Exhibition in the arena of 1962 paintings. Saliva Khrushchev. How did the Soviet authorities treat contemporary art. Twenty persistent avant-garde artists and the shortest exhibitions

December 1, 1962 - 50 years ago, the opening of the exhibition "30 Years of the Moscow Union of Artists" took place. And few people were ready for the fact that the formal solemn reporting and planning event would become historical and a turning point for the artistic process in the country.

50 years ago, the opening of the exhibition "30 years of MOSH" took place. And few people were ready for the fact that the formal solemn reporting and planning event would become historical and a turning point for the artistic process in the country. Vladimir Yankilevsky, a participant in the Manege exhibition, recalls the background of those events in his text “Manege. December 1, 1962".

Khrushchev's visit with his entourage to the exhibition at the Manege on December 1, 1962 was the culmination of the "four-part fugue" played by Soviet life, skillfully prepared by the USSR Academy of Arts. These four voices are:

First: The general atmosphere of Soviet life, the process of political de-Stalinization that began after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, which gave a moral impetus to the liberalization of society, the "thaw", according to Ehrenburg, and at the same time intensified the struggle for power and influence between Stalin's heirs and the young generation in all sectors of Soviet society, the entire infrastructure of which has changed little and no longer corresponded to new trends real life. Big bosses and local officials were in some confusion and confusion before new trends and did not know how to react to previously unthinkable publications of books and articles, to exhibitions of contemporary Western art (at the World Youth Festival in 1957 in Moscow, to the American Industrial Exhibition, Picasso in the Pushkin Museum). What one hand forbade, the other permitted.

Second: this is the official artistic life, fully controlled by the USSR Ministry of Culture and the Academy of Arts, a stronghold of socialist realism and the main consumer of the country's budget for art. Nevertheless, the Academy became the object of ever-increasing public criticism for glorifying Stalin's personality cult, for distorting and embellishing the picture of real life. The academicians saw a particular danger for themselves from the activated young part of the Union of Artists, which openly began to demonstrate its opposition to the Academy in the spirit of the times. All this gave rise to panic among academics. They were afraid of losing their power and influence and their privileges, of course, primarily material ones.

The third voice is the new trends among the young members of the Union of Artists and their growing influence in the struggle for power in the infrastructure of the Union of Artists and the Academy. This young generation, under the influence of the changed moral climate, began to look for ways to depict the "truth of life", which later became known as the "severe style". This manifested itself in greater thematic freedom, but with dead-end problems in the field of pictorial language. Grown in the nurseries of conservative academic universities, in the traditions of the realistic school of the late 19th century, completely cut off from the real contemporary artistic life of the West, they aesthetically and intellectually could not tear themselves away from this school and made timid attempts to embellish the “corpse”, somehow aestheticize their miserable and a dead language with examples of poorly assimilated post-Cézannism or some kind of homegrown pseudo-Russian decorativism or bad taste in stylization of ancient Russian art. It all looked very provincial.

Being inside the official structure of Soviet art and being built into its hierarchy, they already held positions in various commissions and exhibition committees with a habit of system state support(free creative dachas, regular government purchases of works from exhibitions and workshops, creative business trips, publications and monographs at public expense, and many other advantages and benefits that ordinary Soviet hard workers never dreamed of, with whom these artists constantly emphasized blood ties). It was in them, as in their heirs, that the academicians saw a threat to their weakening power.

And finally, the fourth “voice of the fugue” is the independent and unbiased art of young artists who earned their living as best they could and made art that they could neither officially show, since all the exposition sites were under the control of the Union of Artists and the Academy, nor officially sell for the same reasons. They could not even buy paints and materials for work, as they were sold only with membership cards of the Union of Artists. In essence, these artists were tacitly declared “outlaws” and were the most persecuted and disenfranchised part of the artistic environment, or rather, simply thrown out of it. Typical is the angry and indignant indignation of one of the apologists for the "severe style" of the Moscow Union of Artists, P. Nikonov, expressed by him in a speech at the Ideological Conference in the Central Committee of the CPSU at the end of December 1962 (after the exhibition in the Manezh) in relation to, as he put it, "these dudes ":" I was not so much surprised by the fact that, for example, together with the Belyutins, the works of Vasnetsov and Andronov were exhibited in the same room. I was surprised that my work is there as well. This is not why we went to Siberia. This is not why I went with the geologists in the detachment, not for this I was hired there as a worker. Not for this, Vasnetsov is very seriously and consistently working on questions of form that are necessary for him in his further growth. This is not why we brought our works to be hung along with works that, in my opinion, have nothing to do with painting.” Looking ahead 40 years, I note that in the permanent exhibition "The Art of the 20th Century" in the State Tretyakov Gallery, my work "Dialogue" of 1961 and his "Geologists" are now hanging in the same room (which, probably, he is very dissatisfied with).

