Essay-description of Plastov’s painting “Tractor Drivers’ Dinner. Essay based on Plastov's painting "Tractor Drivers' Dinner". Plastov's creativity Description of Ivan Bilibin's illustration for the fairy tale “Ivan the Tsarevich and the Firebird”
The lyrical painter Arkady Plastov always used simple and simple subjects for his paintings, into which he invested the deepest meaning. It is known that Arkady Aleksandrovich painted his unique paintings during the Soviet period, so each of his paintings is lyrical and beautiful. First of all, Plastov turned to paintings of nature, so each of his canvases is a landscape against which the action unfolds. There is no conflict or emotion in his paintings at all, so each of his canvases is poetic and expressive. One of such expressive and picturesque canvases by the artist Arkady Plastov was the amazing painting “The Tractor Driver’s Dinner,” which reflected all the features of the artist’s depiction of reality.
Arkady Aleksandrovich himself attributed the creation of his amazing painting “The Tractor Driver’s Dinner” to 1951. Its dimensions are also known: 260 by 167. This Plastov landscape work was done on canvas, and the artist used not just paints to realize his plan, but it was done in oil on canvas. I like the fact that the picture has a simple plot and simple images of the characters that can be easily perceived by a person. Some charming lightness emanates from this painting, and the images that the artist created are simple.
It transports every viewer looking at the picture to one of the most ordinary summer days, when the harvest is underway. But the day was already beginning to decline. The evening time in the picture is depicted by the artist wonderfully and beautifully, as the sun is slowly setting below the horizon, but its last and already very dim rays light up the sky a little, and a thick shadow gradually falls on the ground, which will soon turn into dusk and darkness, and then a deep shadow will come night. And only in the morning the sun will appear again, which will disperse the darkness of the night. In the meantime, thick clouds are gradually covering the sky.
In the distance, shadows begin to fall on a black field that has recently been plowed. And it is still warm, but so beautiful at sunset, golden rays. But the approaching evening cool is already blowing, and it is impossible not to notice it. The green grass is still visible, so the people who had been working in the fields all day finally decided to rest and have dinner. Leaving their tractor, they sat down on the grass and waited for their dinner. Several gentle rays of sunshine touched the shoulder of a young and handsome tractor driver, who was tired and now rested with pleasure after difficult work. They are enjoying this moment of peace, and they probably still have to work at night. After all, they definitely need to do their job and harvest the entire harvest on time so that it cannot go to waste.
A young guy, most likely his reliable assistant, also sat down next to the tractor driver. Maybe he is still learning to work in the field, to drive a tractor, and in the near future, he himself will be able to take the place of a tractor driver, and then the work will go even faster. The guy is also waiting for his dinner to be brought, but for now he is daydreaming a little. Suddenly the eldest of the tractor drivers notices that the girl is bringing them dinner. He, thinking about his work and family, begins to cut bread. The bread is fresh and crispy.
And so a young girl in a clean white robe and the same snow-white headscarf comes up to them, she brought dinner. And the tractor drivers have the most common meal: bread and milk. But how long-awaited and desired he is! A young guy, lying on the grass, watches a girl pour aromatic milk from a small can into mugs. He even managed to prepare a spoon. All these people, depicted by Arkady Plastov, live differently, each of them has their own lifestyle and their own interests in life. But working together brought them together, and they also developed a spiritual kinship with each other.
The central place in Arkady Alexandrovich’s film, of course, is occupied by people. But even their lives are indicated by the colors that the artist used. The entire color scheme is bright and stands out against the background of the calm shades of nature. The young but already experienced tractor driver is wearing a red T-shirt. And this contrasts with the girl who brings them dinner. All things on it are pure white. Even the young guy - the assistant is dressed in light clothes. Around the heroes of the picture there is green grass and small flowers, which can usually always be found in the field. The people were tired, but happy that they were able to plow such a large field in a day.
In Arkady Plastov’s film there are no worries or emotional problems, everything seems simple and clear. The life of people in rural areas is always peaceful and measured. Every day they work until dark, and at night they rest so that they can work again in the morning. The artist conveys an unusual, enchanting and magical atmosphere in his delightful and calm painting.
Plastov Arkady Alexandrovich (Born in 1893)
Soviet art can be proud of outstanding artists who determined the face of Soviet artistic culture. A. A. Plastov belongs to such artists. He is a magnificent master of complex paintings and sketches, an excellent illustrator, and an artist extremely versatile in his creative aspirations. At the same time, his art is distinguished by amazing integrity. This is explained by the fact that from the first steps his art is deeply and directly connected with the struggle, thoughts and feelings of his native people and, first of all, with the people whom he knows very well - the peasantry. He was born and raised in the village of Prislonikha, Ulyanovsk region. Here, having already graduated from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, he became a peasant in the first years after the revolution. Here in the 1930s he again devoted himself entirely to his beloved art. This is where he still lives and works.
The life of his native village is a constant theme in Plastov’s paintings, although sometimes in them we will not find specific signs of this particular village and its inhabitants. Like any great artist, Plastov is a master of artistic selection and generalization, able to see in the concrete the general, inherent in time. Direct participation in it allowed this wonderful painter to avoid declarativeness and straightforwardness in his numerous works. His works are imbued with a living and reverent sense of reality. The viewer never doubts the real existence of Plastov's heroes. He is deeply concerned by the feelings that the artist expresses - a sense of pride in the strength of ordinary people, admiration for their selfless work in their native fields.
Plastov's art is bright, bold, life-affirming. This is explained by the artist’s penchant for depicting aspects of life that reveal the optimism of Soviet people. In a scene of village labor or a noisy holiday, in an episode from the life of village children or a portrait of a young collective farmer - everywhere one can feel confidence in the spiritual fortitude of the Russian people, our contemporaries, filled with self-esteem and inner strength.
Among Plastov’s best works is the painting “The Tractor Drivers’ Dinner.” This painting is distinguished by its uncomplicated compositional design, clarity of images of people, and extreme simplicity of the plot.
In fact, what could be simpler than what Plastov depicted. Dusk is falling on the ground, the plowed field has darkened, and the light of the setting sun has painted everything in burning reddish-golden tones. Near the tractor, a tractor driver and a boy, his assistant, sat down for dinner; a girl in a neat white robe brought bread and milk to them in the field. Now the tractor drivers have a blissful moment of short rest (after all, they have to work at night): the eldest is cutting bread, the boy is watching the thick stream of fresh milk that the girl is pouring. That's the whole plot. Nothing special. No difficult experiences. No acute everyday conflicts.
And yet this simple plot is already thought-provoking. The artist devotes his work to depicting the labor of an ordinary Soviet person, although the labor process itself is not shown. The viewer sees people who have worked a lot and successfully over a long day. It is clear to him that this work is not easy, that it required a lot of effort from both the tractor driver and the boy.
However, even with the most cursory glance at the picture, you are convinced how little a retelling of the plot gives for its understanding. Apparently, the point is in the interpretation of this plot, which, by the way, has been used more than once by other artists. What did Plastov focus on? What is especially sweet and dear to him in the depicted scene?
Of course, first of all, he is attracted to people, their appearance, their condition. It is not for nothing that the artist placed the figures in the foreground and accentuated them with bright spots of color - the girl’s white robe and headscarf, the hot red color of the tractor driver’s T-shirt, the light blue spot of the boy’s T-shirt.
