Calling-love-destiny

Anna Vasilieva

      Works of a famous female artist Valentina Pimenovna Lavrova-Soldatova are exhibited in 25 picture galleries worldwide. Her artistic experience is nearing 60 years, and the painter herself has recently accomplished 76. In spite of her age, this woman is amazingly agile and energetic (she fearlessly climbs the stepladder up to the high roof of her workshop to show me the wanted picture), and what is most important, she is full of unquenchable interest to life and bursting with new designs. It turned out a problem to leave her house in Khebny lane: Valentina Pimenovna’s pictures filled with quiet charm of Russian nature and beautiful works of her late husband, sculptor Georgy Dmitryevich Lavrov, form the spellbinding atmosphere of creative spirit. The painter herself is a rarely hospitable and hearty person. I came to Valentina Pimenovna on one of those cool September days. It was very cold in the rooms, as the central heating was not yet on, and the hostess had to wear felt boots and a quilted jacket. She immediately provided me with a warm shawl, poured some hot tea, and our talk started its flow. Valentina Pimenovna turned out to be an excellent story-teller; she spread out her life story like a canvas in front of me. On this canvas of her life the lines of destiny, love and calling met happily.
      Valentina Pimenovna was the twelfth child in the family of a forester. She spent her childhood in Siberian taiga, and that is possibly a reason that the artist’s work is filled with awesome love of nature and wonder of all living creatures. «These feelings were brought up in me by my father, - she recalls. He was a wise, kind, and deeply cultured man.» There were books illustrated by Nesterov in the house, and young Valya has been spending a long time looking at her favorite pictures. When father noticed that his daughter had eagerness to painting, he brought her watercolors from one of his visits to town. There was a lack of paper in the house, and the girl was extremely thirsty for painting, so everything did – elder brothers’ and sisters’ old notebooks, simply ever piece of used paper. But it was just the beginning. Her talent declared itself fully only several years later when Valentina Pimenovna moved in with her elder sister in Irkutsk.
      «There was a youth painting studio in the Cultural Center in Irkutsk, and I used to watch the young artists’ work enviously. There was not a single girl between them – just awfully important-looking and grown-up young men with moustaches. I was incredibly envious and kept asking my elder sister to help me enter the studio. She gave up at last, and I was assigned to the junior group. At first the guys looked down on me: «Hey, she’s just a kid!» But it was only two weeks later that I was transferred to the intermediate and then to the senior group. Teachers advised me to enter the art college. I took my works to the entry board, they liked them and I was allowed to pass the entrance exams. But before that I was asked to show my birth certificate. The thing was, that college accepted students over 16 years of age, and I was only 15. It was the end! I did not fit because of my age! I was so desperate that started to cry and was sobbing so bitterly that members of the board softened and allowed me to enter the college the same year as an exception».
      When Valentina Soldatova finished her 3rd year in the Irkutsk art college, she was invited to the Leningrad Academy of Arts. Before leaving to the «northern capital» Valentina decided to pay a short visit to Krasnoyarsk where her mother and sister lived (her father had died tragically in the taiga). But time (and NKVD) ordered otherwise, and she had to part with her dreams of Leningrad. The matter was that the sister’s husband, a high-rate inventor, was suddenly arrested and declared an «enemy of the people». Valentina’s sister was invaded with horror of sharing the same fate, took her children and left to their home place, a remote village in taiga. Valentina Pimenovna stayed with her mother in Krasnoyarsk and got a job in the Comradeship of Artists. It was there that she met a man who became her life-long friend, companion, love, destiny.
      Georgy Dmitryevich Lavrov was a rarely talented man. In 1927 when he was still a very young sculptor he was sent to Paris by Lunacharsky’s recommendation. He had a chance to work with Burdel, Majol, Despio, Pompoun, to sculpt from nature many of the celebrities of that time, including the great Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. In 1932 there was a personal exhibition of works by Georgy Dmitryevich held in Paris, and that was when the young sculptor received true recognition.
      In 1935 Georgy Dmitryevich came back to his homeland. While living in France he heard a lot about repressive measures and lawlessness in the USSR, but was not eager to believe to the hearsay. Like many talented people of that time he was sincere in his faith to communist ideas and could not imagine that the Party leaders were able to pursue a policy of terror against their own nation. He knew many of the Government leaders personally, including the Sovnarkom deputy chairman, Rudzutak. In 1937 Rudzutak and many of Georgy Dmitryevich’s friends were arrested. He shared the same fate a year later. The sculptor was accused in participating in an anti-Soviet terror organization planning an attempt upon the life of Comrade Stalin.
