Graphics in the art gallery JAG. Masters of Soviet easel graphics Famous works of graphics

"Blind Artists" In this game it is interesting to be not only a participant, but also a spectator. The host asks the children if any of them can draw. Having received a positive answer, he calls 2 volunteers. In front of each participant stands an easel or a piece of drawing paper. Participants

Armless Artists In the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the world was literally swept by a wave of armless artists. Many of them created magnificent works with the help of lips, feet. One of them - a woman, Aimé Rapin from Geneva - was known for her ease in drawing and

We have been planning to make a rating of the most expensive works on paper by artists of the orbit of Russian art for a long time. The best motive for us was a new record of Russian graphics - 2.098 million pounds for a drawing by Kazimir Malevich on June 2

When publishing our ratings, we love to put all sorts of clauses around us to prevent possible questions. So, the first principle: only original graphics. Second: we use the results of open auctions for the works of artists included in the orbit of Russian art, according to the site database (perhaps gallery sales were at higher prices). Third, it would certainly be tempting to put $3.7 million for Arshile Gorky's Housatonic in first place. As you know, he himself tried in every possible way to be considered a Russian artist, while not shying away from hoaxes, he took a pseudonym in honor of Maxim Gorky, etc .; in 2009, Gorka's works were shown by the Russian Museum and the Tretyakov Gallery at the exhibition "American Artists from the Russian Empire", we included him in the AI ​​auction results database, but starting the rating of Russian graphics with him is unfair on formal grounds. Fourth: one sheet - one result. In this rating, we selected only works consisting of one sheet; a formal approach would force us to take into account three more items, each of which was sold in a single lot: 122 original ink drawings for Konstantin Somov’s “Book of the Marquise”, two folders with 58 drawings and gouaches for “The Brothers Karamazov” by F. M. Dostoevsky by Boris Grigoriev and part of Yakov Peremen's collection. Fifth: one author - one work. If we formally took the top 10 by price (excluding the results of Gorka and prefabricated lots), then there would be five sheets by Kandinsky, three by Chagall, and one each by Malevich and Serebryakova. Boring. Sixth: we analyze the period from 2001 to the present day. Seventh: the price rating was compiled in dollars, the results in other currencies were converted into dollars at the exchange rate on the day of trading. Eighth: all results are given taking into account the commission of the seller.

The drawing by Kazimir Malevich “Head of a Peasant”, which is a preparatory sketch for the lost painting “Peasant Funeral” of 1911, quite expectedly became the top lot of the Russian Sotheby’s auction on June 2, 2014 in London. Malevich’s works are extremely rare on the art market, The Peasant’s Head is the first work put up for auction since the sale of the Suprematist Composition for $60 million at Sotheby’s in 2008, and one of the last significant things of the artist in private collections. This study was one of 70 works exhibited by the artist in Berlin in 1927, and then left in Germany in order to save them from the ban and artificial oblivion that would inevitably await them in Russia. At the Sotheby's auction, the work came from some powerful German private collection of the Russian avant-garde. Almost all the lots of this collection were sold with an excess of estimates, but Malevich's drawing was simply out of competition. For him, they gave three times more than the estimate - 2.098 million pounds. This is by far the most expensive graphic work of a Russian artist.

In the list of the most expensive graphic works by Wassily Kandinsky, there are as many as 18 original drawings worth more than a million dollars. His watercolors in their abstract message are in no way inferior to paintings. Recall that it is from the graphic work of Kandinsky - "The First Abstract Watercolor" of 1910 - that it is customary to count the history of modern abstract art. As the legend goes, one day Kandinsky, sitting in the semi-darkness of his workshop in Munich and looking at his figurative work, could not distinguish anything on it except color spots and shapes. And then he realized that he must abandon objectivity and try to capture the "movements of the soul" through color. The result was a work devoid of any connection with the outside world - "The First Abstract Watercolor" (Paris, Center Georges Pompidou).

Canvases by Kandinsky are rare on the market and are very expensive, but the graphics will perfectly fit into any collection and will look worthy in it. Circulation graphics can be afforded for several thousand dollars. But for an original drawing, which, for example, is a sketch for a famous painting, you will have to pay many times more. The most expensive watercolor to date, "Untitled" from 1922, was sold during the 2008 art boom for $2.9 million.

Marc Chagall was an unusually productive artist for his time. It is today that Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons are assisted by an army of assistants, and Mark Zakharovich single-handedly created thousands of original graphic works over the 97 years of his life, not to mention circulation works. Our database of Chagall auction results includes more than 2,000 original works on paper. This artist is steadily rising in price, and the investment prospects for buying his works are obvious - the main thing is that the authenticity of the work be confirmed by the Chagall Committee. Otherwise, the work may almost be burned (this is precisely what the Chagall Committee threatens the owner, who recently sent a painting to Paris for examination, which turned out to be a fake). So the choice should be made only in favor of unconditionally genuine graphics. Its price can reach 2.16 million dollars - this is how much they paid in May 2013 for the drawing "Horsemen" (paper on cardboard, gouache, pastel, colored pencils).

Pastel "Reclining Nude" is not only the most expensive graphic work of Zinaida Serebryakova, but also her most expensive work in general. The theme of the naked female body was one of the main ones in the artist's work. Serebryakova's nudes evolved from images of bathers and Russian beauties in a bath in the Russian period of creativity to lying nudes more in the spirit of European art in the Parisian period. Looking at the beautiful, sensual, idealized nudes of Serebryakova, it is difficult to imagine how tragic the fate of the artist was - her husband died of typhus, leaving her with four children in her arms; I had to live hand to mouth and, in the end, emigrate to Paris (as it turned out later, forever), leaving the children in Russia (later they managed to transport only two to France, they had to leave the other two for more than 30 years).

Zinaida Serebryakova cultivated perfect, eternal, classical beauty in her works. Pastel in some ways even better conveys the lightness and airiness of her female images, in which there is almost always something from the artist herself and her children (daughter Katya was one of her favorite models).

A fairly large pastel "Reclining Nude" was bought during the art boom in June 2008 for 1.07 million pounds (2.11 million dollars). No other work since then has managed to break this record. Interestingly, in the top 10 auction sales of Zinaida Serebryakova, only nudes, and three works are just pastels.

At the Sotheby's London auction on November 27, 2012, devoted to painting and graphics by Russian artists, the top lot was not a painting, but a pencil drawing on paper - "Portrait of Vsevolod Meyerhold" by Yuri Annenkov. Eight participants argued for work in the hall and on the phones. As a result, the drawing, estimated at 30-50 thousand pounds, cost the new owner several tens of times more expensive than the estimate. The result of 1.05 million pounds (1.68 million dollars) overnight made "Portrait of Vsevolod Meyerhold" the author's most expensive graphics and took third place in the list of the highest auction prices for Annenkov's work in general.

Why was interest in the portrait so strong? Annenkov is a brilliant portrait painter who left images of the best figures of the era - poets, writers, directors. In addition, he was very talented in graphics: his manner combined the techniques of classical drawing with avant-garde elements of cubism, futurism, expressionism .. He succeeded as a theater and film artist, as a book illustrator. The attention of the public was attracted, of course, by the personality of the model in the portrait - the famous director Vsevolod Meyerhold. And to top it all off, this drawing comes from the collection of the composer Boris Tyomkin, a native of Kremenchug, who emigrated to the United States and became a famous American composer, a four-time Oscar winner for musical work in films.

One of the main artists of the World of Art association, Lev (Leon) Bakst, of course, should have been on our list of the most commercially successful graphic artists. His refined theatrical works - costume designs for the best dancers of the era, scenery for productions - give us today an idea of ​​what a luxurious spectacle Diaghilev's Russian Seasons was.

Bakst's most expensive graphic work, The Yellow Sultana, was created in the year that Diaghilev's ballet first went on tour in the United States. By that time, Bakst was already a well-known artist, the recognizable style of his theatrical work has become a brand, his influence is palpable in fashion, interior design and jewelry. The sensual nude "Yellow Sultana", which grew out of his theatrical sketches, caused a fierce battle of two phones at Christie's auction on May 28, 2012. As a result, they reached the figure of 937,250 pounds ( 1 467 810 dollars) taking into account the commission despite the fact that the estimate was 350-450 thousand pounds.

The world of noble nests fading into oblivion, foggy estate parks and graceful young ladies walking along the alleys appears in the works of Viktor Elpidiforovich Borisov-Musatov. Some call his style "an elegy in painting", he is characterized by dreaminess, quiet melancholy, sadness for a bygone era. For Borisov-Musatov, noble estates were the world of the present, but there is something otherworldly in his reflections of this world, these parks, verandas and ponds seem to have dreamed of the artist. He seemed to have a presentiment that soon this world would not be and he himself would not be (a serious illness claimed the artist at the age of 35).

Oil painting Victor Borisov-Musatov preferred pastels and watercolors, they gave him the necessary lightness of brushstroke and haze. The appearance at the Russian Sotheby's auction in 2006 of his pastels "The Last Day" was an event, because the main works of Borisov-Musatov are in museums, and only about a dozen works have got to the open auction for all the time. Pastel "The Last Day" comes from the collection of V. Napravnik, the son of the Russian conductor and composer Eduard Napravnik. This pastel was depicted on the "Portrait of Maria Georgievna Napravnik" by Zinaida Serebryakova, now stored in the Chuvash Art Museum. In the monograph "Borisov-Musatov" (1916), N. N. Wrangel mentions "The Last Day" in the list of the artist's works. So the undoubtedly genuine thing quite expectedly reached a record price for the artist of 702,400 pounds, or 1,314,760 dollars.

Alexander Deineka was a brilliant graphic artist; at the initial stages of his career, graphics attracted him even more than painting, first of all, with its propaganda potential. The artist worked a lot as a book and magazine illustrator, created posters. Later, this "magazine and poster work" tired him, he began to work more and more in painting, in monumental art, but the acquired skills as a draftsman turned out to be very useful - for example, when creating preparatory sketches for paintings. "Girl tying a ribbon on her head" - a sketch for the painting "Bather" (1951, State Tretyakov Gallery collection). This most expensive work by Deineka to date belongs to the late period of creativity, when the artist's style from the avant-garde searches of the 1920s and 30s had already strongly evolved towards social realism. But Deineka was also sincere in socialist realism. The power and beauty of a healthy human body is one of the favorite topics in Deineka's work. "Girl tying a ribbon" refers us to his nude, similar to Greek goddesses - Soviet Venuses, who find happiness in work and sports. This is a drawing of the textbook Deineka, and therefore it is not surprising that it was sold for a record 27,500,000 rubles ($1,012,450) at the Sovkom auction.

Boris Dmitrievich Grigoriev emigrated from Russia in 1919. Abroad, he became one of the most famous Russian artists, but at the same time he was forgotten at home for many decades, and his first exhibitions in the USSR took place only in the late 1980s. But today he is one of the most sought-after and highly regarded authors on the Russian art market, his works, both paintings and graphic works, are sold for hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars. The artist was extremely hardworking, he believed that he could do any topic, any order.

Probably the most famous are his cycles "Rasey" and "Faces of Russia" - very close in spirit and differing only in that the first was created before emigration, and the second already in Paris. In these cycles, we are presented with a gallery of types ("faces") of the Russian peasantry - old men, women, children look sullenly at the viewer, they attract the eye and at the same time repel it. Grigoriev was by no means inclined to idealize or embellish those whom he painted, on the contrary, sometimes he brings the images to the grotesque. One of the “faces”, executed in gouache and watercolor on paper, became the most expensive graphic work of Boris Grigoriev: in November 2009, at Sotheby’s, they paid $ 986,500 for it.