Another quote from this speech: “This is false sensational art, it does not follow a direct path, but looks for loopholes and tries to address its works not to that professional public, where they should have received a worthy meeting and condemnation, but are addressed to those aspects of life that have nothing to do with the serious issues of painting.

P. Nikonov, already a member of the exhibition committee and the “chief” in the Moscow Union of Artists, knew perfectly well that all paths to the professional public through the exhibition halls were cut off for us, but nevertheless, not knowing our works, the “professional public” was ready for “ worthy meeting” and “condemnation”.

The trend, despite the illiteracy of style and complete mess in the head, is obvious: we ("severe style") are good, real Soviet artists, and they ("Belyutins", as he called all the others, without making a difference between Belyutin's studios and independent artists ) - bad, fake and anti-Soviet; and please, dear Ideological Commission, do not confuse us with them. It is necessary to beat "them", not "us". Whom to beat and why? At that time I was 24 years old, I had just graduated from the Moscow Polygraphic Institute. I didn't have a workshop, I rented a room in a communal apartment. I had no money for materials, and at night I stole packing boxes from a furniture store in the yard to make stretchers out of them. I worked on my stuff during the day and made book covers at night to earn some money. The things that I did at that time, I showed in the Manege. These are the six-meter pentaptych No. 1 "Nuclear Plant" (now in the Ludwig Museum in Cologne), the three-meter triptych No. 2 "Two Principles" (now in the Zimmerli Museum in the USA) and a series of oils "Theme and Improvisation".

There were only two or three dozen "them" - independent artists in Moscow, and they were of various directions depending on their culture and outlook on life, philosophy and aesthetic preferences. From the continuation of the traditions of the Russian avant-garde of the beginning of the century, surrealism, Dadaism, abstract and social expressionism, and up to the development of original forms of artistic language.

I repeat, for all the differences in aesthetic and philosophical preferences, the level of talent and lifestyle of these artists, they had one thing in common: they were thrown out of the official artistic life of the USSR, or rather, they were not “let in” there. Naturally, they were looking for ways to show their works, they were ready for discussions, but not at the level of political investigation. Their names are now well known, and many have already become classics of contemporary Russian art. To name just a few: Oscar Rabin, Vladimir Weisberg, Vladimir Yakovlev, Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, Eduard Steinberg, Ilya Kabakov, Oleg Tselkov, Mikhail Shvartsman, Dmitry Plavinsky, Vladimir Nemukhin and others.

In the early 1960s, under the influence of a changing social atmosphere, individual semi-legal displays of their works became possible in apartments, research institutes, but always in places not covered by the control of the Academy of Arts and the Union of Artists. Some of the works through Polish and Czech art critics who came to Moscow began to get to exhibitions in Poland, Czechoslovakia and further to Germany and Italy. Unexpectedly, the Moscow city committee of the Komsomol organized the "Club of creative universities", either to give students the opportunity to demonstrate their creativity, or to control and manage them.

In any case, the first exhibition of this club in the lobby of the Yunost Hotel in the spring of 1962 aroused great interest and resonance. I exhibited there the triptych No. 1 "Classic", 1961 (now it is in the Ludwig Museum in Budapest). The authorities were somewhat confused. In an environment of de-Stalinization, they did not know what exactly should be banned and what should not, and how to react in general. At the same time, at the invitation of the Faculty of Chemistry of Moscow State University, Ernst Neizvestny and I made an exhibition in the recreation area of ​​the faculty in the building of Moscow State University on the Lenin Hills. There were other similar exhibitions with the participation of independent artists.

The semi-official activities of the studio of Eliy Belyutin, a former teacher at the Moscow Polygraphic Institute, whose student I was in my first year (57/58), can also be attributed to this unbiased part of Soviet artistic life. Belyutin was expelled from the institute by professors, the former "formalists" of the 1920s and 30s, led by Andrey Goncharov, who were afraid of his growing influence. They themselves were persecuted at one time, they staged a shameful and cynical judgment over Belyutin in the presence of students in the best traditions of that era and forced him to resign due to professional incompetence. Then Belyutin organized a studio, as he himself said, “upgrading qualifications”: “I worked with graphic artists, applied artists and wanted these classes to help them in their work. I was happy when I saw that new fabrics with the patterns of my students appeared, beautiful advertising posters made by them, or new models of clothes. I was pleased to see books with their illustrations in stores. In fact, of course, he was cunning: it was an officially acceptable version of the activities of his studio and it was said in self-defense. His activities as a teacher were much wider. He was an outstanding teacher and tried to realize his potential by teaching the ABCs of modern art to the studio students, which no one did and could not do in any official art school. educational institution countries. The studio was very popular, several hundred studio members visited it at different times, but, unfortunately, most of them learned only the techniques and clichés of modern art that could be used in practical work, understanding nothing in essence in Belyutin's method, which he bitterly told me about.