      Lavrov was condemned to a 5-year term in labor camps. It was only his naturally good health and iron strength of will that helped the sculptor to endure everyday hard labor in Magadan gold-mines where few managed to survive over three months. In 1945 Lavrov was directed to Krasnoyarsk as a life-long exile with restricted right of movement.
      Beginning with the first days of their acquaintance Valentina Pimenovna and Georgy Dmitryevich felt akin to each other. The painter herself recalls their first meetings with remarkable warmth: «It was very interesting to talk to him. He did not want to seem an intellectual, as many men did, though he was an unusually well-read, clever, and deeply cultured person. In spite of my young age he called me exclusively by name and patronymic. We made friends at once. At first we just felt a need for communication with each other. If we did not meet for a few days, I started feeling that something was missing». Then their friendship grew into a more serious feeling, and in 1946 they officially tied their lives. Valentina Pimenovna and Georgy Dmitryevich managed to keep their mutual love to the end, and no hardships and life circumstances were able to part them. And there were a lot of varieties of fortune that befell them.
      In the course of incomplete 7 years they moved from Krasnoyarsk to Chernogorsk, Minusinsk, Abakan – the places where authorities allowed them to settle, where they could find any work and housing. During such moves many of the artists’ works got irrecoverably lost. In Chernogorsk Valentina Pimenovna organized her first town art studio for teenagers and young people; the exhibition of the pupils’ and their teachers’ works became one of the brightest cultural events the town had ever seen.
      The painter often had to do her pictures on order – portraits of the Party leaders, shock-workers at their working place etc. «I never treated such orders just as a way of making extra money. All my pictures, including the ones made to order were real work for me, the work I lent my soul to. Once I was asked to paint a canvas for the stage of a town Cultural Center. I did it imitating the marble bas-relief technique. The Art Council members could not believe that it was just canvas and not real relieved marble».
      In 1954 Georgy Dmitryevich was fully rehabilitated and given the long-awaited right to move around freely. On the 5th of November Lavrovs arrived in Moscow. Then they spent about a year asking the authorities to afford them at least a small place to live and work. At last Moscow authorities granted them a ramshackle house in Khlebny lane, a former garage that had belonged to Beriya. A further year was spent to make this building suitable for living. But in spite of all problems they had to overcome in this period, Valentina Pimenovna recalls it as the happiest time in her life. At last they had their own home where they could live and work in peace, where they could invite their numerous friends! Georgy Dmitryevich was a remarkably sanguine and all-round man: he was an excellent skater and swimmer, could play the mandolin. «I recollect us going to a skating-rink in the Gorky Park once. It was mostly attended by young people, and some guy who spotted us exclaimed loudly, «What are these old folks doing here?» I was hurt by it and asked my husband to show some «high class» to the youngsters. Georgy Dmitryevich, a beautiful figure-skater, was gliding so gallantly over the ice that some minutes later everybody stopped and was watching in admiration. He was already past seventy then.»
      Georgy Dmitryevich passed away in 1991. «How did you come through the loss? What is filling your life now that you are alone?» – I asked Valentina Pimenovna. «But he is with me still, - the painter answered simply. – See this magnificent bust of Pavlova? – it’s his work. And here is me sculptured by him. This is my drawing of him. The very last one».
      But treasuring her life partner’s memory is not the only thing that helps Valentina Pimenovna keep her vigor and readiness of mind. Friends, acquaintances, Lavrovs’ admirers come to see her in her home-workshop almost every day. And the main stimulus that gives her life its meaning is painting. »I can’t afford to think of aging. There are so many things I still have to do, so much beauty that needs to be put to canvas! I have conceived a new cycle of pictures dedicated to «old Moscow». My house is situated in one of the scenic sites of the city, there are a lot of old-time mansions here remarkably well preserved. Some time ago countryside was more attractive to me than the city, but now I would like to depict these quiet side streets where I enjoy walking so much, so that they would stay in people’s memory the way I see them».
      Valentina Pimenovna lives very humbly. Though the people who wish to buy her works are abundant, she is reluctant to sell her pictures except for the extraordinary occasions when it becomes too hard to make the two ends meet. All her paintings and sculptures of Georgy Dmitryevich are left to museums, so she does not even treat them as her property. Each day she has to fight a battle with a malicious enemy called everyday life: it is not at all easy for a an elderly woman living alone to maintain the old house with leaking roof and bursting pipes, but Valentina Pimenovna keeps up her spirits. «What sense is it in getting angry, irritated, or offended? There is no use in it but only harm to one’s health. See that geranium blooming on the windowsill, the sun shining – isn’t that great! One must be able to rejoice and be grateful for each spent day».