Zbarsky, Lev Borisovich. Artist Lev Zbarsky: biography, creativity, personal life and interesting facts Zbarsky Lev Borisovich art paintings

Among Soviet celebrities Lev Zbarsky is rightfully considered one of the most memorable; his biography and personal life are still of interest to many.

Artist Soviet era was known for his flamboyant paintings, but he was mainly associated with a ladies' man who captured the hearts of many beauties. His victories include fashion model Lyudmila Maksakova. However, none of the girls could remain a muse for Leo for the rest of his life; he preferred life in another country.

Lev Zbarsky with his parents and brother

Biography

The future talented artist was born into a family of biochemists in 1931. At birth, his father, as a sign of deep respect for famous personalities He named the boy with a double name - Felix (in honor of Felix Dzerzhinsky) and Lev (in honor of Lev Karpov). It was the second option that pleased the owner of these names, and he preferred to be called that way throughout his life.

It is worth noting that very little is known about Lev Zbarsky’s childhood. Many believe that this is due to the peculiarities of the work of his parents, who were forced to work under the strictest secrecy. Thus, his father was directly involved in the embalming of V.I.’s body. Lenin.

A reliable fact is that before the start of the war the Zbarsky family lived in Tyumen. It was there that Lev's inclinations as an artist were revealed, which is why his parents hastened to hire him a teacher to develop his creative abilities.

After returning to Moscow and graduating from school, young Zbarsky received an art education and easily fit into the capital's bohemian life. He had all the prerequisites for this; he had been vaccinated since childhood. good taste, impeccable upbringing and natural sociability.

Artist's work

It is worth noting that the young man was clearly not a standard of beauty; the first thing that caught your eye was his excessive thinness. However, he in no way experienced a lack of attention from the fair sex, who compared him to Belmondo and Salvador Dali.

Creation

The period of Lev's life in the Soviet Union was characterized by the fact that he showed himself as a talented graphic artist, he was engaged in book illustration. He became famous in 1956, at the age of 25, when he originally designed a book by Yu. Olesha. Critics unanimously agreed that the illustrations are characterized by extraordinary lightness and airiness. Later, Zbarsky was remembered as the director of the cartoons “Bathhouse”, “Moskvichok”, “Country Orchestra”.

Still from the cartoon “Country Orchestra”

Drawings from the book by Y. Olesha

Personal life

Thanks to the position of his parents and the fact that he is with early years proved himself to be a talented artist, Lev Zbarsky owned all the best. Thus, he became the owner of a workshop located in the center of the capital and having a truly enormous size. In addition, the young man dressed in expensive, chic things that invariably attracted the attention of the fair sex.

Not only did Leo win the favor of women by this, but also with his relaxed, free and relaxed behavior. He was a favorite of many metropolitan beauties; he often held receptions in his workshop, where creative bohemia gathered. At one of these events, he met fashion model Regina, who later became his wife.

Subsequently, the affair left a serious imprint on Regina’s entire life, and she never recovered from the moral trauma she received. The fact is that family idyll didn't last long. After the fashion model found out about her pregnancy, she encountered misunderstanding on the part of her husband, and he insisted that she get rid of the unborn child.

But the real blow for Regina was the subsequent development of events, when her husband became interested in another woman who was 10 years younger than her. She became the actress Marianna Vertinskaya, with whom Leo had a short affair.

Interesting facts from life

The next after Vertinskaya was an affair with, who gave birth to Zbarsky’s son Maxim. All these events had an extremely negative impact on Regina’s health; throughout her life she periodically fell into depression and was treated in a psychiatric clinic. At the age of 52, the woman voluntarily passed away.

It is worth noting that personal life played an important role in the biography of Lev Zbarsky. However, she did not bring happiness to either him or his companions. He also left Maksakov and her small child and moved to live in Israel, and six years later - to America.

Death of Lev Zbarsky

America became the last country in which Lev Zbarsky lived. He had at his disposal a spacious workshop, equipped to his taste, but communicated only with a few friends and compatriots.

It is characteristic that the last years of his life the once famous artist lived in solitude and seclusion. He died at the age of 84 in a hospice alone, without family or friends. However, it is worth noting that his grandchildren Anna and Peter were present at the funeral.

IN MEMORY OF THE ARTIST LEV ZBARSKY – THE HERO OF DOVLATOV’S MYTH ABOUT LENIN’S MUMMY

Vladimir Kozlovsky Russian Service BBC, NY

Lev Zbarsky was not immediately released into exile, apparently fearing that he knew some state secret about Lenin

In New York, at the age of 85, the artist Lev Zbarsky, whose father, professor Boris Zbarsky, embalmed Lenin, died, and whose older brother, academician Igor Zbarsky, maintained the condition of the body for many years.

Friends of the deceased, who had the double name Felix-Lev or Lev-Felix (in honor of Dzerzhinsky), jokingly asked him whether he often approached the leader’s corpse on the way to Siberia, where Lenin was evacuated during the war, and whether he pulled his nose. He waved it off indignantly every time.