And finally, the tenth author in our list of the most expensive works of Russian graphics is Konstantin Somov. The son of the curator of the Hermitage collections and a musician, a love for art and everything beautiful was instilled from childhood, after studying at the Academy of Arts with Repin, Somov soon found himself in the World of Art society, which promoted the cult of beauty close to him. Especially this craving for decorativeness and "beautifulness" manifested itself in his numerous drawings based on the images of the gallant era, interest in which was observed in the work of other World of Art artists (Lanser, Benois). "Somov" awnings and gallant cavaliers on secret dates, scenes of secular receptions and masquerades with harlequins and ladies in wigs refer us to the aesthetics of baroque and rococo.

Prices for Somov's works on the art market began to grow at a phenomenal and not always understandable pace since 2006, some of his paintings exceeded the estimate by 5 or even 13 times. His painting goes for millions of pounds. As for the graphics, here Somov's best result so far is 620,727 dollars - this is just one of the drawings of the "gallant" series "Masquerade".

April 22, 2010 at Sotheby's in New York in a single lot number 349 were sold 86 works - paintings and drawings - almost two dozen authors. This sale, by the way, confuses the auction statistics of those artists whose works were included in this lot. Yes, the collection is very valuable in itself, it has a long, complicated and tragic history, and, on the one hand, it's good that the collection fell into the same hands. But, on the other hand, if someday the owner decides to sell individual works, then for most authors there is simply no price level. After the deafening “artillery preparation” that preceded the sale of the collection, he could have appeared, but no, and when reselling it, it would work out to a huge disadvantage.

Graphics is a type of fine art.

The term "graphics" comes from the Greek word "grapho" - I write. The main visual means of graphics are line, stroke, spot and dot. The main color is black, although other colors can be used as an auxiliary.

M. Vrubel. Illustration for the tragedy by A.S. Pushkin "Mozart and Salieri"
The background of paper in graphics plays the role of space, which is important for graphic drawing.
Graphics, despite the more stingy language compared to painting, is distinguished by great possibilities for depicting and conveying emotions. One has only to remember the drawings of the young artist Nadia Rusheva. They fascinate with lightness, accuracy and depth of images. You can read about this artist.

N. Rusheva "Pushkin and Pushchin"
Many famous artists used the possibilities of graphics: Bilibin, Brueghel, Van Gogh, Watteau, Vrubel, Goya, Quarengga, Leonardo da Vinci, Alphonse Mucha, Rembrandt, Titian, Somov, Hokusai and others.

F. Tolstoy "Under the game of Cupid" Tinted paper, pencil, sepia, whitewash

The genres of graphics are basically the same as the genres of painting. But here the portrait genre and landscape are more common, to a lesser extent - historical, everyday and other genres.

M. Demidov "Portrait of S. Rachmaninoff"

V. Favorsky "Mikhail Kutuzov" (1945). From the series "Great Russian generals"

V. Favorsky "Pushkin Lyceum student" (1935)

The landscape in a graphic drawing “does not play” with colors, but it surprises with the subtlety of feelings and encourages the imagination.

S. Nikireev "Dandelions"

Graphic works of world famous artists

Graphic art is diverse and attracts artists with the ability to convey feelings and thoughts with just a pencil or felt-tip pen. This possibility captivates not only the graphic artist creating the work of art, but also the viewer.

A. Durer "Self-portrait" (1500). Alte Pinakothek (Munich)
Major European artist Albrecht Dürer(1471-1528), left a great legacy of drawings - about a thousand: landscapes, portraits, sketches of people, animals and plants. This artist was most fully revealed precisely in the graphic drawing, because. in paintings, he was not always free from the arbitrariness of customers.
Dürer constantly practiced in layout, generalization, construction of space. His animalistic and botanical drawings are distinguished by high craftsmanship and observation. Most of his drawings are carefully crafted. In his engravings and paintings, he repeatedly repeated the motifs of graphic works.

A. Dürer "Praying Hands" (circa 1508)

Katsushika Hokusai "Self Portrait"
Katsushika Hokusai(1760-1849) - the great Japanese artist ukiyo-e (images of the changing world), illustrator, engraver. He is the author of many graphic drawings and engravings.

Katsushika Hokusai "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" (1823-1831)

Vladimir Andreevich Favorsky(1886-1964) - Russian and Soviet graphic artist, master of portraiture, woodcuts and book graphics, art critic, stage designer, muralist, teacher and theorist of fine arts, professor.

Known for his cycles of graphics and engravings, as well as illustrations for the works of A.S. Pushkin, to "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", Marshak's translations, Prishvin's and Tolstoy's stories, etc.
In his plastic vision, Favorsky is close to the Byzantine mosaicists, to Michelangelo, Vrubel.

V. Favorsky. Illustration for "Little Tragedies" by A.S. Pushkin
Leonardo da Vinci(1452-1519). "Universal Man": Italian artist and scientist, inventor, writer, musician, one of the largest representatives of the art of the High Renaissance.

Alleged self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci
The artist constantly recorded the results of his observations of the world around him in sketches, sketches made in various techniques (Italian pencil, silver pencil, sanguine, pen, etc.), achieved sharpness in the transfer of facial expressions, physical features and movements of the human body, bringing everything into perfection. accordance with the spiritual atmosphere of his composition.

Leonardo da Vinci. Sketch of the head of a young girl (the head of an Angel for the painting "Madonna in the Rocks")

Leonardo da Vinci "The Vitruvian Man" (1490). Gallery of the Academy of Venice (Italy)
This drawing was created to determine the proportions of the (male) human body, as described in the treatise of the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius "On Architecture".
Vitruvian Man- the figure of a naked man in two superimposed positions: with arms and legs spread apart, inscribed in a circle; with spread arms and legs brought together, inscribed in a square. The figure and its explanations are sometimes called "canonical proportions".
The drawing is made in pen, ink and watercolor with a metal pencil, the dimensions of the drawing are 34.3 × 24.5 centimeters.
The drawing is both a scientific work and a work of art, it exemplifies Leonardo's interest in proportions.

Caricature

A specific graphic genre is caricature (satirical drawing, cartoon).
Caricature is one of the oldest types of drawing. It reflects the problems of society and from early times served as a certain method of self-assertion over the offender. So they mocked the enemies, so the people mocked their rulers or enslavers. Usually it was a drawing with gross distortions of the features of the offenders or added horns, a tail, etc. The origin of the caricature in Russia took place in the 17th century. from folk prints.
A caricature in a satirical or humorous form and currently depicts any social, socio-political, everyday phenomena, real faces or characteristic types of people.
A modern caricature is a satirical or humorous drawing, an iso-anecdote. According to the subject matter, political, social, everyday, etc. cartoons are distinguished. The genre of caricature is developing all over the world.

Capitalism through the eyes of Hörluf Bidstrup, Danish cartoonist ((1912-1988)
Famous domestic cartoonists: Cheremnykh, Rotov, Semyonov, Brodat, Denis, Kukryniksy, Efimov.

Kukryniksy (from left to right: Porfiry Krylov, Mikhail Kupriyanov, Nikolai Sokolov)

Kukryniksy caricature
Caricature(fr. charge) - a kind of caricature; a satirical or good-natured-humorous image (usually a portrait), in which the external resemblance is observed, but the most characteristic features of the model are highlighted. The cartoons can depict people, animals and various objects. Unlike caricatures, cartoons do not ridicule the shortcomings of the hero, they are good-natured, make people smile, but not laugh at the characters depicted.

Caricature of Maxim Galkin
Another type of caricature is the grotesque.
Grotesque(French grotesque, literally - “bizarre”, “comical” - a type of artistic activity that comically or tragicomically generalizes and sharpens a life story through a combination of real and fantastic. The grotesque is also inherent in other types of art: literature, painting, music. In fact, the grotesque is inherent in a certain artistic thinking, it is a kind of gift. Aristophanes, F. Rabelais, E. T. A. Hoffmann, N. V. Gogol, M. Twain, F. Kafka, M. A. Bulgakov, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote in the grotesque genre.But in this article we consider only the grotesque in the visual arts.

Lyrical grotesque

The art of graphics is diverse. It includes political poster and newspaper and magazine drawing, book illustration and caricature, industrial applied graphics and film advertising. A large section of it is easel graphics - drawings and engravings, executed independently, outside a special practical purpose. It is named so by analogy with easel painting, the works of which the artist creates on a special machine - an easel; the word "graphics" comes from the Greek grapho (grafo) - I write, I draw. Of course, easel graphics are not completely devoid of purpose. Taking up a brush, pencil or engraver's chisel, the artist always has a specific goal. He strives to convey to people his thoughts and feelings, his understanding of life, to affirm the worthy in it and punish the negative, to show the amazing, hidden beauty of the world seen only by him. But at the same time, the author of an easel drawing or engraving does not always pursue an agitational or denunciatory goal with his work, as a master of posters and caricatures, does not carry out advertising or utilitarian tasks, as artists of posters and industrial graphics, his images, finally, are not connected with literary heroes and situations, as in the works of illustrators.

In the same way, masters of easel painting and sculpture, unlike muralists and decorators, create independent works that are not associated with any artistic ensemble - a building, a room, a square, a park, etc.

Easel graphics have much in common with easel painting. Although their leading artistic means are different, both these types of art have great and in many ways similar possibilities for depicting nature, people, and the entire wealth of the material world. Various aspects of human life, which has always been the focus of attention in art, suggested the addition of its various genres in it - portrait, landscape, everyday or battle composition, still life, etc. These genres exist both in Soviet painting and in Soviet graphics. The world of the human soul is shown with particular depth in numerous works of easel painting, sculpture and graphics. For this psychology, for a multifaceted and great conversation with the viewer about a person, we especially appreciate easel art.

Having much in common with painting, easel graphics, at the same time, according to the method of execution - mainly on paper, are close to all other types of graphics in terms of drawing and engraving techniques. She, like the whole family of graphic arts, is distinguished by the comparative speed of execution of things, as well as good opportunities for their reproduction. Thanks to this, firstly, graphics have great data in order to be a topical art, quickly reacting to the events of public life, an art that lives in the rhythm of modernity. These possibilities inherent in the graphics, as we will see below, were more than once perfectly used by its masters. Secondly, since a graphic sheet is generally executed faster than a painting or sculpture (although no less spiritual strength, talent and skill are required from a graphic artist), it retains a special immediacy of communication with nature, the possibility of a live fixation of it. If we add to this that the technique of performing graphic works is very diverse, the ideological and aesthetic richness of this art form becomes obvious.

A lot of interesting things await the attentive viewer of graphic works. Not immediately, but gradually, the originality and beauty of each graphic technique is revealed to him - the silvery clarity of a graphite pencil drawing and the velvety blackness of an Italian pencil, the precise fluency of pen drawings in ink or ink, the tenderness of pastels and sanguine. We gradually learn to appreciate the rich range of gray-black tones available for drawing in charcoal, sauce, black watercolor or ink, the transparent lightness of colored watercolor and the heavier, material language of gouache. We admire the diverse and flexible language of woodcuts, the generalized and laconic forms of linocut, the expressiveness of light and shade and the depth of color in etching, the free, rich in shades of color, the softness of modeling, drawing with a lithographic pencil.

Often, artists also work with mixed media, combining in their works, for example, charcoal, chalk and some kind of pencil or watercolor and pastel, watercolor and gouache, etc.

Both in lithography and engraving techniques, the viewer sees the end result of the artist's work - a print or imprint, otherwise - an engraving. Many such prints can be obtained from one board or stone, and all of them are equally original works of art. This feature of the prints - their rather large circulation while maintaining all the artistic merits - is especially valuable to us.

More and more circles of Soviet people are now joining the art. They find in print the fullness of thoughts and aesthetic experiences that genuine great art delivers, and at the same time, print is not a distant museum unique that we see only occasionally, but a thing with which beauty enters our home, into everyday life.

