Satirical paintings by Soviet and Russian artists. Paintings banned in the USSR. Buy a still life. Buy a genre painting

Soviet artists, in our understanding, are necessarily revolutionary or imperial painters. We are unlikely to include the heirs of movements that formed before the October Revolution in this category, as well as nonconformists, avant-garde artists and others who existed not thanks to the USSR, but in spite of it.

Deineka had an amazing ability to penetrate into a person’s soul, knew how to show him in relationship with the world - and the world is always filled with a mood, anxious or joyful, screamingly tragic or thoughtlessly summery.

Now we are not happy about waterfalls of rain pouring from the sky, but more than half a century ago people knew how to enjoy everything - if not all the inhabitants of the USSR, then certainly the artist Pimenov. What was he supposed to do back in 1937?

essays on paintings by famous artists on the site

Desn is about accepting with your entire being what is happening around you at the moment. The irrational aspect of admiring nature - without realizing oneself in it - is the Zen of a child. It’s very strange to see Plastov’s “First Snow” being taught to children at school. Or not strange, but true?

essays on paintings by famous artists on the site

An artless image of a birch grove in the spring, when the snow has already melted, but the sky is still cold, windy, the reflection of winter is on it, and the air is cold too, ringing with bird whistles, last year’s sodden grass squelches underfoot. Baksheev wrote this, the task is complex, but the landscape itself is simple and understandable.

essays on paintings by famous artists on the site

The famous painting by the Soviet artist Tatyana Yablonskaya depicts a joyful morning and in it is the artist’s daughter. The canvas is permeated with sunlight.

essays on paintings by famous artists on the site

The famous painting by Viktor Grigorievich Tsyplakov “Frost and Sun” depicts not the sun itself, but the effects of lighting. The painting contrasts strong houses and sleighs with horses moving along a snowy road towards us, the spectators.

essays on paintings by famous artists on the site

The Soviet period in the history of Russia is a period of almost eighty years, during which the country, without a shadow of a doubt, changed more than during the last two hundred years of the reign of the Romanov dynasty. These changes have affected absolutely all spheres of life, from everyday life to breakthroughs in science, the development of technology and, of course, art.

It is impossible to ignore the fact that the population of pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary Russia are absolutely two different societies, and the revolution of 1917 itself became a kind of watershed that forever established the boundaries of eras.

Historical events can be viewed in different ways, but for collectors of antiquities and art, history is the setting within which the object of their interest was created on the stage of time. For students of the artifacts of time, history serves as an explanation of why this or that thing looks the way it does. It cannot be denied that the Soviet government began its fight against illiteracy of the population and paid maximum possible attention to issues of education, realizing that such citizens would be at least a little more useful to society. Art education, which was previously available to a much smaller percentage of the population, was no exception. Of course, the party elite and the leadership of the USSR had their own interest in this. They needed those who would illustrate the life of the new country and demonstrate its achievements and superiority over the old world. Nevertheless, despite the huge imprint of propaganda, which could not but leave an imprint on artists and their works, it was in the Soviet Union that many artists who later became very famous were not only born and developed. But even the creators who began their journey under Tsarist Russia developed much faster than their Western colleagues; Soviet painting had its own recognizable handwriting and style.

If you are reading this text, it means that you are, to one degree or another, interested in such a layer in the fine arts as Soviet painting. Working with artists’ canvases is a priority direction of the “Russian Antique Gallery” and, of course, we could not ignore the most interesting works of Russian artists who painted their paintings during the Soviet era.

You don’t have to be a sophisticated collector to want to buy paintings from the times of the Soviet Union. With a relatively affordable price compared to paintings by Western European artists of the nineteenth century, paintings from the Soviet Union are no less interesting and were painted in a unique period of time by real masters. Often, Russian and other art lovers begin their collection of paintings with the works of USSR artists. One of the explanations for the interest in Russian painting of that period can be called the unusually high level of training of artists and art education of the Soviet school as a whole, as well as the greater accessibility of education in general.

It is not without pride that we invite you, before buying Soviet paintings, to familiarize yourself with our section in order to evaluate the level of skill and genius of Soviet artists, and choose the paintings you like.

