One wise man gave Nadezhda the prophetic name Naidan, which means "living forever." For millions of people, Rusheva will truly never die, because although the girl left young, her paintings will exist forever.
Soviet artist Nikolai Rushev lived in Ulaanbaatar since 1950, and after the birth of his daughter Nadia, he moved with his family to Moscow, where he got a job at Central Television. The girl's mother Natalya Azhikmaa was a ballerina, and leaving her career, she focused on raising an heiress.
From the very beginning, Rusheva's life was closely intertwined with art. Although her father did not teach her the basics of painting, at the age of five, Nadia took up the pencil herself when her parents read fairy tales aloud. The girl never used an eraser and did not sketch, drawing "cleanly". And the more Nadezhda was engaged in creativity, the more obvious it became that she had a huge talent.
What illustrations inscribed the name of Nadia Rusheva in the history of painting? And why was the life of a seemingly healthy girl cut short before adulthood? January 31 marks the 71st anniversary of the artist's birth, and it's time to answer these questions.
"The Tale of Tsar Saltan"
The girl's mother Natalya Azhikmaa Salchak was a famous Tuvan ballerina
While the first-graders studied the primer, Nadya also had time to be creative. In one evening, Rusheva created 36 illustrations for The Tale of Tsar Saltan, which her father read to her.
Nadia could draw anywhere: even at home, even on the street
Gradually, the girl's two favorite hobbies merged into one: Nadia herself learned to read and drew compositions based on The Bronze Horseman, Eugene Onegin, and Belkin's Tale. The artist mastered the pen, felt-tip pen and pastel, and in 1964 the Yunost magazine already organized the first exhibition of the 12-year-old Rusheva.
The child prodigy also had unfortunate failures: Pushkinist Gessen asked the artist to make illustrations for the book "The Life of a Poet", and although Nadya approached the task responsibly, not a single sketch of the author impressed. As a result, the drawings created by the quill pen ended up in the museum, however, after the death of Rusheva.
In 1965, Yunost published Nadia's illustrations for Eduard Pashnev's novel Newton's Apple. By that time, the artist had already created five thousand drawings on various topics. There were connoisseurs who organized a whole series of exhibitions by Rusheva, not only in Russia, but also abroad: the child prodigy's paintings toured Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania and even India.
Images based on the books she read popped up in the girl’s head easily, so she didn’t need an eraser. So, Nadia was inspired by the myths of Ancient Greece, so she drew several compositions about the exploits of Hercules, captured on paper the images of the heroes of the Odyssey and the Iliad. The artist did not bypass Tolstoy's fundamental novel "War and Peace".
Nadia was also enthusiastic about the ballet Anna Karenina, although she did not have time to see it performed by Maya Plisetskaya. Looking at the girl’s unusual technique, many believed that her father taught her the skill, but Nikolai Rushev denied this - the artist concluded that since the daughter’s talent is of a natural nature, she should go her own way, without being assigned to a classical school.
Experts called Nadya a brilliant book graphic artist, but she herself dreamed of becoming an animator and illustrating the works of Lermontov, Nekrasov, Yesenin. The girl managed to make drawings for Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, and such that the writer's widow admitted: Rusheva was the first to accurately reveal the image of the main character.
“Drawing is just such a need ... Now in general ... Previously, you could draw every day, it somehow became a habit, and therefore, in general, there was such a shift: from these stupid little men, short-legged, big-headed - to elongated figures , to such compositions. And now, of course, the school is jamming - all 90% of the time. When you come, you solve something, a problem or something else, you write and you see that you have a piece of paper lying on your desk and you want to throw away all these textbooks and draw, draw as much as you want and whatever you want! .. It's good when draw whatever you want. That's when you start something on the assignment, then something always becomes wrong. Well, in general, every thing that is on assignment, it is already out of the soul. As we had in literature, with Griboedov "Woe from Wit".
But The Master and Margarita is the only such book. Firstly, I did it for myself, and not for anyone, and even with some resistance, because there was someone who didn’t want me to do it ... Well, yes, they didn’t, because there are other topics, they are there ... Mom read it later. And dad, since she was there in line, they gave her for one day, he read it overnight and, of course, all this was mixed up with him ... And he did not fully understand her. And it needs to be understood in this way, in general, ”Nadya reasoned in an interview in 1969.
Unexpected death
Nadia seemed like an unearthly adult creature, a genius and a child prodigy, but in many ways she remained a simple girl who dreamed of a clear and bright future. At school, she drew wall newspapers, and in the summer of 1967 she visited the Artek camp, which greatly changed her worldview. Here, 15-year-old Rusheva met the future director Oleg Safaraliev, with whom she subsequently corresponded frequently.
But what happened two years later? At the end of February 1969, Nadya was invited to Leningrad to make a film about her talent - "You, as the first love ..." Cameramen and directors worked practically without a script, allowing Rusheva to improvise. So, one day the artist drew Pushkin the Lyceum student in the snow with a twig, striking the whole group.
On March 5, the artist returned to Leningrad with her father, and later he described a memorable scene in his diary: Nadia accompanied her father to work, sharing her plans at the same time. I finished The Master and Margarita. "War and Peace" - too. “Biography of Pushkin”, perhaps, too ... I will continue Lermontov, Nekrasov, Blok, Yesenin, Green ... And, of course, Shakespeare! But daddy! Bring me today from the library "Don Quixote": I see a new cycle! Rusheva emphasized.
Her plans were not destined to come true: the next morning, Nikolai Konstantinovich found 17-year-old Nadya unconscious on the bed. A few hours later, she died in the hospital, never waking up: a congenital defect in the brain vessel led to the rupture of the aneurysm.
At the Pokrovsky cemetery, a monument was erected to the artist with the image of Kentavrenka - one of her drawings. Subsequently, this character became the emblem of the non-profit organization "International Center for Non-Fiction Film and Television" Centaur ", well, in St. Petersburg in 2003, a sculpture with a sketch hero appeared. Nikolai Rushev did not see this anymore - on the basis of his daughter's notes, he wrote the book "The Last Year of Hope", and in 1975 he died of cancer.
