Artists with the surname Gorbachev. Artist Yuri Gorbachev: I belong to the whole world. You left after the putsch

Gorbachev’s sunny and joyful works now, in the best possible way, will help lift your spirits... However, this year his works will be shown in Moscow, at the Tretyakov Gallery, as part of the artist’s large “Museum Tour”, which runs from 2012 to 2015 Worldwide.

Paintings by Yuri Gorbachev are in the Kremlin, the Oval Hall of the White House, the Louvre, the Hermitage, the Russian Museum of St. Petersburg, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the UN Museum (New York), the National Museum of Ukraine, the National Gallery of Armenia, the Martiros Saryan Museum in Yerevan, the Rudana (Bali), National Museum Seni Rupa (Indonesia), as well as several museums in the USA and other countries. And also in the private collections of Vladimir Putin, Bill Clinton, Alla Pugacheva, Robbie Williams, Mick Jagger, Antonio Banderas and many others...

It’s interesting how everything was intertwined in Gorbachev’s life! He was born in Uglovka (the same place where the famous Russian traveler Miklouho-Maclay was born), which is near St. Petersburg. He graduated from the ceramics technical school in Borovichi. And then he went to conquer Leningrad, where he studied first at the Faculty of Journalism, then at the Faculty of Philosophy. Then he moved to Odessa, where he lived for 21 years. Here he became a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR before he graduated from the art and graphic department of the local pedagogical institute, at the age of 26. That same year he got married. From here he left in 1991 for New York, where he settled down and considers this city absolutely his own. But he doesn’t forget Odessa either, often visiting his city. Many celebrities visited his workshop on Kirov in their time...

But it so happened that a personal exhibition of a Russian American artist was brought to Yerevan... by Estonians. It was at the instigation of the Estonian businessman Meelis Kubits that not only a large delegation from Estonia came to Armenia in mid-June, but also writers and musicians from Ukraine, from a dozen other countries, as well as Mikhail Zhvanetsky and Yuri Shevchuk.

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The Yerevan exhibition of Gorbachev took place in this building - in the Union of Artists of Armenia. I will say right away that he is not a relative of the last former Secretary General and President of the USSR, although their grandfathers are from the same village... This is probably why Raisa Maksimovna directly helped the namesake of her famous husband a couple of times. And the sonority of the surname in the first years of emigration to the USA gave “this Russian” its own charm. Mikhail Gorbachev was remembered and loved there (unlike his homeland). So the rays of glory of the main perestroika fell to Yuri’s share.

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Despite the fact that the artist lives in New York, there are no American motifs in his paintings, but there are plenty of Eastern and Slavic motifs. The technique of execution is also unusual: the canvas simultaneously contains warm oil paints and cold enamel, lush bronze and gold... And no black! Malevich would have had a fit with his black square... Gorbachev uses only dark blue. But in clothes, black color is quite welcome...

Meelis, with whom we know each other well, suggested that I bring the exhibition from Tallinn to Yerevan,” says Yuri Gorbachev. - One of my grandmothers was born in Narva. So the Estonian trace can be traced. But in Armenia I am not a random person - my teacher was Valery Harutyunovich Geghamyan (Ukrainian artist of Armenian origin, teacher, founder and dean of the art and graphic department at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute - K.M.) For five years I attended classes with him every day. And he is a direct student of Martiros Saryan!

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Yuri is in Bali, where he has his own home. In life, and not just on canvas, he loves rich, bright colors...

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Mayan calendar...

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In 1994, Yuri Gorbachev was offered to advertise for Stolichnaya. He did so - and so successfully that the picture directly fit into the stencils of Western people. Cooperation with the brand continued to mutual benefit. Advertising with the author's name regularly appears in TIME, ELLE, VOGUE, American Photo and others...

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with his three sons...

The well-known publishing house Rizzoli International, which publishes only a few monographs a year by internationally recognized artists, published the book “The Art of Yuri Gorbachev” in 1998. In 2002, the international publishing and printing concern Bertelsmann released Gorbachev’s album “The Art of Paradise”...

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Adam and Eve...

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With La Toya Jackson, who became Gorbachev’s first “star buyer” in the United States, purchasing the painting “Strange Woman and Four Animals” from the artist in 1992 at an exhibition at the New York Plaza Hotel.

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"Elephant and Palm Tree"

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and isn’t this lion from a song by Boris Grebenshchikov?..