Nevertheless, the very atmosphere of the studio and the aura of its teacher, the exercises that he gave, were a window into contemporary art, in contrast to the wretched and obscurantist atmosphere of the official Soviet artistic life, the tastes of the Academy and the Moscow Union of Artists. The whole tragedy of the position of Eliy Belyutin, who was forced to constantly mimic in order to be able to continue his work and not be destroyed, can be understood by reading the nonsense that he was forced to speak in the hope of saving the studio after the exhibition in the Manege: “... I am firmly convinced of that there are no and cannot be abstractionists among Soviet artists ... ”, etc. in the same vein.

In an atmosphere of uncertainty in maintaining their dominant positions, the academicians were looking for a way to discredit the forces that really threatened their position. And the opportunity presented itself. The case, which they considered almost as the last bastion on which they could fight their competitors. They decided to use this bastion as a jubilee exhibition in the Manezh dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the Moscow Union of Artists. At this exhibition, among others, the work of the “formalists” of the 1930s, and the work of the new and dangerous youth from the “left” MOSH, were to be presented. The visit of the exhibition by the leadership of the country was expected. It is not entirely clear here whether this was a planned visit or whether the academicians were able to organize it somehow. In any case, they decided to make the most of this visit and incite their competitors, far from the problems of art and having a primitive idea of ​​it, the leaders of the party and government, using the methods of Soviet party demagoguery that were well known to them.

Quite unexpectedly, fate played along with them, throwing a gift. We are talking about a semi-official exhibition of Belyutin's studio, which took place in the second half of November 1962 in the Teacher's House (I don't remember exactly the name of this institution) on Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya Street. In order to give this exhibition more weight and the character of an artistic event, Belyutin invited four artists who were not his studio members to participate in it. He asked me to introduce him to Ernst Neizvestny, with whom we met and agreed to participate in this exhibition in his workshop on Sretenka. First, he invited Neizvestny and me, and then, on our recommendation, Hulo Sooster and Yuri Sobolev.

In this square hall on Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya on Taganka, approximately 12 x 12 meters in size and six meters high, there was a trellis hanging of the studio's works in many rows, from floor to ceiling. The works of the three guests stood out: the sculptures of the Unknown stood throughout the hall, the paintings of Sooster, each of which was small in size (50 x 70 cm), in total occupied a prominent place and were very different from the works of the studios. My pentaptych "Nuclear Plant", six meters long, occupied most of the wall and also did not look like studio work. The works of the fourth guest, Yuri Sobolev, were lost, as he exhibited several small drawings on paper, which were not noticeable against the general background of the painting. The exhibition ran for three days and became a sensation. She was visited by the entire color of the Soviet intelligentsia - composers, writers, filmmakers, scientists. I remember a conversation with Mikhail Romm, who became interested in my "Nuclear Plant" (I think because of the thematic connection with his film "Nine Days of One Year") and asked to come to the studio, but never called.

Foreign journalists made a film, which was shown in America the very next day. Local chiefs did not know how to react, since there were no direct orders, and the police, just in case, out of inertia, “pressed” on journalists - they punctured tires in their cars, made holes in their rights, allegedly for some kind of violations. The excitement around the exhibition of "amateur art", and even with the great attention of foreign journalists, was a complete surprise for the authorities, and while they were choking and sorting it out, it ended successfully. On the third day, we took the work home. In the last days of November, four of us - Neizvestny, Sooster, Sobolev and me - were invited to make an exhibition in the lobby of the Yunost Hotel. Invitation cards were printed and sent out, the works were hung up, and when the first guests began to arrive, some people from the Komsomol city committee, under whose auspices this exhibition was organized, appeared and began to babble something in confusion about the fact that, they say, the exhibition is a discussion one, there is no need to open it to the public, let's discuss tomorrow how to make a discussion, etc., etc. We understood that something had happened that changed the situation, but we didn’t know what exactly.

The next day, a whole delegation appeared, which, after long and meaningless conversations, suddenly offered us a hall where we could hang our exhibition and then hold a discussion, inviting everyone we wished to it, and they were “ours”. They immediately gave us a truck with loaders, loaded the work and brought, to our amazement ... to the Manege, where we met Belyutin with his students hanging their work in the next room. It was November 30th.

This was the gift that the academicians received from fate, or rather, as we later understood, they organized it for themselves. It was they who decided to lure the participants of the exhibition on Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya to the Manege, giving them three separate rooms on the second floor, in order to introduce them to the country's leadership, allegedly as members of the Union of Artists and participants in the exhibition "30 Years of the Moscow Union of Artists", who treacherously undermined the foundations of the Soviet state system. This, of course, was a blatant falsification, since only one student of Belyutin was a member of the Moscow Union of Artists, and of the four of us, only Ernst Neizvestny, who, by the way, was also represented at the anniversary exhibition.

We ourselves hung the work all day and all night. The workers immediately got drunk, and we drove them away. I still managed to paint with gouache the podiums under the sculptures of the Unknown. No one understood what was happening and why there was such a rush. At night, members of the Politburo, Minister of Culture Furtseva, came, silently and preoccupiedly walked around our halls, of course, they did not greet us or speak to us. When at night we were given questionnaires to fill out and told to come by 9 am with our passports, we found out that a party and government delegation would come.

