60th
Anniversary of the Victory Day
"Road to
Victory"
The
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
April, 28
until June,
13, 2005
The exhibition dedicated to
the 60th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic
war is
based on the material of the exposition that is absolutely documentary.
Paintings, drawings, engravings, posters and sculptures created by the
artists
in the besieged differences pocess one common feature, they are
authentic.
The
exposition begins with the motifs of besieged Leningrad as an image of
dying
culture and even civilization. Episodes of redemption of artistic
values,
evacuation of museums and sheltering of the monuments have been
repeatedly told
and are well known. Works by Vasily Kuchumov and Vera Milyutina remind
of those
historical chapters. The art of the besieged Leningrad stood against
the
vandalism in the most tragic circumstances and became the symbol of the
forthcoming victory. Lithographs by Valentin Kurdov and Alexei
Pakhomov,
engravings by Solomon Yudovin and Pavel Shillingovsky, drawings by Ivan
Atapov,
Nikolai Dormidontov, Georgy Fitingof, paintings by Yaroslav Nikolayev
and other
artists that were shown on the Big Land at the 1942-43 exhibition
shocked the
viewers by their true and courageous story.
Masters
who stayed in Leningrad worked
differently. Vyacheslav Pakulin painted plein air, and his muffled
figure
sitting at the easel on Nevsky Prospect became a part of the war
newsreel.
Alexander Rusakov and Georgy Traugot transferred their impressions to
the
canvas at home, in a studio. Figurative scale of many works is built on
a
discord, on sharp consonance of hard colours. The increased colour
intensity of
the Siege painting was later explained by the peculiarities of
perception
characteristic for a hungry man, by strained vision. However, the
artist
associated colour with life and fought for the live and bright
world-image with
all his might.
War
landscape
took a special place both in the oeuvre of separate authors and in the
war
history of art. First of all, it allowed to express the view of life of
a
deeply stunned person who had lost the boundaries of the usual life.
Familiar
look of the city, the street, and the by-road acquired new features,
new
meaning. Lyric landscape soon mastered the language of the heroic
metaphor and
philosophic generalization and got the features of a big
style.
Valentin
Kurdov wrote about the difficulties of the work during the war: “I was
not
afraid of danger. However, I was ashamed to walk in the lines with a
pencil and
draw. I felt awkward with people. Two principles were talking inside of
me. The
first one was saying that it was the artist’s duty, and the other was
whispering
that it was necessary to fight and not to draw there. I was assured
that to see
was not enough for the artist. “To see” meant to draw for the artist.
If I
have not
drawn I have not seen”.
The
portrait
gallery united different unfamiliar people who shared the common grief
in the
“hour of courage”. There are men, women and children among them. Warriors-artillerists, pilots, signalmen,
reconnoitres depicted by the same soldiers Vladimir Vetrogonsky,
Mikhail
Kopeikin, Nikolay Kulikov, Pyotr Lugansky, Ivan Kharkevich. Adolescents
awarded
with the For the Defence of Leningrad medal of whom poet Yury Voronin
wrote:
“We were given medals in 1943 and passports only in 1945”.
P. Konchalovsky created one of the
best
representational war portraits, portrait of the pilot A.Yumashev as
early
as in
1941. The next year Vera Mukhina casts the portrait of a colonel B.
Yusupov in
bronze. The same year A. Deineka exhibited the famous Defence of
Sevastopol
composition, in which the motif of self-sacrifice and heroic deed
became
obvious.
When
Alexander Deineka drew his Burnt-Out Village, he did not think that he
had
created the plastic formula of war. This particular canvas absorbed
pain,
despair,
anger, fury, all these feelings that make a person to assault and
fight until the end. The life in war Moscow can be seen in less known
works
(Launching of an Aerostat by Leonid Khoroshkevich, Antiaircrafters in
the
Petrovsky Park by Alexander Schipitsyn). Air Raid Alaem (in the Metro)
by Ely
Belyutin is rather surprising for the figurative language of the 1940s.
It reserved
frightened faces of people changed either by cry or by gas masks. One
of the
few by means of painting the artist tried to depict fear, its monstrous
power,
that makes people loose their minds when panic strikes.
Road
to the
West became a characteristic feature of the end of the war, the
important image
in the art of the time. It led everyone to different horizons. Nevsky
Prospect
was its part. On the 9th of July the warriors who had
returned from
Germany marched through it. This celebration depicted by Vyacheslav
Pakulin
became the last subject of his war cycle.
In
summer
1943 the first firework was shot celebrating the liberation of Orel and
Belgrad. Since then Moscow salutes accompanied all the
war victories. Leningrad deserved
the right for its own
salute when it finally
threw off the stronghold on the January 27, 1944. Each
salute meant
the forthcoming end of the war. The last impresssions at the exhibition
images are of
festive salutes in still darkened Moscow (Michail Bobyshov), at
Leningrad raid Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva reminds us of this
anticipation. There were
still
months of hard fights till the victorious May. Artists-warriors
depicted in
their camp notebooks evidences of oncoming to the Eastern Europe and
liberation
of its big and small cities. These drawings remained mainly a
documentary
material, their authors had no time to think of big easel works. They
had to
finish the war.
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