[Fed]

"Gains from overseas picture of the fifth month, adorns the wall of the house of Sergei Manteuffel, carefully protected by heavy curtains from direct sunlight. This is a watercolor measuring 37.5 centimeters X52, depicting the Virgin Mary Church of the Nativity of our Anthony's Monastery. For the heart of Veliky Novgorod residents probably more akin to Picasso, because it belongs to the wonderful hands of Novgorod (and even, perhaps, the most Novgorod) Artist Semyon Ivanovich Pustovoitova.

There was an artist

 Pustovoitov was not just a talented local artist, one of many, he is - a phenomenon particular order, Novgorod the legend of the second half of XX century. Since 1951, lived this strange painter unmercenary in his favorite city, where he seemed to know everyone and where everyone knew him. That, however, it is not surprising that when he arrived, Novgorod is only restored after the war, its population. All friends, acquaintances and people unfamiliar with the amazing generosity gave away Pustovoitov his watercolors. A plot of the watercolors was always one - the Temple of Novgorod.
The artist painted the Novgorod churches and cathedrals have always and in any weather. It is hard to imagine working on watercolors, for example, in the dead of winter or the rain, but - how many witnesses say - and this often happened. There was, of course, in his biography and oil paintings, watercolors but it led to the phenomenon of pustovoytovskogo creativity. It Semyon took as an artist, a true and unique.
"Unique" - not my definition: another Academician Likhachev, according to Vladimir Ivanovich Povetkin, argued that "work Pustovoitova can not be copied." The Temple in it - not just an architectural structure or part of the urban landscape, the artist was able to pick it up to the level of the generalized image and spirituality. Gallery pustovoytovskih churches - a many-sided portrait of Novgorod. Do not modern or even ancient, and an essential portrait of the holy city in its tragic grandeur.

 Pustovoitov did not know how to boil the pot. According to legend, even in a series of works originally doomed filmmaker Saltykov the burning front of the camera, he put the soul no less than in the other. And the soul that, as already mentioned, he gave right and left, without sparing, and it was enough not only for the whole Novgorod, but as it turned out, and in most foreign countries ...
- How to evaluate it, the soul, of course managed appreciated! - Taunted a happy owner of coveted watercolors.

America the embargo lifted!

There would be Manteuffel, in fact, ought to rejoice, not ironic: b appreciated the true artist's work - a century watercolors that he would not see.
And it has started an amazing story This past hot summer, when he called friend and said that in America someone is selling a picture Pustovoitova via the Internet.
A stranger to new technologies Sergey immediately called her son, Dmitry, and the one visited by the network, confirmed the existence of the required site and the availability of it offered for sale watercolor.
- Purchased painting was July 5th and August 6th already appeared in this apartment - summed Sergey. - They sent it, as I asked, not a twisted roll, and here in this tremendous solid envelope. It was neat, without those horrible stains that are shown in the picture on the Internet.
- Interestingly, many more of these sheets of the world walks?
- Thousands! And how many of them died - and scary to think!

buzzing word "Novgorod»

However, the joy of meeting with the watercolor is not explained solely by its artistic merit: for Sergei Borisovich it - and even precious reminder of a talented man, with whom he was personally acquainted. Moreover, a "sign" - an understatement.
- I knew him since 1951, from the first days of his stay in Novgorod - Manteuffel says. - Arriving here, he immediately went to the museum. There, he met with my father, Boris Konstantinovich, and together they came to our house, in Nikita building where we lived. And from that moment he began to come to us constantly as a person, immediately became a mother, expected, loved ones, who have always wanted to see and hear.
- Can you say that you were friends?
- I think so. Although the four and a half decades and spat occurred without this does not happen. Semyon was older than me by 16 years, he's passed and the war.

I remember in one of the articles on the artist, I discovered the following passage: "During the war, Semyon Pustovoitov Novgorod was on the ground. This was the first meeting with the ancient Novgorod. Architectural monuments of the city made to the SI Pustovoitova so impressed that after graduation he decided to come back. " Immediately the question arose, even two. First, what sort of architecture in Novgorod during the war could be "impressed" if all this was swept away by the architecture completely shelling and bombing? And, secondly, at what stage of the war in Novgorod Pustovoitov could visit? In the liberation of the city he is known, did not participate after the release of existing units to enter the city did not make sense. It remains true, even prior to the release, but to visit Novgorod, then he might just as prisoners of war, and this episode in the biography of the artist also seems to be no.
- It's all nonsense, - said Sergey - stuff and nonsense! Semyon, according to his testimony, "crawled on their bellies" from Moscow to the Hill, but in Novgorod until 1951, of course, did not happen. In the 44th, he was afraid, terribly wounded, lost everything: vision, speech, hearing, memory - a living corpse! In the hospital under his Kalinin felt hopeless and was transported to his native Odessa, in the house for the insane under the name "Slobodka." But after two years, when everything was finally believed that he was doomed to a lifetime unconscious stagnation, to him suddenly regained: the speech and hearing and vision, and memory, and ability to think. He graduated from art school, which entered into before the war, and only after that first came to Novgorod.

- What attracted him here because, if not remembered 'impressions about the architecture? "
- Impressions of the others were still adolescent: the books on Russian history, epics. By the way, and his graduate work was a large canvas, "Volga and Mikula Selyaninovich" on the epic story. And then one day as some kind of inner voice called out, as the bell sounded in my head "buzzing word" Novgorod ". I do remember that phrase from his letter.

Letters of Sergei Borisovich - the whole file, not just the precious contents of his own, but also design. From the envelope alone could hold an exhibition devoted to a special genre pustovoytovskogo work - a kind of postal chart. On each envelope, a pen or a ballpoint pen drawn Novgorod church, each envelope - a unique, one-of-a-kind work of art. »Alex GEORGE

Sergey B. Manteuffel - Novgorodian at least the third generation: his grandfather, Lt. Col. Konstantin Ernestovich Manteuffel, even in the nineteenth century, served here in the 85th Infantry Regiment Vyborg.
He grew up in a family of Russian intelligentsia: his mother, Antonina M. - painter, father of Boris Konstantinovich - a scientist with a wide range of interests (meteorologist, archaeologist and restorer, ornithologist, ethnographer, etc.), a member of 32 scientific societies. Both parents have started to work in the Novgorod museum before the war. When she started, along with co-workers prepared to evacuate the train and accompanied the latter to the museum treasures, miraculously escaped from the besieged city.
After three years of famine evacuation of seven Sergey Manteuffel returned to Novgorod. Living with parents in the ruins of the Kremlin made him a witness to the post-war revival of the museum. Worked in it, he himself - to this day the exhibition of ancient art and in the main iconostasis of St. Sophia Cathedral you can see them restored icons.