At 5 am we went home. Ernst asked me to lend him a tie (I had one) because he wanted to be in a suit. We agreed to meet at the Universitet metro station at 8 am. I overslept, he woke me up with a phone call. He came up to me for a tie, was clean-shaven, powdered, eyes excited: "I did not sleep all night, sat in a hot bath, played the situation," he told me. We went to the Manege.

The plan of the academicians was as follows: first, to lead Khrushchev and the whole company along the first floor and, using his incompetence and well-known taste preferences, provoke his negative reaction to the already dead "formalists" of the 1930s in the historical part of the exhibition, then smoothly transfer this reaction to their own young opponents from the "left" Moscow Union of Artists, focusing Khrushchev's discontent on them, and then bring him to the second floor to consolidate the defeat of the "opposition", presenting the artists exhibited there as an extremely reactionary and dangerous for the state prospect of liberalization in the field of ideology.

So, the drama developed exactly according to the script prepared by the academicians. The passage through the first floor was accompanied by admiration for the achievements of the academicians, an ironic reaction accompanied by collective loyal laughter at Khrushchev’s “witty” jokes and his statements about Falk and other dead, a very negative reaction to the “severe style” of the young leftist MOSKh and a prepared outburst of indignation towards “ traitors to the motherland”, as they were presented by the academicians, exhibited on the second floor.

When the whole procession led by Khrushchev began to climb the stairs to the second floor, we, who were standing on the upper platform and did not understand anything about what was happening, naively assuming that Khrushchev’s visit would open a new page in cultural life and we would be “recognized”, according to Belyutin’s idea (“We must greet them, after all, the Prime Minister”), they began to applaud politely, to which Khrushchev cut us off rudely: “Stop clapping, go, show your daub!”, went to the first hall, where the students of the studio were presented Belyutin.

Entering the hall, Khrushchev immediately began to yell and look for the "instigators" of the exhibition on Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya. There were two epicenters of the conversation: with Belyutin and with Unknown. In addition, there were curses and threats addressed to everyone, and, on the periphery of the event, a few point questions to the students of the studio, on whose work, standing in the middle of the hall, Khrushchev's finger accidentally pointed. It is strange that this drama is so frivolously, in the style of a soap opera, focusing on the endless repetitions of the word "faggots", described by several peripheral participants who accidentally fell into the "focus" of Khrushchev's attention, or rather, his finger.

The episodes I remember were:

Khrushchev, after an angry tirade addressed to all artists, sternly asks Belyutin: “Who allowed you to arrange an exhibition on Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya Street and invite foreign journalists?” Belyutin, justifying himself: "They were correspondents of communist and progressive press organs." Khrushchev exclaims: "All foreigners are our enemies!" One of the Belyutinites asks why Khrushchev is so negative about their work, while he himself opened the process of de-Stalinization in the country. To which Khrushchev is very firm: "As for art, I am a Stalinist."

Unknown is trying to prove something. Minister of State Security Shelepin wants to shut his mouth: “Where do you get bronze?” Unknown: "In the garbage dumps I find water taps." Shelepin: "Well, we'll check that." Unknown: "Why are you scaring me, I can come home and shoot myself." Shelepin: "Don't scare us." Unknown: "Don't scare me." Khrushchev to everyone: “You are deceiving the people, traitors to the Motherland! Everyone to logging! Then, having changed his mind: "Write applications to the government - all foreign passports, we will take you to the border, and - on all four sides!"

He stands in the center of the hall, surrounded by members of the Politburo, ministers, academics. The white face of Furtseva attentively listening to dirty swearing, the green angry face of Suslov sprinkled with dandruff, the satisfied faces of academicians.

Khrushchev randomly points his finger at one, another work: “Who is the author?” He asks for a surname, says a few words, but this already refers more to the biography of those randomly selected than to the drama of the event itself. I repeat, the main attackers were the head of the studio E. Belyutin and E. Neizvestny.

Then everyone, following Khrushchev, smoothly flowed into the second hall, where the works of Hulo Sooster (one wall), Yuri Sobolev (several drawings) and my three walls were exhibited - the pentaptych "Nuclear Plant" of 1962, triptych No. 2 "Two Principles" 1962 and twelve oils from the Theme and Improvisation cycle, also 1962. First, Khrushchev saw the work of Sooster:

Hulot out.

What's the last name? What are you drawing?

Yulo began, from excitement with a very strong Estonian accent, to explain something. Khrushchev tensed: what kind of foreigner is this? In his ear: "Estonian, was in the camp, released in 1956." Khrushchev lagged behind Sooster and turned to my work. Pointed his finger at triptych number 2:

I went.

What's the last name?

Yankilevsky.

Obviously didn't like it.

What is this?

