Pakhomov is an artist of the picture. From the "Leningrad Chronicle" by Alexei Pakhomov. Monochrome works by A.F. Pakhomova

There was a man in our house. Big or small is hard to tell. He grew out of diapers a long time ago, but he has not yet grown to school. Read...

A goby was grazing at the edge of the forest. Small, a month old, but rather dense and lively. Read...

In Odessa, I wanted to find my old front-line comrade, who was now serving as a long-distance sailor. I knew that the ship on which he was sailing had just returned from an overseas voyage. Read...

It was late autumn in the last year of the war. There were battles on Polish soil. Read...

In the summer we traveled around Ukraine. One evening we stopped on the banks of the Sula and decided to spend the night. The time was late, the darkness was impenetrable. Read...

A new theater building was built in the old Ural city. The townspeople were impatiently awaiting its opening. Finally the day has come. Read...

A new film was being shot at the film studio. The movie was supposed to have such a scene. A bear climbs into the hut where a man tired from the road sleeps. Read...

I lived as a child in a village in the Yaroslavl region. He was happy with everything: the river, the forest, and complete freedom. Read...

On the way to the village of Ozerki, we overtook the chaise. But, to our surprise, there was no rider in it. Read...

During the war I had a friend. We jokingly called him a pet breeder. This is because he is a livestock technician by profession, he used to work in a fur farm. Read...

For many years the state farm herd grazed in the large meadow of the Kamenka rivulet. The places here were quiet, spacious, with low but juicy grasses. Read...

Ravi and Shashi are small. Like all children, they often play pranks, and sometimes cry. And they also eat like little children: they put rice porridge with milk and sugar right in their mouths. Read...

Little Svetlana lived in a big city. She not only knew how to speak all the words correctly and count to ten, but she also knew her home address. Read...

Svetlana was once small, but now she is big. She used to go to kindergarten, and then went to school. And now she does not go to the first grade, not to the second, but already to the third. Read...

Our cities are growing rapidly, and Moscow is growing by leaps and bounds. Svetlana grew as fast as her city. Read...

It was raining outside the window. Boring, shallow, turning into a downpour and again shallow. Spruces and pines do not rustle in the rain, like birches and aspens, and you can still hear them. Read...

She read a lot about the sea - many good books. But she never thought about him, about the sea. Probably because when you read about something very distant, this distant always seems unrealizable. Read...

And yet it is amazing - the forest! Spruce, pine, alder, oak, aspen and, of course, birch. Like these, who stand as a separate family at the edge: all sorts - young and old, straight and short, beautiful and not at all pretty to look at. Read...

Sergei Baruzdin's stories are different. Most of them are devoted to the relationship between humans and animals. The writer vividly and colorfully describes how people show their best qualities in communication with nature. Through his stories, he conveys to us that animals need our care and love. See for yourself by reading "Snowball, Rabbi and Shashi", "Elk in the Theater", "Unusual Postman" and other stories.

In a very interesting and loving way, Sergei Baruzdin describes the world of a little man by the example of the boy Alyoshka from Alyoshka from Our Yard and When People Rejoice. They simply and clearly tell about good, about responsibility and growing up. Children's stories by Sergei Baruzdin carry a great positive charge. Read them and see for yourself.

Alexey Fedorovich Pakhomov (September 19 (October 2) 1900, the village of Varlamovo, Vologda Region - April 14, 1973, Leningrad) - Soviet graphic artist and painter. People's Artist of the USSR (1971). Full member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1964). Laureate of the USSR State Prize (1973 - posthumously) and the Stalin Prize of the second degree (1943).

Alexey Fedorovich Pakhomov is a brilliant draftsman and an excellent master of lithography. His bright artistic talent manifested itself already in early childhood, when he began to portray his relatives. He was greatly influenced by popular prints hung in his father's house in the Vologda province. At the insistence of art lover V.Yu. Zubov, the young artist was sent to study in 1915 in Petrograd, at the Baron Stieglitz's School of Technical Drawing. There he enthusiastically drew plaster casts, tried his hand at the Italian pencil and ink technique.

After the February Revolution, such remarkable masters as M.V.Dobuzhinsky, S.V. Chekhonin, V.I.Shukhaev came to teach at the School. The main occupation was the depiction of nudity. A huge role in the formation of the young Pakhomov's creativity was played by Chekhonin's advice on the layout of the sheet, made in one stroke, "wasted".

After the reorganization of the School into VKHUTEMAS in 1919, the young artist studied with N.A. Tyrsa, A.E. Karev. The organizers of the Workshops creatively rethought the experience of the French post-impressionists, forming the art of a new society. In 1921-23 they created the "Union of New Art Trends", the "Four Arts" group and the "Circle of Artists", which included Pakhomov. Creative searches of this period cover many areas of art: from Cubism and Cezanneism in painting to functionalism, when under the slogan “art for production” the artist went to the factory. And yet, despite the confusion of artistic ideas and tasks, Pakhomov did not disregard Lebedev's method, whose drawings for children's books and posters of "ROSTA Windows" seemed to him the pinnacle of creativity. It was from Lebedev that Pakhomov borrowed the laconicism of the images, the clarity of the silhouettes and the expressiveness of the lines. Gradually, the artist moved from painting to graphics.

