Soviet Art

USSR Culture

Soviet artist Yuri Podlyasky

Soviet artist Yuri Podlyasky (1923-1987) On the the Ob River. 1965-1967. Canvas, oil

Soviet artist Yuri Podlyasky (1923-1987) On the the Ob River. 1965-1967. Canvas, oil

Soviet artist Yuri Podlyasky (1923-1987) – member of the Leningrad Union of Artists (1949), Honored Artist of Russia, People’s Artist of the USSR. He is the author of genre paintings, landscapes and portraits of contemporaries, one of the brightest representatives of the Leningrad school of painting. Yuri Stanislavovich Podlyasky was born in 1923 in the Far East of Russia. Since childhood, he became interested in drawing and went to school at the Palace of Pioneers in Vyshny Volochyok, where he moved with his parents. He continued his education in Leningrad, in the art school at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1942 he entered the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after Ilya Repin.
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Soviet Russian sculptor Alexander Rukavishnikov

Soviet Russian sculptor Alexander Rukavishnikov. Portrait of Vladimir Vysotsky. 1981. Marble

Soviet Russian sculptor Alexander Rukavishnikov. Portrait of Vladimir Vysotsky. 1981. Marble

Soviet Russian sculptor Alexander Rukavishnikov was born October 2, 1950 in Moscow, the USSR. He became a member of the USSR Union of Artists in 1974, Honored Artist of the RSFSR and the Kirghiz SSR in 1984. In the period of 1986-1988 Alexander was a Secretary of the Union artists of the USSR. In 1995 he was given a title of People’s artist of the Russian Federation. The same year Alexander became the Head of the Department of sculpture of Moscow State Art Institute named after VI Surikov, and professor (1999). In 1997 he was chosen a Member of the Russian Academy of Arts and member of the Presidential Commission on culture. Alexander Iulianovich Rukavishnikov – master of monumental and easel compositions, sculptural portraits. In 1976 he was awarded the Lenin Komsomol Prize (1976) – for the sculpture “Builders”, “Work”, “Michelangelo.”
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Soviet artist Alexei Pakhomov

Reaper. 1929. Oil on canvas. Painting by Soviet artist Alexei Pakhomov

Reaper. 1929. Oil on canvas. Painting by Soviet artist Alexei Pakhomov

Soviet artist Alexei Pakhomov (1900-1973) – People’s Artist of the USSR (1971), Full member of the USSR Academy of Arts (1964), Laureate of the State Prize of the USSR (1973 – posthumously) and the Stalin Prize of the second degree (1946). Alexey Fyodorovich Pakhomov was born September 19 October, 1900 in the village of Varlamovo of Vologda Region. From an early age he showed talent for drawing. With the active assistance of members of the local nobility (the son and his father Zubov), he was sent first to a primary school in the city of Kadnikov, and then in 1915 to Petrograd School of Drawing of Baron Stieglitz. Pakhomov studied at the shop of N.A. Tyrsa, and after serving in the army goes to the studio of V.V. Lebedev. Many avant-garde trends that prevailed in the first quarter of the XX century had an impact on the teachers and therefore the school education system.
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Soviet artist Dmitry Nalbandyan

Soviet artist Dmitry Nalbandyan (1906-1993). Portrait of Indira Gandhi. 1970. Oil

Portrait of Indira Gandhi. 1970. Oil. Painting by Soviet artist Dmitry Nalbandyan (1906-1993)

Soviet artist Dmitry Nalbandyan
Artist Ilya Glazunov recalled that, in connection with the preparation to the official visit of Leonid Brezhnev to India 1973, he decided to “make an original gift – a portrait by one of the masters of socialist realism to a friendly government leader Indira Gandhi. To execute a responsible job to Delhi was sent academician Dmitry Abramovich Nalbandyan. He tried very hard, but when he showed the completed work to Indira Gandhi, she barely glanced at the canvas, noting: “I am not an Armenian.” And she refused to take a picture. Nalbandyan then exhibited it in the Arena with the inscription “Property of the author”. Nalbandyan created portraits of many representatives of the Soviet elite (including Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev), for which in the art circles he was called “the first brush of the Politburo.” Dmitry Nalbandyan – full member of the USSR Academy of Arts (1953), Stalin Prize (1946, 1951), and Lenin Prize (1982) winner. In 1978, for a group portrait of figures of Armenian culture “Vernatun” was awarded the gold medal of the USSR.
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Soviet Estonian artist Lepo Mikko

Soviet Estonian artist Lepo Mikko (1911-1978). Songs of times. Triptych. 1970. Oil on canvas

Songs of times. Triptych. 1970. Oil on canvas. Soviet Estonian artist Lepo Mikko (1911-1978)

Soviet Estonian artist Lepo Mikko (1911-1978) – People’s Artist of the USSR, Laureate of the State Prize and People’s Artist of the Estonian SSR in 1972. Lepo Yagovich Mikko was born on 7 December 1911 in the Northern Estonia. From 1927 to 1930 he studied at the School of Industrial Art in Tallinn. Since 1931, he continued his studies in Tartu Art School “Pallas”, following the example of Paris free academies. In his works Lepo Mikko combined French art of the twentieth century and features of an early Estonian modernism. His most productive and successful paintings were created during the Khrushchev thaw period. Mikko was able to catch and transmit optimism of the Soviet society of the 1950s-1960s, devoting his paintings to the themes of struggle for peace, space exploration, as well as still lifes and landscapes.
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Glorifying labor Socialist Realism Sculpture

Socialist Realism Sculpture. M. M. Yershov. (b. 1945 Leningrad). Builders. 1975. Fireclay

Soviet sculptor M. M. Yershov. (b. 1945 Leningrad). Builders. 1975. Fireclay. Socialist Realism Sculpture

Socialist Realism Sculpture

Great October Socialist Revolution meant a turning point in the life of Russia, in the political, economic and social character of being of its peoples. A special role in the birth and development of a new country played culture – public, media, multinational. The October Revolution created the necessary public, social, ideological and moral prerequisites for carrying out a revolution in the field of culture. New challenges arose before the older generation artists, who immediately accepted the revolution and expressed it in their work. In fact, the Soviet generation of artists – the creators of the Socialist Realism art, having no analogies in the world history.
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Soviet sculptor Mikhail Lysenko

Work by Soviet sculptor Mikhail Lysenko. Established in 1964 monument to Lenin was demolished after the coup in Ukraine in 2016

Work by Soviet sculptor Mikhail Lysenko. Established in 1964 monument to Lenin was demolished after the coup in Ukraine in 2016

Born October 16, 1906 in the village of Shpilyovka, Sumy region, Soviet sculptor Mikhail Lysenko grew in a peasant family. People’s Artist of the USSR (1963), member of the USSR Academy of Arts (since 1970), in 1948, Mikhail Lysenko joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
The future sculptor studied at the Kharkov Art Institute (1926 – 1931). Besides, he taught at the Kiev Art Institute from 1944, and became professor in 1947. He created monumental sculptures, however, the most important of them – the “Hill of Glory” in the cemetery of Soviet soldiers in Lvov (bronze, 1947). And also a monument to NA Shchors in Kiev (with co-authors, bronze, 1949-54), a monument to Lenin in Zaporozhye (with NM Sukhodolov; bronze, 1964), and a monument to VP Zatonsky in Khmelnytsky (granite, 1969).
Lysenko received the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and medals. Mikhail Lysenko died in the city of Kiev, May 8, 1972, after a hard trip to Turkmenistan. He was buried at the Baikovo cemetery.
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