Triptych No. 2 "Two Beginnings".

No, it's a daub.

No, this is triptych No. 2 "Two Beginnings".

No, this is a daub - but not so sure, because I saw two quotes from Piero della Francesca - a portrait of Senor de Montefeltro and his wife, collaged into a triptych. Khrushchev did not understand whether I painted it or not. In general, he was a little confused and, having received no support from the academicians, he moved to another room.

I was so shocked by all the absurdity and inexplicable injustice of what was happening to me that, out of naivety, I was ready to enter into a discussion with Khrushchev about art, but I knew that in the next room Ernst was preparing very seriously for a conversation with Khrushchev, and for compositional reasons I decided not to start discussion, leaving it to the director Neizvestny. (When I later told Ernst about this, he was very surprised: “Have you thought about this?”) I could not understand what my fault was before the state. Khrushchev spoke to us as if we were caught red-handed by enemy saboteurs. I was 24 years old (I was the youngest exhibited in the Manezh) and, living in poverty, did these things, which, frankly, I was very pleased with and which now, after forty years, I consider one of the best of what I did, and why does it cause such an embittered, unmotivated reaction?

So, everyone moved to the third hall, where the sculptures of the Unknown were exhibited. Lebedev, Khrushchev's adviser, through whom Tvardovsky lobbied (punched?) for permission to print Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Day of Ivan Denisovich, lingered about nuclear power plant” and began to reassure Hulot and me that, they say, the work is talented and everything will work out. In the hall of the Unknown, academicians began to attack him over Khrushchev's head, feeling that the decisive moment had come. Ernst interrupted them, saying rather sharply: “And you shut up, I’ll talk to you later. Here Nikita Sergeevich listens to me and does not swear. Khrushchev smiled and said, "Well, I don't always swear." Then Khrushchev cited many examples of good, as he understood, art, recalling Solzhenitsyn, and Sholokhov, and the song "Rushnichok", and trees painted by someone, where the leaves were as if alive. The nature of the dialogue with the Unknown changed: at first Khrushchev spoke more, then Ernst mastered the situation and himself began to lead Khrushchev around the hall, giving, for example, such explanations: "These are wings symbolizing flight." He showed several official projects and a monument to Gagarin, and Khrushchev began to listen with interest. The academics were very nervous, they obviously missed the initiative. Having finished the tour, Khrushchev said goodbye to Ernst by the hand and said quite kindly: “There is an angel and a devil in you. We like the angel, but we will eradicate the devil from you. This ended the meeting.

We didn't know what to expect. Just in case, I collected notebooks and took them to my friend Vita Pivovarov. Then he went to his parents to warn them about possible repressions. When I said that “we will take you to the border and - on all four sides,” my mother suddenly exclaimed: “Will they really let me out ?!”

A few days later, I learned that the Belyutins wrote a letter to the Central Committee, where they explained that they wanted to sing the "beauty of the Russian woman." This was quoted indignantly in the Pravda newspaper. How events developed further is fairly well known. Meeting with artists at the government dacha, where I, having already understood everything, refused to give my works, then a meeting of the Ideological Commission of the Central Committee with young cultural workers, where I was and with surprise and curiosity watched the farce of "benevolent" criticism of alien trends in Soviet art and loyal and justifying speeches of many cultural figures. Here is a quote from a speech by B. Zhutovsky, one of Belyutin's studio students, pointed out by Khrushchev's finger: "I believe that my works exhibited at the exhibition in the Manezh are formalistic and deserve the fair party criticism that they received." And further: “I am grateful to the party and the government for the fact that, despite all our serious mistakes, we have been given the opportunity in a healthy creative environment to discuss the most important issues in the development of our art and help us find the right path in it.” Then the triumph of the Stalinist academicians and their victory over the "left" Moscow Union of Artists. We, the "independents", were recognized as existing for the first time, having brought down on us a flurry of newspaper and magazine abuse. It became difficult to get orders from publishing houses, I had to work under a pseudonym. But this victory was decorative, it no longer corresponded to the dynamics of the liberalization of society.

After two or three years, interesting books and translations began to appear, exhibitions continued at research institutes, and concerts of contemporary music continued. It was already impossible to stop, despite any prohibitions.

Vladimir Yankilevsky,
Paris, February 2003

1 Arena. Weekly Journal, 2003, No. 45. Memoirs of the Manezh Exhibition, 1962. In: Zimmerli Journal, Fall 2003, No.1. Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. P. 67-78.

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Moscow, 2 Dec— RIA Novosti, Anna Kocharova. Fifty-five years ago, on December 5, 1962, an exhibition was held at the Manezh, which was visited by the head of state Nikita Khrushchev. The result was not only sounded insults, but also the fact that this whole story divided the artistic life in the USSR into "before" and "after".

