Cartoonist

(1925-2012)

“As I now remember: when I was born, I began to draw cartoons …” So, or so many cartoonists answer the banal question: how long have you been doing this business? Many, but not Zharinov. He came to the profession of a satirist not suddenly. There was a school-ten-year-old with “just drawing”, drawing “for yourself”, without any purpose, because I did not know how you can not paint it! In 1938, he was already in secondary art school. Here, Zharinov determined a conscious aspiration – at all costs be an artist! And who knows, maybe after graduating from art school, Volodya would become a painter, without even suspecting that he left … from his fate. But folk wisdom says: you can not escape from fate! He did not leave. Worked in a large-circulation newspaper Metrostroevets by an artist. He descended into the mines, painted portraits of the builders – shock workers Metrostroy, did full-scale sketches, sketches in the drifts. A newspaper artist should be able to do everything. And one day I had to sit down for a caricature. This was the beginning of the journey of the satirical artist Vladimir Zharinov. He finally found the one genre of fine art, to which, as it turned out, the soul lay most of all, in which it was possible to unite its constant desire for a real reflection of life with the yet not fully realized need for exaggeration, allowing biased, interested to interfere in this real life, make adjustments, emphasize, allocate all that which, to him, the artist, seems worthy of derision.

In 1949, Zharinov entered the Moscow Polygraphic Institute, and after a while he went to practice at Crocodile, without even assuming that his whole life would be firmly connected with this magazine …

In the late fifties, Zharinov came to the TASS Press Cliche as a cartoonist with an unmistakable political grasp and an inexhaustible supply of topics. The activists of the Press Cliché artists consisted of experienced masters, such as I. Semenov, Yu. Uzbyakov, E. Shcheglov, Yu. Fedorov, S, Kuzmin, E. Vedernikov and others. Here it is necessary to say about the main virtue of Vladimir Zharinov-satirist. There are artists (and often gorgeous!), Which can create a real work of satirical fine art, but … the theme of the picture, as a rule, offers him a “test”, the person who creates them. And the artist, the master of his work, will enrich it with expressive details, find the most accurate compositional solution, type characteristics, etc. Vladimir Zharinov is among the best “tests” now working in “Crocodile”. Himself, being an artist, he never lacks topics not only for himself, but in a multitude he comes up with them for a “common cauldron”. Almost all crocodile artists made drawings on his subjects, including such ko-rifeys as Kukryniksy, B. Efimov, M. Cheremnykh, A. Kanevsky, I. Semenov, V. Goriaev.

Zharinov – indifferent, active artist. Without passing a single significant event or phenomenon, he responds with lightning speed to them with a whole cascade of topics. He paints himself and gives his subjects to others. Not only to colleagues in the “Crocodile” – they are willingly taken by satirical magazines of the fraternal republics. For example, in the Ukrainian magazine “Peretz” he was repeatedly awarded for the best themes of the year.

Zharinov rarely comes up with “without words.” And this is not because he lacks expressive means, ingenuity. No. He believes that the exact signature found does not impoverish, but, on the contrary, enriches the thought, makes it concrete, does not give the opportunity to be understood “and so and so”. From what has been said, it should not be at all that any drawing “without words” already alone, in itself, is bad. Far from it) But the good old tradition of the Russian Soviet caricature, which does not shy away from a good word, like a witty signature, has not outlived itself. Vladimir Zharinov of this tradition is true. LS Samoilov

Masters of the Soviet caricature
Ed. “Soviet artist”, Moscow. 1981