Anatoly Zverev's artistic biography begins in the late 1940-s or early 1950-s in Sokolniki - a region of Moscow. The first person to discover him happened to be Alexander Roumnev, a dancer at Tairov's Chamber Theater. Roumnev used to walk in Sokolniki Park. One day he saw a group of workers mending sand boxes and benches at a playground. As soon as large pieces of plywood were nailed to the playground fence a young man joined the group. He looked pale and skinny and was dressed in an oversized sheepskin coat and two different boots, one of box-calf, the other one of tarpaulin. With his face inspired, his eyes clear but intransigent, his mind flooded with problems and ideas far away from the vanity of everyday life, he looked like someone from the world beyond. He carried two buckets - one was full of whitewash, the other contained cinnabar paint. He also had a regular kitchen broom.
The young man deepened the broom first in one bucket, then the other one, and started to spread the paint over the plywood fence. He worked in an elegant yet somewhat careless manner. Few minutes later the fence was shining with blinding rich colors. Not a single spot in the playground was left unattended. The area was "occupied" by a flock of strange birds more colorful than roosters. They shocked with bold richness of palette so unusual in those strict and hungry years after World War II.
Roumnev was so amazed that he decided to find out more about the artist. He introduced himself and asked the young man to tell him about his life. Zverev invited his new acquaintance to have a look at his works. Roumnev became so enthusiastic about Zverev's art that he started to bring his friends to the park just to look at the roosters. He introduced the young artist to Moscow celebrities, helped him to buy food and paint and to sell paintings. Though the artist was grateful to his admirer for his warmth and tenderness, he still couldn't live steadily in one place. He always got attracted to some distant marvels, sometimes disappearing and living like a vagabond for quite a long time. But as soon as he returned, he would go back to work zealously, hungrily, ndefatigably, producing paintings by the dozen at a time. Soon he was drafted and became a Navy sailor.
Inspiration would sometimes roll over Anatoly Zverev unexpectedly leaving him no time to think over what, where and how to express. Why use brushes when it is easier to take tubes in his hand and squeeze all the paint out at once (let it be oil, gouache and watercolors together) on the canvas, on the paper or even on a table cloth and using a tooth brush, a knife, a spoon or whatever is handy, even a bare finger in a matter of seconds to turn the colorful mess into a harmony of bright, profound concentration of artistic expression. A simple bouquet of Moscow area flowers would spring out like fireworks. A Russian landscape - so familiar to every Russian - would suddenly come out of a chaotic mixture of paint stains. Another stain of paint could turn into a beautiful face of a friend or a lover, or a dog, a horse, a bird with kindsad eyes.
During the days of the World Youth and Students Festival in 1957 - an international event which marked the beginning of Khruschev's thaw in the Soviet Union - an art studio was built in Moscow Gorky Park. It was the place where Moscow artists could see the way their Western counterparts work. An American journalist who covered the Festival described an interesting situation in one of his reports:
American artists decided to shock the Russians with a flaw of aggressive abstract paintings. They combined the scum of all the most avant-garde trends and produced the "electicism" to knock the Socialist Realism down. American artistic production line moved on and on without a single stop. The Russians were really taken aback. They never expected to see such a high "production rate". Their academic education left them with only one argument - the right to speak about who was right and who was wrong. The discussions were tough and energetic. They accused Americans of an attempt to escape social problems. Americans denied the charges and in their turn urged the Russians to learn to work with materials easily and freely. Those arguments continued until a strange-looking young man with two buckets of paint and splashed two buckets of paint over it and jumped in the middle of the blue- and -green pool, sweeping it wildly with his mop. Ten seconds later the work was finished. The crowd was shocked and amazed to see an enormous in size, yet beautifully done refined masterpiece of a woman's portrait. The young Russian artist winked at one of the speechless Americans, slapped him on the back leaving a stain of fresh paint and said:
"Leave alone painting, come on, I’ll teach you to draw."
His first personal show happened abroad, in Paris about 1958. Starting in late fifties, his works were displayed annually in the best galleries of the U.S.A. and Europe. But back home the situation was different. Those, who were labeled "unofficial art representatives" by the dogmatists who monopolized art criticism (naturally, Zverev was one of the labeled) found themselves between silently revolving millstones designed to "grind" talented competitors by ignoring their existence. Artists' creativity would make discoveries and give them away to the World, the discoveries would be recognized as milestones, would attract connoisseurs, experts and admirers. And at the same time it "wouldn't exist". No critical reviews, no mention in any publication. The depression put whole artistic schools and trends out of sight, out of mind.
The Great Picasso used to send his best wishes to "the best Russian graphic artist" with every visitor from Moscow. It was a real support for Zverev, a reason not to lose his self control and vanish.
The sun-bright lucky star of his fortune was his friendship with Ksenia
Mikhailovna Aseyeva, widow of the Russian poet of the "Left" group.
Both as much as they could helped each other to ward off loneliness.
She was most kindhearted, slightly exalted woman, the heroine of
Aseyev's piercing lines in the past, who had seen in her lifetime quite
a lot of brightest celebrities and lived through lost of romances,
friend of Mayakovsky. She became a devoted worshiper and a passionate
promoter of his art. She was literally enchanted and bewitched, and
steadfastly endured any follies and eccentricities of the reckless
genius. Well, she for the second time happened to live through
everything that she breathed with in the stormy twenties. The history
and her youth repeated for her for the second time. His destiny was to
see Ksenia Mikhailovna off in her wake. The memory of touching
tenderness in their relations warmed up the rest of the artist's years.
...By the end everything was shaping up tragically and desperately. The
closed space of more and more uniform drinking bouts (where partners
broke down unable to keep up with more experienced master) oppressed
him and broke his wings. All of a sudden a shed with five hundred
paintings said to be ready to be exported by Costakis from the Soviet
Union (the king of collectors was getting ready to move to Greece). He
was looking for a real safe refuge, losing his magic of mastership,
falling apart in paltry and fleeting handouts and compliments. The mask
of a "sly guy" and a kind simpleton that saved him all his life and was
more and more boring now, interfered and turned into a burden. The role
provoked by the circumstances was played through. Everything that
people expected and demanded of him he gave them back with interest
through his work in his honest, sincere and irreproachable way.
A few days before his sudden death (in December 1986) he wrote on a slip of paper:
"Art should be free. Though it is very hard. Because human life is not free".
His heritage tragically and irreversibly missed the exhibition halls, museums, and art galleries of Russia. He worked hard all his life, but there is not a single work by the master which is exposed in the public collections of Russia.
Although the discovery of him in his native country had already happened.
And so it had to happen, sooner or later.