Post-war Siberia...  The populous noisy "Cossack" market on the suburb of Omsk. Beggars. The recent soldiers crippled by war. Accordion, laughter... The road on a cemetery, passing nearby. Wind band, mourning, tears...
         Dust and barefoot children...
        Finally, after 7 years of separation from the father-veteran and wanderings of mother with the little son across the Far East, the family again reunited. Parents artists work in art fund, Gennady goes to school, cares of younger sisters, goes behind water on a pumping station, stands in long queues for kerosene and bread, runs to fish with the companion on Omka and Irtysh... Also draws, draws from life every day. Peace life is gradually adjusted. But future artist already knows that are happy not all. Near the house there are two psychiatric hospitals...
        

With his mother Ludmila 1942

Father’s photo from the front

 
      All life he remembered the red brick 4-storeyed house on the neighboring street "the 1-st line", bloodcurdling female screams and the sobbings reaching from there in the evenings, and appearing behind lattices of windows ridiculous suffering figures of closely cropped women in the bottom shirts. On the road behind water he saw them every day, passing by barefoot with buckets and a yoke. Their images were engraved in the memory and mysteriously and painfully pursued soul of the impressionable boy. He also knew that before the war in this psychiatric hospital his mother lay...
      On the family circumstances the father didn't manage to achieve the cherished dream - to study in Academy of Arts in Leningrad though he was recommended there after the excellent termination of the Art school of Vrubel (the same school also ended mother). But he just from the childhood imparted the high creative principles and diligence to the son. Gena didn't leave a pencil since the early childhood, he slept with a pencil under a pillow. Coming back late at night from work, the father awoke the son and asked him to show homework - one drawing from the nature, one drawing on memories and one water color. "Have pity on his son, he is still small," - half-asleep mother often told.

The post-war Omsk. October demonstration