Soviet easel graphics is a vast area of ​​our art, the as yet unwritten history of which includes wonderful pages of great artistic searches and accomplishments. It has its own brilliant traditions both in Russian art and in a number of other national schools of art. Almost all the major painters of the past were also great masters of drawing and watercolor. Watercolors by Alexander Ivanov and K. Bryullov, numerous drawings and watercolors by Repin, graphics by V. Serov and Vrubel are masterpieces of our art full of eternal charm. As a democratic art, carrying the images and thoughts of artists to the people, lithography appeared in Russia at the beginning of the 19th century. Kiprensky, Orlovsky, Venetsianov, later Perov, Shishkin, Vl. Makovsky, Levitan and other artists. In the forties of the 19th century, Shchedrovsky in the album "Here are Ours" shows the viewer trade, craft people, folk types. This was the first experience of creating color lithography in Russian art. The leading artists of the last century appreciate the art of engraving for its relatively greater accessibility to the people, because it brings their creations closer to the audience of the people's audience. The classic of Ukrainian poetry and the artist T. G. Shevchenko, who worked in etching, wrote in 1857: “Of all the fine arts, I now like engraving the most. And not without reason. society". Shishkin was also an enthusiast of etching. I. E. Repin repeatedly turned to various engraving techniques. The whole variety of genres - domestic, historical scenes, portrait and landscape - develops in lithography, etching and drawing of the last century.

In the graphics of the beginning of the 20th century, as in all art, there is a complex interweaving of sometimes opposite tendencies. The events of the revolution of 1905 capture magazine graphics with particular force, but they also find responses in easel things - etchings by S. Ivanov, in pastels by V. Serov, a shocked witness to the reprisals of tsarism against workers. In these works, as well as in the images of miners, working women, students by Kasatkin, in the drawings by S. Korovin depicting soldiers, in the sheets of Sergei Ivanov dedicated to the poor migrants, there is an interest in the working person characteristic of advanced Russian art and sympathy for his difficult and often tragic fate. But in the graphics of these decades there is also a tendency to move away from the complexities and contradictions of social reality. In some cases, this tendency imposes a kind of passive contemplation on the works of artists, in others it leads the artists in their work to palace halls and parks far away and alien to a wide audience. Almost the leading genre in pre-revolutionary graphics is the landscape. It employs such great masters as A. Ostroumova-Lebedeva, V. Falileev, K. Yuon, I. Nivinsky, I. Pavlov, E. Lansere and others. They subtly see the beauty of the many-sided nature, its various states, the poetry of architecture in its relationship with the landscape. This admiration for the beauty of the world is the main eternal content of their works, which excites us to this day. But sometimes a hint of contemplation is felt in their sheets.

In pre-revolutionary engraving, magazine and book illustration, more than in other forms of art, the influence of the World of Art society was felt, perhaps because many of its members were graphic artists of a high professional level. Of these artists, this society included Ostroumova-Lebedeva and Lansere. However, all the best aspects of their work were formed contrary to the aesthetic attitudes of the theorists of the "World of Art", who advocated "pure art" far from life. The paintings, watercolors and drawings of the main figures of the "World of Art" A. Benois, K. Somov and others resurrected the gallant and inanimate world of the court life of past eras, were a refined and learned game of history. Thus, in pre-revolutionary graphics, works are created that are saturated with all the drama of social contradictions, a mass of chamber lyrical landscapes appears and, at the same time, retrospectivism flourishes, that is, a departure from modernity, the aestheticism of the world of art.

In the first years after the revolution, the appearance of easel graphics changed little. These harsh years were the time of the militant loud-voiced art of the poster, agitational monumental sculpture, and the new art of decorating mass holidays. Against the background of the rapid development of these types of art, easel graphics at first look especially traditional. Basically, the same masters work here as in the pre-revolutionary years, and their work, which has already been largely determined, does not immediately and quickly undergo complex changes associated with the influences of the new reality. Landscape and portrait became the leading genres of easel graphics. Artists lovingly depict the ancient corners of cities, remarkable architectural monuments, the eternal beauty of nature, not subject to social storms. There is a lot of captivating craftsmanship in their works, calm admiration for the beauty of the world. But this closed little world of a retrospective landscape turned to the past seems to be protected by an invisible wall from the events taking place in the country.

Works of the domestic genre, of which few were created, depict the same quiet and modest life, untouched by any social upheavals, simple domestic work.

The graphics of these years are dominated by engravings and lithographs; drawing and watercolor are not common. Landscapes and portraits are often published in albums of engravings, and these are small-circulation and expensive editions for a few connoisseurs.

Intimacy distinguishes portrait works. Models of portrait painters are usually artists, writers, artists, that is, a rather narrow circle of people spiritually close to the author. Their inner world is revealed subtly and attentively, but not yet at the level of grand generalizations that will be available to Soviet art later.

And only in the portraits made by N. A. Andreev, in particular in his images of V. I. Lenin, the portrait genre in graphics immediately acquires new qualities, generalizing power, social sound. These drawings are rightfully included among the best achievements of Soviet art, they still delight us today and participate in our lives. But in the years of their creation, these sheets were, as it were, a brilliant exception, only confirming the rule - that is, the general chamber character of most portrait works. From Andreev's drawings, as if ahead of their time, we will begin our acquaintance with Soviet easel graphics.

For N. A. Andreev (1873 - 1932) - a famous sculptor, author of the Moscow monuments to Gogol, Ostrovsky, the Freedom Monument, drawing was not only a necessary preparatory stage of work, but also an independent area of ​​\u200b\u200bcreativity. In the early 1920s, he made a large number of graphic portraits - Dzerzhinsky, Lunacharsky, Gorky, Stanislavsky, artists of the Art Theater and others.

A man in all the integrity of his character - that's what interested Andreev the portrait painter. In his sheets, the inner world of the model is outlined clearly, confidently, in detail, but without halftones and richness of nuances. Getting acquainted with the portraits of Andreev, we kind of get the sum of very accurate, verified knowledge about the people depicted on them. Precisely, the clarity of this knowledge is a kind of pathos of Andreev's work, and the manner of performing portraits also obeys him.

Much of this manner comes from the artist's sculptural vision of the form. This is the emphasized plasticity of the drawing, the obligatory search for an expressive silhouette line, but also the rigidity of the color, the lack of a sense of air. But the main thing here was the positive that gave Andreev's sculptural talent - the ability to see the model as a whole, the main thing in the outline of the head, to see the specificity of the appearance, cleared of random lines and turns. This integrity of the silhouette, combined with the most detailed development of the face, especially the eyes, constitutes the artist's unique style. She was well served in the hands of Andreev by sanguine, pastel, colored pencils, as well as charcoal or an Italian pencil, with which the main volumes were outlined.

In the same manner, Andreev executed several portraits of V.I. Lenin, which are part of his famous Leniniana - a large cycle of sketches, drawings, sketches and sculptures, the creation of which was the main work of Andreev's life during the years of Soviet power. Andreev's portraits of Lenin are for us not only the work of a talented artist, but also the precious revelation of an eyewitness, a person who repeatedly observed Lenin at congresses and congresses and in his Kremlin office. A lot of cursory sketches were made by Andreev in the process of this work, but there are only three completed pictorial portraits; the artist perfectly understood the complexity and specifics of their tasks, with the seeming possible speed of execution.

In one of these portraits, a slight squint of Lenin's eyes, a barely perceptible smile breathed life into the image, creating an image full of human warmth. At the same time, a sense of the social significance of the image of the leader lives in the portrait, and therefore this sheet is so new in content for the art of graphic portrait of those years (ill. 1).

The theme of Lenin - the leader of the masses with even greater force and expression was developed by Andreev in the profile portrait of V. I. Lenin, often dated to the beginning of the 1920s. The impulse and energy of this inspired image, its sublime heroism wins hearts. At the same time, the understanding of the historical role of V. I. Lenin here is so mature that this work of Andreev seems to be far ahead of the scope of art of the early 1920s. With all the richness and achievements of the art of these years, we will not find in it such a sense of the scale of Lenin's deeds, the scope of Lenin's thought, such a historical understanding of his image. And it seems fair the recent assumption of the researcher of "Leniniana" L. Trifonova that the portrait, which became known only in the 1930s, was created not in the early 1920s, but later. Laconic language and inner content give this sheet a real monumentality. It is not for nothing that this portrait is now familiar to a wide audience not only from many reproductions: it is made in mosaic, it is painted in H:t panels, when decorating holidays. Enlarged to a huge size, the drawing does not lose anything in its laconic expressiveness,

G. S. Vereisky (born 1886) also worked in the field of portraiture from the first years of the formation of Soviet graphics. The moment of assessing the social significance of a person will take an important place later in his things, but the artist's path to this and especially the nature of his first works were different than those of Andreev. G. S. Vereisky received his first skills in art in a private studio in Kharkov, studied at the university, participated in a student revolutionary circle and the revolutionary events of 1905, in connection with this, a prison, and then several years of emigration - these are some moments of the artist's biography. From 1918, for a number of years, Vereisky worked in the department of engravings of the Hermitage. He came there already possessing significant information from the history of world art, while his long work in the Hermitage enriched him even more in this regard. Not a book, but a living knowledge of the masterpieces of world art left its mark on the artist's creative image; great culture, nobility, simplicity, behind which there is exactingness, distinguish his numerous works. Vereisky began with lithographic portraits, and although we now know him as an excellent draftsman and etcher, he did most of all in the field of lithography.

From the very beginning of his work, Vereisky was characterized by fidelity to nature, observation. Therefore, perhaps, the long path of this artist in art seems at first glance smooth and calm. In fact, he is marked by constant searches, improvement of skills,

Bereisky's first album "Russian Artists" was released in 1922. We see here a fully represented group of artists of the society "World of Art" from the founders to its second generation. Vereisky knows his models perfectly and accurately captures the spiritual mood, the character of each of the artists - the gloomy seriousness and uncomfortable loneliness of Benois, the joyless concentration of Somov, the prickly expression, the intensity of Mitrokhin's inner life, etc. From these sheets, as well as from Andreev's portraits, we We can learn a lot about the people depicted here, but in the portraits of Vereisky there is no moment of evaluating people, so to speak, from a distance, the characterization is given in a chamber, intimate-lyrical plane, and the question of the social significance of their activities has not yet been raised. In subsequent albums of 1927 - 1928, Vereisky already more accurately finds the natural and relaxed pose of the model, draws more confidently and freely. Successful portraits of artists Golovin, Zamirailr, architect Shchuko, critic Yaremich, Notgaft. Vereisky was well able to convey the inner culture, liveliness of mind, the charm of great education, inherent in the people depicted by him.

In the 1930s, Vereisky worked a lot on portraits of pilots, admiring their courage and courage, trying to emphasize these qualities in their description. And when, at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, he created portraits of the brave participants in the battles of Fisanovich, Meshchersky, Osipov and others, they looked like a continuation of the artist's story about the brave Soviet soldiers, begun by the works of the 1930s.

But the main achievement of Vereisky during this period and beyond was the portraits of cultural figures. With particular clarity, during the war years, the artist felt that the theme of his portraits was creativity, the ability, precious and inalienable from a person of art, to work with creative insight even in a moment of severe hardship. In these sheets, Vereisky's great technical skill seemed to be illuminated for the first time by deep emotional excitement, and his always correct and accurate portraits acquired a lively emotionality. The director of the Hermitage, the orientalist I. A. Orbeli and the poet N. Tikhonov, were drawn by him during the days of the siege of Leningrad; her hardships left their mark on the appearance of these people, but in spite of the conditions they work and their creative depth is conveyed tangibly and clearly. The same poetry of inspired searches is also in the portraits of the artist E. E. Lansere, the conductor E. A. Mravinsky, the painter T. N. Yablonskaya (ill. 2). Once again, cultural figures of various professions are presented here, but how their inner world has changed, their ardent devotion to art has been illuminated with a new meaning. The former intimacy of Vereisky's works disappears, and the question of the social role of art sounds in full force in his portraits of 1940-1950. The methods of his psychological writing did not become different, but only more accurate, but from the usual conscientious truthfulness of his characteristics, the contours of the great inner closeness of the people depicted by him, the closeness in the main thing - in understanding the meaning of his work, as if by themselves were indicated.

