The originators of Russian Soviet representative art were people whose artistic methods had been formed before 1917, artists brought up on the traditions of progressive Russian art, who were able to appreciate the importance of the Great October Socialist Revolution for their country. It took a rather long time for the social upheaval to be properly understood by them, to be deeply impressed on their minds and reflected in their work. But all the more bright and striking were the new qualities in the work of Russian artists who were linked firmly with Russian pre-revolutionary art. Such diverse painters as M. Nesterov, V.Baksheyev, A. Arkhipov, S.Maliutin, N. Kasatkin, K.Yuon, P. Kuznetsov, P. Konchalovsky, I. Mashkov, A. Lentulov, K. Petrov-Vodkin, and A. Shevchenko, the sculptors N. Andreyev, L. Sherwood, A. Matveyev, I.Shadr and many others passed through a stage of spiritual upsurge, eagerly absorbing the ideas, the needs and the mood of the time.
Russian Soviet art of the twenties and early thirties presented a most complicated, interesting and at times contradictory picture of many converging trends, variously interpreted traditions and clashing styles... There were a number of creative associations of artists at this time. The best known were the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia and The Easel Painters’ Society. Despite the great difference in the creative orientation of these associations, the efforts of all the artists were aimed at portraying faithfully the labour and everyday life of the Soviet people. Many artists not only tackled themes utterly new to art but also advanced audacious artistic solutions, created new aesthetics. The finest of the works by the members of the Easel Painters’ Society, in particular the pictures of A.Deyneka, extolled the beauty and joy of free labour. At the same time attempts were made to convey by means of art the position of man in the world of modem technology. The works of the twenties and thirties anticipated much of what was later to become the content, the spirit of the whole of the Soviet multinational art. One of the most important achievements in painting was the true-to-life portrayal of the man of the new socialist society, the portrayal of his spiritual world. A firm place in the history of Soviet art is occupied by portraits of people typical of the early years of socialist construction in our country, among them The Delegate by G.Riazhsky.
In this period, too, a number of works dedicated to Lenin were executed which have now become classics, among them N. Andreyev’s Leniniana sculptures, paintings by I. Brodsky and A. Gerasimov and first outstanding monuments to Lenin.
The twenties marked the emergence of Soviet thematic painting — historico-revolutionary, battle or genre painting. It was in the twenties that M. Grekov, the doyen of Soviet battle painting, created his best canvases, and A.Deyneka produced his world-famous Defence of Petrograd. Landscape, which had always been of great significance in Russian representative art, occupied a prominent place. Vigour, optimism, a sense of the joy of life—this is the main message of the lyrical landscapes of N.Krymov, V.Baksheyev, K.Yuon, I.Grabar, A.Kuprin, A.Rylov and P. Konchalovsky. In them one can see plastic skill, high technical standards and constructive design — whether of architectural setting or “pure” nature. Optimism and the admiration of the beauty of the material world also imbue many still-life pieces of the period and this is especially noticeable in the still lifes by I. Mashkov.
To the same period belong such classical works of studio sculpture as A. Matveyev’s group The October Revolution, and the composition The Cobblestone Is the Weapon of the Proletariat by I.Shadr. There appeared the first important works by Vera Mukhina, and the remarkable sculptures by A. Golubkina, the most interesting among which is the portrait of Leo Tolstoy.
It was in the twenties that the wood engravings by V.Favorsky and A.Kravchenko gained world fame. Their traditions are continued today throughout Soviet graphic art, in both easel work and book illustrations. The eminent Russian artists who were earlier associated primarily with the Mir Iskusstva (World of Art) group — B.Kustodiyev, D.Kardovsky, M.Dobuzhinsky, A.Benois, V. Konashevich and others — took a most active part in the designing and illustration of mass editions of Russian and foreign classics, and also of Soviet literature.
By the beginning of the thirties the attitude of Soviet artists toward the world around them and their role in the life of their society had been clearly determined. All progressive artists were united by a realization of their common cause with the entire people building a socialist state. During this period the creative unions (of artists, architects, etc.) were formed, while separate groups broke up. This historical stage was recognized officially in the decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks), of April 23, 1932, “On the Rebuilding of Literary and Artistic Organizations”. The theoretical theses on socialist realism as a creative method uniting artists with a diversity of styles on common ideological and creative positions, which were formulated during that period, were of great importance.
The period from 1932 to 1941 (to the beginning of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945) is celebrated as a time when paintings dealing with themes from revolutionary history and contemporary life predominated. Artists tried to make a deep social analysis of the events of the past, and to bring out the characteristic features of contemporary life in generalized images. The passion for a “documentary” approach to the phenomena of life, to the portrayal of only separate facts gave way to efforts to produce works in which philosophical generalization prevailed. At this time were created the Interrogation of Communists and At an Old Urals Mill by B. Ioganson, Siberian Partisans Take the Oath by S. Gerasimov, Death of a Commissar and 1919. Alarm by Petrov-Vodkin. The thirties saw the appearance of the impressive works of A. Deyneka, S. Chuikov, A. Samokhvalov, Yu. Pimenov, G.Nissky, N.Romadin and many others whose creative methods were developed during the Soviet period. The art of A. Deyneka who was able to catch and convey the pulse beat of his time is especially characteristic of this generation. He succeeded in achieving an expressive plasticity all his own, and his works have an atmosphere of optimism about them (Mother, Future Pilots, The Donbas. Dinner Hour).
Those were the years when M. Nesterov, P. Korin, I.Grabar and P. Konchalovsky, all artists who had attained fame even before the Revolution, produced their best works, among which we should, first of all, mention a gallery of portraits of Soviet intelligentsia, people of active creative thought. The traditions of their art can easily be traced in Russian painting.
The artists of the older generation, whose life and work are connected with their native towns or villages, made an immense contribution to the development of the thematic picture. They turned their attention chiefly to the life of the peasantry, of which they had an excellent knowledge. Among the artists in the autonomous republics of the RSFSR Ts.Sampilov of Buryatia showed himself to be an original master of genre painting.
The upsurge in the life of society found powerful expression in V. Mukhina’s world-famous sculpture Worker and Collective Farm Girl. This sculptural group was a perfect example of the art of the period, a qualitatively new creation of monumental plastic art. In her dynamic image Mukhina embodied the energy, the will, the purposefulness of the people, she expressed the fervent mood of the first two triumphant decades of our state. The great popularity of monumental sculpture in those years was in no small measure due to the work of N.Tomsky, M.Manizer, S.Merkurov and other masters. A distinct style of realistic sculptural portraiture was evolved. Many portraits done in the thirties, and above all those by S. Lebedeva and V. Mukhina, are distinguished for their mature skill, finesse, expressiveness of modelling, and psychological profundity.
