Soviet Art

Tsarina Marfa Vasilyevna in the comedy film ‘Ivan Vasilievich changes his profession’, directed by Leonid Gaidai. Soviet film actress Nina Maslova

Soviet film actress Nina Maslova
Born on November 27, 1946 in Riga, Nina Maslova is a famous Soviet Russian film actress. She spent her childhood in the city of Nikolaev in Ukraine, and, according to her, it was not cloudless. The girl had a difficult relationship with her mother (she was very rude), so her stepfather brought her up. No wonder, the only dream of Nina was to leave her home. And while it was impossible to do this, she was in conflict with her mother (she cut her veins twice) and spent time in courtyard companies. Hence the taste of alcohol, she knew early – at 11 years of age, drinking with friends a bottle of cheap wine.
At the age of 18, Maslova’s dream finally came true – she escaped from her humbled parent home. Fell in love with the young Muscovite Alexander, who came to Nikolayev to work, she soon found himself with him in Moscow. And there she joined the Institute of Land Reclamation with him. It was in 1964. And the next year Maslova broke up with both – her Sasha and the institute, as became interested in actor’s profession.
Fortunately, in 1965 Maslova entered the School-Studio of the Moscow Art Theater. She lived in a hostel, where her neighbors were the future stars of Soviet cinema – Yekaterina Vasilyeva and Yekaterina Gradova.
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In the field. Painting by Soviet Tatar artist Ildar Kasimovich Zaripov (15 November 1939 – 14 June 2012)

Soviet Tatar artist Ildar Kasimovich Zaripov

Born 15 November 1939 in Kazan, Ildar Kasimovich Zaripov grew up in a large Tatar family. The talent for drawing appeared at an early age. After graduating from the Kazan Art College (1961), he entered the Moscow Art Institute named after V.Surikov. There began the artist’s creative development. He specialized in the easel painting, and studied in the workshop under the guidance of People’s Artist of the USSR DK Mochalsky. At the end of his studies he entered the creative workshop of Geliy Korzhev – famous Soviet artist.
One of the distinctive features of his style is the decorative expressiveness that is consonant with the folkloric sources of the culture of the Tatar people. For a long and fruitful creative life he created dozens of masterpieces that entered the Golden Fund of Cultural Heritage of the Tatar people and Russia.
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On the escalator, Moscow Metro 1941-1943. Oil on canvas. Painting by Soviet artist Grigory Mikhailovich Shegal (1889-1956)

Soviet artist Grigory Mikhailovich Shegal

Born in 1889, Grigory Mikhailovich Shegal is a talented Soviet painter, the author of paintings on the historical-revolutionary and everyday themes. The wonderful landscape painter, Grigory Mikhailovich Shegal was a man of broad artistic interests, high culture and an active life position. However, the path to professional activity was long and difficult for Shegal. Reading the biography of the master, you involuntarily marvel at his diligence, perseverance and purposefulness.
Born in the provincial city of Kozelsk, the future artist lost his father very early. So, talented and versatile gifted self-taught – he had to earn his own bread from childhood. The only rejoicing for him was reading. It awoke in him an unconscious desire to transfer to fragments of paper images born in the soul, inspired by books and impressions of the surrounding world.
A conscious desire to become an artist appeared a little later when he worked as an apprentice in the engraving workshop in Smolensk. Spending all his meager earnings for classes with a tutor, Shegal for three years prepared for passing the external examinations for the certificate of maturity and successfully withstood them. Next, he moved to St. Petersburg, where in 1912 he entered the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts. Here he studied in the workshops of such prominent Soviet masters as Nikolay Rerikh and Arkady Rylov. In 1917-1918, Shegal spent a short time at the Academy of Arts, workshops of G. Zaleman and I. Bilibin and completed his professional education in 1925, being a mature man.
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Penguin with baby. 1960 Wood sculpture. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Work by Soviet sculptor Vasily Alekseevich Vatagin (1883-1969)

