May 2010 in Moscow : Peredelkino, a painter and two writers

The visit to the Peredelkino village allowed us to discover two writers (Tchoukovski and Pasternak) and a painter (Shilov).

Let's start with the Shilov painter (right picture), contemporary artist born in 1943. He painted over 600 paintings, including portraits of all the leaders of the Soviet Union and Russia, as his family and also showed the lives of ordinary people. His critics say his portraits look like photographs, but his paintings are often expressing the hard life through the facial features : his pencil drawings are remarkable. Since 2001 he is member of the Russian Academy of Arts and has donated to the city of Moscow 365 of his paintings.

The new Building of Shilov Gallery is located near the Kremlin, closed to the subway station Borovitskaya: it was inaugurated by the Mayor of Moscow YM Luzhkov end June 2003.

To have a look at the paintings, see official site http://www.amshilov.ru/ and also http://www.tanais.info/art/en/shilov.html

Besides portraits, he has painted few still-life and also landscapes like the Peredelkino village (below).

Now, let's explore the Peredelkino village : http://www.peredelkino-land.ru/
Peredelkino is just 40 minutes drive from the Kremlin (20 km from Moscow, south-west) and to get there you should take the Minskoe road (towards Minsk). Peredelkino has a collection of datchas that had been built for artists. It is also possible to go by train but you need a full day and also walk a lot !

Let us first see the Church of the Transfiguration, whose style recalls the St. Basil's Cathedral on Red Square : the Peredelkino has 11 domes (we counted them !).

Then, let's go to the cemetery where the Peredelkino writers Chukovsky and Pasternak are burried.

We will take the car to see Chukovsky and Pasternak dachas, who are numbered 48 and 34 on the map below.

Korneï Tchoukovski (1882-1969) is a great author of poems for children. His books are still printed in millions of copies. Chukovsky spoke fluent English and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford for his essays on Walt Whitman and his theory of translation. He was also known as a leading Soviet dissident: he gave refuge to Solzhenitsyn and many others. His dacha can be visited (Russian guide) and you can find many items that belonged to him.

Almost everything in the house is preserved as if Chukovsky still lived. In the office, there is a huge library (over 5,000 volumes), a sofa, a desk, on which there is a tree and even a crocodile in black wood. A dress of Oxford professor is suspended from a door : he had received it for his translation of literary from Great Britain.

When leaving the dacha you can see the tree shoe that Chukovsky mentioned in one of his stories.

The major works from Korneï Tchoukovski are :

• The Crocodile (« Крокодил », 1916) : the words of the tale read in Russian families to young children http://www.stihi-rus.ru/1/chukovskiy/12.htm

• Principes of the artistic translation («Принципы художественного перевода», 1919)

• Moïdodyr (« Мойдодыр », 1923)

• The cockroach (« Тараканище », 1923)

• The Tsokotouche fly (« Муха-Цокотуха », 1924)

• Barmaleï (« Бармалей », 1925)

• The phone (« Телефон », 1926)

• Aïbolit Doctor (« Доктор Айболит », 1929)

• The art to translate (« Искусство перевода », 1930)

• From two to five (« От двух до пяти », 1933)

• The Philomena pain (« Федорино горе », 1968)

• The Babel tower and other ancient legends (« Вавилонская башня и другие древние легенды », 1968)

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) is the most famous writers of Peredelkino village outside of Russia. He received a Nobel Prize for his novel "Doctor Zhivago" by 1958, but he refused to get the award under the pressure of the Soviet government viewing the book as anti-Soviet. In Russia, Boris Pasternak was a very popular as a writer and translator of Shakespeare books. His dacha was transformed into a memorial museum and you can visit it (Russian guide).

For geeks, the equipment that looks like a TV is a real one : indeed, in front of it, there is a device with a magnifying glass and a water tank. It magnified the image and allowed all the guests around the table to watch TV : it was the ancestor of the videoprojector !