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a characteristic fact from Yuri’s biography:
The future artist’s mother worked as a teacher all her life, but in 1951, following a denunciation, she received a prison sentence and was imprisoned in the St. Petersburg “Kresty” prison. To get Leningrad registration and be closer to his mother, Gorbachev got a job as a prison guard. As he recalls, prisoners recognized him by his Lilac cologne...

More works from the Yerevan exhibition:

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I often come to Odessa, but my main apartment is on 57th Street in New York,” says Yuri. - I love New York more than anything in the world. This is exclusively my city... Once in Odessa I had a meeting with William Saroyan, whose stories, with his special humor, I had read before. On the shelves in one of the halls of the House of Actors, he saw my ceramic works - a curly ram, a wavy goat, a horse... He asked who made it? They told him and pointed to me. Saroyan decided to visit my workshop. He stayed with me for four hours. When he left, he said that he would take the horse and the wavy goat to California. I, of course, gave him one of my paintings. He tried to give me several tens of dollars. I don’t remember if I took it or not...

Yura, he told me, I see you in New York. And this was 1980. And I didn’t even think about leaving anywhere for almost ten years... It was later that his words turned out to be prophetic. But when I moved to America in 1991, William Saroyan had passed away by that time. I was surprised to discover how people reacted to the mention of his name. Much more respectful than anyone from the Kennedy clan, for example, with whom life also brought me together. Saroyan was treated like a classic, like a great artist - like Picasso... And then I began to read his works again, rediscovering them for myself. He is one of my favorite writers. And his prediction came true. Today I am an international artist with Russian roots and an Armenian school...

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With Hollywood starlet Brooke Shields and tennis star Andre Agassi (in the bottom photo), who were once spouses (photos of the paintings are mine, the rest are from the artist’s personal archive):
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"Birds"

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with his eldest son Platon (36 years old), whom Yuri trusts most, and with his ex-wife Natalya, with whom he is friends and helps her new family...

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In 1990, I had an exhibition at the Soviet Cultural Foundation in Moscow, which Raisa Gorbacheva helped organize,” Yuri continues to say. “She once told me then: monstrous times are coming.” If you decide to leave, I will help you... And she became the third person to say so. The second was Parajanov.

- Did you leave after the putsch?

Before. Back in June 1991. I left because banditry began, human life became devalued, and I had small children. And besides the external danger, there was also an internal one - the danger of disappointment in what you are doing, what you have dedicated your life to. Nobody needed an artist in those years in the USSR...

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with Hillary Clinton

Before my final departure, six months before, I had an exhibition in New York,” says Yuri. - And from everywhere I heard more and more often that I had to go...

And if someone returns from there now, it often means that he didn’t fit in there, didn’t settle down, didn’t find himself... But that’s not all, of course. I haven’t returned, but I often come here with my exhibitions, which I hold in Ukraine, Russia, and now in Armenia, as if I’m returning to some origins. This is difficult for my American friends and agents to understand. They believe that if they know me in America, in Asia, then this is quite enough. And there’s no need to tempt fate, what if something happens to me in the former Soviet Union?

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When Yuri and I were photographed on my camera, I still didn’t know how famous he was. And for 22 minutes (later I saw it on the recording)... he took the hero of the occasion away from the hall - from very official and not so official persons. They came to the lobby for us a couple of times, and we continued to talk, feeling sincere sympathy for each other, as if we had known each other for a long time. It’s not for nothing that my colleague from the New York Times once wrote: “There is no better subject for a story than a man who wants, above all, people to be happy... A man whose message is so simple and charming that it resonates with both Americans and Russians, and Indonesians..." And Armenians, I note)))

Hello, Yuri!

P.S. In Yerevan, however, there were other meetings and conversations. For example, with the vice speaker in the Armenian parliament -

This coming Saturday, Yuri Gorbachev should be in London, where an exhibition featuring his work is opening. “Kandinsky, Malevich, Chagall... And I, the only living artist in this row,” says Yuri Gorbachev, “My manager Bibi, having learned that I was going to Estonia before, first spent a long time finding out where she was, then recommended calling psychiatrist."

Maybe it's true, or maybe he's joking. By the way, in his book “The ABCs of Success” he writes: “The first thing I do, especially when meeting strangers, is try to joke.”

In the middle of Manhattan

He also writes: “Energy is my favorite word. There is positive and negative energy. I feel the negative from the first second, and it pushes me away.” Yuri himself covers everyone around him with exclusively positive energy. Such a simple, cheerful guy (who would have thought that he was 60 years old).

