 he returned to Moscow, and since then his work has often appeared at exhibitions in the capital and other cities of the Soviet Union. In the same year he joined the Moscow Artists Union, and in 1946 became a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR.
Oleg lived, as before, in the Novodevichy Convent. But in 1945, an order was issued by the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, according to which the Novodevichy Convent was transferred to the Theological Institute and all outsiders were ordered to free the occupied area. The family found new housing in Malakhovka. Here, in a rented apartment, Oleg began a difficult but interesting life: traveling around Russia, participating in an ethnographic expedition in Kyrgyzstan, joint with Valentina Vasilyevna, a large series of works on the life and work of prominent figures of the nineteenth century: writers, musicians, artists, revolutionaries.

Among the joint works are large canvases: “Artist Fedotov in Moscow”, “Gogol reads the auditor”, “Chernyshevsky in exile”.

And for many years I kept a clamshell book “Miller, a boy and a donkey” with illustrations by Oleg Alekseevich Dmitriev. This oriental tale in the revision of S. Ya. Marshak was first published in 1948. Since then, the fairy tale has been published more than once, but I have not seen a more interesting design in any of them.

In the summer of 1951, Oleg Alekseevich began traveling on a yacht, the creator of which was Viktor Fedorovich Bolkhovitinov, an aircraft designer and major general of the aviation service of the Soviet Union. In the team he assembled, responsibilities were strictly distributed. Oleg Alekseevich got the role of a sailor, but in his free time he entertained travelers with pleasant music. One of his favorite instruments: balalaika, mandolin or guitar, accompanied him on all trips.

The last short voyage on the Phoenix was in the summer of 1968. And on January 30, 1970, Viktor Fedorovich died. With the Bolkhovitinov family, Viktor Fedorovich and Natalya Sergeevna, Oleg Alekseevich and Valentina Vasilyevna met shortly after the war. Warm friendly relations between families lasted a lifetime.
A series of works created during this period, Oleg Alekseevich and Valentina Vasilyevna was called "On the open spaces on the yacht" Phoenix ".

Kyrgyzstan. In the summer of 1955, Oleg Alekseevich and Valentina Vasilievna were lucky to take part in an ethnographic expedition in Kyrgyzstan. They conveyed the beauty and grandeur of pristine nature in paintings, drawings, etchings, but a separate, large series is devoted to the life and everyday life of residents of distant villages lost in the mountains. The hospitality, hospitality and decency of these people aroused respect and sincere admiration among the artists.
The works created under the impression of a trip to Kyrgyzstan, Oleg Alekseevich and Valentina Vasilievna combined under the name “Kyrgyz Suite”.

Own living space

In 1959, Oleg Alekseevich and Valentina Vasilyevna got a permanent living space, a communal apartment in the center of Moscow.

Trips to a small home

In January 1963, Oleg Alekseevich, for the first time in many years, visited his small homeland. This happened due to a serious illness and the death of his mother, Adelaide Gavrilovna. After this sad event, Oleg Alekseevich and Valentina Vasilievna became frequent guests of his brother, Leonid. They usually arrived in the fall, and returned to Moscow at the end of December. But sometimes, having experienced winter slush, they met spring, enjoyed the awakening of nature, the warm sun. Oleg Alekseevich and Valentina Vasilievna collected a series of paintings of this period under the series Sukhum. Most of them were transferred to the fund of the Solikamsk Museum.

Tarusa

Oleg Alekseevich and Valentina Vasilyevna often spent the winter in the picturesque surroundings of Tarusa. Here, in the house of creativity of the Moscow Artists Union, they had all the conditions for relaxation and fruitful work: a two-room suite with all amenities, three meals a day, a workshop where you can work when it is very cold outside. But they themselves made up a daily routine and did not step back a single step from it. In her notes, Valentina Vasilievna said: “Our working day was distributed as follows: in the morning, having breakfast, we went to work in nature. Even a severe frost could not keep us in the workshop ... We walked away from home and found a good place, started working ... We worked until lunch. I did not notice the cold. But at the end of the work, I could no longer put the folder and pencils without Oleg’s help. Hands are numb from the cold. ”

And in the evenings, creative people gathered in a large hall, where it was always fun and interesting. How wrong those who believe that the artist should be hungry! A series of winter landscapes created in comfortable conditions, this refutes!
A series of winter landscapes and etchings, the artists called "Tarusa".


