Arkady Alexandrovich Plastov

“Evening meal of the tractor driver”, painting 1951, Tretyakov Gallery. Postage stamp (1973)

Arkady Plastov ( Russian Аркадий Александрович Пластов ., Scientific transliteration Arkady Aleksandrovich Plastov * 19 ^{. Jul} / 31 January  1893 ^{. Greg} in Prislonicha, Ulyanovsk Oblast ; † 12. May 1972 ) was a Russian - Soviet painter of Socialist Realism .

Life

Plastov was born into a family of icon painters in the village of Prislonicha in the Russian governorate of Simbirsk . From 1914 he attended the sculpture department of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. In 1917 he returned to his home village, where he began to paint. From 1935 he went public with his genre painting . In accordance with the strict political-artistic doctrine of the time, which only allowed the style of Socialist Realism in all genres of art, Plastov's pictures heroized life in the Soviet Union, the ubiquitous structure of socialism . His work is characterized by the knowledge of life in the villages of the Soviet Union , the love for the rural population, powerful, lively images and craftsmanship.

As a reaction to the events that moved the population of the Soviet Union at that time, Plastow shows in his pictures how the rural population and their lives are changing in the course of collectivization . Plastow's characters from his home village serve as models for the protagonists in his works. With the beginning of the Second World War , new motifs entered Plastow's work. It depicts the sufferings of the Soviet people, the work of women, the elderly and children on the kolkhoz fields during the war. After the war, motifs from everyday socialist life found their way into Plastow's work.

A special feature at the factory Plastov is the painting "Spring" (Russian Весна ) from the year 1954. It shows a young nude woman and a girl with personal hygiene in front of a wooden hut - probably one of Banja (the Russian equivalent of the Finnish sauna ). It is snowing and in the background of the picture remains of snow can be seen on the pastures. “Spring” is considered to be a turning point in Soviet art history. For the first time since the introduction of Socialist Realism, a work of art in the official area of ​​the Soviet Union shows a completely apolitical everyday scene. As is typical of previous statecraft, the physique of the work's protagonists is neither idealized, nor can a political message, such as the heroization of forced agricultural collectivization in Plastow's earlier works, be read from what is depicted. The artistic turn that the picture, created one year after Stalin's death, reflects the political détente in the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev (the so-called thaw , Russian Оттепель ).

Plastow also worked as a book illustrator, a. a. on editions of works by Pushkin , Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov, but also on children's books. He received the award "Honored Artist of the RSFSR " (Russian Заслуженный деятель искусств РСФСР ) and has been a member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR since 1947.

Literature / sources

• Christ, Thomas: Socialist Realism. Reflections on Socialist Realism in the Soviet Era. Basel: Wiese Verlag 1999.
• Борисовская, Н. А. / Гордон, Е. С. (Ed.): Русские художники от А до Я. Москва: Слово 2000. ISBN 5850502319 . P. 138. (Russian)

Web links

Commons : Arkady Plastov  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Representative selection of images (paintings and photos) (Russian)