Plastov arranged the figures in a compact group, and this gave it greater integrity. At first glance, it seems that the tractor driver, the boy, and the girl, each busy with their own business, are immersed in their own thoughts and are not connected with each other by a common action. In fact, the tractor driver, not paying attention to the others, carefully cuts the bread - perhaps at this moment his thoughts are far from work, from the plowed field, from the people located near him. The girl diligently pours milk from the can into the pan, and this is the only thing that apparently occupies her at the moment. The boy, who has fallen into the thick grass, is looking forward to the future dinner, all his attention is focused on the milk. Thus, the picture lacks a single action in the direct sense of the word. However, the viewer does not feel disunity in the depicted group. On the contrary, he feels its unity. Obviously, this unity determines something more significant than a common action, namely the unity of thoughts and feelings, interests and aspirations of the people depicted.
Just as in a close-knit family one always feels the deep closeness of the members of this family, no matter what they are doing at the moment, so the heroes of Plastov’s painting are united by the same closeness. Maybe they are not relatives, but their appearance is so related to each other, their actions and states are so spontaneous and filled with such simplicity that you immediately feel the same structure of their feelings and thoughts.
The naturalness of appearance, poses, gestures is Plastov’s great achievement in this picture. How often can you see works where the characters seem to be put on buskins, where they do not live their lives, but act out a play, trying to exactly follow all the director’s instructions from the artist. This is not the case in Plastov’s work. The people depicted here are as the author saw them in reality and carefully transferred them to canvas.
Here the question arises: what then is Plastov’s merit, since he only depicted truthfully what he noticed in life? And this merit is very great. After all, the depiction of the scene that is presented in the picture required not a simple fixation of the visible, but a deep understanding of it, careful selection, emphasizing and deepening those features in the characters that corresponded to the artist’s plan and the idea that forms the basis of the work.
The internal unity of the people in the picture, that feeling of their closeness and kinship that we talked about, was Plastov’s goal while working on the canvas. After all, perhaps in life the prototypes of those depicted were distinguished by different characters, attitudes towards the world and people. But such differences are missing from the picture. This is explained by the artist’s attitude towards his characters - cordial, friendly and warm.
Undoubtedly, the main character in the picture is the tractor driver. His appearance is very unassuming. He is wearing an old T-shirt and a battered quilted jacket draped over his shoulders. The head with a loose strand of unruly hair is covered with a tattered cap. The face is overgrown with stiff stubble. The features of this simple face are not distinguished by regularity. But, despite the unprepossessing appearance, the tractor driver evokes deep sympathy. He exudes strength and deep wisdom. Apparently, it was no coincidence that the artist depicted him carefully cutting a piece of bread from a loaf. Bread is the fruit of the labor of a tractor driver who plowed the same field a year ago and harvested it. That is why he cuts this bread with a feeling of deep satisfaction and at the same time with a great sense of gratitude to the land that waters and feeds him.
Although Plastov does not in the slightest degree violate the naturalness of the general situation, and certainly does not artificially “raise” the image of the tractor driver in relation to other characters, this image is perceived as a symbol of folk wisdom, as a symbol of free labor. And in this regard, it determines the figurative structure of the picture.
The images of the helper boy and the girl are different from the tractor driver. They seem less significant. This is understandable. They are young and more spontaneous, reacting more vividly to their surroundings than a tractor driver. In fact, it is enough to compare how a collective farmer cuts bread and how a girl pours milk to feel this difference. If the first one cuts off a piece with some special reverence, then this reverence is not felt at all in the girl. If the bowed head of the tractor driver hints that he is immersed in his thoughts, then the bowed head of the girl only indicates her attentiveness and desire to complete the assignment as best as possible. The contrast becomes even more obvious if we compare the images of the tractor driver and the guy. There is no hint of thought in the latter. He gave himself over to the anticipation of a hearty and tasty dinner.
Magnificently, in a purely picturesque sense, Plastov united the entire group and at the same time contrasted the image of a tractor driver with a girl and a helper. All the figures are united by the reddish light of the setting sun, which imparts a special warmth to the overall color. This light softens flashes of brick red, blue, and white. It is not difficult to notice that it is no accident that the artist throws a dark padded jacket over the tractor driver, dulls the green color of his cap, and plunges his face and chest into shadow. On the contrary, it highlights the girl’s figure with a bright spot and illuminates the boy’s back and head with the sun. Thus, with color and lighting, he contrasts the tractor driver with the images of the young heroes of the picture.
And yet, we repeat, no contradiction is felt in this opposition. The people depicted are perceived as an indissoluble unity. To a great extent, the landscape, superbly painted by the artist, contributes to the creation of a feeling of this unity.
A group of people sat on the ground overgrown with thick grass and wild wildflowers. And behind them lies the vast expanse of a freshly plowed field. This space extending to the distant horizon, above which the sky stretches, covered with whitish evening clouds, produces a majestic impression. It gives rise to a feeling of solemn peace, giving the picture an epic sound. The silence of the fields corresponds to the state of reverie in which the tractor driver is immersed, and to the silence of the girl and the guy. Nature, like people, enjoys peace after a sunny day.
You can often hear about a painting: “It (this painting) is filled with light and air!” These words can rightfully be applied to Plastov’s painting. Looking at her, we seem to feel the fresh evening air caressing our face. The air is almost motionless: the smoke from the tractor engine only sways slightly, it slowly moves to the side (by depicting the smoke, Plastov gave a special tangibility to the air space, made one feel the calm, windless weather and imparted a special intimacy to the depicted scene).
“Tractor Drivers’ Dinner” is one of Plastov’s most poetic paintings. But it is not easy to answer the question of what is the secret of this poetry. Perhaps in the magical evening lighting, giving softness to the outlines of figures, landscapes, and objects. Perhaps in an amazing fusion of man and nature. And most likely, in the greatest simplicity of the plot motif, the appearance of people, and the landscape, simplicity, which is a high manifestation of the truth of life. In this canvas, Plastov avoids everything that could complicate the narrative, disrupt the measured, leisurely and soulful rhythm of the story. The composition of the picture itself is simple, the plane of which is divided into two almost equal parts: large figures of people below, a plowed field and a high sky above. Simple linear rhythms. The appearance of the people depicted is simple and unpretentious. Simple in their inexhaustible power, the heavy layers of earth and lush growth of grass painted by the setting sun.
The horizon in the picture is very high. This allows Plastov to depict the tractor drivers and the girl against the background of the earth and give the whole scene a special touch of warmth and intimacy. Thus, it is not people who appear here in the halo of the sublime and majestic, but the dark earth and the bright heavenly heights. But the power emanating from nature involuntarily passes on to people, for they are the masters of this fertile land, who know how to own its riches and subjugate them to themselves. It is as the owner of the land watered by his sweat that the tractor driver is perceived, full of self-esteem and the satisfaction that comes with confidence in a job well done.
Essay based on the painting: Plastov’s “Tractor Drivers’ Dinner.”
The painting depicts an almost idyllic scene: a wife brought her husband and son a simple dinner right on the field. City residents cannot understand this, but in the countryside such a picture becomes normal in the summer.
