Memory of Russia: The exhibition “Two shores of one war” in Veliky Novgorod

In the conference hall of the Museum of Fine Arts (Veliky Novgorodwas opened an exhibition "Two banks of one war".

The exhibition is organized by the Novgorod Museum Reserve, together with the Administration of Veliky Novgorod and the Friendship Society of Great Novgorod and Bielefeld. The exhibition presents watercolors of Novgorod destroyed during the Nazi occupation and city, reborn from the ashes of war, two artists-soldiers who fought seventy-two years ago on the opposite side - the Gottfried Gruner and our compatriot Semen Pustovoytov.

For reference: Gottfried Gruner was born in Germany in 1923. After graduating from high school, he was drafted into the army, fought on the Eastern Front in Russia. The place of the dislocation of its parts in 1942-1943 was Novgorod. For us, Gottfried Gruner is interesting because it left important evidence, already distant, but very memorable for our time, the image of city streets with ruined houses, skeletons of ovens, the medieval churches of Novgorod and the surrounding area with traces of bombing and shelling.

When employees of the Novgorod museum first saw photocopies of watercolors, he felt that his work look like works of Novgorod artist Semyon Ivanovich Pustovoytov - disturbing atmosphere, gloom and tragedy of images. The first impression was the beginning of the movement to the exhibition "The two banks of the same war".

Biography of Semyon Ivanovich Pustovoytov was also linked to Novgorod of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Here he defended his homeland, where received a serious concussion, the effects of which healed many years. Here he became an artist. He saw the city in ruins. In his eyes, he came back to life: to build new streets, high-rise buildings, like a phoenix from the ashes revived old Russian churches.

Two artists. Two fates. After 72 years, they met again at a small, but important, remembering to us about the past and believe in the future, the exhibition - one for two.