Soviet Art

Children on winter walk. 1978. Soviet artist Nadezhda Vorobyova (14 April, 1924 – 9 July, 2011)

Soviet artist Nadezhda Vorobyova (14 April, 1924 – 9 July, 20110) worked in different genres: landscape, still life, and multi-figure genre compositions. Meanwhile, in the 1950-1960’s she focused her attention on genre of children and youth themes. During this period she creates a large series of works devoted to the theme “Kindergarten”. However, in the 1970’s and 1980’s, the plots in the paintings become more diverse: the city, life in the village, and portrait compositions.
Nadezhda Dmitrievna passed away on July 9, 2011 (Moscow). Her works are in the Podolsk Art Museum, the Belgorod State Art Museum, and private collections in Russia, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, the USA and Japan.
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Wait for me. Soviet painter Vyacheslav Shumilov (1931-2004)

Soviet painter Vyacheslav Shumilov – People’s Artist of Russia, awarded the Silver Medal of the Russian Academy of Arts. Chairman of the Board of the Kalinin (Tver) organization of the USSR Union of Artists. Born in 1931 in Tver, Shumilov Vyacheslav Fedorovich
began his creative life in 1950s. He graduated from Moscow Art and Industrial School of memory of 1905 (1949-1953). And already in 1956 became a participant of the All-Union and republican exhibitions of Soviet art.
In 1956, he first visited the Academic Dacha of I.E. Repin, where he worked under the direction of A.P. Bubnov. This trip played a huge role in the formation of the young artist and largely determined his fate. “Academic dacha” became for him not only a school, but also a permanent place of work, a corner of inspiration, and an inexhaustible source of topics and subjects of his paintings.
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Father and son. 2015. Oil, canvas. Painted for the 70th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. Sons became older than their early departed fathers. The son remembers his father, the WWII member. Above them is a fiery bird of fate. Soviet Russian graphic artist Yuri Aksyonov (born 14 February 1950)

Soviet Russian graphic artist Yuri Aksyonov
Born on February 14, 1950 in Tyumen, Yury Alexeyevich Aksyonov studied in Leningrad. He completed two years at the Leningrad Higher School of Industrial Art named after Vera Mukhina. For six years (1971-1977) he worked as an artist-designer in the Tyumen branch of the Art Fund of the RSFSR. From the same period he began to participate in exhibitions of Soviet art. However, in 1977 he moved to Vladivostok for permanent residence. There, for 15 years (1977-1992) worked as an artist-designer in the Primorsky branch of the Art Fund of the RSFSR. In particular, he specialized in designing and sketching interiors, chasing, monumental painting, and easel graphics.
The artist works fruitfully both in painting and in graphics. But it is in the graphics that he is most organic, and it is in the graphics that his recognizable handwriting was formed. The works of Yury Aksyonov remind old frescoes. They are laconic, the figures are majestic and calm, and faces are distinguished by large, regular features.
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Soviet sculptor Dmitry Ryabichev in his workshop. 1980s

Soviet sculptor Dmitry Ryabichev (1926-1995) was Veteran of the Great Patriotic War, member of the USSR Union of artists (1954), People’s Artist of the RSFSR, laureate of the State Prize of the USSR, laureate of the UNESCO Prize, and laureate of the Lenin Komsomol Prize. Famous Russian sculptor – author of monuments, portraits, monumental compositions, and sculptural and architectural ensembles in Russia and in the world.
During the period of 1946 – 1954 he studied at the Leningrad Civil Engineering Institute, Faculty of Architecture, then at the Moscow Art and Industrial School, the Faculty of Sculpture. One of the brightest representatives of modernity, Dmitry Ryabichev entered art in the mid-sixties, just at the time when Soviet masters gained special freedom of expression, when bright trends in all kinds of art appeared.
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Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz. Bas-relief (1917). Soviet Russian sculptor Vladimir Domogatsky (1876 – 1939)

Soviet Russian sculptor Vladimir Domogatsky (1876 – 1939) – the teacher, professor of Moscow State Art Institute (since 1937), Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1937). Born into the family of a wealthy landowner, a doctor, he spent his childhood in Switzerland. In 1897-1902 he studied law at Moscow University and took private lessons in sculpture from SM Volnukhin, and later, the painter S.V. Ivanov.
At the beginning of the 20th century he visited Paris and Italy several times, where he studied European art. A special influence on his work had the sculptors Paolo Trubetskoy and Rodin. In 1907 in Paris he studied the technique of working in marble.
After returning to Russia in 1908-1910 – he taught at the Stroganov School in Moscow. Since 1937 – Professor of the Moscow Institute of Fine Arts, Dean of the Faculty of Sculpture. Among his students were prominent Soviet sculptors Lev Kerbel, Vladimir Tsigal, and D. Mitlyansky. Meanwhile, he worked in genre of animalistic and portrait sculpture.
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Admission to the pioneers. Ya. V. Titov. Pioneers in paintings of Soviet artists

Pioneers in paintings of Soviet artists
The pioneer organization was not a “sect of young communists”, as Western propaganda represented it, but a children’s and youth association that cultivated positive qualities and a spirit of camaraderie, which today is so lacking for modern children. It is from the absence of pioneers and Komsomol that young people today are trying to unite in military-patriotic clubs, football games and other associations of varying degrees of legality. In Soviet times, everything that modern youth is looking for was given by the Pioneer and the Komsomol.
For those who were pioneers, this time meant hikes, campfires, sports competitions, exciting games, developing clubs and other pleasant memories. Pioneers were almost all who managed to live in the USSR at the age of over 10 years. At the dawn of the pioneer organization, only the best ones were accepted there, but then the criteria were reduced, and by the 1970s and 1980s they began to accept everyone.

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Self-portrait. 1981. Interpreting USSR kitsch Soviet artist Arkady Petrov (born 1940)

Interpreting USSR kitsch Soviet artist Arkady Petrov (born 1940). His art, as well as many of his contemporaries, actually fell into the category of “forbidden” in Soviet times. His paintings almost never appeared on official exhibitions, although in the artistic environment his authority was quite high. Born in 1940 in the village near Gorlovka in the Donbass (and then Stalin) region, he spent his childhood in the miner’s province. Meanwhile, aged 17, he moved to Moscow (1957). After graduating from the Art School “In Memory of 1905”, in 1963-1969, he studied at the Moscow State Art Institute of Surikov. During the Soviet era, authorities hardly allowed his works, and in Soviet times he had only one solo exhibition. However, The Russian Museum became the first museum that acquired the artist’s canvases as far back as the 1970s. Besides, he gained fame in perestroika as the author of one of the individual versions of social art.
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