Summer is a busy time in the lives of rural residents. In the summer you need to make hay for animals, harvest crops and do many other jobs. During harvesting, tractor drivers often spend the night in the field to save time and not miss good days. All you have to do is gape and most of the grain will simply disappear, which means big losses and expensive bread. Everyone understands the need for such work, so even a little boy helps his father.
In the foreground, the artist showed the head of the family, who worked enthusiastically and is now having dinner. A boy lies nearby, carefully watching his father. In the background you can see a plowed field that seems endless. This whole family, work idyll is watched by an attentive sky, which tries to help and support.
Hard work has always been valued and praised, especially among village residents. I was truly surprised by the amount of work this humble man accomplished. Such people can be considered real heroes.
Essay based on Plastov's painting "Tractor Drivers' Dinner".
The events take place in the evening, when the silence of heaven visited the earth for a moment. The arrows of the warm dawn flew to the edge of the field, and it seems that everything ordinary has become witchcraft. In the summer, villagers do a lot of work: preparing hay for livestock, harvesting crops.
So quiet that it may seem that you can hear milk pouring from a jug, how a knife easily enters warm bread, a tractor quietly sighing, how the grass rustles and the fresh wind, filled with the subtle aroma of flowers and herbs, sings in the boundless expanses.
The tractor drivers' dinner is simple, but it is the most delicious and desirable, because it is flavored with a lot of work. The table, set on the ground, was covered by dear hands. The tractor driver in the scarlet T-shirt and front-line cap thought about something for a moment.
The heart of the tractor is quietly beating, a wide stream of milk is flowing, a fair-haired boy who is the tractor driver's assistant is continuously knocking with a wooden spoon, a snub-nosed girl in a white headscarf is quietly purring a simple song. Life itself is shown, without decorations. She is desirable, tart, bitter in every vein, every stroke of Plastov’s painting “The Tractor Drivers’ Dinner.”
Evening came. The rays of dawn skillfully illuminated the swollen veins on the heavy, gnarled hands of the tractor driver, and illuminated all the irregularities and wrinkles on the face of the former serviceman. We carefully touched the guy’s rosy cheek and ran over the curly crown of his head. They gently emphasized all the charm of the girl in a white appearance, slipped through the burnt grass and scattered across the mighty layers of virgin soil.
The painting depicts a Russian, free-flowing land that stretches right up to the edge of the heavens, where the darkish pre-sunset clouds merge with the horizon. The film glorifies man and the earth. It reflects time itself honestly and wisely.
The foreground is occupied by the head of the family, who has been working all day. The boy sits next to him and watches his dad. The heavens are watching the family idyll, trying to support and help.
Hard work was constantly praised and valued, especially in rural areas. This humble man did a great job and can be considered a true hero. In the painting, the artist glorified the work of ordinary people.
Plastov's creativity.
Evening. The silence of heaven visited the earth for a moment. The warm arrows of dawn flew to the side of the field, and, as if by the wave of a magician, everything ordinary became witchcraft.
Quiet. You can hear how the milk pours loudly from the krink, how the knife softly enters the still warm crust of bread and the muffled tractor sighs quietly, how the grass rustles and the summer wind, filled with the bitter aroma of herbs and flowers, sings in the endless expanses.
Tractor drivers' dinner. Simple. But there is nothing tastier or more desirable than it. Because it is flavored with great labor. Yes, because they set the table - our very land - with dear hands.
The tractor driver in the salted scarlet T-shirt and the old tankman’s front-line cap thought for a moment. About what? How fragrant rye bread is. Or maybe he remembered the front-line hunchback and friends whom he would never see, fellow countrymen, fellow soldiers. Or maybe about that... Yes, however, what can you dream about after such a toil!
A tight stream of milk flows, the heart of the tractor beats rhythmically, a young, shaggy, fair-haired boy, the tractor driver's assistant, impatiently taps a wooden spoon, a cute snub-nosed girl in a white headscarf quietly purrs a simple song.
Life itself. Without embellishment. Tart, bitter, desirable, in every stroke, every vein of Plastov’s canvas “The Tractor Drivers’ Dinner,” written in 1951.
More than forty years have passed since the young boy Arkady Plastov whispered with his lips dry from excitement: “To be only a painter, and nothing else!” Forty years have passed since those fabulous days of 1911, when eighteen-year-old Plastov came to Kazan from the distant village of Prislonikhi, Simbirsk province, obedient to the dictates of his heart, to see the exhibition of the famous Polenov.
“I was then raised to some transcendental heights - after all, I saw the paintings of one of those who, according to my then concepts, touched the heights of the possible. Polenov immediately attracted me with the freshness of colors and lighting effects. They seemed brighter to me than reality itself,” - the master recalls in “Autobiography”.
Forty years... What a time the artist lived through, how much he saw, how much he felt, before creating his “Tractor Drivers’ Dinner” - a picture in which all the elastic power of the people is!
It was not without reason that in 1958, at an exhibition in London, the President of the Royal Academy of Arts, Charles Wheeler, amazed by Plastov’s canvas, said:
- How much such art gives! Realism. You know, somehow now I understand especially clearly why you, Russians, were able to survive the war and win. Whoever can work so enthusiastically, oh, is not easy to overcome!
...It's getting evening. The rays of dawn, with the art of a brilliant sculptor, sculpted the swollen veins on the gnarled, heavy hands of the tractor driver. The harsh furrows of wrinkles inexorably cut across the face of the former soldier. They gently touched the boy’s rosy cheek and walked over the curly crown of his head. The charming features of the girl in white were softly outlined, slid along the blades of burnt grass and spilled over the uplifted mighty layers of raised virgin soil.
The land... Russian, free, stretches to the very edge of the heavens, where the gray pre-sunset clouds merge with the horizon. Earth and man. They are glorified in this picture, a wise and honest picture, reflecting the time itself.
The extraordinary, austere beauty of the canvas. In Surikov's thick, stocky way, the hero is depicted, outwardly unremarkable, but beautiful in his commitment to the land, the Motherland, a rightful, just cause. In the color of the canvas one can discern the sounds of Vrubel's painting "Towards Night", Kuindzh's sunsets, and Roerich's epic tales. But this is Plastov!
It is bitter and somehow awkward to read today the yellowed pages of newspapers, where in articles by art critics of that time this wonderful picture was torn to smithereens for its supposed rudeness, humiliation, primitivism, and ignorance of life.
But, fortunately, these are already pages of history.
Although the artist had to endure many painful moments in those years, listening to reproaches for the lack of precisely those very qualities that he actually possessed to the highest degree - truthfulness and citizenship.
The creative path of Arkady Aleksandrovich Plastov is difficult and remarkable.
Here are a few lines from his Autobiography:
“Our village lay on the large Moscow highway, and, as long as I can remember, endless carts always stretched past our house, troikas with coachmen-song-writers raced. The horses were well-fed, of all colors, maned, in elegant harness with a copper set, with tassels, carts and a sleigh with all sorts of turned and carved balusters, painted arches, like Surikov’s in “Boyaryna Morozova.” Since then, the smell of tar, the neighing of horses, the creaking of carts, and bearded men have led me into a kind of sweet stupor.