"Before", one way or another, there was contemporary art. It wasn't official, but it wasn't banned either. But already "after" objectionable artists began to be persecuted. Some went to work in the field of design and book graphics - they just needed to earn at least somehow. Others became "parasites", as they were then defined by the official system: not being members of creative unions, these people could not engage in free creativity. The sword of Damocles hung over each - a very real judicial term.

The exhibition in the Manezh, or rather, that part of it where avant-garde artists were exhibited, was mounted in a hurry - right at night, on the eve of the opening on December 1. The offer to participate in the official exhibition, timed to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Moscow Union of Artists, was unexpectedly received by the artist Eliy Belyutin.

Shortly before the Manege, he exhibited the work of his students in the hall on Taganka. Under his leadership, a semi-official studio worked, which is now commonly called "Belyutinsky", and its members - "Belyutins". His students later wrote that Belyutin's studies and classes were "a window into the world of contemporary art."

The exhibition was held following the results of the summer plein-airs, Ernst Neizvestny also participated in it, who was not formally a member of this circle, but later became the main person involved in the scandal at the Manege. The unknown, as well as Vladimir Yankilevsky, Hulot Sooster and Yuri Sobolev, were invited by Belyutin to give the exhibition more weight.

This story with Khrushchev over time acquired legends, many participants had their own versions of what happened. This is understandable: everything happened so rapidly that there was simply no time to comprehend and remember the details.

It is believed that the exhibition at Taganka was visited by foreign journalists who were surprised to discover that the avant-garde exists and develops in the USSR. Allegedly, photographs and articles in the Western press immediately appeared, and even a short film was made. This seems to have reached Khrushchev - and now at the highest level it was decided to invite avant-garde artists to the Manege.

There is another version of this hasty invitation. Allegedly, the avant-garde artists in the Manege were needed by academicians in order to show the head of state and, as they say, stigmatize objectionable art. That is, the invitation to the Manege was a provocation that the artists simply did not recognize.

One way or another, Belyutin was called by the secretary of the Central Committee, Leonid Ilyichev. Being himself a passionate collector of art, and not always official, he persuaded him to show the work of his studio members. Belyutin seemed to refuse. But then, almost at night, employees of the Central Committee arrived at the studio, packed the works and took them to the exhibition hall. At night they did hanging - avant-gardists were assigned three small halls on the second floor of the Manege. They did everything quickly, some of the work did not have time to hang. And, which is significant, there is still no complete and accurate list of works that were exhibited at that time.

Artists waited impatiently for Khrushchev. Leonid Rabichev, a participant in the infamous exhibition, recalled that someone even suggested putting an armchair in the middle of one of the halls: they suggested that Nikita Sergeevich would be put in the center, and the artists would tell him about their work.

First, Khrushchev and his retinue were taken to the halls where paintings by recognized classics hung, including Grekov and Deineka. According to the recollections of eyewitnesses, the “scrapping” occurred at the works of Falk, which the Secretary General was incomprehensible, and therefore did not like. Then the situation began to grow like a snowball.

Ernst Neizvestny later said that while waiting for the General Secretary on the third floor, he and his colleagues had already heard "the cries of the head of state." Vladimir Yankilevsky later wrote that when Khrushchev began to climb the stairs, all the artists began "politely applauding, to which Khrushchev rudely interrupted us:" Stop clapping, go, show your daub!

Ernst Neizvestny fell under the hot hand. “Khrushchev attacked me with all his might,” the sculptor later recalled. “He shouted like a slashed man that I was eating away the people's money.” The Secretary General did not like the work of the artist Boris Zhutovsky either, the painting by Leonid Rabichev caused irritation.

"Arrest them! Destroy them! Shoot them!" Rabichev quoted Khrushchev's words. “Things that cannot be described in words happened,” the artist summed up.

All those present, according to eyewitnesses, were in a state of shock. Even after leaving the Manezh, no one left - everyone stood and waited for immediate arrests. The following days also lived in a state of fear, but there were no arrests, formally no repressive measures were used. This, as many believe, was the main achievement and conquest of Khrushchev's rule.

A few years later, the artist Zhutovsky visited Khrushchev at his dacha - the former general secretary had already been removed from power and led a calm and measured life. Zhutovsky said that Khrushchev even seemed to apologize and said that "he was screwed up." And Ernst Neizvestny later made the famous black-and-white gravestone monument to Khrushchev. The sculptor himself called this fact the most incredible result of this scandal.

Culture shock

In December 1962, the head of the USSR Nikita Khrushchev, in contact with modern art, was offended in the best feelings and poured out his anger in the ways available to him - he overlaid the artists with a good obscenity and spit with relish at the picture of Leonid Mechnikov, when looking at which his patience, apparently, burst.

The exhibition of 1962 in the Moscow Manezh is the first exposition of Soviet avant-garde artists, or rather abstractionists, which was held by the New Reality studio headed by Eliy Belyutin. "New Reality" is a unique Soviet phenomenon, which could only come true thanks to the so-called thaw. The reason for the exhibition was quite decent - the 30th anniversary of the Moscow branch of the Union of Artists of the USSR. But Khrushchev was unprepared for the perception of abstract art.