Meanwhile, Gorbachev exhibited in dozens of countries around the world, in the most prestigious galleries, his paintings are in the Oval Hall of the White House, in major museums, in the private collections of many celebrities - from Hillary Clinton to Alla Pugacheva.

Now Estonia is included in the list of countries where his personal exhibitions were held. “I am very glad that I came here, the nature outside the city is very pleasant, reminiscent of ours, Novgorod, the contrast with New York is, of course, striking, but this is also interesting in its own way,” Gorbachev noted.

But the not very friendly reception at the border, he admitted, was a little upsetting. “I flew here from Odessa, and while we were standing in line at the border control, I managed to meet someone, invited them to my exhibition, but everyone had already left, and everyone studied my American passport under a magnifying glass, turning it almost inside out,” Yuri said . “I cross borders about 20 times a year, but this is the first time I’ve encountered this.”

Probably, Yuri Gorbachev, who left Odessa for America in 1991 with almost no one, almost no money, not knowing the language, really had the moral right after a decade and a half to write the book “The ABCs of Success.” Upon arrival in New York, Gorbachev and his family settled in Brighton Beach, and now lives and works in his own workshop in the center of Manhattan.

“New York is my favorite city; I always miss it when I’m away,” says Yuri.

At the same time, he does not forget about the village of Uglovka in the Novgorod region, where he was born, and about Odessa, where he lived for 20 years before emigrating. By the way, he also bought an apartment in Odessa. “There are such fat tomatoes, and such an amazing view of the sea!” - he explained.

The artist also has housing in distant Indonesia, on the island of Bali - Gorbachev also really likes this region of the planet.

He left for America at a time when the head of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, was incredibly popular. “The big name helped me partly, but it didn’t have a decisive influence,” says Yuri. “The main thing is what I am as an artist.”

From friendly correspondence

In Germany we listen to Echo via the computer. Sometimes "Freedom". We have several Russian television programs. But we hardly include them, only in very rare cases, such as today, when we talk about Vysotsky. But we watch, rather, we also listen, RTVI, more often “Minority Report”. Not everything, of course. For example, I only like Shenderovich, my beloved Radzikhovsky, Kiselev.
Tatyana Lin

Apparently, I share many of the same tastes as your family. Of my 3-4 favorite journalists, Lenya Radzikhovsky is in first place. I know him from Ogonyok. He was already a famous author then, but he began his professional life as a journalist (in terms of earning money) with us. And at 19.00 on Fridays (and earlier on Thursdays) I can be very upset by changing Radzikhovsky to anyone in “Minority Report”.
Alexander Shcherbakov
January 2009
And here is a small Ognykovsky note by Leonid Radzikhovsky (he often wrote large analytical articles) from the first February issue of 1992. In it, as in a drop of water, both the circumstances of the time and the views of the thinking intelligentsia are reproduced.

What is Yeltsin thinking about when he looks at the price tag, clearly taken from a jewelry store, with a piece of sausage shyly lying next to it?

Where are you galloping, proud horse?

And where will you put your hooves?

Pushkin’s epigraph is not an attempt at cheap banter, which is so shamefully fashionable today. Nothing like that. I am not going to compare Yeltsin and Peter the Great, I am not going to compare St. Petersburg and an empty grocery store. But without any mockery and mockery, one can and should compare two state philosophies, two worldviews, two political ideas.

A man for the state, a man who approaches the state like poor Eugene approaches the Bronze Horseman.

The state was built “to harm an arrogant neighbor.” And although our neighbors long ago (the Swedes right after the Battle of Poltava) dismantled their empires and a considerable part of their arrogance, we continued to build our nuclear missile pyramids “to spite” them. And all the thoughts of our military-industrial feudal lords more than fit into such an imperial philosophy. And poor Eugene, on whose back the Bronze Horseman pranced, endured...

Yeltsin is the first leader of Russia elected by the “poor Eugenes.” It is called upon to finally turn Russian political philosophy 180 degrees and begin to open the “window to Europe” from the other end.

The state is for the people. Sausage is more important than SS-20 missiles. And it is better to dismantle the monstrous and majestic pyramid, built for centuries, into small houses for “these little ones.” Here it is, a new philosophy that has long been dominant among the former “arrogant neighbor” and has finally reached us!