Childhood flew by with bliss that will never be repeated. Three years of rural school. As if yesterday, the lemon-yellow alphabet revealed to me the wonders of sounding and speaking squiggles. The tiny blue volume of Pushkin - "The Captain's Daughter" and Koltsov's "Why are you sleeping, little man" were the first things I learned from literature and what I tried to illustrate. For what? Who knows! I don't remember myself. An old woman, Nanny Stepanovna, came to see us then. She was a housekeeper for us when my father and mother went to visit on Christmastide and Easter. Stepanovna, dry and affectionate, told us in the twilight epics and fairy tales about Ilya Muromets, about Etorius the Brave, about Alyonushka and the Belg-oruch stone. She must have known them a lot, since she never repeated anything, with the exception of our beloved Alyonushka and brother Ivanushka...
In 1912 I graduated from four classes of seminary. Friends and patrons arranged my affairs in the best possible way. The provincial government decided to give me a scholarship for art education of twenty-five rubles a month. I'm going to Moscow.
I’m getting a job in the workshop of the late I. I. Mashkov to prepare for a competition at the school of painting, sculpture and architecture. This was two months before the exam. I’m not myself, I’m wandering around Moscow. The towers and cathedrals of the Kremlin, China Town with bushes on the gray walls, St. Basil's, Red Square and, finally, the Tretyakov Gallery... It is impossible to describe these experiences. I was out of breath and could barely stand on my feet. Never have I felt so much strength for any victory on my chosen path as then.
I stayed with Mashkov for two months. I suffered cruelly when he unceremoniously straightened my filigree pencil-sharpened heads with thick charcoal, without regard for my manner, so exalted in God-saved Simbirsk.
But here comes the competition. Three days of enormous stress - and the result is failure."
But the stubborn boy from Prislonikha did not give up. He goes to Stroganovka as a volunteer in a sculpture workshop. Months pass, “there was not enough scholarship to live on,” but young Plastov achieves his goal.
“In 1914, I entered the sculpture department of the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. After sitting in Stroganovka studying sculpture, I came to the idea that it would be nice to study it along with painting, so that in the future I would have a clear understanding of form. Of course, reading about the masters of the Renaissance. I decided to continue painting at home for now.
I was in school for three years, graduated from the head, figure, and full-scale classes. For the summer he went to his Prislonikha, wrote sketches, comprehended the wisdom of conveying reality with great accuracy, to the point of naturalistic dryness.”
It seemed that the artist’s path began to be determined; he lay in the familiar circle outlined by the workshop, opening days, successes and failures, in a word, everything that from time immemorial had been difficult to get used to, but provincial neophytes had gotten used to.
But fate would have decided otherwise...
“The (February) revolution found me in my third year. After I, like many, rode around Moscow in a truck with machine guns, with a red flag on my rifle, arresting bailiffs, gendarmes in police stations, at train stations, I am still at the end of the third week Since the beginning of the revolution, I went to my home in Prislonikha to write on location. Life, however, has made its inexorable adjustments. At gatherings, dozens of people come to me with questions that I never dreamed of answering or explaining. , to help understand thousands of questions that had never been seen before, I was forced due to my position as the most literate person in the village, the position of “one of my own”, whom I could trust. For the first time, I thought about the political side of life. The previous, pre-February, primitive idea of revolution was irrevocably abandoned. To my shame, in the February days it seemed to me that if I eliminated the stupid and harmful tsar, the revolution would accomplish its main task.
Riding in a truck, taking captive the stunned police officers, I sincerely considered myself a real revolutionary. And only in October, when I came to Moscow to graduate from art school and unexpectedly came across barricades and shooting in the streets, I finally realized that a revolution in a country like then Russia was a process that, in its size and significance, was similar to a change in geological eras in the life of our planet, and that now it is not enough to just be an artist, but you also need to be a citizen."
Citizen... Plastov bore this proud title from that time on throughout his life - when he was elected a member of the first village council and when, among other landless people, he was awarded land and became a plowman, mower and reaper. He remained so even when, finally, after great labors and experiences, he overcame school and became a master. His path was not easy.
“In January 1931, a collective farm was organized in our village. I took an active part in its organization. In 1931, on one unfortunate July day, we had a fire. A beautiful, all-consuming flame frolicked for an hour, and half the village went up in smoke into the sultry July sky. The house and all my property burned down. Everything that I had written and drawn up until now was lost in the flames and became ashes.
From that time on I stopped taking part in field work. I only have one vegetable garden and a cow left. It was necessary to restore what was lost, and at an extraordinary pace. It was a time when I was slowly approaching how to finally become an artist."
Plastov was about forty years old at that time. Another, perhaps, would have hesitated, deviated from the goal set in his youth - “to create an epic out of peasant life,” and would have exchanged his talent for trifles. But Plastov was not like that. With renewed vigor he collects sketches and materials for future paintings. Everything is for future use.
The artist performs his first paintings “Collective Farm Holiday”, “The Herd” and “Bathing the Horses”. In these paintings he declared himself as an outstanding colorist.
And again Plastov faces a dilemma: either continue the meticulous, outwardly unnoticeable, but arduous work of collecting etudes, sketches for the planned epic, which so far brings not so much laurels as troubles, or slip into the path of writing the then fashionable major compositions.
Plastov chooses the first path. He stays true to himself. Days, months, years pass in labor and quest. His main theme - Man and Motherland - has not yet found its full plastic expression.
The thunder of the Great Patriotic War struck. And Plastov’s civic lyre began to sound in full force.
“The fascist flew by”... 1942.
Autumn. Slope. Young thin birch trees in a golden headdress. The deep peace of a fine autumn day. Not a single blade of grass moves.
The sharp howl of a dog cut through the silence. The sheep wander lost. What is this?
The shepherd boy pressed his cheek to the dry, prickly grass. Fell awkwardly. The arm is twisted. The whip and hat flew far away. Scarlet blood on blond curls. The baby clung tightly to his native land. He won't get up.
Far, far away in the clear sky above the emerald greens is a fascist plane. A moment ago, a leaden rain stopped life.
The dog howls, raising his furry muzzle to the sky. Cows moo pitifully and sheep bleat. A whining, ominous sound fades away in the distance. Birch trees rustle.
“My father was bitter about the war,” Nikolai Arkadyevich, the artist’s son, told me. - Just, holy anger seethed in his soul. And these feelings of his resulted in the film “The Fascist Flew Over.” One day my father was writing an autumn sketch. And this motive touched him so much that I saw tears in his eyes. When we returned home from the sketch, my father immediately sketched a sketch of the future painting. The painful collection of material began. The village boys helped him. But no one managed to fall on the grass, as my father wanted. Finally, one kid stumbled and somehow awkwardly stretched out on the dry grass. "Stop, stop!" - the father cried.
Seven days later the picture was painted. It was based on that first autumn sketch that deeply touched my father...
Young Plastov, an interesting artist himself, told many, many interesting things.
Father and son.
Arkady Alexandrovich's letters to Nikolai are priceless.
Here are just two of this legacy:
“I read your letters with great attention and pleasure. Know, dear son, that my heart beats with joy and pride when I read that you write and draw and do not boast of what you have achieved, but are thoughtful and critical.
This is very true, this is how it is needed - this healthy look at things, at yourself, at your actions, at the movement of your thoughts, your heart. Through this, that restlessness of the spirit, fruitful and creative, is achieved, without which no forward movement is conceivable.
