Artist Yuri Vasiliev. Linocut " Woman and car ". Autograph and inscription of the artist Anatoly Mindlin.

Artist Yuri Vasiliev. Linocut " Woman and car ". Autograph and inscription of the artist Anatoly Mindlin.
1971. Under glass, on hard cardboard, the edges are pasted. The size of the engraving itself is 27.3 x 36, the frame 35.2 x 45 cm. Yuri Vasiliev's signature in the upper corner. The glass itself is slightly dirty.

Yuri Vasilyevich Vasiliev-MON (April 7, 1925, Moscow — October 29, 1990, Moscow) was a Soviet artist and sculptor.

In 1940, he entered the Moscow art school in memory of 1905, and studied under Anton Chirkov. 

In 1942-1945, he was a cadet at the Irkutsk aviation school.

Then he returned to the school of memory in 1905, but already to the theater Department under the guidance of Viktor Shestakov.

After graduating from the school in 1947, he continued his education at the Moscow Institute of applied and decorative arts (1948-1952), and then at the Moscow state art Institute named after V. I. Surikov (1948-1953) from Vasily Efanov. He studied informally with Yevgeny Kropivnitsky.

Participated in the exhibition "30 years of MOSH" (1962), which was defeated by the head of the Soviet state N. S. Khrushchev. At the invitation of Yuri Lyubimov, he designed a number of performances in the Taganka Theater.

In the 1970s, he worked extensively as a sculptor, including in the field of urban sculpture.

In 1980, he removed the death mask of Vladimir Vysotsky.

Member of the Union of artists of the USSR.

On July 26, the artist Yuri Vasilyevich Vasiliev, together with his son Mikhail, a student of the Stroganov school, removes the death mask of Vladimir Vysotsky at the request of Yuri Lyubimov. Vasiliev was well acquainted with Vysotsky. He was an artist of the performances "the Fallen and the living" and "Pugachev", was familiar with the mournful craft of creating posthumous portraits. At one time he made a death mask of the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet…

In 14 hours 10 minutes Vasiliev on all rules imposed mask, as this did always. When he tried to remove it, it was impossible. It was as if some force had pressed it to her face. Yuri Vasilyevich recalled that he turned to Vysotsky: "volodenka, let go." The mask came off unexpectedly easily.

M. Vladi helped the artist with this work. In her memoirs she will write: "It's night. I turn on our table lamp. The Golden light softens your face. I'm letting in a sculptor who will help me remove my death mask."

Of course, it is more romantic and mysterious to remove the death mask yourself and at night, especially when you "help the sculptor"...

And with me, when I took it and died,

Now the postmortem mask has been removed

Efficient family members…

Simultaneously with the mask, a cast of Vysotsky's left hand was made. This cast of Yu. Vasiliev gave it to the Vysotsky Museum. By the decision of the Museum's Foundation Commission, the cast was accepted for storage in the auxiliary Fund. Museum rules assume that items are included in the main Fund only if they are guaranteed to be stored indefinitely. The cast material is gypsum. According to employees of the stock Department, this material does not provide long-term preservation without proper conditions.

According to the first cast of the mask, a split form was made, according to which three plaster copies and three castings of metal were made. A distinctive feature of the masks made by Yuri Vasilyevich was the presence on the reverse side of the soft material of the inscription " VL. Vysotsky", the signature of the sculptor" mon " (this was his childhood nickname) and Roman numerals-the serial number of the mask: I, II, III. The original cast was not filled with plaster from the inside (hollow), was in the sculptor's Studio (with cilia frozen in plaster) and disappeared from the Studio when Yuri Vasilyevich was ill and his daughter lived in the Studio.

Plaster mask with the number "one" was given Vassiliev his friend, Professor Yu Delusio, which has long been part of artistic Council of the Taganka Theatre; the second mask was made master at the personal request of Vladimir Zolotukhin is he; the third mask 13 Jun 1991 wife of Yuri Elena Petrovna Vasilieva gave it to the Museum.

Then bronze copies were ordered, also in triplicate. For high-quality casting, Yuri Vasilyevich gave his silver spoons.

One of them - in France at M. Vladi, the second Vasiliev gave personally to Yu. P. Lyubimov, who put the mask in a safe, the third mask, which was intended for the family, Vasiliev gave to Arthur Makarov.

In 1983, Yuri Lyubimov went to London to put on the play "Crime and punishment", and the second mask disappears from the safe… Conflicting information from different persons did not reveal the fate of this mask.

V. Yanklovich: "The sculptor Raspopov, who made the figure of Vysotsky, needed a mask, needed to work. Raspopov decided to turn to Dupak (once in the theater-so the Director). Dupak replied that he did not have a mask, Lyubimov took it abroad… But Petrovich didn't take any mask abroad, it should be at Dupak's..." the Family is worried too. Nina Maximovna Vysotskaya comes to the theater... Where is the mask? "Dupak took us to the office… There is no key to the safe! They searched for the key for a long time. They opened the safe in Lyubimov's office – there was no mask. And Dupak says, " I don't know anything. The mask was there." - "How so, Nikolai Lukyanovich!"- "I will search." I call the next day: "you know, Nina Maximovna, contact Marina… We gave her the other one too…”»

The bronze mask was not found, but massively discovered plaster forgeries. In 1990, a plaster mask of Vysotsky was transferred to the Museum by Alexander Kisilenko from Leningrad. Lyudmila Abramova, who worked at the Museum at the time, said that she and her widow Yu. Vasiliev was placed next to the original death mask of Vysotsky and the "Leningrad version": "the" Leningrad copy " has mixed up the right and left sides. The real mask has one corner of the mouth down on one side, and the replica has the other. But it is quite possible that it was done by a sculptor, and a good sculptor, because there is a certain similarity there… But I did it from photos. Vova Vasileva says that this is an independent work… A re-creation that is passed off as a death mask… After all, Vasiliev only removed the face, because there was a strong swelling of the neck, and he did only up to the chin… And on "Leningradskaya" the work is very deep: the neck, ears, hair… And the hair is made completely wrong…»