For many, Soviet painting will certainly evoke nostalgic feelings, because these works largely reflect their childhood. Half-forgotten life of the past, ancient buildings and streets that today have changed beyond recognition, stadiums, demonstrations, the work of workers, harvesting, scenes from production, demonstrations of the achievements of Soviet craftsmen. These motifs come to us from the paintings of many creators of the USSR. Our collection includes works by such artists as:

· A.A Deineka

· E.E. Moiseenko

· A.I. Lutsenko

· Yu.A Volkov

If you want to start collecting USSR paintings, we recommend that you first determine the boundaries of your collection. They can be the time period, theme, creative association, method of painting and much more. Of course, when determining the boundaries of your future collection, it is best to consult with people immersed in the environment of antique fine art, who will at least help you with advice on how to avoid the pitfalls and mistakes that await beginners. The experts of the Russian Antique Gallery are always ready to give you advice on any questions of interest.

We also always recommend that you first buy Soviet paintings by currently little-known artists for your collection. Their paintings are cheaper, but just like any antique, they consistently increase in price, being an excellent investment, much more reliable than modern banks. Moreover, the world of antique fine art also has its own fashion. Just yesterday, an artist known only to a narrow circle of professionals suddenly receives worldwide recognition, an academic scientific article or scientific pop material is published on the topic of his work, and his canvases instantly become needed by everyone and, consequently, seriously increase in price. And such cases are not exceptions at all.

You can buy a painting by a Soviet artist as well as a decorative element. And this solution also has many advantages that cannot be discounted. Let us note that the painting of the USSR has its own characteristic and recognizable features, the skillful use of which can either create a certain atmosphere of a bygone era, or emphasize some “Russianness” of the space in which the painting is located. Soviet painting is very accessible to those looking for an interior solution by the very fact of its quantity, and, therefore, this section of the “Russian Antique Gallery” is regularly updated. No less interesting is the stylistic and genre diversity of works by Russian artists in the USSR. The rapid change of ideological paradigms of Soviet society gave rise to very, very much in an amazingly short period of time. The explosion of the avant-garde, which gave birth to absolutely all the main art movements of the twentieth century: abstractionism, suprematism, constructivism, futurism, rayonism, analytical art, which developed towards socialist realism. Later, thanks to this amazingly multifaceted path, the world of fine art received nonconformist artists who created their canvases in the period of the 60s to the end of the 80s of the twentieth century. And all this diversity existed

and developed in parallel, being either in favor or out of favor with the ruling elite. This is an incredible and multifaceted period that is simply impossible not to love and appreciate.

Despite the fact that the “Russian Antique Gallery” deals with rarities of the past, we all live in the present and quite modern world. Who else but us knows that the most valuable thing a person has is time. And in pursuit of his witnesses, you can lose this precious resource. By creating this site, the team of our store put a lot of effort into making buying Soviet paintings as convenient and simple as possible, in order to save your personal time, which you can always spend on things that are important to you.

Buying paintings by Soviet artists today is easy and simple in our online store, spending just a few minutes and completing the minimum possible number of steps. Absolutely every item from the archives of our store is presented on our website, accompanied by a detailed description, with the maximum possible indication of all important data for the rarity, as well as with high-quality photographs in which you can easily see the antiques in the smallest detail. To buy Soviet paintings, all that remains for you is to find a painting that interests you, place it in the cart and complete the order. After this, our managers will contact you and discuss the details.

If you have any questions about any painting or item presented in our online store, you can always contact us through the feedback form or call the number indicated in the upper right corner. Our specialists are always happy to help you.

For those who are accustomed to making purchases only by directly examining the item with their own eyes, our online store, where Soviet painting is presented, is also not useless. It shows the current availability of items in our collection and allows you to get all the necessary brief information about the antiques you are interested in.

Our team of experts works every day to find new unique items for our collection and is always ready to accept individual orders to search for specific items. The best way to buy Soviet paintings is to come to our store and tell our consultant what kind of painting you are interested in, and we will accept your request for work. The employees of the Russian Antique Gallery have completed hundreds of individual orders, and we are confident that we will be able to find the item you are interested in on mutually beneficial terms.

Invites you to choose in our salon

Original taken from uglich_jj in Anti-Soviet painting

Below is a selection of anti-Soviet paintings from different years. Some of these paintings were painted back in the USSR, secretly, “on the table”; the public saw them only after the fall of the Soviet regime. Another part of the paintings was painted in the 1990s. and later, when censorship and Lubyanka no longer threatened the authors. Both parts are interesting in their own way, especially today, when the restoration of the Soviet Union is in full swing in the Russian Federation and nostalgia about these times is being instilled. And there is something to remember.