Always hold on to this trinity: faith that you are doing what you need to do, hope that you have enough strength to do it, and love for this work.
Of course, you should not force yourself to do anything, but the discipline of the spirit should always be at its best. After all, there are moments, especially for young people like you, when the careless thought that everything will be done in time takes possession of a person so strongly that a chaotic scattering of forces begins, here and there, and generally in vain. This is where the core of behavior should be the idea that one must work systematically, never deviating from a systematic exercise in what one loves.
After all, it would never occur to you to stop breathing at some point, for example. There’s a lot of time ahead, they say, I’ll still breathe.
So is this work. It should be rhythmic and tireless, like the beating of our heart. Sometimes weaker, sometimes more intense, but non-stop, vigilant - and then what a joy it will be to reap the fruits of your smart and wonderful labors.”
It seems that these wise words are addressed not only to Nikolai. They contain all the experience, all the great knowledge of Plastov’s life.
“Spring”... The wind rustles in the thick willow trees. Torn clouds are driving in the high sky. He tears his scarf, fluffs out his heavy braids, and rustles in the folds of the light cotton dress of a girl who has come on the water. Drives ripples across the dark water.
The icy moisture runs like a silver ringing stream into the placed bucket. The sunbeams, having broken through the willow thickets, sparkled at the mouth of the gutter, scattered like broken diamonds in the bucket and illuminated the slender figure of the girl.
Freshness. Purity. Victorious barefoot youth powerfully enchants us in this canvas. We involuntarily remember distant pages of our own lives, and something bright, joyful, despite our will, visits our soul. Such is the magic of Plastov painting.
“Youth”... With a swing, as if knocked down, the guy fell into the thick grass. Tired. Only a minute ago he was racing like crazy with a cheerful dog. Hot. The young man pulled off his shirt and stretched out, crushing the meadow flowers. Covering his eyes with his hand, he looks at how a free bird flutters high in the sky. Young grains of bread stand nearby like a green wall. A light summer breeze moves the ears of corn and bends them down. The lark sings. Summer. Happy time. Carefree youth. It's time to mature, hope and dream. In this canvas, with some melancholy poignancy, you feel the irrevocability, the priceless fleetingness of that time.
“Haymaking”... As in a morning drop of dew, the entire rainbow world is reflected, permeated with the singing of a horn, the hubbub of birds, the lowing of cows, the cry of a rooster, the chirping of a far-reaching tractor and the voice of the wind, dispersing ruddy clouds in the reddish firmament, so in this picture all the joy of our land has been collected.
June. Haymaking. We seem to hear how each flower sounds from this thousand-colored bouquet and how lilac, blue, azure, turquoise, yellow, saffron, crimson, purple and gold coders ring with delicate chords. The trumpets of the white-trunked birch trees raised high sound powerfully, and, as an accompaniment to this polyphony of June, millions of leaves, swayed by the summer breeze, scatter in a silver trill.
And just as it happens in a symphony, when, after a tense crescendo, each instrument of the orchestra, putting all the strength, richness and originality of its voice into the general flow of sounds, rests in a measured, gentle adagio, so in the canvas “Haymaking” the wise artist, scattering a precious mosaic before the viewer flower-bearing June herbage, gives a rest to the eye, spreading out in front of it a magical carpet of sunlit meadow... And again, as in the music of a symphony, subject to the invisible law of counterpoint, where some rhythms replace others, so in the canvas we see a proportionate alternation of dark copses, emerald meadows , blue oak forest in the distance. And finally, as the finale in this jubilant hymn of joy, as the final chord, as the most solemn note in this consonance - the high sky stretched above all this splendor.
There was a moment of silence, and we heard the cuckoo and the hum of a shaggy bumblebee, the hardworking song of a bee and the measured steel sound of a scythe.
“Haymaking” is a symphonic poem, a hymn to the native land, to the victorious people who survived and won a cruel and bloody war.
The magic of this painting by Plastov lies in the highly metaphorical nature of the painter’s language. After all, how monumental and sublime must be the plastic vocabulary of the work in order to take, it seems, the most ancient plot from rural life - haymaking, to make the viewer feel the grandeur of this peaceful panorama, the greatness of this sounding silence! Indeed, behind all this seething joy of life, the viewer of those days could not help imagining the entire abyss of suffering and death that the people accepted in the recent terrible years.
Let us recall the date of creation of the canvas - 1945, more precisely, the summer of 1945 - and then the whole scale of citizenship of this Plastov masterpiece, the whole ringing truth of this amazing canvas will appear even more clearly and precisely before us.
The philosophy of the canvas becomes even more striking and convincing for us when we learn that the people depicted in the painting “Haymaking” are not just models depicting mowers, but close relatives, friends of Plastov, his fellow villagers, fellow countrymen. This canvas is a combination of the broadest generalization and documentary, authenticity of the image.
After all, the young man in the foreground is the artist’s son Nikolai, the woman in a white headscarf looks like his wife
Natalya Alekseevna, and two elderly mowers are fellow countrymen of Arkady Alexandrovich - Fedor Sergeevich Tonshin and Pyotr Grigorievich Chernyaev.
This thoroughness and authenticity contains all the pathos of Plastov’s creative destiny. From the very first steps, the painter never changed his once established holy order: every year to paint from life the life of his native Prislonika, to glorify its people, their joys and worries. And if even for a moment we imagine collected in one place, let it be a museum or an exhibition, the entire thousand-page album of drawings, the entire immense mass of canvases, then we will see an invaluable panorama of the life of one village, elevated by the artist’s talent to the sound of a chronicle, the history of the country.
"Spring"... A rare soft snow is falling. Martovsky, the last one. Through the transparent veil of a gray day, before our eyes is the dressing room of a smoking village bathhouse. A young woman hastily gathers her daughter, a snub-nosed, charming little girl who touchingly bit her lower lip. Red bangs stick out from under a warm scarf. Mother is in a hurry. Golden straw rustles underfoot. Heavy drops fall loudly. Chilly.
In this canvas, as never before, the maestry of Plastov’s brush appears before us in all its splendor. It is not for nothing that Tretyakov viewers call this painting “Northern Venus”; this canvas was painted with such virtuoso skill. At one time, this canvas sounded like a challenge to a public unaccustomed to paintings with nudes... And experienced reinsurers called it a compromise: “Spring. Old Village.”
Nikolai Arkadyevich told how his father was indignant and how one day, having come to the Tretyakov Gallery, he angrily tore off the words “Old Village” from the label and left the word “Spring”.
