Nikolai Nikolaevich Uvarov has lived almost all his life in Riga and is considered a Latvian artist. However, his life and work are no less connected with Russia and the Russian mentality than with Latvia. Tikhomirov is an innovative artist who has tried over 20 areas of the art of painting and developed his own original ideas and working methods.
Childhood
Nikolai Nikolaevich Uvarov liked to call himself a prince: his ancestors on the father's side belonged to the old princely family of the Uvarovs. His grandfather and great-grandfather were priests of the Orthodox Church, and his parents worked as teachers of the Russian language: father - at school, mother - at the university. Uvarova’s maternal grandfather, Samsonov Alexander Matveevich, was a confectioner famous throughout Uzbekistan.
Nikolai Uvarov was born and spent the first five years of his life in the Uzbek SSR, in the city of Tashkent. The artist's date of birth is October 29, 1941. In the spring of 1946, when his son was not yet five years old, his mother went with him to her sister in post-war Riga, and Nikolai Uvarov stayed there forever. However, he was drawn to his homeland all his life, and he tried to travel to Uzbekistan at least once a year. By the way, Uvarov learned to cook his famous pilaf, which was subsequently famous among his friends and relatives of the artist, precisely at home.
Nikolai began drawing in early childhood: already at the age of five he painted cartoons on the hated Hitler. In a mixed Russian-Latvian kindergarten group, where the boy began to go to Riga, he once made a series of illustrations for the Russian folk tale "Masha and the Bear." The children and the teacher were delighted, and then the mother of the young artist enrolled her son in the drawing circle at the Riga Palace of Pioneers. The big plus was that children were given supplies - paper, paint, and easels. It was here that Nikolai Uvarov began to comprehend the basics of professional painting. Classes were taught by the famous Latvian artist Auseklis Matisovich Bauskenieks, who gave his students the basics of classical art.
Two years later, Uvarov began to attend a more serious educational and art institution - a visual studio of the Central House of Trade Union Culture, led by Eduard Yurkelis, the famous master of watercolors.
And in comprehensive school No. 26, where Nikolai studied, he drew all kinds of friendly cartoons, caricatures, and “nightmares” with youthful enthusiasm. The boy studied well, read a lot: every month his mother received a new volume of the 50-volume edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, and Kolya literally absorbed information. He also loved the classics of literature, science fiction.
Education and career start
Uvarov graduated from the school in 1958 and immediately got a job: the painting skills acquired in the school years were quite enough to become an artist at the Riga Porcelain Factory. Two years later, Nicholas was drafted into the ranks of the armed forces in the missile forces, he served in Western Belarus, in the Pinsky swamps. In the part where Uvarov served, there was a good library, and the young man reread all the books found there dedicated to the history of painting. He also continued to draw: “for himself” and “for business” - he designed stands, newspapers, etc.
Demobilized in 1963, Uvarov decided to get higher education in his chosen profession as an artist, and in particular - as an illustrator of books. He dreamed of becoming a student at the Moscow Polygraphic Institute, but in the first year he could not pass the competition of 18 people for a place, and the next year the competition was held, but instead the daughter of a famous writer was accepted to this place. In the period of preparation and unsuccessful admission, Nikolai worked as a student of the designer of the art design bureau. And in 1965 he entered the first year of the faculty of easel graphics at the Latvian State Academy of Arts. Uvarov with great warmth and respect remembered his mentors - Alexander Stankevich, a teacher of applied graphics; Peteris Upitis, master of book graphics; painting classes with Leo Svemps - all these people contributed to the formation of the personality and professionalism of the artist Nikolai Uvarov. In his free time, the student worked part time: he drew posters, wrote slogans on banners for Latvian factories and factories.
Young specialist
In 1971, a young specialist with a diploma just obtained came to work as an artist and designer at the Bureau of Technical Aesthetics of the Riga Electromechanical Plant (REZ P / O "Radio Engineering"). And immediately went on a business trip to Moscow at the International Electrotechnical Exhibition in Sokolniki - to arrange the pavilion of the USSR.
