10 Soviet artists you need to know

The best Soviet artists went far beyond the propaganda art and created real masterpieces.

An artist who has passed through all Soviet art, from the OST group (a Society of Easel Artists who depicted the new Soviet realities using the methods of the German Expressionists) to figurative art with strong elements of the avant-garde.

The work "In the metro" on the one hand reflects a passion for futuristic industrial themes, on the other-it is made in an absolutely avant-garde spirit.

From the avant – garde with radical works and the legendary association "Jack of Diamonds" to almost a return to the style of the old masters with the preservation of physiology-Mashkov's work is incredibly diverse and fascinating.

He is the creator of an absurd and ironic version of the Soviet still life.

One of the largest and most famous Soviet masters. Curiously, as an artist, he was very different – in the 1920s and 1930s, they were two "different" people and artists – but at the same time he created his own recognizable style.

His work does not fit into the generally accepted canvas of social realism, because each of his large-scale works was an absolutely new avant-garde solution. And moving in the circle of the Soviet higher nomenclature, he managed to remain himself.

A complex and controversial figure, and a very ironic artist. He said to himself that he worked "from Ilyich to Ilyich" - from Vladimir Ilyich Lenin to Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev. And his work is like a litmus paper – it was he who was the aesthetic canon of every era.

A complex and controversial figure, and a very ironic artist. He said to himself that he worked "from Ilyich to Ilyich" - from Vladimir Ilyich Lenin to Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev. And his work is like a litmus paper – it was he who was the aesthetic canon of every era.

He, in particular, being a painter of Joseph Stalin, caught his craving for heavy minimalism, and in the time of Nikita Khrushchev revealed another canon-almost Soviet impressionism.

One of the brightest women artists of the Soviet era, standing in the same row with Alexander Deineka, perhaps the best personified the militaristic theme, the images of various types of troops of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army.

Even the tank on her canvases became a full-fledged hero.

A subtle and underrated artist, in the 1930s he worked as a curator of the department of the latest trends in Russian painting in the Tretyakov Gallery.

And it is he who owns one of the main emblematic works of this period, "Political Employment on a battleship" from the collection of the State Museum and Exhibition Center "ROSIZO".

A paradoxical figure and an artist of the next generation. He is one of those who seriously looked into the art of the old masters, but at the same time created their own innovative interpretations of generally accepted subjects close to surrealism.

Including even his widely published work "Letter from the Front".

He has very interesting small forms – for example, still lifes, in which, as in a more free genre, magical realism and surrealism are reflected to the greatest extent.

It has gone through several stages of flourishing. He started out with rather brutal battle scenes, but became an iconic figure for artists of the 1960s generation.

He managed to create his own absolutely indescribable and recognizable style in all elements, but remain a completely simple, accessible person.

There is a famous story when young authors from art workshops gathered to go for a beer, and the master caught up with them with a shout:

Probably the main representative of the "harsh style" of the early 1960s, still working today.

He changed his style several times, from multi-layered almost monochrome painting to his own version of primitivism with masterful color and composition.

The author of two epoch-making paintings and the most famous artist to the mass audience.

Her "Morning" and "Bread" were printed in every school textbook, as well as replicated in magazines and on posters.

The canvas "Bread" became the embodiment of the Stalinist theme of fertility, and "Morning" - already the beginning of the Khrushchev thaw.

At the same time, she always remained a very strong and versatile artist, changing styles, developing her own version of primitivism in the spirit of Henri Rousseau.