Soviet Artists Painting War Time. S.D. Kichko (b. 1946) Farewell. 1972. Oil on canvas

Soviet Artists Painting War Time
The Great Patriotic War became obvious the most important factor in the development of art in the 1940s. Soviet artists and sculptors, like other citizens, have been actively involved in the protection of the country, but because of the nature of their profession, they (as well as writers) were attracted to propaganda tasks, determined by the government, who gave an enormous role in this period. During the war, there were significant works of easel graphics, and the variety of experiences has given rise to a variety of forms. It is fast and accurate front-line documentary sketches, different in technique, style and artistic level. These were portrait drawings of soldiers, guerrillas, sailors, nurses, commanders – a rich chronicle of the war, then transferred in part in the engraving. In the scenery of the war a special place is occupied by the image of besieged Leningrad. War time painting had its stages. At the beginning of the war – the artists mainly fixed what they saw, not aspiring to a generalization, almost hasty pictorial sketches. Artists painted on live impressions, which they had a lot. These paintings always had a great sincerity, passion, admiration by people bravely withstanding inhumane challenges, integrity and honesty of artistic vision, a desire to be extremely conscientious and accurate.
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Soviet artist Yuri Podlyasky (1923-1987) On the the Ob River. 1965-1967. Canvas, oil

Soviet artist Yuri Podlyasky (1923-1987) – member of the Leningrad Union of Artists (1949), Honored Artist of Russia, People’s Artist of the USSR. He is the author of genre paintings, landscapes and portraits of contemporaries, one of the brightest representatives of the Leningrad school of painting. Yuri Stanislavovich Podlyasky was born in 1923 in the Far East of Russia. Since childhood, he became interested in drawing and went to school at the Palace of Pioneers in Vyshny Volochyok, where he moved with his parents. He continued his education in Leningrad, in the art school at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1942 he entered the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after Ilya Repin.
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Reaper. 1929. Oil on canvas. Painting by Soviet artist Alexei Pakhomov

Soviet artist Alexei Pakhomov (1900-1973) – People’s Artist of the USSR (1971), Full member of the USSR Academy of Arts (1964), Laureate of the State Prize of the USSR (1973 – posthumously) and the Stalin Prize of the second degree (1946). Alexey Fyodorovich Pakhomov was born September 19 October, 1900 in the village of Varlamovo of Vologda Region. From an early age he showed talent for drawing. With the active assistance of members of the local nobility (the son and his father Zubov), he was sent first to a primary school in the city of Kadnikov, and then in 1915 to Petrograd School of Drawing of Baron Stieglitz. Pakhomov studied at the shop of N.A. Tyrsa, and after serving in the army goes to the studio of V.V. Lebedev. Many avant-garde trends that prevailed in the first quarter of the XX century had an impact on the teachers and therefore the school education system.
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Portrait of Indira Gandhi. 1970. Oil. Painting by Soviet artist Dmitry Nalbandyan (1906-1993)

Soviet artist Dmitry Nalbandyan
Artist Ilya Glazunov recalled that, in connection with the preparation to the official visit of Leonid Brezhnev to India 1973, he decided to “make an original gift – a portrait by one of the masters of socialist realism to a friendly government leader Indira Gandhi. To execute a responsible job to Delhi was sent academician Dmitry Abramovich Nalbandyan. He tried very hard, but when he showed the completed work to Indira Gandhi, she barely glanced at the canvas, noting: “I am not an Armenian.” And she refused to take a picture. Nalbandyan then exhibited it in the Arena with the inscription “Property of the author”. Nalbandyan created portraits of many representatives of the Soviet elite (including Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev), for which in the art circles he was called “the first brush of the Politburo.” Dmitry Nalbandyan – full member of the USSR Academy of Arts (1953), Stalin Prize (1946, 1951), and Lenin Prize (1982) winner. In 1978, for a group portrait of figures of Armenian culture “Vernatun” was awarded the gold medal of the USSR.
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Songs of times. Triptych. 1970. Oil on canvas. Soviet Estonian artist Lepo Mikko (1911-1978)

Soviet Estonian artist Lepo Mikko (1911-1978) – People’s Artist of the USSR, Laureate of the State Prize and People’s Artist of the Estonian SSR in 1972. Lepo Yagovich Mikko was born on 7 December 1911 in the Northern Estonia. From 1927 to 1930 he studied at the School of Industrial Art in Tallinn. Since 1931, he continued his studies in Tartu Art School “Pallas”, following the example of Paris free academies. In his works Lepo Mikko combined French art of the twentieth century and features of an early Estonian modernism. His most productive and successful paintings were created during the Khrushchev thaw period. Mikko was able to catch and transmit optimism of the Soviet society of the 1950s-1960s, devoting his paintings to the themes of struggle for peace, space exploration, as well as still lifes and landscapes.
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Goalkeeper training. 1976. Gouache on paper. Soviet artist Andrey Lopatin (born 1951)

Early works of Soviet artist Andrey Lopatin were first featured in the illustrated album “Youth of country” published to the 60th anniversary of Komsomol, in 1978. The embodiment of youth, health, and strength of the athletes was characteristic for the paintings of A.R. Lopatin – “Goalkeeper Training”, “Morning Running”. Andrey Rostislavovich Lopatin – Honored Artist of Russia, member of the Commission for the Creative Union of Graphic Artists of Russia, director of the House of creativity “Chelyuskinskaya”. Soviet artist Andrey Lopatin was born in 1951 in Moscow, the USSR. He graduated from Moscow State Art Institute of Surikov (1975), studied at workshops of MV Motorin, EA Kibrik, NL Voronkov. Already in the early works of Andrei Lopatin there has been interest in the genre compositions.
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Self-Portrait with a mask. Oil. 1943. Soviet Armenian artist Martiros Saryan (1880 — 1972)

Soviet Armenian artist Martiros Saryan
According to the artist himself, in his long life, he experienced a lot of grief and a lot of fun. He witnessed two world wars, and fought against the worst enemy of mankind – fascism. In the Soviet Army in the Great Patriotic War fought his son. The artist has painted dozens of portraits of war heroes. Saryan lived through the death of his beloved son, the death of many of his paintings. I do not know the artist more sunny than Martiros Saryan. And the bright, sparkling view of the world, a striking sense of light and color and love for his native Armenia, he had inherited from his parents, because he was born and raised in Russia. He studied painting in Moscow in the workshops of Soviet Russian artists Serov and Korovin, and only as an adult, twenty-year-old, he first visited the homeland of their ancestors – Armenia. And became sick of this country forever. Despite the fact that he had to go to Cairo and in the sultry and mysterious Tehran and multifaceted Constantinople, lived and worked in the Mecca of artists – Paris, he has always been irresistibly drawn to his homeland.
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