In the end of June 2012 an exhibition “Anatoly Zverev on fire” was held in the “New Manezh” building in Moscow. Such an unusual name sends us back no the tragedy, that happened with the artistic heritage of painter Anatoly Zverev. His numerous art works were kept in the collection of Georgy Kostaki that practically completely perished in a fire. For a long time canvases from this collection were considered lost. Never the less some of the works survived, though being quite damaged by the fire. And that exact part of the burned collection, that underwent restoration, is presented at the exhibition. By some unexplainable coincidence, it so happened that exactly at the time of this exhibition a fire practically destroyed an old industrial building in the north-east of Moscow where our friend Sergey Fedotov had his workshop… Struggle with the fire lasted for over 5 hours. A special fire train and helicopter were engaged in the process. Flames swiftly spread in the building, and soon all three stories were blazing. The biggest problem was in the fact that the 18-th century building had wooden floors. At a certain moment they simply collapsed covering two firemen. Unfortunately one of them died. Taking into consideration the scale of the tragedy, the more incredible seems the fact that the flames raging from both sides and even from above Sergey’s workshop, never penetrated inside and did no harm to the paintings kept in the workshop. And it’s absolutely unbelievable, that the paintings weren’t damaged by the tons of water used to put the fire out! We will be happy to see the lovers and admirers of Sergey Fedotovs’ art.
