of those far-off years as the beginnings of the art of socialist realism. One of the most interesting of the surviving examples created in fulfilment of the plan for monumental propaganda was the symbolic-allegorical memorial plaque
To Those Who Fell in the Fight for Peace and Brotherhood of Peoples, done in 1918 by S. Konionkov and set up at the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow (it is now in the Russian Museum in Leningrad).
Easel paintings also contributed to the unique character of the art of the early twenties. The work of the artists of the older generation reflected the thoughts and feelings of those who welcomed the Socialist Revolution with deep satisfaction. Some of them expressed their ideas in images that were somewhat naively symbolic, but not devoid of charm. Kustodiyev’s canvas, The Bolshevik (1920), can be considered the most memorable of such works. A different tendency is displayed in A.Rylov’s remarkable landscape The Blue Expanses (1918). This landscape, executed in a consistently realistic tradition, is notable for the outstanding energy of the brushwork and its atmosphere of elation. Petrov-Vodkin expressed his own conception of the birth of the new in the canvas 1918 in Petrograd in which he depicted a young woman as a Madonna. In the fact that he turned to the traditions of Russian icons one clearly sees the artist’s desire to emphasize the lofty, poetic nature of the simple Russian woman.
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