The first artist in space: Alexey Leonov donated his paintings to the Tretyakov Gallery. The first man in outer space was an artist Paintings by Evgeny Leonov

01.07.2020

The collection of the Tretyakov Gallery has been replenished with two space paintings: test pilot, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, the first man to go into outer space, Alexey Leonov donated two of his works to the museum. It turned out that he had been interested in painting since childhood, and after school he even chose between flying and art school. The craving for the sky won, but he did not give up art, and painted even during that legendary flight

Leonov is not only a professional cosmonaut, but also a professional artist. In the same 1965, when Alexey Arkhipovich became the first person to cross the threshold of a ship into outer space, he was admitted to the Union of Artists. “I was accepted into the Union by Katenka Belashova (sculptor - website note), Plastov, Romadin - what great masters they were!.. I brought them my sketches,” says Leonov. “Before the flight, I thought a lot about what technique should be: paint in space won't work, pastel won't work, watercolor won't work either. I still have a pencil "Tactics" of medium hardness. good paper. I already knew from the stories of my comrades what I would see: black sky, blue earth. And when I did the first works, they began to say that my horizon does not bend like that. We argued for a long time - I measured it! I knew exactly how many degrees the arc should be! And only then did Professor Lazarev judge us. He said: “Guys, what altitude did you fly at? – 300 kilometers, and he was at an altitude of 500 kilometers. And this means that the dimensions are all different!”

And around the Earth in the picture there is a blue belt of atmosphere. “The belt is exactly four degrees! Do you know how I measured it? I made a palette with the size of the Moon and calculated that the height of the belt was four times its size. I accurately determined the color using an anomaloscope, a device that determines a person’s color vision. According to science, I measured the time, which he made sketches. So the color of the Earth is not fictitious, but as it really is."

In the second picture, the astronaut artist depicted Polar Lights over the North Pole. Flashes of green flame are visible above the horizon, but where the Moon is, red light suddenly appears. “We still don’t know where he’s from,” explained Alexey Arkhipovich.

"Back then it was forbidden to make sketches spaceship“Voskhod-2,” and I did it,” Leonov continued. “It was not much different from the Vostok - they only added a soft-structure airlock chamber and a second engine. But in fact, it was not a new ship - just as the Vostok was, it remained the Vostok. Everything is absolutely in the details."

The astronaut also spoke about the difficulties he had to face during the flight. He was on the verge of death and still doesn’t remember how he coped with the situation. “I was attached to the ship with a halyard and had to pull it out of the airlock to go into space, and then collect it to go back. right hand I had a movie camera, and the second one I had to wind it up and attach it to hooks, and I don’t know how I did it. This is impossible! I went back not with my feet, but with my head first, and I had to turn around in this airlock, but the suit was inflated. I released the pressure valve without asking permission from the land, that is, I broke the law, but it made me feel better. I lost six liters of water in one day! So if anyone wants to lose weight, please go there!” Leonov concluded his story, gesturing to the sky.

Leonov's works are in the collection Dresden gallery, in Houston. In Russia, Leonov’s paintings are kept in museums in two cities: 17 works in Gagarin and another 70 in Kemerovo, where the artist has been running a district school for 15 years children's creativity– the only school in Russia for children with musculoskeletal disorders.

After the ceremonial part, Leonov toured the exhibition and spoke on the occasion about his acquaintance with Pablo Picasso. Through the Russian-French artist Nadezhda-Khodasevich Leger, the cosmonaut agreed on dinner with the cubist. “He wasn’t a great artist. The Rose Period, the Blue Period, Guernica, and then he started doing all this nonsense,” Leonov said. “When we had dinner, he spent a long time gnawing on trout bones, and I thought, why is he so greedy? ? Then he brought the clay, pressed this skeleton into it, and an hour later the fired form was ready. Picasso filled it with bronze and everything was done! How brilliant!" - It's a shame!"