But a paradox! “Butter instead of guns” - but the oil has completely disappeared! While the guns were being driven, by some miracle there was both butter and sausage. And now, when we turned “to face the sausage,” it’s not there... Why?

Maybe Yeltsin was thinking about this?

...One grandmaster did not make the first move for half an hour, sat thinking, and then moved the pawn “e2-e4”. He was once asked: what are you thinking about, why don’t you start? He replied: I’m thinking about starting the next game.

So what was our President thinking about in Saratov, after the people brought him bread, the guards brought him salt, and in the store a lonely sausage looked at him like a retired member of the Politburo? Maybe, like that grandmaster, about a new reform? Or about a bright future when sausage becomes just sausage?

L. RADZIKHOVSKY

Gorbachev began with work on ceramics, back in the USSR. Gorbachev received his higher education in the Soviet Union, at the Academy of Arts; Additionally, the future artist specialized in philosophy and communications.

He moved to the States in 1991; Yuri practically did not know English, but his talent and charisma did not let him fall into ruin. Twenty years of experience working with pottery certainly helped the artist; However, real fame was brought to him by another, much bolder decision - to switch to canvas and oil. First, Yuri became famous in New York, and then throughout the world.

By 1993, it became completely clear to Yuri that it was as an artist that he was destined to succeed; this year Gorbachev went to the Far East. His work has always been strongly influenced by Asian motifs; The “journey to the origins” helped him to reveal his connection with Eastern culture stronger than before. Yuri did everything possible to ensure that this culture - in his interpretation, of course - became public knowledge. The experience of living and working in Russia, America and Asia made Gorbachev exactly the talented creator that he is now.

Yuri's works are exhibited in the best museums in the world - his permanent collections can be admired in the Louvre, the Kremlin Museum, Tsarskoye Selo, the White House and the United Nations office. On March 14, 1996, it was Gorbachev who was commissioned by the UN to create a new painting - this painting will be used in a new series of stamps dedicated to endangered species. As a demonstration of his talent, Yuri provided the UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali with the painting “Green Parrot On Red Flower”. Gorbachev’s works are also in private collections - for example, the artist personally presented one of his paintings to former US President William Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton on July 22, 1996.

Yuri’s main merit, of course, is the creation of a unique fusion of different cultures, embodied in a simple and understandable language of beauty. In his paintings, Gorbachev actively uses varnishes and glazes - his long experience of working with ceramics makes itself felt.

In 1994, Yuri was hired by representatives of the Stolichnaya company - the artist was supposed to develop the design of a new Christmas advertisement for the most popular variety of Russian vodka, which is popular all over the world. The advertisement was supposed to be truly grandiose - in addition to Gorbachev, such legends of modern art as Andy Warhol and Keith Haring worked on it. Such a global project was launched on the initiative of one person - a prominent collector and president of the Carillon company (the main distributor of Absolut and Stolichnaya) Michel Roux. The result did not disappoint the businessman - for example, he called Gorbachev a real Russian angel, capable of finding good in anything.

For the last 8 years, Yuri has been actively traveling around the world; From naive paintings from the very beginning of his career, he moved on to much more complex works. Now Gorbachev uses quite complex techniques for working with precious metals like gold and copper and complex varnishes and glazes covering oil paintings. Gorbachev developed the technologies used today for almost 10 years; Thanks to his “pottery” past, now he creates miracles that have never been seen before.

In 1998, the collection “The Art of Yuri Gorbachev” was released, published by Rizzoli International, one of the most prestigious publishing houses in the world. Yuri is one of the few Russian creators (along with Marc Chagall and Kazimir Malevich) who were honored to receive a contract with this company; in fact, "Rizzoli" is generally distinguished by incredible care when selecting topics for their collections - in a rare year more than one of their volumes is published.

Best of the day

At the end of 1999, a joint exhibition of original creations by Yuri Gorbachev and Marc Chagall was held in Prague; Its success was simply incredible - several thousand people visited the gallery in just 6 weeks.

In 2000, The Bertelsmann Group published the book “The Art of Paradise” - a monumental work about the life and work of Gorbachev, clearly revealing all the symbolism inherent in him and demonstrating the entire path he traveled to the heights of success.

In June 2009, at the first Russian Art Fair in London, the best works of Russian artists of the last century were demonstrated. Yuri's works were located next to the masterpieces of the same Chagall and Malevich, Natalia Goncharova and Faberge.

Now Yuri lives and works in New York City.