Sergei Dovlatov also had a hand in creating this mythology, writing that the Zbarsky family accompanied Lenin’s body to Barnaul, and that they “were given a separate compartment. Levushka and the mummy occupied the lower shelves.” In fact, their route lay in Tyumen, and Lenin traveled under guard in a separate carriage of their special train.

Zbarsky refuted to the author of these lines the popular version among his casual acquaintances that during the evacuation Lenin was kept in their apartment in a bathtub with ice. In fact, the body was kept in the premises of an agricultural technical school in the center of Tyumen, a former real school where the writer Prishvin and the revolutionary Krasin studied. As Igor Zbarsky wrote in the book “Object No. 1,” ironically, Krasin observed the embalming of Lenin’s body in 1924.

Mystery of the Mummy

As Lev Zbarsky said, the greatest impression on him in Tyumen was not his father’s occupation, but the natural exchange between captured Germans and local boys. The Germans skillfully made toys, knives or lighters for them, and the children brought them food in return. According to screenwriter Olga Shevkunenko, who knew him well, under the influence of this childhood impression, Zbarsky never passed by a homeless person without giving him alms.

He was not immediately released into exile, apparently fearing that he knew some state secret about Lenin. There could be only one state secret: that the mummy is not real. Zbarsky knew that this was not so. But those who were supposed to give him an exit visa apparently had doubts and therefore hesitated for some time.

Rooted for Clinton

Zbarsky, the ex-husband of the famous Soviet fashion model Regina Zbarskaya (nee Kolesnikova) and People's Artist RF Lyudmila Maksakova, from whom he had a son, Maxim, was killed by lung cancer, diagnosed two and a half years ago.

He emigrated to Israel in 1972, and in 1978 moved to New York, where he bought a huge loft, the money for which was lent to him by the Israeli writer Ephraim Sevela.

A distinguished Moscow party-goer and first lover, in recent years Zbarsky lived as a recluse in Manhattan, ordering the doormen not to let anyone in to see him, but once in the hospital he was surrounded by friends. He was visited by Maxim Shostakovich and his son Dmitry, who came from Moscow, and his hostess legendary restaurant“Russian Samovar” Larisa Kaplan, Shevkunenko, director Nina Sheveleva and artist Kirill Doron, with whom Zbarsky vividly discussed the American election campaign the day before his death. He was rooting for Hillary Clinton.

Favorite of beautiful women

Zbarsky was buried in the giant Jewish cemetery "Mount Moriah" in New Jersey.

Among those who accompanied him to last way There were Zbarsky’s granddaughter, 16-year-old Anna Maksakova, and his grandson, 25-year-old Pyotr Maksakov, who works as a marketing manager at Sibur and came to New York to visit his wife Galina, daughter of fashion designer Valentin Yudashkin, who is now pregnant. Anna and Peter never saw their grandfather during his lifetime. At the end of the ceremony, the young Rabbi Yaguda, who emigrated to the United States from the Timiryazevsky district of Moscow, played Vysotsky’s song “Someday I will die - we always die someday...” on his iPhone.

The funeral for Zbarsky took place on the second floor of the Samovar, in the so-called Cigar Hall, which he once designed. Among those present was the New York son of the deceased, Alexei Weintraub.

“Levochka was an amazing, multifaceted personality,” said Roman Kaplan at the beginning of the wake, who knew Zbarsky since 1959 and for almost 30 years was the face of Samovar, where the deceased sat on Fridays at the master’s table with a Russian newspaper in his hands. "A brilliant artist, a phenomenal sculptor, a man extraordinary taste, Kaplan continued. “The most beautiful women in Russia were in one way or another in love with Lyovochka.”

Felix-Lev Borisovich Zbarsky(1931-22 February 2016, New York) - Soviet and American artist. Son of biochemist Boris Zbarsky, brother of biochemist Ilya Zbarsky, first husband of actress Lyudmila Maksakova and fashion model Regina Zbarskaya.

Biography

Lev Zbarsky is the first son from the second marriage of Boris Ilyich Zbarsky with Evgenia Borisovna Perelman. Lev was born in November 1931 in Moscow. The father decided to name his son after the person he respected most. Since there were two such people: Lev Yakovlevich Karpov and Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, the son was given a double name - Felix-Lev.

In Tyumen, Lev showed interest in drawing. The father found an artist in the city who gave the boy lessons for several years. After school, he entered the Printing Institute, where he received a specialty as a graphic artist (book illustrator).

Sergei Dovlatov wrote in his book “Solo on Underwood” that the Khrushchev thaw for him began precisely with Zbarsky’s drawings. And he called his illustrations for Olesha the pinnacle of perfection.

Zbarsky was the production designer of several animated films: “Bathhouse” (1962), “Moskvichok” (1963), “Country Orchestra” (1964).

In 1972, Lev Zbarsky emigrated to Israel and from there moved to the United States. Anatoly Naiman explained the reason for this action:

Ballerina Maya Plisetskaya loved to tell this story about Zbarsky: once he drew a devil, and they told him that his devil was too modernist. Zbarsky replied: “I will draw realistically, just give me the life.”

