Soviet Art

Soldier’s song. 1954, fragment. Painting by Soviet artist Pyotr Ivanovich Zhigimont (1914-2003)

Soviet artist Pyotr Ivanovich Zhigimont – Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1949), Laureate of the Stalin Prize (1949).
Born in 1914 in Mariupol (now Donetsk region of Ukraine), he studied at the Kharkov State Technical University (1934-1937). After graduation he studied at the Leningrad Art Institute of Ilya Repin (1937-1939). While still a student, Zhigimont took part in exhibitions of Soviet art (since 1938). He also worked in the studio of Mitrofan Grekov (since 1946). And already in 1949, became a member of the USSR Union of Artists. Noteworthy, together with his colleagues, he participated in the restoration of the picturesque panorama “The Battle of Borodino” in Moscow and in the creation of the largest panorama “Battle of Stalingrad” in Volgograd.

Meanwhile, after the collapse of the USSR and hard years of perestroika, in 1993, he emigrated to Germany. There he continued to be active as an artist. Pyotr Ivanovich Zhigimont died in Cologne in 2003.
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Victory! 1945-1948. For this painting Soviet artist Pyotr Aleksandrovich Krivonogov (1910-1967) received Stalin Award

Soviet artist Pyotr Aleksandrovich Krivonogov

Born September 8, 1910 in a family of peasants, Pyotr Aleksandrovich Krivonogov (1910-1967) grew up in severe revolutionary years and passed through all the horrors of the Great Patriotic War. One of the most brilliant Soviet battlesists, he created stunningly realistic pictures – real scenes of battles forever smashing into the memory of the artist – the chronicle of the war years and the great sacrifice of the Soviet people.
In the years of the Civil War, his father was beaten up to death by the sham poles. Mother had to somehow feed the four children, and because of despair, she decided to send Peter to the Sarapul orphanage. In 1925 he was in the children’s reception of the city of Kineshma, Ivanovo region. After graduating from the seven-year school, in 1930 he began studying in the art school at the Academy of Arts in Leningrad. After finishing school, Pyotr Krivonogov entered the Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture of the USSR Academy of Arts. His teachers were prominent Soviet painters K.F. Yuon and graphic artist P.A. Shillingovsky. He graduated from the institute in 1939.
In 1940, Peter Krivonogov became part of the art studio named after M. Grekov.
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Harvest, detail of painting by Soviet Ukrainian artist Tatyana Golembiyevskaya (born 1936)

Soviet Ukrainian artist Tatyana Golembiyevskaya – People’s Artist of Ukraine, Honored Art Worker of the Ukrainian SSR (1966), People’s Artist of the USSR (1986), and Corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Arts (1988).
Born November 7, 1936 in Kiev, Tatiana Nikolayevna Golembiyevskaya grew up in a family of artists. In 1962 she graduated from the Kiev State Art Institute, where her teachers were V.Kostetsky, K.Trokhimenko, S.Grigoriev, and I.Shtilman. Member of the Union of Artists of the USSR since 1962, she studied at the Creative Workshops of the cademy of Arts of the USSR in Kiev until 1965. In addition to studying, Golembiyevskays was an active participant of exhibitions of Soviet art – republican (1960), All-Union (1961), and foreign (since 1963).
Author of genre paintings, master of landscape and still life, she also worked in the field of easel painting. Besides, in 1968, Tatyana Golembiyevskaya began working as a teacher at the Kiev Art Institute (1984 – professor).
In 1968 she became a laureate of the Republican Komsomol Prize of Nikolay Ostrovsky.
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Continuation. 1979. Painting by Soviet artist Yuri Mikhailovich Raksha (December 2, 1937 – September 1, 1980)

Soviet artist Yuri Mikhailovich Raksha (December 2, 1937 – September 1, 1980) was a famous art director of cinema. Born Yuri Mikhailovich Terebilov, he later took his wife’s surname and became Raksha. The boy grew in a family where his mother and grandmother knitted the famous Orenburg shawls. However, the fate of this Soviet artist was like from a Soviet movie. Thus, 16-year-old Yuri, all alone went from Ufa to Moscow. He wanted to study and had to survive working as a loader. And soon he was lucky enough to get a job as an artist on Mosfilm. In addition, Yuri traveled to the taiga with oil geologists.
In fact, paintings of Raksha define him as socialist realism artist. But in addition to brave conquerors of the north and friendly bohemia, Raksha loved to draw his wife: in clothes and without, different techniques, funny and sad, young spouse and mother. Irina Raksha was the love of a lifetime.
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Banner Bearer and a trumpeter. 1934. Painting by Soviet artist Mitrofan Grekov (15 June 1882 – 27 November 1934)

Soviet artist Mitrofan Grekov
The founder of the Soviet school of battle painting came from the Sharpaevka farm of the present Rostov region. He studied at the Odessa Art College (1898-1903), then at the Petersburg Academy of Arts (1903-1911). A disciple of Ilya Repin and Francois Roubaud, he was a participant of the First World War, and spent three years at the front. In Civil war, serving in the Budyonny cavalry, one of the first turned to the display of combat episodes in painting. For a decade and a half (1918-1934) he created about 300 paintings, capturing in them the battle path of the First Cavalry Army and the image of the people who heroically fought for a new life.
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Belushya Guba. 1959. Oil on canvas. Arkhangelsk Museum of Fine Arts. First Nenets painter Tyko Vylka (1886-1960)

The main inspiration and subject of painting for the Nenets painter Tyko Vylka was Arctic. Born in 1886 in the village of Belushya Guba on Novaya Zemlya, Ilya Konstantinovich Vylka became known as Tyko Vylka – public, statesman, researcher of the New Earth, and an active member of the Geographical Society of the USSR. And, of course an artist, Arctic landscape painter.
February 21, 1911 in the Moscow Museum of Handicrafts opened a personal exhibition of works of Tyko Vylka. In November 1927 ten landscapes were exhibited at the exhibition of the arts of the peoples of the USSR. Pictures of Tyko Vylka are in the Russian, Nenets Okrug, the Arkhangelsk Regional Museum of Fine Arts, Orel Picture Gallery, the Museum of the Arctic and Antarctica, and the Memorial Museum of M.V. Lomonosov (Kholmogory).
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Folklore group of the Chernyanovsky Choir. 1972. Painting by Soviet artist Yevgeny Ryabinsky (24 June, 1925 – 22 July, 2002)

Soviet artist Yevgeny Ryabinsky

Born June 24, 1925 in the village of Algasovo of Tambov province, Yevgeny Vladislavovich Ryabinsky was the son of a village teacher. Veteran of the Great Patriotic War, Yevgeny Ryabinsky fought in the 36th Infantry Brigade, near Leningrad. However, due to the health problems, in 1944, he demobilized and entered the Moscow Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts. Three years later, in 1947, he moved to the painting faculty of the Moscow Art Institute of VI Surikov, where he studied at the creative art workshop of P.I. Kotov and Yu.P. Kugach. In 1951 he graduated from the Institute, the diploma painting – “Rest of collective farm youth.”
After graduation the artist returned to Tambov. Ryabinsky created thematic works devoted to the life of rural workers – milkmaids, poultry farmers, and machine operators. And a great place occupied the landscape. For more than forty years of work in the Tambov organization of the Union of Artists of the RSFSR he was repeatedly elected to the post of chairman of the board. Besides, for two terms he was the chairman of the zonal exhibition “The Edge of Chernozemny.”
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