Let's Get Acquainted

The famous military artist, People's Artist of the USSR Nikolai Zhukov (1908-1973) admitted that he never imagined the fullness of happiness in life without children and did not believe in the empty phrases of bohemian artists who preached solitude and freedom for the success of their art. When the artist's family welcomed their firstborn, Nikolai Nikolaevich spent every free minute passionately drawing the little girl. Then the second child was born, then the third... He drew each of them in various observed situations. The drawings turned out light, sincere, and infinitely touching. One of his friends - whether jokingly or seriously - once said: "Children taught Zhukov how to draw." In 1958, the book "Let's Get Acquainted" was published by Detgiz, containing, like a cozy family album, "children's" drawings by Nikolai Zhukov and accompanying poems by the poet Vladimir Tomsen. That book served as the basis for the present edition. Children are a special and large people; we need to learn to understand their language, to be necessary and interesting to them, to be a friend so that they trust us and let us into the secret of their wonderful souls... The theme of childhood requires great and genuine love, a father's feeling for all children by the artist, constant observations, collecting facts from the lives of children, a serious attitude towards them. Nikolai Zhukov, People's Artist of the USSR. The book uses materials from the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, the Nikolai Zhukov House Museum in Yelets, and from the artist's family archive. For preschool children.