4 . Moscow Surikov Secondary Art School (1951 – 1956)
 

        To the 3rd grade thirteen-year-old Gennady was accepted at once. Teachers very much doubted that the modest provincial boy was the author of the fine drawings and water colors which have come by mail from Omsk. But doubts vanished as soon as they saw him behind work with a pencil and paints. And during the next years of studies (1951-1956) his drawings were the best, hung out in a methodical office, and were shown to numerous delegations and then got into funds. The small road alarm clock was sent as a gift to the young artist from Italy by the owner of firm of Olivetti who admired his drawings. In the same year there was shown report on TV "On a Visit of Korney Chukovsky" where Gennady draws a portrait from life of the well known children's writer.

      Gennady very much missed expanses of Siberia, native Omsk. Among 12-year-old teenagers with whom he lived in a boarding school, there was Volodya Kutnovsky, a very gifted young man from Novosibirsk. They made friends. Volodya gently cared the friend, covered him in cold nights by the blanket, bought him once galoshes... Their friendship lasted not long. After vacation from Novosibirsk to Moscow Volodya didn't return to the 5th class, and Gennady went next summer to search for him. Volodya was in a Novosibirsk psychiatric hospital. It appeared that his views, outlooks on life, judgments sharply dispersed from family traditions, and relatives decided that he was sick...
     Gennady was shaken. Every summer on vacation he again and again visited his friend in the psychiatric hospital in far Novosibirsk till relatives didn't transfer Volodya to a country boarding school, having asked doctors not to say anybody that the unfortunate young man is in the hospital...