Soviet Art

Minimalistic landscape, Leningrad, Views of the City (1953). Soviet graphic artist Gennady Dmitrievich Yepifanov (4 August 1900 – 4 September 1985)

Soviet graphic artist Gennady Dmitrievich Yepifanov
Born August 4, 1900 in Rostov the Great of Yaroslavl Province, future graphic artist illustrator Gennady Dmitrievich Yepifanov grew in the family of a bookbinder of the local printing house. Interestingly, aged 21, Gennady Yepifanov taught singing at the Rostov Gymnasium (1921-1922). In 1923 he entered the Yaroslavl Art College and at the same time, worked at the Rostov Museum of Antiquities (1922-1924). After graduation from the art school in 1925, he studied at the Leningrad Institute of Art and Technology. At first, it was the fine art workshop of Konstantin Petrov-Vodkin, and then the graphic faculty of VD Zamirailo, Dmitry Mitrokhin, Vladimir Konashevich, YS. Kruglikova, and PA Shillingovsky. Under the guidance of Konashevich, he completed his thesis work – illustrations for children’s tales of S.Ya. Marshak, awarded the title of graphic artist.
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Wedding day. 1975. Oil on canvas. Painting Soviet artist Pyotr Antonovich Yablonovsky (25 July 1910 – 23 November 1984)

Soviet artist Pyotr Antonovich Yablonovsky
Born 25 July 1910 in the village of Khartsyzsk, Donskoi Voivodship of Russian Empire, Yablonovsky became known as a Soviet Ukrainian artist, a representative of the Soviet school of socialist realism. In 1941 he graduated from the Kiev Art Institute, where he studied at the workshops of Soviet artists F. Krichevsky, M. Sharonov and S. Grigoriev. After graduation, like many peers of that time, he went to the front. After the end of the war he participated in exhibitions of Soviet art and soon became a member of the USSR Union of Artists.
Meanwhile, the main themes of the artist were the heroic days of Soviet power, military themes and heroes, in particular, Vasily Chapaev, the hero of the civil war. The artist also created landscapes and genre paintings. One of the most talented paintings of the artist “Svyatoshino. An experimental fish breeding station “(1949), is in the regional art museum of Lugansk.
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Winter landscape behind the window. Painting by Soviet Russian artist Vyacheslav Tokarev (July 26, 1917 – April 22, 2001)

Soviet Russian artist Vyacheslav Tokarev
Born July 26, 1917 in Bogoroditsk of Tula province, Vyacheslav Tokarev was the same age as the Great October socialist revolution. The boy grew up in Moscow, as his family moved there soon after his birth. Aged 17, he entered the Ryazan Art College, where he studied in the workshop of Y.Ya.Kalinichenko (1934-1938). And the next year he entered the painting faculty of the Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture of the All-Russian Academy of Arts (workshop of Professor A.A. Osmyorkin). However, forced to interrupt studying because of the Great Patriotic War, in 1941 he became a rifleman of the 576 rifle division of the Leningrad Front. Demobilized in connection with the wound, in 1943 he returned to study at the institute, where he studied in the workshop of Professor Avilov. Tokarev graduated from the institute in 1948 with the diploma painting “Kovpak”, and the same year he became a member of the Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists (1948).
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Soldiers. 1976. Painting by Soviet artist Gennady Ivanovich Prokopinsky (1921-1979)

Soviet artist Gennady Ivanovich Prokopinsky
Born July 26, 1921 in the village of Staronizhesteblyevskaya (Krasnodar Territory), Gennady Prokopinsky lived and worked in Moscow. His first art education began in 1939-1940 at the Moscow Regional Art College in memory of 1905. Since 1940 he worked in the Studio of Military Artists of Mitrofan Grekov. Studio of military artists named after M.B. Grekov, created in 1934, was a unique creative team of military artists. The first generation of Greeks became not only singers of the military past, but also chroniclers of brutal military trials of the Great Patriotic War. Among these military artists was Gennady Prokopinsky, who was on various fronts and finished the war in Berlin. The author of works of monumental art and a series of easel paintings on a military-patriotic theme, he began to take part in art exhibitions of Soviet art since 1942. Veteran of World War II, awarded with medals “For Military Merit” and “For Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.”
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Good-bye, earthlings. 1979 (triptych Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin). Painting by Soviet artist Andrei Ivanovich Plotnov (July 21, 1916 – May 13, 1997)