While still at the academy, Uvarov began to understand the narrowness and limitations of the concept of "Soviet artist." He saw that a certain conveyor was working on the training of artisans, who were subsequently required to fulfill orders according to clear rules and requirements. This approach to painting did not suit the creative personality of Nikolai Uvarov. Because of this, he quarreled with his boss and, not wanting to become an obedient and disenfranchised “cog”, resigned from a prestigious position.
Educational activities
In 1971, Nikolai Nikolaevich came to work as a drawing teacher at secondary school No. 37 in Riga. There was more scope for creativity, and the young teacher gradually developed an original methodology for teaching children painting. The basis of this technique is the development of imagination and creative thinking. Uvarov used all these developments in his further teaching activities. However, not everything was smooth at this job either: the directorate did not want to separate a separate class for drawing lessons, and Uvarov had to run around floors and classrooms with folders and accessories for classes.
Four years later, he left for Jurmala and began working there at school No. 5. Here he was allocated a room, which he designed in accordance with his tastes and preferences, ordered transforming desks and cubic chairs, various equipment. As a result, students could independently change the architecture of the room, guided by the topic of the lesson.
Having completed his school teaching career, Uvarov took up private teaching, and his lessons began to be in great demand. Many students of Uvarov were able to enter prestigious world art universities and achieved brilliant results in the profession. The mentor taught his wards not the craft, but the philosophy of the artist’s creativity, showed how a philosophical subtext can be expressed through the image of any ordinary subject.
In 1988, Nikolai Uvarov created the Balto-Slavic Society, later transformed into the Baltic International Academy. And here all his pedagogical finds and developments came in handy, in particular, on the development of creative thinking and imagination. Since 1998, he even taught a special course on this topic at the design department at BRI - the Baltic Russian Institute.
Artist career
In July 1977, Uvarov received a call from the editorial board of the Latvian newspaper Sovetskaya Molodezh and was invited to the post of chief artist. The editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Anatoly Kamenev, set the task: the appearance of each issue should be interesting! And Uvarov began to introduce a system of illustrations for each column. The work was very intense, but it was worth it: the newspaper was highly appreciated by the Central Committee of the CPSU, and the editor Kamenev was invited to be promoted to Moscow. The new boss Uvarova Andrei Vasilenok was not so creative and completely generous in fees.
And again, Uvarov was forced to quit - this happened in 1980. Immediately, a new job came up, and a new period began in the artist’s biography, which he jokingly called “medical”: Nikolai Nikolaevich worked for eight years at the Riga Medical Institute as a senior artist in the publishing department: he published methodological manuals, brochures, and books. In 1988, Uvarov was dismissed from this position and began to engage in creative activities as a "free artist".
Creation
Uvarov worked in various techniques and styles: graphics, engraving, oil, watercolor, ink, pencil, etc. The artist’s creative genres are also diverse: landscapes, among which there are a lot of images of Central Asia, sketches of urban architecture and nature, caricatures, the famous “debelins” as a kind of cartoons that make fun of negative phenomena in society.
Uvarov's design work should be highlighted as a separate block: drawings illustrating the Akkadian epic "Gilgamesh", which later came out as a separate edition; work on a series of illustrations for 38 chapters of the Old Testament (1975); illustrations for books, for example, for the children's book “Terrible folklore of Soviet children” by Andrey Usachev and Eduard Uspensky and much more.
Nikolai Uvarov’s own creative find was the technique of writing in oil on sandpaper. One of the most famous of these paintings is Dandelions.
Another experimental and innovative technique of the artist was watercolor with freshly brewed black coffee: in the last years of his life, every morning Uvarov began not with breakfast, but with the writing of three such watercolors.
Uvarov drew ideas and inspiration for his work not only from nature and the surrounding life, but also from literature - for example, from the works of Rabelais, Ray Bradbury and other writers.
