Ilya Glazunov
(b. 1930).

Father - Sergey Fedorovich Glazunov, and historian. Mother - Olga K. Glazunov. Wife - Vinogradov Benoit Nina (... -1986). Son - Ivan Ilyich Glazunov, artist. Daughter - Faith Ilinichna.
Ilya Glazunov - the artist, the name of which around for several decades, not subsiding controversy. Delights the audience accompanies sharp criticism, no matter what the interest in the work of this extraordinary man unabated. greatest shock responded to the soul of the artist Leningrad blockade, has remained in the memory of an unrelenting nightmare when he lost almost all his family, who died in front of him, a miracle survived. 12-year-old boy was taken from the besieged city across Lake Ladoga, on the road of life under Nazi bombs ...

The memory of the war always lives in the soul of the artist. Even as an adult, student at the Leningrad Institute of Arts named after IE Repin , he expressed his impressions of the war years in "The Roads of War" full of real drama and the truth of life. Glazunov offered it as a thesis. Academic authorities unanimously rejected the picture, calling it anti-Soviet, distorting the truth and the meaning of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people: "War is characterized by a victory, and you relish the retreat of Soviet troops - this has not happened in Soviet art."
picture was exhibited several years. On the famous five-day exhibition, which was held in the Arena in 1964, he still dared to show it. However, the exhibition was closed, and the picture is transferred to the Officers' Club, where it was destroyed. In the mid-1980s, the artist painted a picture of a repetition destroyed. It is now in the Art Museum of Alma-Ata.

Leaving ... from Leningrad, small Ilya was in the old village of rowing, lost in the dense forests of Novgorod. Together with the village peers dug potatoes in the field, has worked on the threshing floor, pass the collective herd. These years have left a deep imprint in the minds of the future artist, he, he owes a lot to the understanding of the Russian character, a sense of the poetics of Russian landscape.

The war has not ended, when Ilya Glazunov returned to his native Leningrad. He enrolled at the Art School, which later became the Institute named after IE Repin Academy of Arts of the USSR, where he studied in the studio of People's Artist of the USSR Professor BV Johanson.
Under the high arches of the academic corridor - the former Imperial Academy of Fine Arts - 25-year-old student of Ilya Glazunov met the woman of his destiny, who became his wife - Nina Alexandrovna Vinogradov Benoit. They proceed from the known to all lovers of art family Benoit .

The first exhibition of 26 years of Leningrad student of Ilya Glazunov was held in early February 1957 at the Central House of Artists in Moscow. Unprecedented thundering success, to withdraw the wave of articles in the world press to herald a powerful blow to the socialist realism caused to the young artist, has put the event in the category of historical phenomena. The reason for the exhibition was the receipt of Glazunov Grand Prix at the World Exhibition of Youth and Students in Prague for he created the image of the imprisoned writer Julius Fucik. The young artist decided this issue boldly and unexpectedly. He showed well the prison courtyard, where prisoners were taken for a walk, and sadly they wander around, looking at the ground. And the only one of its features something resembling the youngest artist dared to raise his head high and look at the beauty of melting in the sky and the clouds swirling in the evening sunset birds. This pattern is so unusual and dramatic, shocked not only the international jury in Prague, but the Soviet public.

Appeal to the image of the artist's "Report from the Gallows" was supported by the official ideology of the traditional internationalist sound, and it probably gave reason to believe the development of the young artist's creativity in the future. But what they saw shocked viewers on his show, included in complete contradiction with the Soviet ideological attitudes. The artist presented 80 graphic works and paintings. Their creation was expressed credo realist artist who understands the realism of Dostoevsky - "in the highest sense of the word." "There is nothing more fantastic than reality," or, as one of the favorite artists of Glazunov - MA Vrubel , "only realistic bear depth and versatility." The flow of visitors who wanted to get on the show, grew by the hour and the day it was due to discuss the government to tame the passions police, which later became the attribute and other exhibitions Glazunov. Official criticism at first was in a state of shock, then at the creativity of the young artist's fierce controversy broke out, dividing the audience into two irreconcilable camps. Most of the researchers and the artist himself is divided into four major cycles in his work. contemporary life, the poetry of everyday life of the city - a theme his lyric "urban cycle", which includes such films as "Leningrad spring", "City", "The Last Bus", "She's Gone" and others. For a city characterized by Glazunov special psychological mood that conveys the state of mind of the artist. Sometimes Glazunov expresses the mood of his lyrical, showing the city, seen through his eyes.