Soviet sculptor Vasily Alekseevich Vatagin

Born in Moscow in 1883, Vasily Alekseevich Vatagin – Russian animal painter, sculptor and scientist-zoologist. The founder of the Darwin Museum, Alexander Fedorovich Kotts, was one of the first to draw attention to the talent of the young artist. Practically from the very foundation of the museum in 1907, the collaboration of the painter and sculptor V.A. Vatagin and director of the museum A. F. Kotts began. Vatagin, rightfully considered co-founder of the Darwin Museum has created more than 400 paintings, as well as about 100 sculptural works for 40 years of work.
Since childhood he was fond of drawing, and aged 15 he attended the studio of watercolor artist NA Martynov. In 1902, Vasily entered the natural department of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow University. Also, he studied at the studio of the painter K. Yuon.
After graduating from the university, the artist made several trips to the zoological gardens of Western Europe, visited Central Asia, India, and northern Russia. There he performed a large number of sketches of animals and birds, which later became indispensable helpers in various works. Among them – zoological illustration, easel painting, book illustration and sculpture.
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I.V. Stalin. 1936. Painting by Soviet Russian avant-garde artist Pavel Filonov (January 8, 1883, Moscow – December 3, 1941, Leningrad)

Soviet Russian avant-garde artist Pavel Filonov – a genius of the Soviet avant-garde. The famous, mysterious and largely unknown yet artist and man. December 3, 2018 was exactly 77 years since the day of his death. Filonov died in the most difficult winter of 1941 in Leningrad. Exhausted to the extreme, he guarded his house, and most importantly, his work – the work of all life, from the “lighters” on the icy attic of the house. Once fell down, and the next day he could not get up any more. He died of pneumonia and dystrophy.
What was he like? Tall, big, with “cherry eyes and pale cheekbones …” – wrote a friend of Filonov poet Velimir Khlebnikov, with whom they made friends in 1910. He also told about his friend: “I met an artist and asked if he would go to war. He replied: “I, too, am at war, not for space, but for time. I’m sitting in the trench and taking a scrap of time from the past. My duty is equally heavy, as the troops for space … “.
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Soviet Russian actress Galina Polskikh

Soviet Russian actress Galina Polskikh
“… I think that I became an actress not accidentally,” says Galina Polskikh, “when I was playing, I filled a terrible emptiness in my life, I lived in an imaginary world.”
Born in Moscow on November 27, 1939, Galina Polskikh Soviet Russian theater and film actress.
Galina practically does not remember her parents: during the war, when she was only three years old, her father was killed at the front, and in 1947 her mother died from anemia. Therefore, at the age of 8, Galina was in the orphanage. However, she didn’t stay there for long. Soon her maternal grandmother, Efrosinia Andrianovna, moved to Moscow from Kaunas and took care of her grandchildren. They settled in the former parental 9-meter basement room in Sretenka. Their house was opposite the store “Mushrooms-berries”, where the grandmother got a job as a cleaner.
After graduating from school in 1956, Galina Polskikh decided to go to All Union Institute of Cinematography. According to Polskikh, at first, she even did not understand that acting was not just a game, but a profession, work. She entered the course to famous Soviet film director Mikhail Ilyich Romm.
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At the old apple tree. 1977. Oil, canvas. Painting by Soviet Russian artist Mikhail Davidovich Natarevich (September 29, 1907 – February 23, 1979)

Soviet Russian artist Mikhail Davidovich Natarevich
Born September 29, 1907 in Vitebsk, Natarevich received his first art education in Vitebsk, in the studio of Yu. Peng, a painter and teacher who graduated from the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. Natarevich – Russian Soviet artist, painter, member of the Leningrad organization of the Union of Artists of the RSFSR. In 1932 he came to Leningrad and entered the preparatory classes at the All-Russian Academy of Arts. And two years later he became a student of the painting faculty of the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after I. Repin. His teachers in drawing were M. Bernstein and S. Abugov, and teacher in painting – Alexander Savinov.
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