The ceremony took place at the “Thaw” exhibition, which operates in the museum building on Krymsky Val. The choice of location is symbolic: one of the sections, called “Space - Atom,” talks about the exploration of the sky, including Leonov’s contribution to it. Here you can see documentary footage of young Leonov drawing landscapes while preparing for the flight. IN Tretyakov Gallery noted that all legal formalities for the transfer of works to the collection were observed, and now the paintings will become valuable exhibits, because they reflect important point history of space exploration and the 20th century in general.

In addition to the “Thaw” exhibition, the ceremony of handing over the paintings was timed to coincide with the premiere of the film, which tells about the legendary flight of Leonov and Belyaev and the cosmonaut’s spacewalk. The main roles in the film were played by Evgeny Mironov and Konstantin Khabensky.

Alexey Leonov and two of his paintings donated to the Tretyakov Gallery. Photo: RIA Novosti

NASA announces the death of Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov interrupted live broadcast from the ISS. At that moment, two astronauts were just going into outer space. Leonov was the first person on Earth to do this - in 1965. He spent 12 minutes in airless space.

And ten years later, it was he who participated in the high-profile Soyuz-Apollo space mission, which marked the beginning of cooperation between countries in space.

Alexey Leonov at home. Before flying into space. 1965 RIA Novosti Archive

Leonov died in Moscow at the age of 85. Twice Hero of the Soviet Union, a pilot and then an astronaut, was fond of drawing and painting. He exhibited a lot; two paintings by Alexei Leonov are in the Tretyakov Gallery (pictured above). Together with another science fiction artist Andrei Sokolov, Leonov created the design in the 1970s postage stamps on a space theme.

Painting by Alexei Leonov “Cosmic Dawn”. RIA News

Painting by Alexei Leonov “Over the Black Sea”. RIA News

In 2017, speaking at the Tretyakov Gallery, Leonov spoke about drawing in zero gravity: “I thought a lot before the flight: what will I do? And what kind of technology should there be? Paint doesn't work, pastel doesn't work, watercolor doesn't work. There is only one thing left - a pencil, good paper. Medium hard pencils.

"Eruption on the Moon." Drawing by Alexey Leonov and Andrey Sokolov. RIA News

All-terrain vehicle on the moon. Drawing by Alexey Leonov and Andrey Sokolov. RIA News

"Moon. The first minutes after landing.” Drawing by Alexey Leonov. RIA News

1973 Leonov in his workshop. 2 years before the Soyuz-Apollo mission. Photo: RIA Novosti No perfect equipment can accurately convey what is seen in Space. Only human eye and the artist’s brush are able to convey to people the beauty of our Earth, revealed from cosmic heights...

There are not many such people. There were them in the twentieth century. only three - who took the first cosmic step. And two of them are our compatriots: Gagarin, who first ascended into space orbit, and Leonov, the first to push off from the hatch into free flight, separated from hostile space only by the shell of a spacesuit...

There are no ordinary people among astronauts at all. But not everyone is able to convey to others not a dispassionate photo report, but the feelings, emotions, mood that accompany entering a new environment for a person. It is unlikely that the picky commission, which selected pilots from garrisons for “fundamentally new equipment”, first of all assessed the artistic talents of the young pilot - it was much more important to it that the day before Alexey Leonov brilliantly landed the emergency MIG-15bis with the engine turned off.

But it is quite possible that S.P. Korolev took them into account when choosing a person for the first spacewalk. The task was also technically non-trivial, but great fears were associated with psychology: how would a Man feel outside the cabin, alone with Space? And the chief designer decided that it was the artist who would best describe his impressions and sensations.

SP turned out to be right. For two generations of people, they have perceived space, first through the paintings of the artist A. A. Leonov, and only then through the television “picture”, which is improving every year, but is not able to compete with the eye and hand of the artist...

Although Alexei Arkhipovich’s impressions and sensations at the very moment of leaving, and especially returning to the ship, were conveyed by profanity... The designers of the first extravehicular spacesuit made a mistake, and the flexibility of the inflated suit in a vacuum turned out to be less than designed. As a result, the hands came out of the gloves, the legs came out of the boots, and it became completely impossible to move, but it was necessary.

