[Tsop]

William Meiland
DIMA VOLUME
Gori. Not far from the area, where still stands a monument to the penalty to the leader of all peoples, where stands a museum in his name and wandering curiosity or loyalist contemporaries in the basement, but rather, in the former boiler house, I met with the sculptor Dima Tomaevym. Led me to a resident of the nearby town of Tskhinvali painter Hsar Gassiev.
On the table there appeared a dark red wine, grape-smelling valley Ateni, spongy goat cheese, fresh green hill. And a little spree began with the traditional fine toasts.
In the studio Dima Tomaeva everywhere stood stone and wooden sculptures raznovelikie, a crowd of human figures and figurines, silent black narodec, who settled in the corners of the shelves.
Gassievu most rules of meter, "Grandma." From its rough machined monolithic figure was based on the primitive force and the secular mind. Devoid of any details and was smoothed over, the sculpture looked like a distant steppe Scythian woman.
"Grandma" was one of the earliest works Tomaeva, and I do not know that it carried a young sculptor, I would have thought that it hewed hewer rural self-taught. However, this conjecture was true. Vocational education Dima has not received.
The first lessons in the handling of stone he gave his grandfather, a local stonemason. Natural talent, hard work and, as they say, a rare rukastost, agility, skill, craftsmanship - all this was the formation of the personality of the artist. It has long been known that the one in whom lives the artist realizes in his work on things, sometimes hidden from the wisest.
During another trip to Gori, all the same great and good Hsar Gassiev showed me the village cemetery in the town Karkusty.
Looking at the stone tomb, in the shape of humans and animals that are installed on the graves of local shepherds and blacksmiths, farmers and artisans, men and women of quiet, I thought again of Tomaeva Dima and his senior colleagues - Gadaev L. and B. Soskieva. People obviously plastic tradition rooted in their work, no matter where they live and whatever influences and temptations of modern art were neither.
Follow my meeting with Dima Tomaevym already occurred far from his hometown. Yes I do. Frankly speaking, not too wanted to face every step of the PA with mustache shadow of inertia revered local deity. Of course, no Burn, or the surrounding mountains did not blame the random fact of the birth is one of the most bloodthirsty dictators. Thank God, the Moscow land took a last evil, treacherous, vindictive and Blighters murderer of millions, and should not be afraid of the ominous shadow today. But to be constantly at her side, too, is not desirable. I can imagine how the same Hsaru Gassievu, which in the terrible thirties called the son of enemies of the people living in nearby Tskhinvali on the street, named after the son of a shoemaker Gori.
In the late seventies Dima gradually moved to Moscow. But all his impressions, feelings, visions, good and evil shadow followed him to the capital. For a long time without Dima adjoin the studio, which depressed him immeasurably. He wandered through strange angles, it jarred his healthy pride, but the thirst of all defeated. At one time he worked with me about the underground "Babushkinskaya" in the rooms of the local nezhilfonda, commas, several artists. Work in the material he was there but could not. It was the fifth floor, and nervous residents of the lower floors were not allowed to knock on a stone or metal. Dima sculpted small clay sketches and clay and put them on the shelf. I think that this long-standing inferiority of its existence hastened his early demise. Artist without his corner for life and, more importantly, to work - things that plague our culture.
At our last meeting, Dima often spoke that he was ready to go aimlessly - in any country and at all times, just to give work. He was confident that his forces are endless, and will live many more years. With pride he showed me something built with his own hands populated barns, converted them into a comfortable studio in the suburban village Kupavna. Along the walls of this cozy, regained in the throes of asylum had already line up his remarkable new work. They looked like those little timid self-taught sculpture that I saw in Gori many years ago.
It was a new stage, new achievements and hopes for the show, na recognition, na place in art. But the studio Dima so lovingly built them out of slate, burnt together with the content.
To Dima, it was very painful, excruciatingly heavy blow. He could not speak without a shudder of the heart of this disaster. He had a feeling that the collapse of his last hope.
When it finally appeared he had a good workshop, time-boat in which he has not had time. Heart could not stand.
May 1990