This is pederasty! Why pederasts are 10 years old, and this order should be?<...>Does it evoke any feeling? I want to spit! These are the feelings

By the way, the picture that Khrushchev spat in, Leonid Mechnikov subsequently cherished and cherished - circled the place of spitting, took the audience to watch. She also became the highlight of the reconstruction of the exhibition "New Reality" in 2012 in the same Manege.

Few of the artists survived - one of them, Pavel Nikonov, gained worldwide fame, became a People's Artist of the Russian Federation. As well as the sculptor Ernst Neizvestny, who recently left the world, who got, if not a spit from Khrushchev, but an honorable dressing for his "freak factory". Ironically, it was the Unknown who made a monument to Khrushchev on his grave at the Novodevichy cemetery.

Another exhibition of "New Reality", but not in the Manezh, but in the Museum of Modern Art MMOMA, will open on October 19, 2016. There will be several paintings from that devastating exhibition, however, as Olga Uskova, the main collector of works of this movement and the head of the Russian Abstract Art Foundation, says, their task is to tell about the artistic phenomenon, and not to reconstruct the 1962 exhibition, in which Khrushchev’s spitting was not so quite a significant event.

Twenty persistent avant-garde artists and the shortest exhibitions

In the same 1962, Khrushchev said:

We appreciate that position (in art. - Note. Life) is good. But there is also a lot of rubbish. Gotta clean.

And they started cleaning. However, according to researchers of the avant-garde movement of those years, if the entire party apparatus believed that these paintings were so bad and harmful, they would have been destroyed, and their authors would have been imprisoned. Nevertheless, none of the defeated artists lost their freedom, Khrushchev's order to expel them from the CPSU could not be implemented, since none of them were members of the party. Somehow they could continue their work and even teach (the same head of the "New Reality" Eliy Belyutin), and their works were even periodically taken to international exhibitions from the USSR.

In the late 1960s, already under Brezhnev, the so-called twenty artists began to form in Moscow, the main of which was the leader of domestic nonconformism, Oscar Rabin.

On January 22, 1967, together with Lianozovo (a group of artists) and collector Alexander Glezer, he organized the first of the shortest exhibitions in their history at the Druzhba Palace of Culture. Two hours after the opening, KGB officers came and ordered to close the disgrace.

In the same months, the artists attempted a number of exhibitions, and one turned out to be shorter than the other - the exhibition of Eduard Zyuzin in the cafe "Aelita" lasted three hours, the exhibition at the institute international relations- forty-five minutes, and Oleg Tselkov in the House of Architects - fifteen minutes.

bulldozer exhibition

In the fall of 1974, another significant event happened in the informal art environment. On the outskirts of the Soviet capital, in Bitsevsky Park, the same Rabin with the already formed "twenty" decides to hold an exhibition in the open air - a sort of vernissage. It was attended by journalists from foreign news agencies, diplomats, as well as another group of painters who came to support their colleagues. Not far from the crossroads, the artists hung their paintings on makeshift racks.

The scope of the exposition was small - a few dozen works and participants, but the reaction of the authorities was not long in coming. About half an hour after the start of the exhibition, bulldozers and dump trucks drove to the venue, and about a hundred policemen in civilian clothes arrived, who began to crush and break paintings, beat and arrest artists, spectators and foreign journalists.

The event caused a resonance at the world level. After publications in foreign media, the authorities decided to rehabilitate themselves by allowing the G20 artists to hold a similar exhibition in Izmailovo in two weeks. It lasted, however, not much longer - about four hours, and the work was not of the same level (destroyed and confiscated works from the first opening day could not be returned). But later these four hours in Izmailovo were remembered by the artists as "half a day of freedom".

Avant-gardists and hippies in "Beekeeping"

And yet the ice broke just then. A year later, in September 1975, the first truly free (because permitted) exhibition of avant-garde art took place in the VDNKh pavilion "Beekeeping". It went down in history as an "exhibition in Beekeeping". It was organized by the artists Vladimir Nemukhin, Dmitry Plavinsky, and the curator was Eduard Drobitsky. other.

Several hundred works, from paintings to hippie performances, managed to be put on display, which lasted only a week, but opened the door to new Soviet art.

The current sectologist, and then 18-year-old hippie Alexander Dvorkin, in his book of memoirs "Teachers and Lessons" recalls this exhibition in the following way:

To admire the "almost forbidden" works of fans of abstractionism, surrealism and other nonconformism, the people lined up in a kilometer-long line, along which mounted police drove sullenly. In total, 522 works were presented under the vaults of the pavilion. The group "Volosy", of course, also did not stand aside - the "Hippe Flag" made by her, measuring one and a half by more than two meters, attracted everyone's attention. The collective authors succinctly listed Lime, Mango, Ophelia, Shaman, Bumblebee, Chicago. We will not reveal the secret completely, but among these pseudonyms was one that bore the name Alexander Dvorkin.