Saying the name of G. S. Vereisky, we often immediately recall the works of M. S. Rodionov (1885 - 1956) - an artist whose art was in many ways internally close to G. S. Vereisky. And the main areas of work - portrait and landscape (which Vereisky also did a lot), and the strict beauty of manner, and thoughtfulness in the study of nature were common to these artists. Performed by M. S. Rodionov in 1944 - 1946, also in the technique of lithography, a series of portraits of scientists and artists - Abrikosov, Baranov, Vesnin and others - lays in our graphics the same line of serious, devoid of external showiness, strong inner truthfulness of portrait art, which the works of G. S. Vereisky also outline.

The works of Vereisky and Rodionov took us far from the first post-revolutionary years. Returning to them, we must supplement the range of portrait works already familiar to us with the works of B. M. Kustodiev (1878 - 1927). A major painter, Kustodiev worked a lot in graphics. An interesting portrait of F. I. Chaliapin, executed by him in 1921 in watercolor and pencil. If in the first version of this portrait, the seal of everyday life, as it were, extinguishes the inner light in Chaliapin's face, then further on the artist creates a complex and at the same time convincing image; one senses in him talent, breadth, elegance, and some hidden thought (ill. 3).

The second widespread genre in the graphics of the 1920s was the landscape. One of its greatest masters was A.P. Ostroumova-Lebedeva (1871 - 1955). Her early awakened interest in art led her to the Stieglitz School of Technical Drawing, where she studied under the guidance of an excellent teacher and engraver V. V. Mate, a great master of reproduction tone engraving. The creative profile of Ostroumova was not immediately determined. Having moved to the Academy of Arts, she studied there with various teachers, and was subsequently accepted as a student of I. E. Repin. This was an event that left its mark on all the further activities of the artist. "In the depths, at the heart of our art, Repinsky's cheerful, fresh and eternally living realism is the cornerstone of everyone," Ostroumova later wrote. Gradually, the artist's interest in engraving, and in particular in color woodcuts, is becoming more and more determined. She studied fine examples of this art in various collections during her trip to Paris. Of all the engraving techniques, woodcuts in Russia by the beginning of the 20th century had the least independent artistic value and existed mainly as a way of reproducing paintings. Colored woodcuts were completely forgotten. Therefore, when Ostroumova-Lebedeva submitted a number of her engravings to the Academy for the competition, including a colored woodcut from the painting by the Flemish artist Rubens "Perseus and Andromeda", the jury initially even rejected this sheet, mistaking it for a watercolor.

Throughout her long creative life, Ostroumova-Lebedeva carried her commitment to woodcuts and watercolors. About the first of them, the artist herself writes with love and poetry:

“I appreciate in this art the incredible conciseness and brevity of presentation, its laconicism and, due to this, its extreme sharpness and expressiveness. I appreciate the merciless certainty and clarity of its lines in wood engraving ... The technique itself does not allow for amendments and therefore there is no room for doubts and hesitations in wood engraving ...

And how beautiful is the running of the tool on hard wood! The board is so polished that it seems like velvet, and on this shiny golden surface a sharp chisel runs swiftly, and the whole work of the artist is to keep him within the boundaries of his will!

A wonderful moment when, after hard and slow work associated with incessant intense attention - do not make a mistake - you roll paint with a roller, and all the lines you left on the board begin to shine with black paint, and suddenly a drawing appears on the board.

I always regretted that after such a brilliant flowering of engraving, which was in the 16th and 17th centuries, this art began to wither, became a service, a craft! And I always dreamed of giving him freedom!"

Even in the pre-revolutionary years, Ostroumova created many wonderful works - views of St. Petersburg and its environs, landscapes painted during travels in Italy, Spain, France,

Holland. Invariable accuracy and fidelity to nature are already combined in them with a great gift of generalization. The artist St. Petersburg draws especially penetratingly and poetically. The city rises in its sheets majestic, full of harmony and beauty. The harmony of the composition, linear clarity, purity of color distinguish her works.

After the revolution, which caused the artist, according to her memoirs, a surge of creative energy and a joyful upsurge, Ostroumova still works most of all in the genre of architectural landscape. In her sheets, as before, the city is not busy streets seething with an active crowd, but above all the realm of beautiful architecture, its enduring beauty.

At the same time, new features are revealed to the artist in the appearance of the city, and the restrained emotionality of her paintings is sometimes replaced by a more stormy, impulsive feeling. Within the framework of a single landscape genre, Ostroumova creates very diverse and always internally integral things. Recall, for example, her 1918 watercolor "Petrograd. Field of Mars." This sheet with the rapid movement of clouds in the high sky, the expanse of the square and the slender, forward-looking figure of the monument to Suvorov is full of hidden tension and pathos. The attitude of the artist here is courageous, cheerful, the rhythms of life heard by her are clear, like a march, and, like a march, musical. Ostroumova paints with light strokes, generalized in form, using detail with wise moderation. It would seem that this sheet is drawn quite simply, but skill and great artistic taste stand behind its simplicity. It is also manifested in the nobility of the modest and beautiful palette of this thing.

The woodcut "Smolny" is permeated with unusual for Ostroumova stormy emotionality. The breath of the revolution, as it were, blows over this landscape, and the building of calm classical forms seems to live again, as in the boil of October 1917. The clash of black and white seems to double the power of each of these colors. The columns of the Propylaea, which mark the entrance to Smolny, turn menacingly black, the earth shines with bright whiteness, strokes swirl in rapid movement, outlining the road to the building in the depths, a tree bends under a gusty wind, and oblique falling lines slightly outline the sky over Smolny. An image is created full of impulse, movement, romantic excitement. Moreover, how beautiful and picturesque this black woodcut is, how great are its purely decorative merits.

The cycle of small woodcuts depicting Pavlovsk is also distinguished by decorativeness. Decorativeness was seen by the artist in the outlines of a bunch of trees, the silhouette of a statue or a lattice, observed in life and therefore convincing.

A classic example of the great skill of Ostroumova-Lebedeva is the landscape "Summer Garden in Hoarfrost" (1929; ill. 4).

The tranquility of a deserted garden embraces you as you look at this engraving; you seem to find yourself on its alley - this is how the composition of the sheet is deployed by the author. The stitch of footprints in the deep snow and the rhythm of the snow-covered black grate outline the movement into the depths of the sheet, and it is gently rounded there by the light silhouette of a bridge. Movement and distant figures of people enliven the whole sheet, but do not break its snowy charm. It is in the combination of amazing peace, silence with a sense of the life of a big city, flowing somewhere very close, that the special charm of this engraving is born. The poetry of winter, its hazy colors, frosty air blowing over the crowns of trees in brittle pink hoarfrost, is beautifully conveyed by the artist here.

During the Great Patriotic War, Ostroumova-Lebedeva, who was already over seventy years old, did not leave Leningrad. She shared with all the inhabitants the incredible hardships of the blockade and did not stop working to the best of her ability. The pages of her memoirs relating to these years are not only a chronicle of hardships and spiritual anxieties, but also evidence of an eternal creative burning, a tireless desire to work. Such love for art, great devotion to it are still an example for young artists, and the achievements of Ostroumova-Lebedeva in engraving and, in particular, the revival of her artistic color woodcuts, remain as an unshakable contribution of a great master to our art.

The works of V. D. Falileev (1879 - 1948) are in many ways close to the works of Ostroumova-Lebedeva in terms of attitude and stylistics. He was also a master of black and color woodcuts, and turned to etching and linocut in a constant search for new technical possibilities of his work, in particular color. Falileev's landscapes, both depicting his native country and foreign ones, attract us with the same fullness of feelings, the ability to see beauty in the usual motifs of nature, as the works of Ostroumova-Lebedeva, but harmony and classical purity of lines are less common in his engravings, the manner of his drawing is freer and somehow more restless, the coloring is hotter and more picturesque. At the same time, the ability to generalize one's impressions, to create a capacious artistic image with a minimum of means, makes Falileev related to Ostroumova-Lebedeva. In this sense, for example, the album of colored linocuts by Falileev "Italy" is characteristic, where the artist, devoting only one sheet to one city or another, in extremely laconic compositions, sometimes depicting only a fragment of a building, seems to concentrate the most characteristic in the appearance of Italian cities.

The artist is also interested in stormy nature, he creates a series of etchings "Rains", in a number of sheets he varies, studying the changeable appearance of the sea, the outlines of a stormy sea wave. In landscapes with motifs of storms and rain, some researchers see a kind of graphic response to a revolutionary storm, but such a rapprochement still seems too straightforward. And with Falileev, we will not dare to establish a similar relationship between his plots and social events. But in the totality of his works, in the special intensity of their internal structure, there really is a sense of the complexity of the social world, and it is more distinct in his landscape sheets than, for example, in the linocut of "The Troops", because Falileev was primarily a landscape painter.

I. N. Pavlov (1872 - 1951) was also a representative of the landscape genre in graphics. In his person, Moscow had a poet as devoted and never tired of singing it, like Leningrad in the person of Ostroumova-Lebedeva. Pavlov was almost the same age as Ostroumova, but his path in art began in other, more difficult living conditions. The son of a prison paramedic, later a watchman at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, he had to "go to the people" early, enrolling as an apprentice in an engraving craft workshop. Reproduction engravings from paintings by V. Makovsky were the first works that brought him success. Subsequently, Pavlov studied at the Stieglitz School of Technical Drawing and in the workshop of Mate, as well as at the school of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, but not for long due to the need to work. In reproducing paintings, the artist achieves great skill, and his engravings are published in popular magazines of those years, acquainting readers with the works of major painters - from Repin to V. Makovsky. Photomechanics, however, further supplants this mode of reproduction. In the works of Pavlov, the main theme of his work appears - the ancient corners of Moscow and provincial cities, the landscape of Russia that is fading into the past.

The transition to the creation of original engravings was not easy for the artist, but his diligence and love for his subject did a lot. Since 1914, albums of landscape engravings by I. N. Pavlov began to appear. At the heart of his landscapes were impressions from the nature near Moscow, from trips along the Volga and the Oka. Chamber perception of nature, the search for a kind of intimacy in it distinguished these first works. “I strove for the selection of corners and expected to see my engravings as real mood landscapes. On a large scale, in the panoramic image, it seemed to me that the intimacy and compositional clarity that I tried to achieve could completely disappear,” the artist later recalled. Starting a large series of Moscow landscapes, Pavlov, here too, is looking primarily for chamber lyrical motifs, capturing antiquity. "I looked for the rarest old buildings, courtyards, dead ends, hundred-year-old wooden houses, churches of old architecture; I did not ignore many outstanding monuments of antiquity ... Sometimes the old alternated with the new, in order to emphasize the typicality of the taken piece of the city," we read in his memoirs.

From year to year, I. N. Pavlov's Moscow engravings accumulated, which made up his numerous albums. Much has changed in a relatively short period of time in Moscow, the quiet corners that I. N. Pavlov painted in the huge modern city have become unrecognizable. And we are grateful to the artist, who has preserved for us the modest comfort of the silent lanes, the friendliness of the little houses (ill. 5). And in other Russian cities - Kostroma, Uglich, Ryazan, Torzhok - Pavlov is attracted by ancient architecture. He felt her expressiveness and originality very well. But on the whole, Pavlov's works are incomparably less artistry and plastic beauty than, for example, in the landscapes of Ostroumova-Lebedeva or Falileev. The documentary accuracy of his work often turns into photography.

5. I. N. Pavlov. Sheet from the album "Old Moscow". On Varvarka. 1924

Pavlov's cycle of modern landscapes was replenished in 1920 - 1930, when, having joined the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia, he, like many masters of art, went on creative business trips to the industrial centers of the country. Color linocut "Astrakhan" with a dark flock of ships and the lights of a large building of the People's Commissariat of Water Transport on the shore, the landscape "On the Volga" with sharp black silhouettes of sailboats and slightly trembling water, "Baku", "Balakhna" and some other sheets executed in these years were among the best works of the artist. The sheet "Zvenigorod. Outskirts", created by the 78-year-old master in 1949, conquers with a joyful, bright mood.