Plastov... Never forget his weather-beaten, open face. Eyes, piercingly sharp, sometimes sly, sometimes angry. The master’s smile will not be erased from memory, bright, almost childlike, a deep scar at the temple - a mark of kulak hatred, and a gray strand on a high forehead, furrowed with worries. The master was simple and outwardly accessible. But few people knew the entrance to the light of his soul, open to the sun and children, fellow countrymen and native side. He was like the founders of a man and hardworking, so he hated clickers and super-gazers. He despised lies. And therefore, from his canvases the truth looks at his contemporary. Bright, bitter, juicy and tart, just the way it is. His canvases are a world richly populated by people, his beloved contemporaries, children and ancient grandfathers, beautiful young women and strong guys. In his canvases the sun shines generously, it rains, the grain ripens, it snows - in a word, this is our very life, our people, our Motherland... The enemy of idleness, he glorified the work of the peasant in his paintings. Hard work, from dawn to dusk, labor joyful with its fruits. Plowing, harvesting, threshing, harvesting potatoes, flowering meadows and rich fields, fruitful gardens - in a word, a whole encyclopedia of rural everyday life was unfolded before us by the master. It is not smiling, light-eyed extras who populate his canvases, but tanned, wiry, sometimes unsightly in their everyday life, but even more so, the great people of the village stand up to their full height in dozens of his paintings - the heroes of our time! Few in the history of painting can you find such a fusion of nature and man. A young mother with a baby, exhausted by the heat, in a garden weighed down with fruits... A young man lies down on the boundary next to green bread, an old man looks through tears at a felled birch tree, children run out onto the porch, admire the first snow - all these are symbolic canvases, wise, deep in that abyss of sensations and associations that come not in an office or in the solitude of a studio, but are given by the experience of a whole life, life in the very thick of the people. Arkady Aleksandrovich Plastov experienced all the hardships and joys. He knew the full extent of recognition. As a spiritually rich and generous person, he forgot the annoyance of long ago and in his canvases reflected the joy of being, immeasurable joy.
Plastov is a sorcerer. After all, one touch of his brush made the flowers instantly open with a fragrant corolla, the cool streams of the spring ring, and the birch branches rustle. In his canvases, grass breathes, butterflies flutter, birds sing, grasshoppers chirp, people live, love and dream, and ripe rye rustles. The master passionately loved his homeland, and when he had to leave its borders, he always took a bunch of thyme, a fragrant herb, with him abroad. He missed there, in a foreign land, the aroma of the Pslonikhinsky meadows and fields. The artist often said: “You must not spare yourself.” This meant that we had to work... The master wrote:
“I love this life. And when you see it year after year... you think that you need to tell people about it... Pat’s life is full and rich, there are so many amazingly interesting things in it that even the ordinary everyday affairs of our people attract attention , shock the soul. You have to be able to see it, notice it...
Fu, damn it, tell yourself how much life there is! She will not let you lose heart, succumb to hypochondria, or plunge into scholastic debates about pictorial manner and form. Here we must not argue, we must write - and in such a way that it is similar! It looks like life. Here, at every step, right on the surface, living, touching optimistic motifs are scattered. As if especially for the artist, for the artist’s joy!
...I’m not ashamed to admit, I love everything that is brought to life by the sun, that is caressed by its warm light, and most of all I love people.”
“Arkady Aleksandrovich Plastov opened our Second Congress. And today he is not among us,” said Geliy Korzhev from the rostrum of the Third Congress of Artists of the Russian Federation. “Approaching Prislonikha in the mournful days of Plastov’s death, I suddenly realized that everything that surrounds me - and fields, and a light birch forest, and the Russian people we met along the way - not just nature and not only people, but the content of the painting of a great artist who had just left us, revived before my eyes.”
Plastov’s work is the clearest example of truly vital modern art, when problems of form, problems of traditions seem to cease to exist, when creativity flows freely and uncontrollably, when a master creates as directly as life itself creates, when a work of art seems to grow out of life, revealing it to us, making us newly sighted, newly receptive to truth and beauty.
In one of his letters, the master says: “I have not painted a single picture without checking a thousand times what I am going to write, that it is the truth, and only the truth, and it cannot be otherwise.”
Naturally, a serious and deep conviction in the correctness of the chosen path in art could not but require from the artist a certain structure throughout his life. His hayfields and harvests, his threshing floor with bread, his flocks, shepherds, countless portraits of peasants glorify the work that filled his whole life, which he knew not from the outside, without separating himself in his unassuming life from that peasant world that is so convincing and powerfully recreated on his canvases.
Convinced and consistently for many decades, he lives not “side by side”, not side by side, but inside this world, following the desire of his heart and understanding of the role of the artist, sacrificing all the temptations of the capital’s amenities for the sake of the truth of life, which was the basis, meaning and purpose of his work . Hence the conviction and passionate poetic authenticity of everything that came from his brush, hence the dozens of sketches and hundreds of studies for each of his works, hundreds of steps leading him from the truth of the fact, the truth of the accidental, to the lofty truth of poetic generalization, to the truth - the hymn of life .
Following Goya, he could write on his canvases: “I saw it.”
Plastov's whole life is a feat. He managed to fulfill his promise in full - “to create an epic of peasant life.”
And today, reading his wise words: “We will unearth in ourselves all that goodness that often only sleeps at the bottom of our hearts, we will put into battle all the courage of which our souls are capable, all the audacity of our thoughts, all the passion of desires to see, know and to love more and more, more and more ardently our reality and our contemporary,” one would like to exclaim:
“Yes, truly Plastov saw and loved!”
Artist Arkady Plastov - People's Artist of the USSR, laureate of the USSR State Prize, Lenin Prize and State Prize named after I.E. Repin, author of thematic and historical paintings, illustrator, portrait painter and landscape painter. He is called one of the brightest and most original masters.
Arkady Aleksandrovich Plastov was born in the village of Prislonikha, Simbirsk province, on January 31, 1893, in the family of the rural hereditary icon painter Alexander Grigorievich Plastov. Arkady was the sixth child in the family.
Self-portrait
Necessaryso that a person feels the enduring, incredible beauty of the world every hour, every minute. And when he understands this amazingness, the thunderousness of existence, then he will be enough for everything: for feats in work and for the defense of the Fatherland, for love for children, for all of humanity. This is what painting is for...
Arkady Plastov.
The parents of the future artist dreamed that their son would become a priest, and after Arkady graduated from the third grade of a rural school, he was sent to the Simbirsk Theological School. And five years later, in 1908, Plastov entered the Simbirsk Theological Seminary.
It so happened that in the spring of 1908 Arkady met the workers of the artel of icon painters who came to renovate the church in Prislonikhe. The artist’s father supervised the work of the artel. And besides, Alexander Grigorievich Plastov was a church elder and psalm-reader. The architect who built the church in Prislonikhe was the grandfather of the future great artist Grigory Gavrilovich Plastov.
When they started setting up scaffolding, the artist writes in his autobiography, rubbing paints, boiling drying oil on the steep bank of the river, I myself was not myself and walked, enchanted, around the visiting miracle workers.
Winter holiday (Nikola)
His father taught Arkady how to grind paints and began teaching him the basics of painting. The artist later recalled:
...planted prophets and archangels with wings surrounded me. As if enchanted, I watched with all my eyes as some handsome giant, winged, in a mantle the color of fire, was born among the pink clouds. To be only a painter and nothing else!” - I whispered then with lips dry from excitement.
In the fall of 1908, the father of the future artist suddenly died. Arkady is amazed by this death and his grief simply knows no bounds. He returns to the seminary, but studies without any desire.
It’s hard to remember,” but studying at the religious school lasted five long years. In the seminary “a harsh, boring regime reigned, isolation from the outside world” and “prayer on command twenty times a day, unbridled cruelty of elders towards younger ones.