"19-year-old Sergei Korolev in Gagarin's spacesuit." 1965
Drawing by A. Leonov on the dust jacket of the book “ Psychological problems
interplanetary flight"

And for the first time, the cosmonaut significantly changed the operating mode of his apparatus, dropping the pressure below the required level - but he needed to know that this was already possible, because... for some time Leonov breathed oxygen, and decompression did not threaten death. Then he changed the established sequence of actions, flying into the airlock chamber not with his feet, as expected, but head first. After which the astronaut had to turn around in the narrow inflatable tunnel of the airlock chamber...

We only recently learned about this and many other aspects of the Voskhod 2 flight. But this was extremely important: for the first time in our cosmonautics, a person reacted flexibly to a changing situation, that is, he justified his – expensive and unsafe – presence in space! Before that, let’s face it, the cosmonauts of the Vostoks and the first Voskhod were more like guinea pigs.

Leonov began to prepare for the flight on the orbital station. It was he who was supposed to lead the first Salyut crew, but... a few days before the launch, doctors discovered abnormalities in the heart of the flight engineer, V. Kubasov, and backups flew to the station - G. Dobrovolsky, V. Volkov, V. Patsaev. ..

In the early 70s, instructor, deputy head of the training center,
A. A. Leonov was the most trained cosmonaut, and certainly the most famous outside the borders of our country. Apparently, this is why he was appointed commander of the Soviet ship for the joint Soviet-American flight. The task was again technically non-trivial (it was necessary to somehow “harmonize” not only the atmospheres of the ships, but also the models of ballistic calculations). But the main problems again were not in technology: the most advanced and secret machines of the opponents in the Cold War had to work together!

"Soyuz" - "Apollo". 1973.
Canvas, oil. 150x60 cm

Future international
space station. 1967.
Cardboard, gouache, 50x80 cm

Once again, the ingenuity of the astronauts literally saved the program. Since the event is political, it means the whole world should see it. This can only be done with the help of television, but it was the one that failed immediately after the Soyuz entered orbit. And although a second ship and three backup crews were ready at Baikonur, using them for such a reason is a shame and a scandal! The task was complicated by the fact that there were no... tools on board, and it was necessary to open the panel to get to the current distributor (which had a failure) using medical scissors and a hunting knife, bought by Leonov on the eve of the flight! By the way, the Americans considered the incident to be staged...

Alexey Arkhipovich never flew into space again, and until 1991 he headed the cosmonaut corps of the Cosmonaut Training Center named after. Yu. A. Gagarin.

The paintings of the artist A. A. Leonov are unique. It just so happens that our artists willingly paint native nature, no less willingly experiment with all sorts of unconventional styles, but extremely rarely (and often ineptly) depict the “second” nature - man-made. Maybe this happens because this very man-made nature - technology - needs to be known, and most artists (as well as “humanities” in general) treat such knowledge with disdain?

Meanwhile, artistic canvases on which the most complex, sometimes existing only in drawings, technology operates in near and far space - a powerful means of propaganda, including for the creation of this very technology! It is no coincidence that a group of artists is constantly working at the American NASA, creatively reflecting the steps of the American space program, including those that remained on paper. It seems that part of the problems of our cosmonautics stems from the fact that our response to the work of this group was the creativity of only two people: Alexei Leonov and Andrei Sokolov...

The astronaut-artist and almost the only youth popular science magazine were simply doomed to cooperate. Already in the October 1965 issue, on the color tab, readers of “Technology for Youth” saw a cosmic dawn drawn by Leonov, and next to it, on black and white pages, the landing of a Soviet spacecraft on the Moon, as seen by the artist (who, apparently, did not yet know , that it is he who will practice this maneuver on a simulator converted from a helicopter...).

The first issue of the next year, 1966, greeted the reader with a cover by artists A. Leonov and A. Sokolov, and in the May issue of “TM” the world-famous famous painting cosmonaut "Over the Black Sea".

