Soviet Art

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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Oil of Siberia. (co-author V.S. Bukharov). 1976. Canvas, tempera. USSR Union of artists. Soviet artist Mikhail Ombysh-Kuznetsov (born 1947)

Soviet artist Mikhail Ombysh-Kuznetsov
The rapid growth of the role of Siberia in the social, economic, and cultural life of the country is one of the characteristic features of the Soviet reality of the 1970s. Creativity of the Siberian artists, who enriched the fine arts with many bright, original works, is an integral part of this process.
Among the young Siberian masters, who drew attention to the artistic public of the country, a prominent place belongs to the artist from Novosibirsk Mikhail Ombysh-Kuznetsov. His paintings, imbued with the spirit of constructive logic and a penchant for strong-willed restraint, masculine clarity of imaginative decisions, are also full of great emotionality. This inner spirituality, born from direct contact with reality, permeated with a living sense of Siberian everyday life, gives the artist’s works a special “imaginative space”.
Mikhail Sergeyevich Ombysh-Kuznetsov was born on November 21, 1947 in the city of Barabinsk, Novosibirsk Region. In 1965-1970 he studied at the architectural faculty of the Novosibirsk Engineering and Construction Institute named after V.V. Kuibyshev, and in 1970-1975 he taught at the department of drawing in the same institute. Member of the USSR Union of Artists since 1975. Laureate of several diplomas and prizes of the Central Committee of the Komsomol, the Union of Artists of the USSR, and the Ministry of Culture of the USSR.
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Congratulations with the gold medal! 1959 (diploma). Soviet painter-portraitist Elena Shegal (1924-1979)

Soviet painter-portraitist Elena Shegal (1924-1979) – Member of the Union of Artists of the USSR (1949).
Born June 23, 1924, Elena Grigorievna Shegal was the daughter of the prominent Soviet artist Grigory Mikhailovich Shegal (1889-1956). In the period of 1939-1941 she studied at the Moscow Secondary Art School, in the workshop of V.V. Pochitalov and her father Grigory Shegal. During the Great Patriotic War, 1941-1943 she lived in Bashkortostan. And after the war she graduated from the Moscow State Art Institute of Surikov (1949), where she studied in the workshops of I.I. Chekmazov and V.V. Favorsky, and raduated from the workshop of S.V. Gerasimov. Noteworthy, her diploma painting – “Congratulation with a gold medal!” (1959) – was exhibited at the art festival in Budapest, Hungary.
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Kukryniksy. Portrait Photo by Lev Ivanov. Soviet artists Lenin Prize Laureates

Soviet artists Lenin Prize Laureates
Noteworthy, the Lenin Prizes weге adjudged оn every birthday of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin ‘for works generally acknowledged as being best in literature, art, music, as well for the production of plays and acting in films and оn the stage‘. From the resolution by the Central Committee оf the Communist Party, and Соuncil оf Мinisters оf the USSR ‘Оn Lеnin Рrizes for the best works in sсiеnce, teсhnоlоgу, literature and аrt’. ‘Рrаvdа’. September 8, 1956.
This post features the most notable personalities in Soviet Art. In addition, the portraits of the awarded artists – work by Soviet photographer Lev Ivanov. These photographs appeared in the album prepared for the birthday centenary of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin by the Аvrora Art Publishers jointly with the Glаvроligгаfprоm Рrinting-hоusе # 5 attached to the Committee of the USSR Council оf Мinistеrs for Рrinting. And in the first photo – the trio of Kukryniksy – Mikhail Vasilievich Kupriyanov (b. 1903), Porfiry Nikitich Krylov (b. 1902), and Nikolai Aleksandrovich Sokolov (b. 1903). They received the highest award – the Lenin Рrize in 1965 for the series of political cartoons published in ‘Рravdа’ and ‘Кrокodil’.
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Soldiers. 1967. Oil, canvas. Ministry of culture of Latvian SSR. Painting by Soviet Latvian artist Karlis Dobrais (born 24 February 1943)

Soviet Latvian artist Karlis Dobrais
Born 24 February 1943 in the Sausnneja district of the Latvian SSR, in his childhood he attended Riga Art school of Rozental (1954—1961). And in 1970 he graduated from the State Academy of Arts of the Latvian SSR named after T. Zalkaln (the head of the thesis was E. F. Kalninsh).
The works of Karlis Dobrais attract the attention of spectators and art critics with an almost classical quality factor, a well-considered composition, every detail and every smear. Dobrais seemed to restrain the desire characteristic of any young and novice master to quickly find and approve his artistic self, more trust in the slow but steady organic growth process, collecting and accumulating creative forces.
In one of the first significant works of Dobrais – “Soldiers” (1967) – for all the dissimilarity of its stylistic manner to the almost sculptural pictorial language, which has become a kind of visiting card of the artist, the gravity and seriousness of the theme, clear logic of composition.
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