To brighten up his stay at the seminary, Arkady reads a lot and draws portraits of his classmates. It so happened that these “portraits” were seen by Vishnyakov, a teacher of philosophy, psychology, logic and French, who decided to take the talented teenager under his wing and began studying the theory of painting with Arkady. From Vishnyakov, Arkady learned about the existence of different trends in painting, about architecture and architectural styles, and was amazed by the magnificent architecture of Paris and Rome, which he saw in books.
Soon, the seminary introduced a drawing lesson as an auxiliary discipline. Drawing lessons were taught by the aspiring artist D.I. Arkhangelsky, who soon became the mentor of Arkady Plastov. Paintings by Vasnetsov, Surikov, Repin and Nesterov simply charmed Arkady:
I began to paint heroes, brownies in stables, goblins, praying horses on empty country roads, reapers in sultry fields, old men in chapans, wretched villages covered with snow...
And the more the young man learned about world painting and became acquainted with the work of Russian artists, the stronger was his desire to become a painter.
Seminary professor Vishnyakov introduced the young artist into the circles of the Simbirsk nobility and soon enough found a trustee for Arkady, who agreed to pay for the young artist’s education in Moscow. Moreover, the Simbirsk government agreed to pay the talented young man a stipend of 25 rubles per month.
However, Arkady gave almost all of this scholarship to his mother, who lived in Prislonikha with three young children.
Warm spring day
Four years later, in 1912, Plastov went to Moscow with the decision to become a painter. Subsequently, he describes his first meeting with the old capital as follows:
I’m not myself, I’m wandering around Moscow as if in a dream. The Kremlin, Red Square, cathedrals, then the Tretyakov Gallery. Is it possible to describe these supernatural experiences? This is a bliss that made me, a strong-as-life 19-year-old guy, gasp, as if I were carrying a three-story house on my shoulders. Can you express in words the oaths that were given before these mysterious and powerful creatures of geniuses?
Ardent spring
However, Plastov, who did not have any systematic training, was not accepted into the MUVZhZ and he entered the workshop of I.I. as an apprentice. Mashkov, and then moved to the Stroganov School as a volunteer, where his mentors were S.S. Aleshin and F.F. Fedorkovsky.
In 1914, the young artist entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where he studied with the sculptor S.M. Volnukhin and painters A.M. Korina, A.M. Vasnetsova, A.E. Arkhipova, A.S. Stepanova, L.O. Pasternak.
And when the October Revolution happened, Plastov left Moscow and returned to his native Prislonikha, got a job as secretary of the village council, worked as a peasant, and painted in his free time.
Only eight years later, in 1925, Arkady Aleksandrovich returned to Moscow, where he draws agricultural posters, but does not forget his small homeland and often visits Prislonikha, takes an active part in organizing a collective farm in his native village, works as an ordinary collective farmer for two years, only for the winter leaves for Moscow with a certificate stating that “collective farmer A.A. Plastov is released for the winter to work in the waste fishery according to his specialty.”
In 1931, a tragedy occurred - a fire destroyed 59 courtyards in Prislonikha, including Plastov’s house - all the artist’s works were lost in the fire. Only the artist's vegetable garden and cow survived.
From that moment on, Plastov completely abandoned peasant farming and devoted all his time to painting. It was during that period that Arkady Aleksandrovich came up with a rule: do not write anything without checking it several times on location. The artist, with great care, writes sketches of all parts and details of the future painting, as a result of which the sketch of each painting is “overgrown” with a huge number of working sketches, studies, and sketches.
To paint the painting “Bathing the Horses” (the painting was commissioned for the exhibition “XX Years of the Red Army and the Navy”), the artist was sent to a military unit that was stationed in the Caucasian foothills.
Bathing horses
In his autobiography, Plastov describes the process of working on the painting “Bathing the Horses”:
Nature was so abundant and inexhaustible that sometimes, and quite often, I became perplexed: when should I stop and where should I stop? The very opposite was equally captivating, and as soon as I paused in gathering the sketch army, my heart immediately began to ache - a little, positively a little. And the waste of sketches was enormous. Good in itself, but being transferred to the picture, he suddenly lost all his positive qualities, or rather, he could not stand the trimming before he went into the picture - there was too little left of him, and a whole heel of them were needed for one place , or even more.
In 1935, Arkady Aleksandrovich showed his paintings “Sheep Shearing”, “In the Haymaking”, “Collective Farm Stable” in Moscow. The public accepts the paintings very well and Plastov becomes a regular participant in all major art exhibitions.
And two years later, the painting “Collective Farm Holiday”, shown at the exhibition “Industry of Socialism”, brought the author both success and all-Union fame.
Collective Farm Holiday (Harvest Festival)
The bright, colorful canvas shows the life of a Soviet village in the thirties.
Here is what the artist himself wrote about the artistic concept of this painting:
Noise , crowd, hubbub, . I did not try to sacrifice individual components of the composition to any particular moment. On the contrary, I wanted everything to be confused with each other to the point of confusion and to be funny even after a long examination. I wanted to give every detail that truthfulness and amusingness that is always present in nature. I wanted the viewer to look around in confusion - where to sit and who to clink glasses with... in the process of work I had to make about two hundred sketches.
This painting, “propaganda for happiness,” is a group portrait of the Russian peasantry:
Life has become better, life has become more fun!”, a red red banner unfurled over the festive feast of the collective farm holiday. At the top of the picture, above the collective farm feast and the banner “Life is more fun,” towered a portrait of leader Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. After the death of I.V. Stalin in 1953, during the period of “debunking” his cult of personality (XX Congress of the Communist Party), Arkady Aleksandrovich Plastov was asked to remove the portrait of leader Stalin from the collective farm painting “Harvest Festival,” which was acquired by the State Russian Museum (SRM) for its collection. Plastov said: “No. You so stubbornly forced me, him (Stalin), to be placed there, now let him stay there forever.
Just before the start of the Great Patriotic War, Plastov painted several large compositional watercolors, including the autobiographical painting “Elections of the Poor Peasants’ Committee.”
Election of the Poor People's Committee
In 1941, mobilization into the Red Army began and only about 20 people would return to their native village of Prislonikha from the fronts of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). Everyone from whom the artist painted portraits in his native village in the 30s would die defending your Fatherland. At the exhibition in the Russian Museum, black and white photographic portraits of Arkady Plastov’s dead fellow villagers were presented; these are the faces of people who amaze viewers with the strength of their character: Ivan Modonov, Andrei Trifonovich Ryabov, Mikhail Sergeevich Yanov, Fyodor Sergeevich Tonshin, Ivan Sergeevich Tonshin, Petrukha Grishin, Stepan Platonovich Shcheglov, Stepan Izosimov (Bylinin), Watchman Sergei Varlamov, Pyotr Grigorievich Chernyaev, Ivan Gundorov, hunter Yakov Gundorov, Vasily Yashogin, old man Gerasim Teryokhin, blacksmith Vasily Lotin, and other portraits of fellow villagers.
During the war years, the artist painted a whole series of paintings that differed from all his previous works in their enormous drama. Here you can remember “The Nazis have come”, “One against the tank”, “Defense of the homeland”.
The fascist flew by
And the canvas “The Fascist Flew” became one of the most tragic and powerful works of art written during the war and about the war. Here is what O. Sopotsinsky wrote about the painting:
War appears here in its terrible guise. The meaninglessness of a tragically cut short life is especially impressive against the backdrop of peaceful nature, in a quiet corner where there is no hint of war. Plastov's painting is imbued with deep humanistic content. It contains a curse on war.