Finally, in October 1968, Alexey Arkhipovich appeared before the readers of our magazine as... the commander of the 6th parade-competition of home-made cars for the prize of the magazine “Technology for Youth”! A logical continuation of the collaboration between the journal and the cosmonaut was the work of A. A. Leonov on our editorial board from 1972 to 1989.

And we are glad that in 2005 Alexey Arkhipovich Leonov is again a member of the editorial board of the magazine “Technology for Youth”!

Alexey Leonov with his grandson Danya.
2003

The exhibition was prepared for the 85th anniversary of one of the pioneers of space exploration.

At the exhibition at the Museum of Cosmonautics, visitors can see about 40 paintings. Most paintings will be presented for the first time.

Alexey Leonov painted more than 200 paintings. On his canvases he depicts both outer space and earthly landscapes.

The exhibition is divided into several parts, which are dedicated to different stages of the life of an astronaut and an artist: childhood, choice of a professional path, spacewalks, the Soyuz-Apollo program.

Viewers will be shown photographs of the training of the crew of the Voskhod-2 ship, a description of Alexei Leonov, written by Yuri Gagarin. Also here you can see Alexei Leonov’s uniform with a full set of awards, the interior of the artist’s studio and a telescope from his office.

You can visit the exhibition at the Museum of Cosmonautics until the end of autumn.

Alexey Leonov - twice Hero Soviet Union. He was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, III and IV degrees, the Yu.A. Gagarin in the field of space activities, the Orders of Friendship, Lenin and the Red Star.

From March 18 to 19, 1965, Alexey Leonov took part in the flight of the Voskhod-2 spacecraft. During this flight, he became the first person in the world to walk into outer space.

From July 15 to July 21, 1975, Leonov took part in a flight on the Soyuz-19 spacecraft. The flight program included a docking with the American Apollo spacecraft.

Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov is the first man in outer space and a participant in two space expeditions, Voskhod 2 and Soyuz 19 (Soyuz-Apollo).

But Alexey Leonov is known not only for the legendary expeditions - many know about his artistic talent. We have collected several works dedicated to space and science fiction.

"Over the Black Sea"

In the painting “Over the Black Sea” I tried to depict the Earth as I saw it from a height of about five hundred kilometers. The Black Sea area was not chosen by chance, because it was here that the exit from the ship was carried out. In addition, the most characteristic details come into view here earth's surface- sea, mountains, plain.

"Night glow of the atmosphere halo"

The instruments clicked. The chronometer hands began to run. I turn on the electronic globe - it will help us determine our location above the Earth, show all the Earth’s radio stations, as well as light and shadow. Light and shadow are important in space.

In one earthly day, sixteen cosmic days pass in space with the alternation of day and night. In one earthly day, the sun rises and sets sixteen times in space!

"Spaceship Voskhod-2"

We began to look at the ship.

And Sergei Pavlovich said very cheerfully and proudly:

Meet, meet - Voskhod-2. We need to answer the question - can a person be in outer space?.. And not just be, but work!.. A person on board a spaceship must be able to swim in space, like a sailor in the ocean. It is through this airlock chamber,” and Sergei Pavlovich pointed to an unusual pipe, “that a person will go into space.

Each of us tried the sluice pipe with our hands. Everything was solid and of good quality, but somehow I couldn’t believe that a man’s entry into space would be possible in the near future.

"I'm going into space"

I pulled up the halyard, which had straightened to its full length, and quickly walked onto the ship. When approaching the ship, he put his hands forward and, touching the walls of the airlock, pushed off with force. And suddenly I was spinning somehow complicatedly: first over my head, and then from left to right. The halyard began to entangle me like an octopus. It's bad - he tied me up. And good - the rotation slowed down, and I stopped not far from the ship. The halyard began to slide off me in rings and hung freely between me and the ship. I understand that sudden movements in space are contraindicated. I made my next departure from the ship taking into account my mistakes - I gained experience in sailing in outer space.