Organized freedom

After the resounding success of the exhibition in "Beekeeping", the authorities allowed the "twenty" to have their own premises and exhibition area. In the autumn of 1976, an exhibition of eight luminaries of the movement - Otari Kandaurov, Dmitry Plavinsky, Oscar Rabin, Vladimir Nemukhin, Dmitry Plavinsky, Nikolai Vechtomov, Alexander Kharitonov and Vladimir Kalinin - was opened in the newly opened premises of the city committee of graphics on Malaya Gruzinskaya Street. Since then, the "twenty" settled in the city committee of graphics and stayed there until their last exhibition in 1991.

One of the leaders of Soviet unofficial art, the artist Eliy Belyutin, whose works were criticized by Nikita Khrushchev at the 1962 exhibition at the Manege, died at the age of 87 in Moscow.

On December 1, 1962, an exhibition dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the Moscow branch of the Union of Artists of the USSR (MOSH) was to open in the Moscow Manege. Part of the exhibition's works was presented by the "New Reality" exposition, a movement of artists organized in the late 1940s by the painter Eliy Belyutin, who continues the traditions of the Russian avant-garde of the early 20th century. Belyutin studied under Aristarkh Lentulov, Pavel Kuznetsov and Lev Bruni.

The art of "New Reality" was based on the "contact theory" - the desire of a person through art to restore a sense of inner balance, disturbed by the influence of the surrounding world with the help of the ability to generalize natural forms, keeping them in abstraction. In the early 1960s, the studio united about 600 Belyutins.

In November 1962, the first exhibition of the studio was organized on Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya Street. The exhibition was attended by 63 artists of the "New Reality" together with Ernst Neizvestny. The head of the Union of Polish Artists, Professor Raymond Zemsky, and a group of critics managed to specially come to its opening from Warsaw. The Ministry of Culture gave permission for the presence of foreign correspondents, and the next day for a press conference. The TV report about the opening day was held at Eurovision. At the end of the press conference, the artists, without explanation, were asked to take their work home.

On November 30, Dmitry Polikarpov, head of the Department of Culture of the Central Committee, addressed Professor Eliy Belyutin and, on behalf of the newly created Ideological Commission, asked to restore the Taganskaya exhibition in in full force in a specially prepared room on the second floor of the Manege.

The exposition, made overnight, was approved by Furtseva along with the kindest parting words, the works were taken from the authors' apartments by the Manezh employees and delivered by transport of the Ministry of Culture.

On the morning of December 1, Khrushchev appeared on the threshold of the Manezh. At first, Khrushchev began to consider the exposition rather calmly. Over the long years of being in power, he got used to attending exhibitions, got used to how works were arranged according to a once worked out scheme. This time the exposure was different. It was about the history of Moscow painting, and among the old paintings were the very ones that Khrushchev himself banned back in the 1930s. He might not have paid any attention to them if the secretary of the Union of Soviet Artists Vladimir Serov, known for his series of paintings about Lenin, did not talk about the paintings of Robert Falk, Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Drevin, calling them daubs for which museums pay a lot of money workers. At the same time, Serov operated with astronomical prices at the old rate (a currency reform was recently passed).

Khrushchev began to lose control of himself. Mikhail Suslov, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU on ideological issues, who was present at the exhibition, immediately began to develop the theme of daub, "freaks that artists purposely draw", what the Soviet people need and do not need.

Khrushchev walked around the large hall three times, where the works of 60 artists of the New Reality group were presented. He then rapidly moved from one picture to another, then returned back. He lingered on the portrait of the girl Alexei Rossal: "What is this? Why is there no one eye? This is some kind of morphine drinker!"

Then Khrushchev quickly went to the large composition of Lucian Gribkov "1917". "What is this disgrace, what kind of freaks? Where is the author?" "How could you imagine a revolution like that? What kind of thing is this? Don't you know how to draw? My grandson draws even better." He swore at almost all the pictures, poking his finger and uttering the already familiar, endlessly repeated set of curses.

The next day, December 2, 1962, immediately after the release of the Pravda newspaper with a damning government communiqué, crowds of Muscovites rushed to the Manege to see the reason for the "highest fury", but did not find a trace of the exposition located on the second floor. The paintings by Falk, Drevin, Tatlin and others, cursed by Khrushchev, were removed from the exposition on the first floor.

Khrushchev himself was not pleased with his actions. The handshake of reconciliation took place in the Kremlin on December 31, 1963, where Eliy Belyutin was invited to celebrate the New Year. A short conversation took place between the artist and Khrushchev, who wished him and "his comrades" successful work for the future and "more understandable" painting.

In 1964, "New Reality" began to work in Abramtsevo, through which about 600 artists passed, including from the original artistic centers of Russia: Palekh, Kholuy, Gus-Khrustalny, Dulev, Dmitrov, Sergiev Posad, Yegorievsk.