Let's start with this:

Yuri Kugach. "Glory to the Great Stalin!" 1950

But who would have thought that since the 1960s. In the silence of his studio, Kugach worked for 30 years on this canvas, which he succinctly called: “From the recent past.”

Yuri Kugach. "From the recent past." 1960-90s
Dispossession, a peasant with laboring peasant hands and security officers who evict his family from the village. Ahead is another line of carts with other families. Somehow there is no joy, no one is dancing.

Yuri Kugach had the title of People's Artist of the USSR, was quite kind to the Soviet government, although he painted all sorts of nasty things about it (secretly). Many could not afford this either. They just remained silent and waited in the wings.

Egils Veidemanis (1924-2004), Soviet artist, son of a Latvian rifleman, who remained in Russia after 1917. Egil Karlovich lived all his life in Moscow, about which he wrote a lot of good paintings. Well, for example:

Egil Veidemanis. "Winter evening in Zamoskvorechye." 1968

But the time has come and it turned out that in addition to the Kremlin and Zamoskvorechye, there is also the Butovo training ground in Moscow. The place where in 1937-38. The security officers shot and threw 20,000 people into ditches, including the artist’s father. After the Civil War, my father worked at the Latvian theater "Skatuve" in Moscow, which was shot almost in its entirety.

Egil Veidemanis. "Butovo. NKVD execution range." 1999-2003

The ages of those executed in Butovo ranged from 14 to 82 years, of all nationalities and classes, incl. about 100 artists and more than 900 clergy. The execution technique itself in the picture, however, is not depicted with historical accuracy.

In this manner, “on wheels,” the NKVD shot Poles in Katyn - they drove them out of their cars into the forest and shot. In Butovo everything was a little different. There was a special barracks where people were brought to around 1 am (up to 400-500 people per night). They were brought there supposedly for “sanitation” (one to one, like the Nazis in their camps). There they checked their identities, undressed them, and announced the verdict. At that time, the firing squad was sitting in a separate house, drinking vodka. Only then did they begin to drive them out into the street to be shot, one by one. When the whole job was completed, in the morning the bulldozer operator filled up the hole.

Sergei Nikiforov. "Linden trees at the site of executions (Butovo training ground)." 2002

Sanitation in the Butovo barracks is good, but not as effective. Therefore, effective managers of the USSR also used more massive methods of killing. For example, hunger. In this connection, I would like to introduce you to the Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR Nina Marchenko. At the height of Soviet power, she painted such optimistic pictures:

Nina Marchenko. "Childhood Restored" 1965
A Soviet soldier liberates children from a German concentration camp. The artist then dedicated this painting (thesis) to the children of Buchenwald. True, the Americans liberated Buchenwald, but that doesn’t matter.

Or here:

Nina Marchenko. "Twins". 1972
In the picture there is a Ukrainian village, a happy granny, children, towels.

But since the mid-1980s. Nina Marchenko began to draw what was happening in the Ukrainian village during the time of Stalin.

Nina Marchenko. "Registration for the collective farm." 1985
A brutal communist in a Budenovka drives a peasant into a collective farm.

When they drove me to the collective farm, they took away the bread. The grain was taken away and sold to the West to earn currency for industrialization. The famine of 1932-33 began in the grain-producing regions of the country, primarily in Ukraine (Holodomor).

Nina Marchenko. "Road of Sorrow" 1998-2000

The idea of ​​starving several million people to promote industry is not new. It was first used by British colonialists in Bengal at the end of the 18th century. They taxed the Indians so much that they took everything from them and took them to England, where the industrial revolution was unfolding at that time. True, from this 7 million people. in Bengal in 1769-1773. died of hunger. Ukraine, as well as the Russian Volga region and Kuban became Inner Bengal Soviet Union.

Nina Marchenko. "Mother of 1933" 2000

According to the most conservative estimates, in 1932-33. At least 3 million people died from hunger in the USSR. They were exchanged for a Ford assembly line at the GAZ plant in Gorky and Siemens turbines for the Dneproges. And it is right. What value do the lives of the average Bengali have? And turbines - you can spin them.

Nina Marchenko. "Last way". 1998-2000

The war with the Germans of 1941-45 was fought in approximately the same style as industrialization. This is what the Moscow artist Sergei Sherstyuk (himself the son of a front-line soldier, a general of the Soviet Army) showed in his 1985 painting.

Sergey Sherstyuk. "Men of the same family. 1941."

Sergey Sherstyuk. "Men of the same family. 1945."

