On December 13, at the end of 2010 in Pushkino after a serious illness the artist Vitaly Tarasov, member of the Union of Artists of Russia, member of the Union of Writers of Russia has left life.
In Ivanteevka passed his childhood and adolescence. Here he graduated from school № 5. Then-Military school, after which he was expected eight years of service in the missile troops. Returning from the Army, senior Lieutenant Tarasov arrives at the Printing Institute. His teachers were fine artists-p. Thursday,. Zakharov, B. A. Sholokhov. Zakharova was called “The Soviet Chistyakakov”, he brought up a whole galaxy of well-known Soviet charts. Boris A. Shalokhov, a disciple of Pavel Korin, himself was an outstanding drafer.
During the years of study at the Institute and after Vitaly Tarasov works in painting and graphics. Many times I had to go with him to Etudes. In 1970, we went to the Russian north in the Farapattovo and Cyril-Belozersky monastery. In the morning we went to the plein air. I usually wrote one or two etudes, and then went to the birth cathedral to study the frescoes of the great Dionysius. Vitaly continued to write. On the day he gave out five or six full watercolors. He worked then in a realistic manner. And the nature itself has forced to echo it.
However, as the artist Tarasov formed as a result of continuous experimental work. He therefore perceived and applied the basic styles of European art. Cubism, Fovism, expressionist changed each other, enriching his painting. However, in every work he remained original, not similar to Picasso, Van Gogh, Nolde, whom he loved very much. Natural motives were transformed under the influence of his inner life. Nothing static. In all the works felt an inner impulse, ecstatic perception of the world. For his landscapes and religious paintings of the late 80s-early 90s, the mighty Energy, absolute freedom of expression were characteristic. During these years he experienced some kind of happiness to create! Somewhere near there was sometimes a small, vain life. There were rains, rains were replaced by snow ¬ mi, Spring came, and Vitaly was immersed in creation of the New World, in which something sounded the limit of expressionism, then there were visions of a raging blossoming, exultant landscape. He was seen in accordance with the state of his soul.
One can understand the shock experienced by the famous Italian art critic Marina Pietzolo by visiting his studio apartment. Later, she writes: “With Vitaly Tarasov we enter the world of the Russian ex ¬ repression, into the world of life, which pulsates in every moment of the creative extravaganza, in every stroke. His painting is some kind of magic, some extraordinary force capable of freeing the purest, the best of this life, which fills our souls with the small ones. ”
Vitaly possessed a special vision of the world. With his art he claimed the self-worth of the color of real reality, the creation of a new beauty, which is available to people obsessed with this beauty. The combination of extraordinary freshness and energy flow created bright contrasting colors. He has given a rare boldness, recklessly colliding sometimes disharmonious combinations, and at the same time noticed: «From a dis-harmony the new harmony is born».
In the painting of the early 90s dramatic tension grew sharply. Thus it is possible to note constant and unique lirism in his creativity. Yes, it couldn’t have been otherwise. He was poet. Poetry was the second side of his creativity.
In 1997, a collection of his poems “earthly Stretching” was published. Vitaly’s poems began to be in the Moscow magazine “Poetry”, in the collections of Moscow poetry “Rusich”.
In 1988, the artist Tarasov radically changes his life. He buys a house in the village of Nikul near the ancient Yuryev-Polsky. A new period of his creative work begins. Leisurely village life, immersion in nature changed his art. It returns to the realism, but enriched by the color achievements of the 90s. Everything caused his delight: melting snow, deep winter with snow-covered village, may flowering garden, endless panoramas of the olpolya with the bells of ancient churches on the horizon. Yuriev-Polish land-as if the center of the Russian world. Vitaly told me about it. This understanding was reflected in many landscapes created in the village of Nikulskoye in the early 21st century.
But one day in the dim twilight of December with abundant snowfalls he stood by the window. Evening, Gus. And for some reason there was a strange thought: the same was locked in the close world of the island of St. Helena Napoleon Bo ¬ Companion. There were lines: “He lived on the island of St. Helena, the fate of the taste of change.” Vitaly Tarasov has not yet known that these lines will mark the last period of his creation. For more than five years he worked on the poem “Napoleon”. Persistently, every day, plunging into inexhaustible material and creating two or three pages of poetic text. It was his last artistic feat.
A sudden illness interrupted work on the second part of the poem. The first part is published now by small tiara. There will be publications in Moscow journals.
… Tarasova’s art continues to live. With the departure of the creator, the value of his creative heritage often increases. The history of Russian expressionism will be incomplete if it will not be represented by Vitaly Tarasova’s painting.
Anatoly Petushkov