Nazarov Mikhail Alekseevich - artist. His painting style is regarded as neo-primitivism. Born in a beautiful village, watching the disappearance of Russian villages, he tried in paintings to preserve the memory of village life. In the last years of his life, his art was revealed at exhibitions and brought unforgettable impressions to art lovers.
Biography
Mikhail Nazarov was born on May 24, 1927 in the village of Kananikolskoye in the Zilair district of Bashkiria. Father and mother were from peasants. The family was never in poverty. There was always food, even during the war years. Planted several gardens and lots of potatoes. They developed virgin soil and sowed bread. They dug everything with a shovel. Mom was an active hostess, never sat idle and took care that the children were full, dressed and shod.
Michael started working early. He was a blacksmith and a bricklayer. The family moved to the Tubinsky mine and Mikhail worked there as a prospector. Throughout the war, he, along with adults, mined gold in the mine. Earning a bag of flour per month was a blessing.
After the war, Mikhail was appointed head of the narrow-gauge railway construction. They gave a horse and a tarantass. He drove around and marked the future road. I drew everything I saw. He showed his drawings to the construction director and said that he wanted to go to study. So the road to the world of canvases and paints was outlined, and this road lay through the Bashkir art and theater school.
How to start drawing
It all started at school. From the fifth grade a wall newspaper was issued. They painted it with the whole class, but for some reason Mikhail did not like this hobby, but he liked the sketches for the lessons of geography and science. Either waterfalls or plants. At that time, it seemed to him that he was the worst draftsman among the guys, but for some reason the nickname "artist" stuck to him.
The art school gave him not only science and art of drawing, but also communication with teachers Alexander Tyulkin and Boris Laletin. Under their influence, the budding artist formed his own style of painting.
Becoming
After graduating from art school, Michael taught visual arts lessons to children at school. Later he entered the State Art University in Tallinn. There, Mikhail plunged into the world of academic drawing. He worked a lot - from eight in the morning until ten in the evening. I wanted to work even on the weekend. On Sunday, the workshops were closed, he often climbed through the window, just to work. In the Baltic states, the artist felt free. In Russia at that time, much was prohibited and art was dictated. Necessarily in the paintings it was necessary to draw Lenin and Stalin. In M. Nazarov, Tallinn felt a special taste for creativity. Ilmar Kimm had a great influence on M. Nazarov at that time.
Rejection and clandestine period
In 1958, M. Nazarov returned to Ufa. It was filled with new ideas and themes. While living in the city, he still missed the village, his native Kananikolsk, and his memory did not give rest. So on the canvas began to appear at home, bazaars, rivers, tractors, men with earflaps, women in trapezoidal shawls, "cannon rings", a mine, a scythe, an ax, a hammer and a cart. The images of people in the paintings, he called the "Canary Cancer."
Over the years, his writing style has been refined, but society did not like it. In those years, many artists suffered from misunderstanding and rejection. It came to the explicit prohibition and repression of painters.
Mikhail Nazarov did not give up. He stubbornly painted and taught painting at the Ufa Institute of Arts. Z. Ismagilova. By 1989, Nazarov had written more than 200 paintings, and almost all were presented at his first exhibition in Sverdlovsk. But even then, his work was perceived in two ways. In the book of reviews at the exhibition, some people scolded him terribly and offered to take away all his brushes and paints from such an artist and not to show anyone what he painted at all.
Years passed, the artist’s workshop looked more like a repository of canvases. M. Nazarov never sought to become famous. His living canvases were waiting in the wings and waited.
At the last Miras exhibition in his life, he talked about the painting. He was looking for a white to black ratio. Started on the left side - from the cross. The cross first painted as a frame of a village window. It has come from memory that the base of the window frame in the peasant's hut is a cross. Just long forgotten. Then it seemed that the cross would be lonely, and a random pattern arose on the right. According to the author, the sizes of black and white in the picture are guessed exactly. This picture is perceived as a whole composition, because one color supports the other and does not allow two objects to separate.
The artist recalls his feelings while walking in the village. He noticed that when you walk along the street, it seems that it’s not you who are walking, but the houses go and move with you. This is what became the basis of the design in paintings with houses.
The composition "Life-Being of Zinka Pustylnikova" is dedicated to Aunt Zinaida Methodievna. She was presented at the Sverdlovsk exhibition. A flattering response for M. Nazarov was written about her in the book of reviews. The lines said that if the artist painted only this picture, one would be enough to admire him.
All of Nazarov’s work is a conversation about life, about “life”, which was portrayed by the “sixties”. The heroes of the artist are real canancers, only their faces and figures are as if cut down. The paintings seem to say that life is hard and harsh.
Do it yourself - teach others
For more than a quarter of a century he devoted himself to teaching students painting. Many have become folk and honored artists of the Republic of Bashkiria:
Remembering the teacher, they say kind words about him. At the Miras exhibition, Amir Mazitov said: “For me he is such a Bashkir and Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle, and Herodotus in one person. He can very simply say about some deep lofty things
Students sought to get to him for painting courses. Legends were composed about him among artists. He attracted and fascinated with stories about the homeland, about Bashkiria, about painters of all times. Young caught every his word, already realizing that they were talking with a real master.