Interests Oleg Alekseevich

During travels in Russia Oleg Alekseevich was carried away by the creativity of the peoples of Russia. He gathered a lot of interesting things: costume designs, household utensils and other amazing wood products. I especially remember the bear with the balalaika. And on his balalaika Oleg Alekseevich entertained the guests with Russian folk songs. In the early sixties he had a mandolin. The hobby began with the fashionable, at that time Indonesia, and then everything was filled with Italian classics, you could listen to it endlessly. But a few years later the violin took her place. He owned this complex instrument quite professionally, in his repertoire - Sen Sans, Rimsky Korsakov. The violin did not last long, during one of the trips to Sukhumi, he had to abandon it. Her voice was drowned out by the polyphonic chorus of dogs from neighboring yards. Left without a musical instrument, Oleg Alekseevich decided to try himself as a master in the manufacture of guitars. The reason for a new hobby was a mulberry log, which he accidentally discovered in our garden. Here is how Valentina Vasilyevna signed the drawing, which captured Oleg with his first guitar: “... he began to make guitars himself. Various. For all occasions. I was looking for new forms. One was better than the other ... ".
Oleg Alekseevich’s musical preferences changed, but he never parted with Pushkin. Lyric poems, poems, prose, all this he could read by heart or retell close to the text. In an hour of sadness and sadness with his beloved poet, he found lines in tune with mood. In the last years of his conscious life he often repeated:

"If life deceives you,
Do not be sad, do not be angry!
On the day of gloom, humble yourself:
A fun day, believe, will come ... "

Mikhailovsky, the family estate of Pushkin's mother, was a favorite place of his pilgrimage trips. “Shelter of peace, work and inspiration” for a long time did not let go, returned again and again. And not in vain! He always discovered something new here. And even when trips began to be less frequent, and then stopped altogether, he did not lose great interest in the life and work of his idol. To friends of Pushkin: the nanny, Delvig, Kyukhelbeker Oleg Alekseevich devoted a series of large canvases. And then I thought about the portrait of Anna Wulf, a girl who all her life has been unrequitedly in love with Alexander Sergeyevich. Before picking up a brush with paints, Oleg went in search of her portrait. But he had to be content with a small medallion and descriptions of his contemporaries. But he did not abandon his plan, a huge emotional uplift did not leave him during this work. And to write out her face helped a case that is difficult to call otherwise than mysticism. Nobody but me, “even Lenka,” as he called his brother, he did not tell about this. The plot of the picture is also mysterious: Anna is sitting at the window, sorting through the scribbled sheets, and outside the window Pushkin, or rather his silhouette.

A series of works devoted to Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin Oleg Alekseevich and Valentina Vasilyevna were called "Shelter of calm, work and inspiration."

Solikamsk Museum.

With his retirement, Oleg Alekseevich began to think more and more often about the fate of the work of his life, he was worried that the paintings could fall into bad hands. And by chance I learned that the widow of the famous artist, Mikhail Stepanovich Epiphany, fulfilled the will of the deceased husband, transferred his paintings to the Museum of Local Lore of Solikamsk, and she began to work on arranging the art department, which was being created there at that time. Oleg Alekseevich and Valentina Vasilyevna followed her example, donated 50 of their early works to the museum fund, and with great enthusiasm began to improve the branch. In total, they donated more than three hundred of his best works to his fund. The city administration has repeatedly noted their merits, awarded, awarded the title of honorary citizens of Solikamsk.

In 1998, after the death of his wife, Valentina Vasilyevna, Oleg Alekseevich married VV Astakhova, a woman who had sought him for many years. In 2003, Oleg Alekseevich suffered a stroke, due to which he lived in a blurred consciousness for the last six years of his life. The conclusion on incapacity was made on the basis of the conclusion of the Serbsky Institute after his death. Oleg Alekseevich died on August 19, 2009.

Compiled by E. Dmitrieva. The article was compiled on the basis of my personal memoirs, the stories of Oleg Alekseevich and his brother, Leonid, as well as notes by Valentina Vasilyevna and her comments on the photographs.