The inappropriate praise of Pavlov's work by critics in the late 1940s and early 1950s obscured the shortcomings of his works and, paradoxically, made it difficult to ascertain their true merits. Complete denial of his work is not uncommon today. But we appreciate the great work of the artist and his rich experience, which he generously shared with many masters of Soviet graphics at the beginning of their career.

The merit of Pavlov - along with V. D. Falileev - is the introduction of linocut into the everyday life of Soviet artists, and the invention of a new method of printing prints with watercolors - aquatypes.

Of the students of I. N. Pavlov, M. V. Matorin, a master of color woodcuts and a landscape painter, works fruitfully as an artist and teacher.

In his appeal to the architectural landscape, to the monuments of antiquity, IN Pavlov was not alone in the 1920s. Vl. Iv. Sokolov, a student of Levitan, whom the same I. N. Pavlov managed to interest in engraving techniques, released several albums in 1917 - 1925 dedicated to Sergiev Posad, old Moscow, Rostov. All these are good examples of the old landscape. In the albums of lithographs by Yuon and Kustodiev in the 1920s, one can also see Sergiev Posad, Russian landscapes, pictures of the untouched old provincial life. The classical buildings of St. Petersburg stand in the chased lines of the woodcuts by P. A. Schillingovsky, whose album of landscapes, published in 1923, although called "Petersburg. Ruins and Revival", but basically contained only sorrowful pictures of the ruins - the destruction caused to Petrograd by military devastation. Once in Armenia, Schilling's veto again sees only the features of antiquity, publishing an album of etchings "Old Erivan" in 1927. Thus, the ancient landscape in the graphics of the first decade is not an accidental hobby of individual masters, but a whole phenomenon.

Only by about 1927 did interest in him dry up, and the same Schillingovsky, a great zealot of architectural antiquity, in the next year, 1928, created the album "New Armenia", as if noting in his work a characteristic change that occurred in the schedule.

The new, of course, grows in the bowels of the old, and works dedicated to the modern landscape appeared in graphics, so to speak, in its depths, among things already familiar to us. Their authors were artists who only yesterday devoted their creativity to the contemplation of the eternal beauties of architecture and nature. So, for example, I. I. Nivinsky (1881-1933), the greatest master of the Soviet etching, in the album "Crimea", released in 1925, artistically and easily, although with a touch of contemplation, conveys the everyday festivity of the beautiful southern nature. By the 10th anniversary of October, by order of the Council of People's Commissars, Nivinsky creates several large etchings "Zages", where, depicting a power plant in Georgia, he not only introduces a new plot into his landscapes, but also actively seeks new forms of expression for it.

Successful is the etching "Monument to V. I. Lenin in the Zagas" with its careful drawing and the monument to V. I. Lenin, naturally dominant in the industrial landscape - the creation of the sculptor I. D. Shadr (ill. 6). The beauty of this monument, its majestically spectacular silhouette becomes here the main component of the landscape image. Nature is now conceived by the artist not only as an object of admiring contemplation, but also as a field of great human activity. The notes of an active attitude to life for the first time sounded distinctly in the graphic landscape.

New motives appear in the second half of the 1920s in the work of the artist I. A. Sokolov (b. 1890). From the very beginning of his work, I. A. Sokolov, a student and great admirer of V. D. Falileev, depicts scenes of labor in engraving. At first, this is the hard and troublesome domestic work of a woman in the household, handicraft work - a cramped and limited world, shown with warmth and love. A shoemaker bending over his work, a laundress, a grandmother with her grandchildren in an evening cramped unprepossessing room, a slender silhouette of a lace maker against a background of light fabric with an intricate pattern, obviously connected by it - these are the first works of Sokolov (ill. 7).

By their nature, they are very close to the works of I. Pavlov, Vl. Sokolov and other artists who showed us the unofficial corners of big cities, their untouched antiquity. “So it seems that the life, reflected in the engravings of I. A. Sokolov, proceeded behind the walls of those small houses that I. N. Pavlov depicted,” rightly writes the biographer of I. A. Sokolova M. Z. Kholodovskaya.

Obviously, because the pictures of labor have always been close to the artist, it was he who was one of the first to expand the narrow scope of his theme and begin to depict the new world of industrial labor - work at a large metallurgical plant. By 1925, his first sheets depicting the Moscow plant "Hammer and Sickle" belong. By this time, the artist had already mastered the technique of colored multi-board linocut, and the types of workshops, the interweaving of powerful steel trusses, the complex lighting of scenes with dazzling red-hot metal are reproduced by him accurately and thoroughly. Later, already a mature master, Sokolov again comes to a familiar factory and in 1949 creates a series of engravings dedicated to him. This time he introduces portrait sheets into the series; one of them, depicting the steelworker F. I. Sveshnikov, was especially successful for the artist. In the guise of Sveshnikov, who is intently watching the smelting, he managed to convey the modesty, simplicity, charm of a person with great life and work experience. But even the first "factory" sheets of Sokolov retain their significance for us; they contain the conscientious accuracy of the first steps along a path unknown by the author himself and other artists.

Throughout his life, I. Sokolov also worked a lot in the field of landscape. His landscapes of the 1920s and 1930s became widely known; the cold freshness of early spring and the fiery attire of autumn are always imprinted in them with a clear, precise pattern, clear, pure colors. Improving the technique of color linocut, achieving a free transfer of a rich gamut of colors, the artist uses a large number of boards, and sometimes rolls onto the board not one, as usual, but several colors. His well-known engraving "Kuzminki, Autumn", captivating by the hot picturesqueness of flowers, for example, was executed on seven boards in nine colors.

The events of the war were reflected by the artist in the large series "Moscow in 1942" and "What the Enemy Destroyed". In the first of them, painting tanks leaving for the front on the streets of Moscow, herds driven to the rear, vegetable gardens in courtyards, etc., the artist saturates his sheets with genre motifs, but still remains primarily a landscape painter in solving the composition as a whole. In the second - landscape - series, the documentary task is deliberately brought to the fore, but sadness also colors these sheets, depicting the painful destruction of the beautiful ensembles of the suburbs of Leningrad. The same documentary task confronts the artist in his series of post-war years, in which he painstakingly and meticulously reproduced memorable places associated with the life and work of V. I. Lenin and A. M. Gorky.

The first works about the new life, like the sheets of Nivinsky or Sokolov, were not numerous. However, their number is gradually increasing. During the years of the first five-year plan, business trips of painters and graphic artists to the most important new buildings, industrial giants, and the first collective farms were organized. The artists were enthusiastic about these new tasks for them. And although among the works created as a result of these trips there were still few things of high artistic merit, with this work a new fresh stream comes into the graphics, the breath of the big life of the country.

The complexity of this work consisted both in the insufficient knowledge of the everyday life of socialist construction by the artists, and in the debatability of many issues of the art form characteristic of those years. Numerous art groups often came out with opposite theoretical platforms, and in the disputes that arose at that time, the very right to the existence of easel art was sometimes called into question. It should not be forgotten that these years were a period of conflicting searches in the field of art education. Often, improper training of artists in universities deprived them of a solid foundation of professional skills, and the young graphic artist had to make up a lot later. True, the works of a number of excellent masters of the older generation, as well as the advice they gave to young people, often outside the official walls of the university were very instructive for her. There were also such studios as, for example, the studio of Kardovsky, in which the artists went through a fruitful school of realistic drawing and composition. And yet the working conditions of the artists were difficult. They improved only with the elimination of artistic groupings in the early 1930s and the unification of all healthy creative forces on a single realistic platform.

When drawing graphics to modern topics, several main areas of work for artists quickly developed. One of them was, as we saw in the engravings of I. Sokolov, by means of an accurate, somewhat descriptive, almost documentary reproduction of the seen, mainly industrial, labor conditions. In works of this type, there was a lot of ingenuous and honest desire of the authors to tell the viewer as accurately and fully as possible about new buildings and factories. It is not for nothing that artists often do not limit themselves to one sheet, but in a whole series of them they capture views of a factory, construction, etc.

The second direction can be called that warmed by a lyrical feeling, laconic, preserving the liveliness of the sketch, but also its reticence, the art of the industrial landscape, which was created in the late 1920s and early 1930s by N. N. Kupreyanov (1894 - 1933), a student of such different artists , like Kardovsky, Petrov-Vodkin, Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Kupreyanov went through a short but difficult path in art, full of constant searches. He interestingly worked not only in easel graphics, but also in book illustration. One of the first Kupreyanov devoted his things to the revolution, and his woodcuts "Armored car" (1918) and "Cruiser" Aurora "(1923), somewhat deliberate in their emphasized angularity or rapid movement of lines, carried a particle of genuine spiritual uplift, a lively response to events of October. Leaving woodcuts soon, Kupreyanov works mainly in the manner of free, full of light and mysterious transitions of light and shade drawings in ink and watercolor.Chamber landscapes and scenes of the "Selishchenskaya series", in which there is both warmth and close isolation of the family world, constitute one of the sides of his work. But Kupreyanov's art early also enters the expanses of a vast country. In the series "Railway Tracks" (1927), his quick brush fills sheet after sheet with the booming movement of trains, and in his hurried rhythm one can hear the echo of the country's business life. cycles "Baltic", which began to be created in 1931, and "Fisheries of the Caspian Sea", which arose as a result of the artist's trips there - the same lightness of the outwardly careless sketchy manner of drawing. Behind it, one can feel the far from completed search for images of modernity, combining the expression of the fleeting and the capacious content of the characteristic.

An early death interrupted the work of the artist in the midst.

The third direction in the work of graphic artists on contemporary topics emerged with an early trend of romantically upbeat rendering of the plot. It turns industrial motifs into a majestic, sometimes enchanting spectacle. It would seem that such works have the most creative, emotional approach to nature. And indeed, among them significant and very beautiful in execution things are not uncommon. But their romantic elation most often has a somewhat abstract and subjective character, it, like the descriptive accuracy of other works, is the result of only the first contact of the artist with the theme. Not without reason, carried away by general views of construction, workshops of factories, etc., the authors of all early industrial works still give a very modest place to people in them. An example of works of a romantic plan can be N. I. Dormidontov's sheet "Dneprostroy" (1931; ill. 8). Dormidontov (born 1898) is also one of the first artists of the modern theme in graphics. Already from the mid-1920s, his worksheets devoted to labor appeared - at first, stiffly accurate and dryish, then more free and found in composition. In the drawing "Dneprostroy" the artist is fascinated by the huge scale of the structure, the enchanting picture of night work, illuminated by the sharp light of numerous light bulbs. In his drawing, work turns into a spectacle that strikes the imagination, mysterious, grandiose and slightly fantastic.

A similar interpretation of labor can be seen in a series of engravings by AI Kravchenko (1889 - 1940), also dedicated to the construction of the Dneproges (1931). It was created by the artist already in the mature time of creativity, and his spectacular skill was clearly manifested in it,

In the engravings of this cycle, huge structures of the dam are piled up, going up, arrows of cranes are closely rising around them, the high sky swirls with clouds, and the sun sends its dazzling rays up. The contrasts of black and white colors give rise to a bright, restless range of engravings. The spectacle of construction near Kravchenko is grandiose and impressive. And people who create a new industrial giant under difficult conditions are given only as rhythmically repeating groups of identical silhouette figures, as abstract carriers of movement. However, many artists at that time were attracted primarily by the general panoramic expressiveness of the construction site, workshop, etc. And in Kravchenko's engravings, it is only expressed most talentedly.