In an interview with the magazine “Only Stars” on August 19, 2015, Zbarsky’s friend Roman Kaplan said that the artist was seriously ill, he had stage 4 lung cancer. He lives in New York, has become a recluse, and does not communicate with his son Maxim from actress Lyudmila Maksakova, nor with his grandson Peter.

Personal life

Leo was the only lover, and then the husband (in the early 1960s), of Regina Zbarskaya. When Regina became pregnant, Zbarsky did not want a child, and she decided to have an abortion, after which she tried to suppress her feelings of guilt with antidepressants.

Soon Lev became interested in actress Marianna Vertinskaya, and then went to Lyudmila Maksakova, who bore him a son (convicted in Russia).

Ex-husband famous Soviet fashion model, who became the prototype main character film "Red Queen", died in the USA from lung cancer. Lev Zbarsky was 84 years old.

The ex-husband of Regina Zbarskaya, the prototype of the main character of the acclaimed TV series “The Red Queen,” died in the United States in mid-February 2016. In fact, on the eve of the film's premiere on Russian television screens.

It is not known whether Lev Borisovich managed to watch this picture (obviously, it’s unlikely) - it would be interesting to see his opinion on how truthfully the story of their relationship with Regina was depicted in the series, how she coped with her role, appearing in the image of the famous Soviet fashion model. Well, and, of course, did the actor himself play him well?

Red Queen: Lion and Regina

As it became known, Lev Zbarsky died alone and in poverty in one of the American hospices.

For last year he tried unsuccessfully to fight lung cancer. Throughout his life, Zbarsky smoked a lot. Even on archival photos he is with a cigarette.

At the same time, doctors characterize him as a very courageous person who steadfastly endured wild pain.

Lev Zbarsky

The real Lev Zbarsky and Regina Kolesnikova (who later took her husband’s surname) met in the late 50s. Then they became husband and wife.

Their marriage crashed due to the fashion model's pregnancy. She wanted to have children, but Lev insisted on an abortion, which was unsuccessful - she could no longer be a mother.

Because of this, the fashion model began to use antidepressants in excessive quantities, which eventually drove her to a mental hospital and suicide.

And Lev Zbarsky, having abandoned Regina, had affairs with the most beautiful women Soviet Union.

He was married to actress Lyudmila Maksakova (she bore him a son), then was in a relationship with Marianna Vertinskaya.

In 72, Lev Borisovich Zbarsky left the USSR, first to Israel, and then to the USA, where he lived until the end of his life.

Felix-Lev Zbarsky was born on November 12, 1931. His family was intelligent; his father and older brother were famous scientists. The boy was given a double name in honor of Felix Dzerzhinsky and Lev Karpov, his father’s authorities. The future artist himself preferred the name Leo.

In childhood and youth, Leo did not need anything; he belonged to the so-called “golden youth”, and everyday problems didn't bother him.

Lev Zbarsky showed an artistic gift early, and the young man free time began to conduct them in his studio in the center of Moscow.

Women of Lev Zbarsky

The personal life of Lev Zbarsky was very fascinating, but often tragic for his companions. The artist attracted women simply magnetically. Although, according to eyewitnesses, there was nothing special about Lev Zbarsky’s appearance. He was thin and had an unattractive face. But, probably, charm, wit and talent helped the artist win women’s hearts.

Lev Zbarsky met fashion model Regina Kolesnikova in his workshop in Moscow, where the “golden youth” of that time often gathered. At first, the artist idolized this delightful woman and literally carried her in his arms. In the first years of marriage this was the most a beautiful couple Moscow.

But the artist was very flighty. He quickly grew tired of any jewelry, even the most exquisite ones. In addition, Regina wanted a child, and Lev believed that this would ruin her figure and prevent him from creating. Regina had an abortion, which she immediately regretted because she could no longer have children.

Meanwhile, Zbarsky became interested in someone else famous beauty Marianna Vertinskaya. True, the affair with her did not last long, since the artist soon met actress Lyudmila Maksakova, who was then at the peak of her fame. For the sake of Lyudmila, Lev divorced Regina, which caused the fashion model a series of depressions, from which she never got out. Regina Zbarskaya several times lay in psychiatric clinics and then committed suicide.

Marriage to Lev Zbarsky did not bring happiness to Lyudmila Maksakova. She decided to give birth to a child from her husband, a son, Maxim. But the artist could not stand children’s screams and constantly spent time in his studio, away from his family. And two years after the birth of his son, the artist left for Israel and never returned to his homeland. The son never saw his father again.

last years of life

Lev Zbarsky spent the last years of his life in the USA, where he lived alone and as a recluse. He died at the age of eighty-four. Last days the famous artist spent in a hospice. At the funeral of Lev Zbarsky there were two of his grandchildren, who were in the USA at that time and accidentally learned about the death of their grandfather. They never saw their grandfather alive.