Soviet Art

Sad clown. Wooden sculpture, 1970. Soviet Sculptor Mikhail Smirnov (January 26, 1926 – January 10, 2011)

In Soviet art 1960-70-ies Mikhail Smirnov has a special place. The artist more closely than most of his contemporaries, was connected with the traditions of wooden sculpture. Masters of Permian Plastics, ST Konenkov and GI Motovilov played a great role in shaping him as a sculptor. The artist asserts human ideal, capable of strong feelings and actions. This embodied his dream of a harmonious personality, coupled with the nature loving people who know the price of a simple peasant labor. The ability in easy pose, in the expression of natural human movements capture the beauty of everyday life, distinguishes the sculptor. Sculptures of MN Smirnov – a poetic statement about the beauty of working people. Soviet artist Mikhail Smirnov (January 26, 1926 – January 10, 2011) – a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR (1952), Honored Artist of Russia (1976), People’s Artist of the RSFSR (1983). Sculptures of MN Smirnov are in the State Tretyakov Gallery, more than 30 museums in Russia and former USSR republics, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, France and England, as well as in private collections in the country and abroad.
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S. Malyutin. Portrait of Chairman of the Revolutionary Russia Art Association Alexander Grigoryev. Oil. 1923. The State Tretyakov Gallery

The Revolutionary Russia Art Association, or AKhRR – the most vigorous artistic union of the 1920s in the Soviet Russia, which existed from 1922 to 1932. It absorbed different artists – from N. Kasatkin, A. Rylov, and M. Grekov to A. Lentulov, A. Kuprin, and P. Konchalovsky. In addition, AKhRR – the most numerous group, which already in 1927 had forty branches in different cities of Soviet Union. Finally, it found a clear political orientation. AKhRR path can be considered as the search for a common language between the artists and the mass audience, which, according to Lunacharsky, was necessary to find in the works of contemporary artists “clear to the maximum language, the presence of deep feelings, the desire to penetrate the inner world of people, and first of all in the vanguard of people, in its Communist party. ”
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Soviet artist Pyotr Ossovsky (May 18, 1925 – August 1, 2015). Sons. Oil. 1968-1975

Soviet artist Pyotr Ossovsky (May 18, 1925 – August 1, 2015) – Corresponding Member (1988), Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts (1995), People’s Artist of the USSR (1988), winner of the USSR State Prize (1985), member of the USSR Union of Artists since 1956. Ossovsky entered the Soviet art in 1960s, he was one of the so-called “severe style”. Ossovsky traveled a lot: Siberia and Central Asia, Vologda and the Crimea, Italy and Britain – this is an incomplete list. Travel – an essential part of his creative life. Ossovsky was a genuine internationalist, able to understand the soul of another people, to find common concerns, hopes, joys of all people of the earth. Working in Mexico, for example, he learned Spanish, knew Mexican songs, creativity of eminent artists. And the trip resulted in an excellent series of paintings.
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Soviet artist Viktor Ivanov (born 1924). Self-portrait at age 9. Oil. 1933

Look at children’s works of the artist – Self-Portrait at age 9, and a portrait of grandmother Natalia painted by 15-year-old artist. They talk about the early development of talent and persistent skill finding. Soviet artist Viktor Ivanov belongs to a remarkable constellation of Soviet artists whose artistic career began at the first youth exhibitions in the 1950s. Within ten years, their works were largely decisive for the Soviet art, and themselves “young” become mature great masters. Paintings of the artist are in the Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum: “For mowing. In the tent,” “Family. 1945”, “Ryazan meadows”, “In the Eye”, “Cafe “Greco”. Almost all of them depict the native Ryazan land, and deep love of the author to the person – worker. Artist searchingly looks into the fate of the people of the village today, creates generalized, pathetic images, which bear the stamp of all Soviet people.
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Last villagers of Rusinovo. 1979. Fragment of painting. Soviet artist Viktor Harlov

Soviet artist Viktor Harlov (born August 7, 1949) – People’s Artist of RSFSR, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Arts, the winner of the RSFSR State Prize of IE Repin for a series of paintings “Rusinovo land”. Besides, he is the winner of the Lenin Komsomol Prize (1979). Native of Murmansk region, he studied at the art department of the Kirov Regional Art School. In 1976 he graduated from the Faculty of Painting of the Moscow State Art Institute named after VI Surikov (studio of monumental painting, professor K.P. Tutevol). Works by Soviet artist Viktor Harlov are kept in the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Kirov regional art museum of Vasnetsov, in the vaults of the State Museum and Exhibition Centre ROSIZO (Moscow) and the Directorate of Art Exhibitions of Artists Union of Russia (Moscow), the Institute of Russian realist art (Moscow), as well as in museums and galleries of the former USSR – Irkutsk, Vologda, Izhevsk, Pavlodar, Syktyvkar, Murmansk, Lvov (Ukraine), Kaliningrad, Chuguev (Ukraine).
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Soviet means excellent

Born in the USSR people remember this slogan “Soviet means excellent!”. This statement, formed in the second half of the 1930s, after the NEP (New Economic Policy), and the period of the first five-year plan and the collectivization came the period of industrial growth. By 1934-1935 has come a stage of stable expansion of the consumer market. Along with advertising exports, was gaining popularity advertising for domestic trade, created in the specialized art offices. Virtuoso poster artist A. Zelensky (1882-1942) is considered Patriarch of Soviet commercial posters. The same brilliant creative way is characteristic for a young Soviet artist-advertiser of the time A. Pobedinsky (1904-1979). They worked in parallel in commercial poster art – the ice cream advertisement, meat and dairy products, canned food, fruit juice and spirits. Advertising these products is striking in diversity.
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USSR Energetics Soviet Poster Art. Alexander Samokhvalov ‘The Soviets and electrification are the basis of the new world’. Leningrad, 1924

USSR Energetics Soviet Poster Art created by prominent and unknown Soviet artists gallery of posters, which in fact, has become the chronicle of several epochs of a giant country – the USSR. These posters are kept in private collections and museums and have already become true antiques. The first posters were meant to get across the basic idea of countrywide power plant construction to the common man. The main slogan was “Communism is Soviet power plus electrification of the whole country”. And thus energetics, the driving force of the economy in the twentieth century, has become one of the main themes in poster art, from the GOELRO (State Electrification of Russia) plan to the youth working on building new HPPs, from preserving electricity to its measured production.
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