Creativity Kravchenko generally makes a bright and original page in the history of our graphics. A master of woodcuts, etching and drawing, very sensitive to the themes of acute social coloring in easel things, a science fiction writer and a magician in illustrations, Kravchenko quickly gained wide popularity at home and abroad. Coming from a peasant family, he was educated at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. His teachers were famous Russian painters S. Ivanov, V. Serov, K. Korovin, A. Arkhipov. Kravchenko began his career as a painter, but in the field of drawing and engraving, which he turned to during the years of Soviet power, his work is especially interesting. Numerous trips to India, France, Italy, America and the Soviet Union completed Kravchenko's art education and broadened his horizons. Kravchenko worked very hard. He created a bizarre world of images in book illustrations, combining fantasy and the grotesque, the quivering magic of feelings and the energy of obsession. He constantly worked in the field of landscape, his various sheets capture the harmony, beauty and modest nature of the Moscow region, and the famous cities of Europe. He is one of the first graphic artists to create story series, responding to public topics. The cycle of engravings dedicated to the funeral of V. I. Lenin, made in the same year, 1924, was a sorrowful eyewitness account, and now it has acquired the significance of a historical work. The artist subsequently returned to the Leninist theme once again, having executed in 1933 a strict and solemn engraving "Mausoleum". He also made a cycle of engravings "A woman's life in the past and present" for the Soviet pavilion at the International Exhibition in Paris. In contrasting paintings, the artist reproduced the fate of a woman-mother in Tsarist and Soviet Russia; he acted here as a storyteller, whose speech is emotional and vivid, but there was no great internal and plastic expressiveness in his images. After the series "Dneprostroy" Kravchenko did not leave the industrial theme and in 1938, based on the materials of a creative trip, he created drawings and etchings dedicated to the Azovstal plant.

In the etching depicting the pouring of steel (ill. 9), the artist is still fascinated by the power of huge technical structures, the majesty of the picture of labor. He freely composes a complex scene, effectively illuminates it with streams of light and sparks. In addition, a real labor rhythm appears here, and with it the expediency of everything that happens, instead of the somewhat abstract pathos of Dneproetroy. In addition to spectacular entertainment, the sheet also acquires great content.

This monumental etching was made by Kravchenko for the All-Union Exhibition "Industry of Socialism". This exhibition in Soviet art is associated with the mass appeal of artists to the present. Works for it were created for several years, starting in 1936. Shortly before the start of this work, 1,500 drummers from one of the largest factories wrote on the pages of Pravda, addressing the artists:

"We expect great paintings from you. We want them to be not just simple photographs. We want passion to be invested in them. We want them to excite us and our children. We want them to instill in us the joy of struggle and thirst for new victories. We want you to show the people of our country - the heroes and ordinary participants in our construction."

These ardent words not only well formulated the tasks of our art, but also reflected the atmosphere of the exacting love of the people for art, that lofty interest in it of a working man who helped artists in their work. Organized on the initiative of Sergo Ordzhonikidze and opened during the days of the 18th Party Congress, the exhibition broadly covered the life of the Soviet Country. Over 1000 works were exhibited here, of which about 340 were in the graphic department (except satirical). Few of these sheets were works of great skill, few of them have survived to this day. But the new themes brought by them, seen by the artists in life - on the scaffolding of new buildings, in the workshops of the factory - were a great conquest for the art of graphics. Dneprostroy and work at the Solikamsk potash mines, the construction of a metro and the development of the Arctic, gold mining in the taiga and the labor of a miner - how different these topics are from the vicious circle of life phenomena to which the world of easel graphics was limited earlier, how little adherence to antiquity, fundamental retrospectivism! There were still a lot of industrial landscapes here. But besides them, scenes of labor also appear; and a person working at a factory, in a field, in a laboratory, in a mine becomes the hero of graphic works for the first time. Artists still do not know his inner world well, at first they only feel well and are able to convey his confident habit at work, the plasticity of professional movements. Therefore, the labor gesture in the drawings is more convincing than the expression on the face, and some good works are spoiled by the external rudeness of the characters.

The artist A. Samokhvalov (b. 1894), for example, in a series of watercolors well showed the vigor and optimism of the "Metrostroy Girls", but also emphasized their rudeness. Such an emphasis, as it were, puts a limit to our knowledge of Samokhvalov's heroines and impoverishes his work, although in its very tone, in its atmosphere, there are features that are correctly seen in life. The man of labor is more thoughtfully characterized in the watercolor by S. M. Shor (b. 1897) "The Goat Girl" from the series "Old and New Qualifications of the Donbass" (1936; illustration, 10). Here the image of an intelligent and energetic woman is created, her spiritual warehouse, moral strength are sensitively guessed. It is not for nothing that S. Shor becomes a master of graphic portraiture, most often performed by her in the technique of etching.

In the prewar years, sheets dedicated to workers by I. A. Lukomsky (born 1906) appeared. In his sepia drawing "Worker" (1941; ill. 11), the emphasis is transferred from the individual-characteristic to the typical, filed underlined, as if close-up. Inner freedom, pride in one's work can be read in the face of the worker.

In the 1930s, an important event for graphics was the preparation of an exhibition of illustrations for the history of the party. It focused the interest of many artists on historical subjects, made them rethink the path traversed by our state. The historical-revolutionary theme began its life in graphics already in the early 1920s. However, at that time these were only separate works, mainly engravings, in which often abstract decorativeness and schematism were still thought of as an integral part of engraving technique. Later, in 1927, as a complete opposite to these works, an image of the hero of the Perekop battles fanned with revolutionary pathos appears under the chisel of the Ukrainian artist V.I. Kasiyan. V. I. Kasiyan (born 1896) - a native of Western Ukraine, educated at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts - an artist looking for a soul, a bright temperamental manner. His list is bright, emotional, but he still remains alone in the schedule of these years.

Most of the works created for the above-mentioned exhibition acquired, rather, an easel than an illustrative character. Opened in 1941, before the war, it was called the "Exhibition of New Works of Soviet Graphics" and included a number of good works. Many of them belonged to masters of book graphics. Illustrators brought into the sphere of easel drawing the psychological nature of images and the accuracy of the historical situation, which were then recent and striking achievements of their art. Such were the sheets of the collective of artists Kukryniksy - "On the barricades", "Chkalov on the island of Udd", "Political leads", Kibrik - "Khalturin and Obnorsky", Shmarinov "Bauman's funeral" and others.

The interest of graphic artists in historical topics in the 1920s and 1930s had another aspect related to literature.

The inspired images of Pushkin and Lermontov attracted the creative attention of artists for many years. N. P. Ulyanov (1875 - 1949) put a lot of work into his Pushkin series. One of the major Soviet painters of the older generation, a close student of V. A. Serov, Ulyanov was a master of historical painting and portraiture, as well as a theater artist.

Ulyanov's drawings tell about various periods of the great poet's life - from the lyceum days to the last tragic months; they are completed to varying degrees - some are larger, others look like sketches, like pages of intense and unfinished searches, but in all of them the main thing for the artist is the fiery life of Pushkin's soul. One of the best is a drawing made in connection with the painting "Pushkin and his wife in front of a mirror at a court ball." The proud, beautiful image of Pushkin appears here in the laconic lines of Serov's inspired drawing.

Pushkin's theme receives another interpretation in graphics - in the landscape of memorable places. The artist L. S. Khizhinsky (born 1896) performs in this genre. In his jewelery woodcuts made with great skill, depicting Pushkin and Lermontov places, he achieves a difficult combination of documentary accuracy and emotional poetic beginning. Without this combination, the success of the memorial landscape, which is always built on subtle subtext, individual associations, is impossible.

In the 1930s, new moments in the development of graphics are felt very strongly. They consist not only in new directions in the work of artists, which, as we have seen - supported by exhibition activity! - are gaining a large scale, but also in the new content of the traditional genres of portrait and landscape, and in the appearance of significant works by artists of the Union republics. So, V. I. Kasiyan, already mentioned above, creates engravings dedicated to Shevchenko full of serious thoughts during these years. The artist also put a lot of spiritual fire into his later work on the great kobzar, depicting the unbroken angry Shevchenko against the backdrop of episodes of the people's struggle (ill. 12).

Among the most important works of these years are landscapes and portraits by the Armenian master M. Abegyan, lithographs dedicated to Moldova by the Ukrainian G. Pustovite, a monumental etching by the Georgian artist D. Kutateladze depicting S. Ordzhonikidze and S. M. Kirov. During this period, the well-known Azerbaijani artist A. Azimzade - a cartoonist, draftsman and poster artist - created the most interesting things in the field of easel graphics. Pictures of the past are reproduced in his sheets in the original manner of a detailed, with a touch of ornamental drawing. What is new in the portrait and landscape of the 1930s? The former intimacy of these genres disappears, and their masters come out more and more boldly towards life, getting to know new people, expanding the geographical scope of landscape works. The latter applies not only to the masters of the industrial, but also to the ordinary landscape. If earlier only E. E. Lansere, who tirelessly studied the nature and life of the peoples of the Caucasus, and Schillingovsky, who painted Armenia, departed from the established Moscow-Leningrad tradition in the landscape, now a whole galaxy of masters creates their works outside its narrow boundaries. Artists depict the nature of central Russia, the North, the Crimea, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. The landscape becomes an area of ​​brilliant application of watercolor technique. The works of the graphic artists L. Bruni, A. Ostroumova-Lebedeva, the painters S. Gerasimov, A. Deineka, P. Konchalovsky testify to the real flowering of the watercolor landscape. The activity of the author's worldview is a new feature of these works. Perhaps, with particular clarity, it is visible in the landscapes of those artists who happened to visit abroad during these years.

A sharp vision of the contrasts of foreign reality is inherent, for example, in the Parisian and Roman landscapes of A. A. Deineka (ill. 13). The artist cannot surrender to the calm charm of majestic architecture and statues, as was the case more than once in pre-revolutionary foreign series of graphics; against this beautiful background, his eye notices both the figure of an unemployed man and the ominous self-confident figures of the ministers of the church. In the circle of such works as Deineka's sheets, journalistic passion and political intransigence, characteristic of Soviet graphics, are born.

These qualities also manifested themselves with great force in the "Spanish Series" of drawings by the Leningrader Yu. N. Petrov (1904 - 1944). Petrov's series was a contribution of easel graphics to the fight against fascism, which in those years was already actively waged by both caricature masters and political poster artists. The art of Yu. Petrov, a draftsman and illustrator, was the art of great culture and deep feelings. Petrov was a participant in the fight against fascism in Spain, he knew and loved this country, its people, its great writers and artists of the past, and this love and reverence was reflected in his drawings. Spain, its mountainous landscapes, houses destroyed by bombs, its restrained, proud and ardent people - the soldiers of the People's Army, women and children who have lost their homes, are captured in laconic, a little sad and courageous compositions. Some pages of Petrov's series seem to be sketches, but the gentle drawing with soft modeling outlines the plasticity of forms and landscape plans so accurately, such quivering life fills them, that the great thoughtfulness of each sheet becomes tangible. This series still remains one of the most experienced and sincere things in our schedule. Its author later died on a military post during the Great Patriotic War, and his art, which promised a lot, did not have time to reach its zenith.

The Great Patriotic War, which began in 1941, dramatically changed the nature and pace of development of all types of art. She also caused great changes in the easel graphics. The efficiency of graphics, the comparative simplicity of its techniques have now become especially precious qualities. The burning need to have a say in the hour of national trials, to quickly respond to the bitterness and heroism of the coming day, led many artists to drawing, watercolor, and sometimes engraving. In easel graphics, now, along with its recognized masters, some painters, as well as, very successfully, illustrators, began to work.

From the very first year of the war, along with posters and caricatures, easel graphics became one of the most active forms of art, deeply exciting the hearts of viewers. The masters of drawing and engraving created many beautiful things, born of anger and inspiration. There are separate peaks in this string of works, distinguished by special plastic skill. But the overall level of military graphics is high. The artists created their drawings both in the ranks of the Red Army, and in besieged Leningrad, in cities through which a heavy wave of retreat passed, in the rear, where everything was subordinated to the tasks of the front, and abroad of our country in the last period of the battle against fascism. The graphics showed us different sides of the war, different facets of life in this crucial period in the history of our Motherland - from the fleeting thoughtfulness of a tired nurse to the panorama of a huge battle. At the same time, the difference in talents, the warehouse of figurative thinking of artists, also clearly affected. In the works of one, the war appears as long military roads, often unpleasant, and sometimes so sharply pleasing to the eye with the unexpected beauty of the surviving forest. In the sheets of another, she goes through a series of simple scenes of army life, sketched hastily, but accurately. In the drawings of the third, she is in a special expression of the eyes of a warrior or partisan who has met death more than once. The courage and patriotism of the Soviet people, so vividly manifested during the war years, were sung by artists in these works of different nature. Graphic works are full of that special sense of the beauty of our Soviet life, sharpened by the war, which marked the best things in all forms of art.

