Evgeny Telishev. GOGOLEVSKY 29

Outside the circle of friends and few relatives, Evgeny Telishev is not well known to anyone, but especially in the artistic environment. He is not listed on long or short lists of prestigious and other awards; his name cannot be found in the lists of so-called ratings. And why would he be there?..

Having been born of God in Salekhard, right on the Arctic Circle, our hero spends his childhood and youth there. In the family, ET’s drawing abilities — real or imaginary — not for us to judge — were encouraged. The decisive role, however, was played by his uncle, an excellent sculptor and brilliant draftsman, Vadim V. Telishev, who lived in Novosibirsk at that time, but despite the distance supervising his nephew. It is to him that ET is obliged by decision to go to the Polygraphic Institute after school. True, he fails miserably, in order to enter the same year, for lack of the best, at the art-graphic faculty of Moscow State Pedagogical Institute named after Lenin, which he finishes - not without problems - in 1972.

No matter how sad the fate of the art teacher in the Siberian province, ET, nevertheless, for several years, has been playing this role, regularly visiting Moscow, spending the night with friends or at train stations.

Were it not for Valera Kryukovsky, ET would hardly have managed to stay in the capital for a long time. Valery, a former fellow student and a remarkable painter, left his wife and lived in his workshop on Gogolevsky, paying 15 rubles a month to the head of the housing office, Ivan Denisovich, a member of the CPSU. The situation, of course, is against those, and even current, times, illegal. Nevertheless, Valery was not alone here: in the attics and basements, under the same conditions, there were a lot of motley audiences: artists, sculptors, unrecognized writers. There was even one theater actor on Taganka. Ivan Denisovich, therefore, was not in poverty.

“Live here, with me” - that was the fateful phrase of Kryukovsky when ET appeared in his basement. “Live until you get settled.” Live a year, live two. " ET lived in the basement for three whole years, first with Valery, then when he, having married again, left the basement, alone.