And the final blow to the country’s male population was dealt by the post-war alcoholization of the USSR. He captured it most clearly in the 1970s and 80s. artist Vasily Kolotev. Kolotev was a non-conformist, did not cooperate with the authorities, did not seek any titles, awards, or exhibitions. He worked as a mechanic at a factory and painted “on the table”, living in a wretched Moscow communal apartment.

Vasily Kolotev. "Red day of the calendar." 1985
Drunken Soviet proletarians celebrate May 1st.

Vasily Kolotev. "...And the ship sails. Beer house." 1979
The state-forming nation of the USSR during the late Brezhnev...

Vasily Kolotev. "The poplar leaves fall from the ash tree." 1984
It's her.

Vasily Kolotev. "Boulevard Scene" 1984
1984 "Andropovka" at 4-70. Well, for spirituality!

Vasily Kolotev. "Sunday". 1984
Russian world.

Vasily Kolotev. "On the staircase." 1983
Third Rome.

Vasily Kolotev. "Peak hour". 1986
And his Romans.

Vasily Kolotev. "Neighbor's Morning" 1984
Soviet communal apartment. Dirt, poverty, superpower.

Vasily Kolotev. "The Ninth Wave" 1979
Soviet family. My wife, in my opinion, rode along with him. And these bulls are on the table, on the floor... Why smoke in front of children?

Vasily Kolotev. "Queue". 1985
Soviet stores. The USSR was a country of queues. Behind everything. From sausage to toilet paper.

The famous Soviet queues, an integral part of the planned economy, are also reflected in the paintings of other artists.

Alexey Sundukov. "Queue". 1986
The queues for food consisting of monotonously and shabbyly dressed women made a truly depressing impression. There was an air of hopelessness about them.

Vladimir Korkodym. "Waiting for goods." 1989
Queue at the village store. Dejection and resignation. A people broken by despotism.

However, this is not surprising. They broke for a long time and cruelly. And they also fooled me. In the older generation who lived under Stalin, the fear of 1937 sat firmly and forever. Fear and habit of believing propaganda. Getting rid of this took years, not for everyone, but the metamorphoses that resulted were sometimes surprising. A striking example is Igor Obrosov, People's Artist of the RSFSR (1983), master of socialist realism, painted in the so-called. "severe style", popular in the 1960s-80s. He was completely loyal to Soviet power, titles, exhibitions, incl. number abroad.

Igor Obrosov. "Malchish-Kibalchish." 1963
A painting based on the children's fairy tale by Arkady Gaidar "About the Military Secret, the Boy-Kibalchish and his Firm Word." Propaganda began from diapers, with efforts including: such people as Gaidar Sr. and the artist Obrosov.

But this is not just propaganda. This is an allegorical picture, with a double bottom. A little boy in a Budenovka stretches out his hands to a stern Red Army soldier walking away. The leaving man is actually the artist's father, the famous surgeon (and communist revolutionary) Pavel Obrosov, who was shot in 1938. In the late 1980s. under Gorbachev, a campaign will begin to expose Stalin's crimes. The artist Igor Obrosov will paint a series of paintings “Dedication to the Father” (1986-88) and it will become clear who is who on the 1963 canvas.

Igor Obrosov. "Mother and Father. Waiting. 1937." 1986-88
Here he is that same Red Army soldier and the black funnel is waiting for him in the yard.

Igor Obrosov. "No right of correspondence." 1986-88
The security officers take the arrested man out. The standard sentence of “10 children without the right to correspondence” plunged the relatives into the unknown: it could actually be 10 years, or it could be an execution, which they were simply not informed about. In the case of Igor Obrosov's father, it is the second.

Later, Igor Obrosov continued the topic he started. In 2008, his personal exhibition “The Tragic Past (Victims of Stalin’s Repressions)” was published.

Igor Obrosov. "Victim of the Gulag." 2000s
A group of security officers rapes a female prisoner.

Two paintings by the same artist, 40 years apart.

More from the late Obrosov:

Igor Obrosov. "GULAG Zombies" 2000s
Stalin's concentration camp. Two security officers are dragging the corpse of an emaciated prisoner.

The last picture is reminiscent of David Ohler’s graphics about Auschwitz, only in this case it’s a Soviet concentration camp. Ohler was a prisoner of Auschwitz, working as a crematorium attendant, but managed to survive. After the war, he made a series of drawings from camp life from memory.