A characteristic feature of graphics was the appearance of a large number of sketches. Artists sometimes performed them in the most difficult combat situation, trying to tell people about the war more accurately and more fully, to collect material for future compositions. In the preface to the album of drawings "Frontline diary" by Moscow graphic artist P. Ya. Kirpichev, Hero of the Soviet Union S. Borzenko writes: "One after another, pictures pass, drawn on the fresh traces of the war, pass as the artist saw them at the time of the events ... No dangers and difficulties stopped him. He made his way to the objects of his choice among the minefields and worked there from morning to evening, afraid to miss the moment, fearing that the fires would go out and the trophy teams would take away the wrecked guns and tanks. " This description of the artist's work at the front is very characteristic, because just like Kirpichev, many easel graphic artists worked during the war. Sketches constitute the precious fund of our art, far from being published in its entirety. Their authors are N. A. Avvakums, O. G. Vereisky, M. G. Deregus, U. M. Dzhaparidze, N. N. Zhukov, P. Ya. E. K. Okas, U. Tansykbaev, S. S. Uranova and others created a whole chronicle of difficult military everyday life, a poem about a man in the war, defending his homeland from fascism.

Despite the fluency that distinguishes the sketches, they already indicate the features of the talent of each artist - and not only his master of drawing, but also a certain range of phenomena that touches him most of all.

So, A. V. Kokorin (born 1908), for example, will never pass by a picturesque scene that he suddenly saw, he will sketch in his graphic diary both saddles hung on a gun, and a broken truck with sticking out from under it on three sides the boots of soldiers mending it, and a convoy fighter calmly sewing something on a sewing machine right in the field, and a figure of a priest with a large backpack talking to a Soviet soldier. The general characteristic of the appearance of people is accurately captured by Kokorin, and behind his simple scenes you always feel a slight smile, affection for your heroes. It was in these sketches that Kokorin's experience as a master of the architectural landscape was accumulated, able to outline the appearance of the city, the main contours of its architecture, and the life of the street - qualities that were developed in the artist's post-war Indian drawings.

Warmth and lyricism distinguish sketches and drawings by D. K. Mochalsky. Even in the most unsuitable situation for this, in the hustle and bustle of front-line roads leading directly to Berlin at the last stage of the war, or already in Berlin - the citadel of fascism that our troops have just taken - the warmth of life, its joyful ray, in a gentle appearance will surely flash in Mochalsky's sheets girls traffic controllers, in the look of a fighter, fixed on a woman with a baby carriage.

N. N. Zhukov (born 1908) appears in military sketches as a physiognomist artist who can see a lot in a person. The constant interest in the inner world of a person makes meaningful even the most seemingly cursory of his drawings. Landscapes, sketches of soldiers, genre scenes alternate in his sheets. The manner of Zhukov's pencil drawing, devoid of any tinge of external showiness, reflects, as it were, this artist's preoccupation with nature, the thoughtfulness of his approach to it. Zhukov's works gained fame even before the war, when he completed a series of illustrations for the biography of K. Marx. Subsequently, Zhukov did not leave his work on this responsible topic. A lot of work was invested by him in the creation of a series of drawings "V.I. Lenin". Her most successful sheets are solved in the form of a light sketch, fixing a short moment in the chain of others, in the form of a kind of portrait study. But it was precisely during the creation of military sketches that the artist’s observation skills and his skill in a quick sketch were strengthened, which were useful to him later - both in an extensive series of drawings dedicated to children, popular with viewers, and in portraits. Most of all, the experience of wartime work was reflected in the illustrations for "The Tale of a Real Man" by B. Polevoy, created by Zhukov shortly after the war.

It must be said that the experience of military work played a role in the illustrative work of other artists. This experience helped O. G. Vereisky create drawings for "Vasily Terkin" by A. Tvardovsky, for a long time brought A. V. Kokorin, later the illustrator of "Sevastopol Tales" L. N. Tolstoy, to the military theme. A. P. Livanov's path from the series "Partisans", created by him shortly after the war, to illustrating "Chapaev" by D. A. Furmanov was also logical.

Another characteristic feature of the graphics of the war years was the appeal of artists to the form of a series, that is, a series of sheets, united by a single concept and manner of execution. We could see that the series were created by artists before, but during the war years they became the leading phenomenon in graphics. A series is good only when the viewer learns something new with each of its pages, when the artist directs his impressions, alternating the sheets in a certain way, that is, giving the series a clear composition. We always meet the concept of "composition" when analyzing a separate work of art. But in reality there is also a composition of a whole graphic series as an internal regularity of the alternation of its sheets, between which there are various connections. Clearly building the composition of the series, the artist finds in it a new means of great expressiveness. The author of the series essentially performs a multi-syllabic, multi-faceted work, each page of which should sound complete and strong, and at the same time be an integral part of the whole created as if by a single breath. Of course, this task is not easy. And often the sum of the sheets, called by the artist a series, in essence is not a series.

The composition of the series is different. Thus, a series can be built on a contrasting juxtaposition of sheets, or, on the contrary, on their even, identical sound. In another case, the author may begin his serial story, gradually increasing its emotional tension, creating a kind of culmination of action and feelings in one or more sheets and closing it with an ending.

This is how, for example, a large cycle of lithographs by A.F. Pakhomov "Leningrad in the days of blockade and liberation", published with the text of the poet N.S. Tikhonov in 1946, was arranged. This cycle was the first major performance in easel graphics by A. F. Pakhomov (born 1900), a master of children's books, known for his illustrations for the works of N. A. Nekrasov and I. S. Turgenev. Pakhomov's lithographs are eyewitness accounts, and they touch us with the truth of what we see, with the light of great human solidarity and courage.

The series opens with the sheet "Seeing the People's Militia", It immediately takes us into an atmosphere of anxiety, confusion of a disturbed happy life. Further, events develop rapidly, the life of the city changes, shelling and bombing become an integral part of it. Leningraders are building bunkers on the streets, on duty during the alarm on the roofs, rescuing the wounded from destroyed houses. All this is shown in lithographs, quickly replacing each other, detailed, like a story, but full of internal tension. In them, time is compacted and saturated, people act without wasting a minute, bravely fight the enemy.

The next page of the album - "On the Neva for Water" (ill. 14) takes us out of the fast rhythm of these episodes. Here time drags on slowly - this is the heavy tread of the cold and hungry days of the Leningrad blockade. A girl with an unbearably heavy bucket is slowly moving up the stairs. This heroine Pakhomov is one of the strongest images not only of the series, but of the entire military graphics. The viewer's gaze first of all stops at the girl's face - this is how the composition of the lithograph is built, this is how the exceptional expressiveness of this face dictates. The artist developed his facial expressions in detail - dark eyes expressing deep fatigue seem especially large on a thinner face, frowning eyebrows are brought together in a sharp movement, bloodless lips of a half-open mouth are so pale that they almost do not stand out on the face and the artist slightly outlines the contour with their line. It would seem that the image of this girl will be the embodiment of fatigue and suffering. But the most remarkable thing in him is the combination of these features of physical fatigue and exhaustion with spiritual hardness.

The steadfastness, insubordination of Pakhomov's heroine is the most complex fusion of many aspects of her spiritual life, her inner qualities, and at the same time this is her main quality that prevails over all others. Here, along with Pakhomov's usual simplicity and ingenuous clarity of the image, its versatility and depth are born. Pakhomov is always especially close to the images of children. And in this lithograph, he managed to tell a lot, showing how a girl pours water from a kettle; for her, this is a matter in which she is completely absorbed - both a necessity and at the same time a game. In this combination there is aching pain, in it there is a genuine blockade life with its notes of acute tragedy in the midst of everyday life. The snowy expanse of the river, the freezing transparent winter air are well conveyed in lithographs. This sheet, as well as the next drawing "To the hospital" - the most powerful, filled with feeling. They form, as it were, the culmination of the series. Further, the artist's story is conducted more calmly and, in accordance with the pace of events, his sheets become brighter and more joyful: "Krovelitsy", "New Year's Eve" and others. The series logically ends with the picture of fireworks on January 27, 1944 in honor of the breakthrough of the blockade of the city by the Soviet Army, a firework that so deeply and joyfully excites people, evoking a whole string of memories and hopes. Under the fireworks, people rejoice in different ways: both noisily, surrendering to the bright triumph of this moment to the end, and thoughtfully, slightly moving away into memories, and deeply, with all their hearts, feeling the safety of their children. Excitement and joy unite them, and the close composition of the sheet, as it were, makes this solidity visible and with one's own eyes.

Military Leningrad is dedicated to many works by other artists. Let's name from them a series of linocuts by S. B. Yudovin (1892 - 1954). We saw how in Pakhomov's series the lithography technique allowed the artist to present each picture he had conceived in detail, delving into the details, combining their linear subtlety with the picturesqueness of the melting expanses of the winter landscape. Yudovin's series is made in linocut. Yudovin is characterized by heightened feelings, tragic notes sound imperiously in his sheets. And the whole figurative structure of his sheets, and the manner of performance are subject to this sense of the tragedy of what is happening. The heavy black color and the cold glow of snow reign in his engravings. In the freezing silence of the city, people trudge with difficulty, bending under the weight of the burden, under the burden of blockade troubles. Their figures, which are usually seen as if from above, stand out sharply against the snowy streets. An angular pattern, a merciless light, snatching siennas out of the darkness; life, which became the frame of the tragedy - these are Yudovin's engravings. It is in vain to reproach the artist for their harsh truthfulness, for the lack of optimism. The nature of Yudovin's talent allowed him to express with particular sensitivity the tragic aspects of the struggle of Leningraders with the enemy.

But the graphics as a whole were characterized by a brighter view of the world, even when depicting the trials that befell the Soviet people. We could see this already in Pakhomov's series and we will find new confirmation of this by getting acquainted with a series of drawings by D. A. Shmarinov "We will not forget, we will not forgive!" Shmarinov (b. 1907) is one of those artists whose efforts made Soviet book illustration a great success in the 1930s. He received good professional training in the art studios of Prakhov in Kyiv and Kardovsky in Moscow. The talent of a psychologist and a great inner culture distinguish his book works. During the war years, Shmarinov created posters and easel drawings. Series "We will not forget, we will not forgive!" was executed by him in 1942 in a short time, but its idea was formed during the entire first year of the war.

The story of the artist begins not gradually, from the beginning - he immediately shocks us with the high tragedy of the drawing "Execution". Pictures of the trials and tribulations of the war follow one after another, but the bright theme of the courage of the Soviet people, which arose from the first page of the series, wins even in its most bitter pages. One of the best drawings of this cycle is the "Return" sheet (ill. 15). Thousands of Soviet collective farmers in life were familiar with the position in which the woman depicted by the artist is located. Shmarinov painted her at the moment when the spectacle of the devastated, destroyed native home first opened up to her eyes, forcing her to stop in some kind of stupor of sorrowful and indignant reflection. Her deep agitation is almost outwardly manifested in nothing. This is the restraint of a strong person who does not allow himself an explosion of feelings, moments of despair. And how much the landscape tells the viewer here! The transparent purity of the air, the brightness of the sun's reflections and the shadows gliding over the thawed earth - this beautiful picture of early spring brings joy to the complex subtext of the scene. The sheet begins to sound like a lyrical story, and this is very characteristic of Shmarinov's talent. Shmarinov's drawings, executed in charcoal and black watercolor, go through many stages in the process of work. But they happily avoid dry external completeness, preserving the quivering liveliness of the strokes, as if they had just been laid by the artist.