The painting “The Fascist Flew Over” is remarkable in terms of painting. The artist seems to adjust the viewer’s perception to a certain mood, depicting faded red autumn grass, yellow birch trees fluttering in the wind, and a gloomy sky covered in gray clouds. This colorful chord helps to express aching pain, a feeling of irreparable loss.
In 1943, Major Plastov of the quartermaster service was sent to Stalingrad, cleared of fascists. The artist was deeply struck by the size and depth of the human grief he saw in those places and suddenly, for the first time, he painted a naked female body in the paintings “Tractor Drivers” and “Saturday.” Life must win and crush death - this is the innermost intention of these paintings.
Tractor drivers
And the painting “Tractor Drivers” hung in the artist’s studio until his death. Plastov called them “Shining bathers, creating a real holiday in the workshop”:
They shine to me from the wall with the joy and heat of the field and their pure bodies. It’s scary to even think now that they too would have left me, and I would have been left with a miserable pile of papers.
And then the long-awaited victory came.
The war is over, over with the victory of the great Soviet people over the monstrous forces of evil, death and destruction, unprecedented in the entire history of mankind. What kind of art, we artists, writes Plastov in his autobiography, must now cultivate for our people: it seems to me - the art of joy... Whatever it is - glorification of the immortal exploits of the victors or pictures of peaceful labor; the past immeasurable grief of the people or the peaceful nature of our Motherland - all the same, everything must be filled with the mighty breath of sincerity, truth and optimism. This mood determined the content of my new painting “Haymaking”... When I was painting this painting, I kept thinking: well, now rejoice, brother, rejoice at every leaf - death is over, life has begun.
The joyful emerald green of meadow grasses, a laughing sunny day, mowers working with pleasure and enthusiasm, the sparkling colors of the sun's rays and the colors of nature - the whole world rejoices and welcomes the long-awaited peace that has come.
The artist wrote:
...indescribably beautiful sun, emerald and silver foliage, beautiful birch trees, cuckoos cuckooing, birds whistling and the aromas of herbs and flowers - all this was in abundance.
The artist paints two paintings at the same time: “Haymaking” and “Harvest”. If “Haymaking” is a bright joy, then “Harvest” tells about the difficult life in the post-war Soviet village: the work of a peasant is not easy.
Walking through a rye field, the artist saw a scene of a peasant lunch, when the strong work with unprecedented stubbornness, and the old and young are released for lunch:
The motive was very consistent with my view of certain things. Before me appeared that stubborn, unbending Rus', which in any situation finds a way out and always solves any problem posed by history.
In 1946, Plastov painted one of his most lyrical paintings, “The First Snow.”
First snow
In 1947 – “They’re going to the polls”, two years later – “Collective Farm Talk”, two years later – “Tractor Drivers’ Dinner”.
Tractor Drivers Dinner
Seven years later, this painting (“The Tractor Drivers’ Dinner”) will be shown at an exhibition in London, and the President of the Royal Academy of Arts, Charles Wheeler, seeing the painting, will say:
How much such art gives... Realism... You know, I somehow now understood especially clearly why you, Russians, were able to survive the war and win. Whoever can work so enthusiastically, oh, is not easy to overcome! Yes, you know a lot about work.
In 1953-1954, Plastov painted the magnificent paintings “Youth” and “Spring”.
“Spring” is perhaps one of the artist’s best works. After the painting was exhibited at the Tretyakov Gallery, visitors began to call this painting “Northern Venus.”
Here is what I. Emelyanova wrote about “Spring”:
The realist artist Plastov chooses a plot where nudity is natural: he depicts a young woman in the open dressing room of a “smoky” village bathhouse, heating “black”. Unexpectedly bold and at the same time exquisitely beautiful is the juxtaposition of the pink-pearl tones of the young woman’s tender naked body and light brown reddish hair with the gray log walls darkened by time, the bathhouse door blackened with soot and the warm tone of golden straw on the floor of the dressing room. The artist’s skill is also manifested in conveying the materiality of the things depicted: cold heavy water in a bucket, a brightly polished copper basin, etc.
In the sixties, the artist created a number of paintings dedicated to the Russian woman and the happiness of motherhood: “Sunshine”, “From the Past”, “Mother”.
The last painting (“Mother”) is filled with some special warmth, the peace of a peaceful existence. The figures of the mother and children are moved to the very edge of the picture. The shallow space is limited by the wall of the hut. As always, for Plastov, color plays a huge, decisive role in creating the image and emotional mood of the picture. Against the background of bright, cinnabar-red pillows, the figure of a mother in a white blouse, a soft pink face and the golden head of a girl approaching the cradle especially stand out. Despite the emphasized brightness and apparent diversity at first glance, everything in the picture is harmonized, everything serves one purpose - creating a mood of joyful elation (M. Sitina)
The artist worked until his last day.
A spectacle when the earth, plowed open by a ploughshare, suddenly reveals hitherto hidden mother-of-pearl fruits, and the amazingly colored figures of women collecting them with rough hands into buckets, and the gentle glow of the September sun, the golden-brown velvet of furrows, the kind of watercolor transparency of the green of drooping sunflowers at the edges vegetable gardens, and much, much more, everything was solemn and beautiful, somehow radiantly holy, touching almost to the point of tears, and everything was so significant, everything was so filled with sweet life, that it’s just a terrible pity that you’re still collecting sketches and can’t begin You don’t have the courage to take on the painting—what if you can’t handle it! You can see infinitely much here [in your native Prislonikha], and your heart will involuntarily shudder, and suddenly you can’t handle it, and you involuntarily confirm to yourself, for the umpteenth time, that there is nothing better than being a painter.
Arkady Aleksandrovich Plastov died on May 12, 1972 in his native village of Prislonikha.
Paintings by artist Arkady Aleksandrovich Plastov
Name unknown
From past
Death of a tree
Arch of Titus
When there is peace on earth
Potato harvest
cloud shadows
City girl
Spring on Mirskaya Mountain
Grandson draws
Kolkhoz current
The Germans are coming (Sunflowers)
Going to the polls
August of the collective farmer
Shepherd Vitaly
Sun
Arkady Plastov is a famous Russian artist who depicts in his paintings the life and everyday life of ordinary Russian people. His work “The Tractor Drivers’ Dinner” was also written on this topic. The year the picture was born was 1951.
In the foreground of the picture is a girl in a light dress and a scarf of the same color. She pours milk for two tractor drivers: a man and a boy. Most likely, this is her father and brother. Having worked in the fields all day, tractor drivers are looking forward to their modest dinner in the form of a loaf of bread and milk. The people who became the heroes of this picture are simple peasants. They work hard, spending time in the fields from morning to evening, as can be seen from the dark tan of their skin. To the right of them, the artist depicted a tractor that has not yet cooled down after a long day of work.
And behind the heroes, in the background of the picture, there is a huge field plowed by tractor drivers, greeting the warm summer sunset. A plowed field is the result of the work of two tractor drivers, as is the future good harvest.
The family in the picture seems truly happy. They are accustomed to hard work and are not afraid of it, so even the feeling of fatigue seems pleasant. Arkady Plastov is a unique artist who has the ability to show all the beauty of the work of an ordinary person.
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