Soviet artist Andrei Ivanovich Plotnov
Born July 21, 1916 in the village of Verkhne-Pavlovka of Lipetsk region, Andrei Ivanovich Plotnov grew up in a peasant family. He studied at the Moscow Art College (1933-1936). In 1936, on the recommendation of the famous Soviet artist Igor Grabar, he entered the painting faculty of the Moscow Institute of Fine Arts. Plotnov – participant of art exhibitions since 1939.
Since the first days of the Great Patriotic War, he left the institute’s 5th year for the national militia. Evacuated to Samarkand in 1942, the same year he graduated from the institute, the workshop of Professor G.M. Shegal. His thesis work was “MV Frunze and Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev under Ufa”.
Member of the Moscow organization of the USSR Union of Artists from 1943, the same year he went to the front and entered the art studio of the NKVD of the USSR, under the leadership of P.P. Sokolov-Skalya. During the period of 1943-1944 he often goes to the front lines, draws portraits of soldiers and officers who have distinguished themselves in battles, as well as individual events of combat life. During the war, the artist created more than 20 political posters, demobilized from the army in 1947.
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Heroes of Socialist Labor. 1950. Painting by Soviet Ukrainian painter Elena Yakovenko (1914-1999)

Soviet Ukrainian painter Elena Yakovenko 1914-1999
Born July 25, 1914 in the city of Merefa, Kharkov region, Ukrainian painter Elena Nikolaevna Yakovenko studied at the Kharkov State Art Institute. From 1938 to 1946 she studied at the workshops of Soviet artists A.Kokel and S.Prokhorov. Yakovenko – a member of the Union of Artists of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist republic since 1946. The author of genre paintings, landscapes, still lifes, she was a participant of regional, republican, international and foreign exhibitions of Soviet art since 1945. Her solo exhibitions took place in her native Kharkov (1950, 1982, 1993), in Sumy (1962) and Kiev (1969, 1984). In addition, E. N. Yakovenko taught at the Kharkov Art College.
Social realism painter and graphic artist E. N. Yakovenko died in 1999 in her native Kharkov.
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Peace. Gypsum. 1960. Moscow, pavilion of the Lithuanian SSR at VDNKh. Soviet Lithuanian sculptor Yuozas Mikenas (1901-1964)

Soviet Lithuanian sculptor Yuozas Mikenas
A beautiful young woman with a smooth, broad gesture holds out the dove of peace to people. Beautifully, severely and gently is her face, the simple open face of a Lithuanian peasant woman, with a proud profile and severely curved eyebrows. The wind throws a thick wave of hair. A light dress encircles a strong body. She holds the child with a gentle movement of the hand. This sculpture has different names – “Peace”, “Mother”, and “Lithuania”. Its author is Yuozas Mikenas.
The path of Juozas Mikenas to art was difficult and complex, the same difficult and complex as the whole life of the artist in bourgeois Lithuania was.
Born February 12, 1901, he grew up in that stern, miserly and beautiful land, on the very border with Latvia, in the peasant family. Childhood remained in his memory with the few clear pictures that made up the world of a peasant boy. It was work in the field, the simple duties of a small shepherd, rural evenings with their clear silence, warm earth under bare feet and the most fascinating fishing in the world. The only city he knew was Aknist: about three hundred residents, two or three shops, a pharmacy, and a church. There he and his brother went to school every day – six kilometers on foot.
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