Valentin Fedorovich Papko (1939 - present) is a muralist who decorated many buildings in Kuban and painted a lot of paintings. However, he never managed to outgrow the status of "provincial artist", and his paintings are exhibited mainly in local museums, and there are quite objective reasons for this. About this artist and his one of the most famous paintings, in which he made many bloopers, we will talk in the article, and at the same time touch on the question: "should a realist painter write the truth of life or for the sake of artistic effect can and distort obvious things?".
Let's live
Papko was born in Krasnodar Krai and from childhood he had to experience all the hardships of the Great Patriotic War. His mother fell seriously ill with typhus in the first year of the war, little Valya, who was three years old at the time, was with her, and he was very lucky that he was not infected and survived, because the village where they lived was under German occupation and there was no good medical care. But afterwards they moved to Tikhoretsk, where they lived with relatives until the end of the war.
Will they get there?
Valya started drawing since childhood, and when he went to school, he could perfectly copy drawings and reproductions of paintings by famous artists. His father, who returned safely from the war, noticed this urge to create and bought him oil paints so that Valya could write like a real artist. His creative development was greatly influenced by one incident seen in childhood. Not far away there was a gypsy tabor, once a gypsy for something very angry at his young wife and chased her with a whip. Valya saw a young woman running barefoot in the snow, screaming hysterically, while her husband chased after her and whipped her with the whip with all his might. The villagers watched this scene indifferently - the affairs of the tabor did not concern them, and a husband had the right to teach and punish his delinquent wife, even if these actions were contrary to the Criminal Code.
Morning in the village. A new time in life.
He sincerely sympathized with the woman, but at the same time passionately wanted to write a similar scene. However, nothing worked, writing from memory was much more difficult than copying what he had already seen, he lacked basic knowledge. Perhaps it was at this point that Papko decided to become an artist. He studied at the Penza school named after Savitsky, but after a couple of years, he lost his art degree. Savitsky, but after a couple of years he transferred to Krasnodar Art School, closer to his young wife. However, the knowledge he received in the province seemed not enough, and Papko finished his studies in Moscow. True, he had to serve two more years in the Navy. Papko recalled that after a full day of regular service, he, when all the coworkers had already gone to bed, had to decorate the club, and at night still write sketches, already for himself. One day he saw an article about Geli Korzhev in a magazine and decided that he would finish his studies only with him, because he fully shared his creative vision and desire to write the truth of life, even if it was harsh and unsightly.
A bygone summer
And then there was artwork in Krasnodar, where during the Soviet era Papko created many mosaics and paintings on public buildings, many of which have survived to this day. But paying tribute to his skill and diligence is somewhat surprising his painting "Not even dreamed of. Morning of June 22, 1941", painted in 2011.
Not even a dream. The morning of June 22, 1941
It depicts a Soviet family - a young wife, a husband and a small child, who are sleeping soundly in the morning, while enemy planes are already flying at their village, ready to raze it to the ground. But despite the tragedy of what is happening, the picture resembles a modern series about war - you look and do not believe your eyes. The airplanes themselves could not fly so low to the ground and in such quantity, but we will refer it to the element of fiction, emphasizing the tragedy of what is happening. And why there is not a tree or a blade of grass in the yard - if the case took place in Stavropol, it is quite understandable, there is a terrible heat and by the end of June the grass can wither, but the village is most likely located in Belarus, where no one ever complained about the lack of trees and grass in summer.
Over the river.
And why such a huge window with a bed underneath? In the past, windows were made small and narrow for the sake of heat preservation and because of their high cost. In general, it seems that at first the artist painted an ordinary window, but then, dissatisfied with the effect, added two more sashes on the edges. And certainly the whole family should have woken up from the rumble of airplanes, but for some reason everyone is sleeping peacefully. All these inconsistencies and reduce the tragedy of what is happening, reduce it to the level of a cheap TV series. Perhaps it is just not the most successful picture of the artist - everyone has mistakes, but it is too revealing in terms of psychology and attitude to his work. And what do you think, has the right to exist such a vision of the artist, which gives outright kitsch - write in the comments.
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