Since 1925, Pakhomov's constant work began in a children's book, on which the writers V.V. Mayakovsky, S.Ya. Marshak, A.L. Barto, E.L. Schwartz, artists, K.I. Rudakov, V.M. Ermolaeva. The children's theme in Pakhomov's work did not appear by chance: making sketches from nature, he often depicted children, caught in his drawings plastically interesting poses and movements.

In the mid-1920s, the artist made several trips to pioneer camps, including "Artek". The specifics of a children's book, its intelligibility for the mind and accessibility for the child's eye presented their requirements to the artist. The upbringing of a new person in accordance with the emerging concepts and ideas led to a new approach to the creation of a book.

The first experience of communicating with children manifested itself in illustrations for the works of Marshak, Schwartz, R. Kipling in the late 1920s. The style of creativity Pakhomov in them has much in common with the avant-garde that appeared in the art of that time. The artist works in silhouette, as a spot, almost in filling, symbolically denoting the light on the faces of the characters. He almost always uses a neutral background. The favorite colors of the master are red, yellow, brown.

The approach to illustrating children's books of this time not only by Pakhomov, but also by many other artists was essentially innovative. Pictures in books and magazines of the 1920s differed from the exalted and sophisticated images created by the masters of the early 20th century. They have become dynamic, bright and contrasting. At the same time, the comprehensive approach to book illustration, typical of artists of the beginning of the century, was preserved: at the same time, the cover, and the headbands, and the font were thought out and designed. Pictures "lived" in the text, and did not accompany it.
Pakhomov's works of the 1930s stand out for their bold subject matter and color scheme. Half-naked women, tanned teenagers on the beach oppose the emphatically correct young men and women in the paintings of socialist realism artists.

Lithographs were the last reflection of innovation in creativity - soon Pakhomov turns into a humble everyday writer of Soviet reality.

Since the 1930s-40s, Pakhomov has illustrated books by N.A. Ostrovsky, I.S. Turgenev, N.A. Nekrasov, stories about Lenin in the children's magazines "Chizh" and "Hedgehog". The style of Pakhomov's works is changing: the locally colored spot and silhouette is replaced by a lively dynamic line, thin shading. "Graphic painting" in the artist's works turns into "pictorial graphics".

For the new task of decorating the book, Pakhomov chooses the technique of sketching from life, rarely using color. He strives for the individualization of the image, focuses the reader's attention on the gestures and facial expressions of the hero. With the help of the line, the artist creates outwardly emotional, direct images, however, devoid of psychological depth. In the illustrations for the books of Mayakovsky, Marshak of the late 1930s - early 1940s, there is no place for the former sharpness of perception of the surrounding world, the novelty of characters. Children in Pakhomov's works think and feel the same way, despite the portrayal of the features of one or another hero.

The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 found the artist in Leningrad, surrounded by enemies. Along with the few graphics of the besieged city, Pakhomov continues to create and creates a lithographic cycle "Leningrad in the Siege". But if the drawings for the sheets of this series are vivid and imaginative, then the lithographs look dry and overly pretentious. The posters of 1942-43, made according to these drawings, became more harmonious.

In the atmosphere of the post-war upsurge and the revitalization of the residents' efforts to restore Leningrad, Pakhomov creates a cycle of lithographs "In Our City" (1944-46). The artist conveys a cheerful mood, a charge of optimism in sketches of people, streets and houses of the city. The sheets are distinguished by unexpected points of view, bold angles of the figures that give them dynamism. The prestigious State Prize awarded to Pakhomov for these cycles prompted the artist to create new works on the theme of the labor of Soviet people.

In the last period of his life and work, in the 1950s-1970s, Pakhomov deliberately chooses unpretentious everyday subjects, not aiming at solving complex large problems. He is attracted by collective farmers, doctors, teachers who are engaged in daily work. Impassive narration, traditional artistic techniques put Pakhomov's later works on a par with the works of other Soviet artists. Only a keen eye and precise composition give them away as a real master. Pakhomov's childhood images remain touching and spontaneous. Illustrations for the works of S.V. Mikhalkov, V.A.Oseeva, L.N. Tolstoy in the 1950s and 1970s demonstrate not only the artist's subtle observation skills, but also an amazing knowledge of child psychology. For several generations of children, the books illustrated by Pakhomov became the first guide to life. The easily remembered heroes of children's books drew them into the world of poetry and prose of the Soviet era.

Natalia Melnikova

Nekrasov N. A. "Frost, Red nose",
Turgenev I. S. "Bezhin Lug",
Tolstoy L. N. "Lipunyushka",

Tolstoy L. N. "Stories for Children",

"Snow Maiden. Russian folktale" ,