Константи́н Васи́льев
Konstantín Alexeyevich Vasilyev was born on September 3, 1942 in Maykop, Republic of Adygeya during the German occupation of the city. His father Alexey Alekseevich Vasilyev was the chief engineer. There was a good library at home and his mother Claudia Parmenovna introduced her children to the masterpieces of world culture and art. Konstantín had two sisters.
Konstantin started drawing early. At the age of 11 he entered the Moscow Secondary Art Boarding School at the Moscow State Institute of Art named after V.I. Surikov. In 1957, he transferred to the Kazan Art School, which he graduated with honors.
He worked as a teacher of drawing in high school and then a graphic designer.
The artistic heritage of Vasiliev is extensive: paintings, graphics, etudes, illustrations, wall paintings in the church of Omsk.
His works of the early 1960s were marked the influence of surrealism and abstract expressionism ("String", 1963; "Abstract composition", 1963).
In the late 1960s he abandoned formalistic searches and worked in realistic manner.
Vasiliev turned to folk art: Russian songs, epic poems, fairy tales, Scandinavian and Irish sagas, "Eddic poetry."
He created works on mythological plots, the heroic themes of the Slavic and Scandinavian epics, about the Great Patriotic War ("Marshal Zhukov", "Invasion", 1972-1975).
He also worked in the genre of landscape and portrait (Swans, 1967; Northern Eagle, 1969; Expectation, 1976;).
He also was an author of portraits: “Shostakovich” (1961), “Beethoven” (1962), “Scriabin” (1962), “Rimsky-Korsakov” (1962) and others.
Konstantin Vasilyev died on October 29, 1976 in a railway accident near Kazan. His family and friends never believed in the official version of his death and suspected that the painter was murdered. Vasilyev was buried in the village of Vasilyevo, where he lived since 1949.
Recognition came posthumously. A documentary "Vasilyev from Vasilyevo" was released in 1978. The Konstantin Vasilyev Museum opened in Moscow in 1998. Another film about the painter under the title "A man with an eagle-owl. Konstantin Vasilyev" was made in 2002. In 2012 Konstantin Vasilyev Museum in Moscow was renamed the Konstantin Vasilyev Centre of the Slavic Culture. Next year, in 2013, the Konstantin Vasilyev Art Gallery was opened in Kazan.
Vasilyev's oeuvres steadily gained in popularity through the late Soviet and early post-Soviet periods, until they have reached a virtually iconic status among Russian nationalists, neo-pagans and fantasy geeks.
The deep symbolism in combination with the original color decision of the paintings made Vasilyev's paintings recognizable and original.
The minor planet 3930 Vasilev, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova in 1982 is named after him.
