George Nyssky. Laconic and poetic landscapes of the 20th century.

Planes fly over the fields. The locomotives run along the paths. Ships and yachts cut the waves. The highway is calling for a way. And next to them quiet spruces sleep, the night sky hangs, the sunset path connects the shores of the harbor bay. Some pictures are romantic emotion. Others – lyrical softness, the most subtle shades of human experiences. If we consider the works of Nyssa in chronological order, then among the ones performed recently one can see those in which both these principles are closely intertwined and mutually penetrate. As a result, a completely new artistic image is created, sounding a wide epic poem about the Motherland.
A romantic who keenly feels the beauty and greatness of the work that transforms the face of the earth, and at the same time a heartfelt lyricist – this is one of the most outstanding painters of our country, George G. Nyssky. At exhibitions, his works among many other canvases are recognized immediately by the special, inherent to him, the inherent majority of the sound and is emphasized by the modern world view. “Sea expanses covered by warships of all fleets among the wonderful Soviet sailors, snow-covered forests near Moscow, skiing, expanses of Moscow reservoirs, canal ribbons, Volga expanses, Moscow and Rybinsk seas sailing under sail, towers of locks, yacht racing, evening romance railway stations, steel twin trails of paths with ruby ​​lights, bindings of viaducts and cross over bridges surrounded by locomotive smoke are all new geography of my Homeland, changed by the will of people. It is necessary to see, reveal its beauty and show it to millions of new people with new thoughts and new feelings, with their cheerfulness, their lyrics and optimism. The landscape of the Motherland has been changed, it is no longer Levitanian — it is joyful and major, and you need to see it to a modern artist, see it with a new feeling, a new heart and new eyes and make it with new hands, otherwise it will not be today, ”the artist writes in his autobiography, this way he formulates tasks for himself, his students and his fellow artists, such a world outlook permeates his work.
Nyssa – one of the leading artists of landscape painting. In the way he organizes the composition of works, he emphasizes the correlation of objects, in the very rhythm of individual parts of the work and the whole the world perception of the person of the middle of the XX century with his new ideas about space, scale and tempo is visible. The beauty of nature and the beauty brought into nature by man, merge together for the artist. And his works, despite the fact that in them the activities of people most often are not directly shown, are full of the dynamics of human actions, sound like a hymn to a man-creator.
The works of Nyssa summarize those impressions and reflections on what he saw, which bring him travels and trips. He himself writes: “In the Far East” – noticed from the window of a fast-moving train. The bristles of the forest on the ridge of the hill, quickly flashed an airfield with aircraft. I didn’t manage to draw anything, so did the etude. The rest is in representation and vision from memory … “The Moscow Region” nursed the whole winter on skis, and when I felt that the thing was packed in me and solved, I quickly wrote it in the workshop ”.
The special features of his work include the fact that even in the smallest landscape a modest and seemingly unremarkable cornerstone is perceived as part of the immense width of his native country, as a separate theme of the powerful and heroic symphony “My country is wide”.
When people talk about Nyssa, his landscapes with runways, silhouettes of semaphores, running trains are most often remembered. This is truly one of his favorite motifs. Most likely, the roots of this attachment are still in the first children’s impressions.
Georgii Grigorievich Nissky was born on January 21, 1903 at the junction railway station Novobelitsa, a few kilometers from the Belarusian city of Gomel. He spent his childhood at this station. He inhaled the mixed, pungent smell of coal smoke, engine oil and heated metal. He admired his favorite hero – a locomotive machinist. He liked to maneuver on a steam train along ramified station tracks. The interests of the family, the father – the railway doctor – little worried the boy. He was just as worried about his childhood and art. He was not at all thought of. For the first time, Nissky encountered the drawing only in the gymnasium and was engaged in it in the lessons without enthusiasm, although even then he already helped his comrades in this. Only in 1917, a fourteen-year-old high school student, did he seriously begin to think about the profession of the artist. V. Zorin, who at that time lived near Novobelitsa pushed him to this. Zorin told the teenager about Russian painters, especially about those who worked at the beginning of the 20th century: about Levitan, Vrubel, Petrov-Vodkin, Roerich. For the first time, Zorin revealed to the young man the peculiarities of Russian art with his immersion in human psychology, introduced the works of the best Russian masters, and advised him to study himself.