David Ohler. "Dragging corpses from the gas chamber of Crematorium III to the elevator." 1946

Obrosov, unlike David Oler, never spent time in a concentration camp. I just drew about him. But in the USSR there were several artists who PERSONALLY went through the Stalinist GULAG and depicted what they saw from memory. For example, Georgy Cherkasov (1910-1973), who was convicted three times for anti-Soviet agitation and was released only after Stalin’s death.

Georgy Cherkasov. "Northern Lights. Ukhtpechlag, late 1930s." 1960s

Georgy Cherkasov. "On the last journey. Ukhtpechlag, 1938." 1960s
This is the Vorkuta camp, where in 1938 the so-called. “Kashketin executions” (after the name of the security officer Efim Kashketin, who organized them). In the picture, a group of prisoners are being led to execution. On the left - two "knitted" prisoners are tying up a priest (this is a real character, Father Yegor, with whom Cherkasov was imprisoned). They knit it so that before execution the condemned cannot take communion.

Another bright camp artist is Nikolai Getman. A native of Kharkov, he was sent to the Gulag in 1945 for “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” I was in Taishetlag (construction of the BAM) and in Kolyma. After being released for almost half a century (from 1953 to 2004), he worked on a series of paintings “The Gulag through the Eyes of an Artist.”

Nikolay Getman. "By stage." 1954

Nikolai Getman. "Lagpunkt Verkhniy Debin. Kolyma." 1985
This is the mine where the artist worked to mine gold. Approximately 400 km from Magadan along the Kolyma highway.

“At the Debin mine (Kolyma) in 1951, a group of prisoners were once allowed to pick berries. Three got lost - and they were gone. The head of the camp, Senior Lieutenant Pyotr Lomaga, sent torturers. They set dogs on three sleeping men, then shot them, then split their heads with rifle butts, They turned them into mush, so that their brains were hanging out, and in this form they were taken to the camp on a cart. Here they replaced the horse with four prisoners, and they pulled the cart past the line. “This is what will happen to everyone!” Lomaga announced.(A.I. Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago).

Nikolay Getman. "Lunch. They brought some gruel." 1991
As in the Nazi concentration camps in the Soviet Gulag, prisoners were constantly kept in hunger. This way the will to resist broke down faster.

Nikolai Getman. "Wick". 1987
The wick is a prisoner whose strength is running out, a goner.

Nikolai Getman. "A ration of bread for a dubar." 1989
In the lower right corner there is a dying prisoner lying on the floor. If his barracks neighbors manage to hide his death for some time, there will be an extra ration of bread, 800 grams per day.

Nikolay Getman. "Morgue of Gulag prisoners." 1980
The picture shows prisoner Ivan Pavlovsky, a Russian engineer who was in the same camp with Getman. His task was to prepare the bodies of the dead for burial. He made tags from tin cans, which he attached to the corpse with wire.

Nikolay Getman. "Mosquitoes" 1990
Torture, known since the time of SLON (Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp). The prisoner was tied to a tree (in some camps - thrown into a hole) during the mosquito (midge) season. In a maximum of an hour, he lost so much blood that a painful death occurred.

Nikolay Getman. "Waiting to be shot." 1987

Well, I guess that's enough. Especially at night. And who still has nostalgia for the scoop, then here:

Russian painting is rightfully distinguished from world art. The fact is that until the seventeenth century, Russian painting was associated exclusively with religious themes. The situation changed with the coming to power of the reforming tsar, Peter the Great. Thanks to his reforms, Russian masters began to engage in secular painting, and icon painting separated as a separate direction. The seventeenth century is the time of such artists as Simon Ushakov and Joseph Vladimirov. Then, in the Russian art world, portraiture arose and quickly became popular. In the eighteenth century, the first artists appeared who moved from portraiture to landscape painting. The artists’ pronounced sympathy for winter panoramas is noticeable. The eighteenth century was also remembered for the emergence of everyday painting. In the nineteenth century, three movements gained popularity in Russia: romanticism, realism and classicism. As before, Russian artists continued to turn to the portrait genre. It was then that the world-famous portraits and self-portraits of O. Kiprensky and V. Tropinin appeared. In the second half of the nineteenth century, artists increasingly depicted the common Russian people in their oppressed state. Realism becomes the central movement of painting of this period. It was then that the Itinerant artists appeared, depicting only real, real life. Well, the twentieth century is, of course, the avant-garde. The artists of that time significantly influenced both their followers in Russia and throughout the world. Their paintings became the forerunners of abstract art. Russian painting is a huge wonderful world of talented artists who have glorified Russia with their creations.