SOVIET PAINTINGS OF WORLD WAR II

Soviet artists kept themselves busy right from the start of the war: they drew portraits of the bravest servicemen and did their best with a view to depict the heaviest fighting on the defense lines and the plight of civilians. Many events of that war can still be seen the way they saw them. They would not shy away from the horrible truth of the war action. But they laid emphasis on the bravery of the Soviets, their patriotism and their hatred of the enemy. Their paintings made people all the more confident that Nazi Germany would sooner or later suffer a defeat.
They produced what art critics used to call battle scenes, i.e. highly patriotic paintings, largely pictures of combat engagements. But the message of the battle scenes of the World War II years was different from that of the pre-war paintings. The new generation of painters focused on the fighter rather than fighting.
Barely had a development taken place, they were ready to depict it, and what they created may by rights be described as a chronicle of World War II. Sketches and quickly-made drawings of what they saw at the front provided material for large-scale paintings.
Even now, fifty years later, the war of 1941-1945 leaves not a single artist indifferent and many artists still paint scenes of that war. Although their mentality is different from that of their fathers and grandfathers and although they have found new ways to depict things, the younger generation of artists carry on the tradition.

SOVIET PAINTINGS OF WORLD WAR II

"THE PEOPLE HAVE RISEN TO FIGHT THIS HOLY WAR."

An unprecedented number of Nazi German and allied troops broke into the Soviet Union in the small hours of Sunday, June 22, 1941.
It took poet Vasily Lebedev-Kumach two days, June 22 and June 23, to write his Holy War poem. The poem made the lyrics of a new song presented, a mere three days later, to departing troops by the song and dance company of the Red Army. Artists, as well as the troops, met its call for national unity, moral integrity and heroism.
An army parade was, in keeping with a tradition, held on Red Square on November 7, 1941. The parading troops left Moscow for the western front.

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K.Yuon, The Red Square parade of November 7, 1941.
Moscow, 1942

Hitler attached special importance to the seizure of Moscow. He expected the seizure of the Soviet capital to signal a surrender of the Soviet Union.
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L.Kartashov, Moscow, 1941. 1983

 
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G.Nissky, Off to defend Moscow.
Leningradskoye Chaussee, 1942.

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I.Sokolov, Westward bound, from the "Moscow, 1942" series. 1943

Thousands of people joined the guerrillas. As many as 41 guerrilla detachments and 377 subversion teams were active in the environs of Moscow in 1941. As many as 11 territories and areas - a sizable part of occupied land - were controlled by the guerrillas in 1942.
 
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V.Chekanyuk, The guerrillas, a detail of the painting. 1975

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V.Gavrilov, For the motherland. 1959

Both blue- and white-collar workers were trying to do their best for the earliest victory. They tried to outdo one another in an effort to help the Red Army. The productivity of labor at industrial enterprises rose, from April, 1942, to April, 1944, by 40 percent.

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A.Kozlov, Socialist emulation at a defense plant, 1942. 1942.

AT THE BATTLEFIELD
 
Soviet painters produced highly emotional and meaningful pictures of battle scenes. They show a deep understanding of the course of developments, the mood of fighting men and wartime documents.

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P.Krivonogov, The defenders of the Brest Fortress. 1951

 
It took the enemy nearly a month (June 22 to July 20) to seize the Brest Fortress. The defending troops pinned down no less than an infantry division supported by tanks, artillery and aviation. Most of them were killed, but a few men found a way to join the guerrillas, although some, mostly heavily wounded men, were taken prisoner.
 

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A.Deineka, The defense of Sebastopol. 1942

 
It took the Germans 250 days (November, 1941 to July, 1942) to seize the Black Sea city of Sebastopol. The troops defending that city thwarted the enemy plans at the southern stretch of the frontline.
  

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P.Krivonogov, At the Kursk Bend. 1949

The Kursk battle began on July 5, 1943, to end on August 23 of the same year, with Nazi Germany losing as many as 30 divisions and the Soviets winning the strategic initiative. The Germans took up defensive positions all along their Soviet frontline.

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P.Krivonogov, The Korsun-Shevchenkovskoye Bloodbath. 1945

 
The Korsun-Shevchenkovskaya operation was launched in the winter of 1944. The Soviets destroyed ten German divisions.
PLACES OF WAR ACTION
 
The wartime routine, the truthful depiction of the developments stunned those who first saw paintings and drawings of the war years. Art is powerful inasmuch as it enters life. Blowups of the best wartime paintings were placed on the thoroughfares of besieged Leningrad. One of them, The Enemy Has Been Here!, by V.Serov, was mounted near the Kazan cathedral at Leningrad's Nevsky Avenue.
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V.Serov, The enemy has been here! 1942

The Nazis broke the world record of war crimes. They razed to the ground thousands upon thousands of villages and cities. The soldiers and officers of the German Wermacht were told to kill "any Soviet they would meet, be it an old man or a woman, a boy or a girl." They would have to kill everyone, they were told, if they wanted "to stay alive, secure a good future for their families and have generations to come glorify their names."
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A.Plastov, The Germans are coming. July, 1941. 1941

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A.Plastov, A Nazi Plane has flown by. 1942

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S.Gerasimov, The mother of a guerrilla fighter. 1943

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M.Samsonov, The Little Nurse. 1953

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T.Gaponenko, The occupants have been driven away, 1943-1946

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A.Krasnov, For the motherland. 1958

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Ya.Nikolayev, Leningrad.
The winter of 1941-1942.
Lining up for bread, 1942.

More than 640,000 people succumbed to famine and frost in the 900 days and nights of the Nazi blockade (winter of 1941 to spring of 1944.) Thousands of evacuees died of the aftereffects of the famine.
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Kukryniksy, The nazis are leaving Novgorod

Soviet troops regained control of the city of Novgorod in Jnauary, 1944. The Nazi occupants had killed 201,000 civilians and prisoners-of-war in that city, damaged, if not destroyed, all its industrial enterprises and cultural centers, as well as many monuments of old Russian architecture and nearly all the houses. When Soviet troops entered Novgorod, they there were 30 people to be found in that city.

VICTORY

The Act of the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces was signed in Karlhorst, near Berlin, on May 8, 1945.
The Soviet Union had for a long time been pining up for the victory. There were new developments, new faces and new moods to paint. The post-war paintings spelt out a new message: the happiness of being alive and hope for a happy future.

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B.Ioganson, The fireworks of victory.
A sketch. 1945

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P.Krivonogov, The victory. 1948

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A.Yeryomin, The 9th of May. 1980

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V.Sidorov, The VE-day. 1945

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V.Kiselyov, He's come back. 1947

A TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF THE FALLEN

The war claimed more than 25 million human lives. It left millions of widows, orphans and cripples. It left an abyss of misery. Half of those who marched off to the frontlines never came back. How many talented people is this country short of, now?!
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F.Bogorodsky, Glory to the fallen heroes. 1945

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P.Semyonov, The father of eight slain soldiers Nikanor Fyodorovich Sidorov. 1975

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A.Yakovlev, A tribute to the memory of the fallen artists.

More time will pass by but the generations to come will be sure to remember the abnegation of the war years. What the Soviet people did in the war years remains an inexhaustible source of inspiration in the eyes of artists.
      Materials used to set up the exhibition: Ye. Zaitsev, The Art Chronicle Of The Great Patriotic War, Iskusstvo Publishing House, 1986. An Illustrated History Of Moscow, v. 2 Mysl Publishing House.

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