Only in the last two sheets of the series - "Return" and "Meeting" - there is no image of the Nazis, and although joy is still very far away, the atmosphere becomes lighter, the heroes breathe easier. The harsh life of the first year of the war, the events of which were summarized by the artist, suggested to him the composition of the series - the unrelenting tragic tension of most of its pages and the bright notes of the last drawings.

During the war years, V. A. Favorsky (born 1886), one of the oldest Soviet artists, a great master of wood engraving, also turned to easel graphics. Throughout his career, book illustration attracted his attention to the greatest extent. And now Soviet and foreign viewers admire, first of all, the harmonious epic world of his engravings for "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", the tragedy and depth of illustrations for "Boris Godunov", the polysyllabic, full of philosophical generalizations and sometimes harsh, sometimes captivating shades of life, a series of engravings for "Small Tragedies" by Pushkin. But already in the late 1920s, Favorsky also created a beautiful portrait of F. M. Dostoevsky - a completely independent, although, of course, closely related to the writer's books. Light and shadow oppose in this disturbing leaf; reverently, strongly fashioned the image of a man overwhelmed by a whirlwind of painful thoughts. We come into contact here with a spiritual life of exceptional intensity, we guess the inner world, full of contradictions and struggle. In the free variety of strokes, in the wise use of color, great skill is felt.

In the 1940s, Favorsky created sheets "Minin and Pozharsky", "Kutuzov". The artist was not alone in his creative appeal to the glorious pages of the history of our Motherland; they naturally attracted special attention of painters and graphic artists during the war years. In the Samarkand series of rhythmically thin linocuts executed at the same time, the course of everyday life is depicted with unhurried grace and laconism. The white background, which plays an important role in all her sheets, accentuates the elegance of the silhouettes, the musicality of simple but thoughtful compositions.

The artist and later more than once refers to easel graphics (sheet "Flying Birds", 1959; see frontispiece, etc.), but book illustration occupies him to an immeasurably greater extent.

A prominent place in the wartime graphics belongs to the works of L. V. Soyfertis (born 1911). Soyfertis previously worked in the field of satirical magazine graphics, and now he often appears on the pages of the Krokodil magazine. During the war years, he participated in the battles in Sevastopol, Novorossiysk, Odessa. Soyfertis had a chance to see a lot of hard things in the war, more than once death was next to him, but his bright and light talent extracted from this not furious battle scenes, not tragedy and death, but the smile of life, which remains itself even under bombardment. A peculiar sharpness, amusingness distinguishes the positions depicted by him. A sailor hurries to the front line in the besieged Sevastopol, and the boys - for speed together - are diligently polishing his shoes. "Once" is the name of this sheet. There is an air battle over the city in the sunny sky, women are watching it, and the old woman is calmly sewing something, sitting right there on a chair at the gate. The sailors at the newspaper window read the latest news, standing in a close group, bristling with bayonets of rifles (ill. 16), a sailor and a photographer are located in the funnel from the bomb - a picture is needed for the party document. All this, obviously, can be called everyday episodes, but this is a life that has been established a stone's throw from the front line, and the most unpretentious, even funny at first glance, scenes here are fanned with a breath of great courage and heroism. Genuine grace distinguishes the drawings of Soyfertis. And if in Favorsky's "Samarkand Series" the chased lines and silhouettes of linocuts were graceful, Soyfertis's graceful and beautiful are light, brittle, as if sloppy lines of the contour drawing and a lively, breathing, slightly tinted transparent watercolor fill.

Soyfertis remains an artist of a fleeting smile and great sympathy for people in his drawings of the 1950s. His series "Metro" - a series of genre scenes, noticed in the hustle and bustle of Moscow underground palaces, and drawings and etchings dedicated to children, are still amazingly vigilantly seen, still illuminated by a demanding interest in a person. Sometimes touching and funny, sometimes mocking and even slightly grotesque, gaining sharpness in comparisons, these sheets always reveal to us some new features of life, something new in the usual flow of everyday life.

The large material accumulated during the war years did not fit easily into the archives of artists. Many of them continued to work on military topics after the end of the war. Especially many drawings and engravings about the war were shown at exhibitions of the first peaceful years. At the same time, the work of graphs naturally went along the path of generalizing their knowledge and visual impressions, along the path from a sketch and a sketch to an easel sheet and a whole graphic series. Thus, several series of lithographs based on the materials of his military sketches were executed in 1946 - 1950 by the artist V.V. Bogatkin (born 1922). During the war years, Bogatkin was just beginning his creative work. He painted a lot; one of his drawings, depicting a young soldier on the banks of the Tisza (1945), gained considerable fame. But the main area of ​​his work was the landscape. The silence of the deserted streets of besieged Leningrad, darkened Moscow, Berlin in the days of the collapse of fascism, mountains of broken equipment on its streets, Soviet tanks at the Brandenburg Gate are captured by Bogatkin in his lithographs. Over the years, the accuracy of what we saw, contained in these sheets, created in the hot pursuit of the war, is more and more appreciated by us.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the picture of the development of easel graphics was complex and in many ways contradictory. The artists succeeded in noticing and conveying certain very significant facets of our life and, above all, to show a man who went through the war, the joy of his return to work, a passionate thirst for creation. This was especially evident in some works devoted to collective farm labor; the beauty of the peaceful fields of our Motherland was felt in them as a newly acquired, conquered property. At the same time, in the flow of drawings depicting Soviet people and their work, the features of illustration, the poverty of thoughts and feelings, were clearly reflected. Prose documentary prevented many artists in these works from rising to the level of a poetic generalization of our life. Many drawings and engravings on historical and revolutionary themes appeared, the artists gave their strength and talent to their creation, but the influence of the cult of personality was especially hard on them. It prevented artists from creating works of great ideological richness, led in some works to incorrect coverage of the role of the people as the creator of history.

The graphics of these years developed one-sidedly in technical terms. Many graphic techniques were hardly used, drawing in ink, charcoal and black watercolor prevailed. Only in the realm of landscape was real watercolor painting and some types of engraving quite common. But the variety of techniques often coexisted in the landscape with the internal passivity of things.

On the other hand, works of great artistic merit were also created during these years. So, during this period, the original and strong talent of B. I. Prorokov, now one of the leading masters of Soviet graphics, was formed. Prorokov's work is vitally connected with the years of the war, with what the artist saw and experienced at that time. But Prorokov not only returned all these years with the memory of his heart to the war, he managed to say with his art the most necessary words about the world.

B. I. Prorokov was born in 1911 in Ivanovo-Voznesensk. His aptitude for drawing manifested itself early in high school. His school drawings, sent to the competition of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, were awarded the first prize. This gave the author the right to receive a ticket to the Higher Artistic and Technical Institute (Vkhutein). However, studying there gave little to Prorokov and it lasted less than two years. Only the advice of the greatest master of political graphics D. S. Moor, who taught lithography, was very valuable for Prorokov. Having not received a special education, Prorokov went through a good school - political and artistic - at work in Komsomolskaya Pravda and later in the magazine Krokodil. On assignments from the newspaper, he traveled a lot around the country, as a newspaperman, he learned to make a large supply of sketches for future use in order to quickly complete any task. Most of Prorokov's pre-war works are caricatures on domestic and international topics. Separate posters, also executed by him, and in particular a sheet exposing the bestial anti-humanistic nature of fascism, already foreshadowed the journalistic intensity, passion and sharpness of his future works.

From the first months of the war, Prorokov worked in the newspaper of the garrison of the Hanko Peninsula, which heroically withstood the siege of the enemy.

“Sometimes we are embarrassed to speak about the feat of a person of art as loudly as about the feat of a soldier or commander, until a writer or artist happens to replace the killed commander in battle and lead the defense of the height,” wrote a participant in the defense of Hanko, who told about it in the story “Ganguttsy” Vl. Rudny - And I can’t imagine a staunch struggle of the sailors of Gangut * ( * Gangut peninsula Hanko was called during the time of Peter I) in the forty-first year without prophetic laughter and satire, without his daily pictorial feuilletons, engravings, portraits, carved due to the lack of zinc for clichés on linoleum, torn from the floors in war-torn houses. "The artist left Hanko with the last detachments of" sailors. Kronstadt and Leningrad under blockade, Malaya Zemlya near Novorossiysk, Berlin and Port Arthur - these are the milestones of his military path. And everywhere, even in the most difficult conditions and right at the forefront, the artist painted a lot.

Prorokov's first post-war series, "In Kuomintang China," was created by him on the basis of what he had seen in the Far East immediately after the defeat of the Japanese militarists. Small in volume, it only outlines some features of the life of the Chinese people, still experiencing colonial oppression and fighting for their national liberation. But the passion of the author's attitude to life is already fully reflected here. With sympathy, the artist draws a Chinese partisan - a simple, modest and brave young man, with hatred and mockery - elegant Americans who staged inhuman rickshaw races; he shares, it seems to us, both the frenzy of a frantic orator at a rally, and the heavy fatigue of a rickshaw crouched under the scorching sun by a carriage. In the next works of Prorokov we will, as it were, feel his author's voice, his always hot indignation or love, and therefore his works will capture us with special force.

In the subsequent cycles of drawings "Here it is, America!" and "For peace!" the voice of Prorokov the publicist grew stronger. Life in his sheets acquires the angry power of the political exposure of imperialism. In the drawing "Aggressor's Tanks to the Bottom," the artist, in an exciting pathetic image, shows the will of the workers for peace, the strength of their solidarity. A gust of indignation unchained forces, rallied a monolithic group of people dumping a tank into the water. The sheet is laconic in composition, full of pathos of struggle; it easily withstands a large increase, and more than once the supporters of peace outside our country carried it as a poster at demonstrations. Series "Here it is, America!" was performed by Prorokov as an illustration for a book of pamphlets and essays about America. But it has essentially turned into an easel cycle - the content of its sheets is so independent, understandable and without text. In the same way, Prorokov's later illustrations for the book "Mayakovsky on America" ​​acquired easel features. The appeal to Mayakovsky was deeply logical in the works of Prorokov. The artist is very close to the passionate pressure of Mayakovsky's poems, and their characteristic alternation of anger and sarcasm, and bold allegorical images, and the obligatory political assessment of phenomena.

In all his works, performed after the war, Prorokov fights for peace, exposes imperialism, the inhumanity of its colonial policy, its militaristic designs. But the artist's most powerful speech for the world was his series "It must not happen again!", in which, for the first time after the battles that had died down, he touched on military visions that had not left the heart.

Two sheets of opposite mood are highlighted in his series: on one - "Hiroshima" - a doomed face, still looking at us from the hell of an atomic explosion, on the other - a young mother, with a weapon in her hands, protecting a child, defending a bright life on earth. Between these two sheets, as in a frame, are a string of pictures of the war. In them, people struggle with the death that fascism brings; and at the hour of death they despise the enemy, just as a young woman despises the executioners, in whose eyes there is a bloody vision of Babi Yar (ill. 17). No details that dissipate great tension, each sheet is a feeling taken at its highest moment, it is a pain that is not yet destined to stop. A sharp silhouette and a close-up are chosen here as mandatory artistic techniques. Only an artist of great courage and ardent faith in people could repeat to us the cruel truth about the past war with such amazing power. His pages filled with pain, anger and suffering leave no one indifferent. Testament of the Czech communist J. Fuchik "People, be vigilant!" resounds for us in this series by a Soviet artist.

Among the works dedicated to V. I. Lenin, drawings by the greatest master of book illustration E. A. Kibrik (born 1906) stand out. In separate sheets of the series, the artist, who carefully studied the materials related to the activities of Lenin in the year of the revolution, not only mastered the first truth of external similarity, but also moved further, to the depths of internal characterization.

The sheet "V. I. Lenin in the underground" (ill. 18) reproduces the July days of 1917, when Lenin, living in Petrograd, was forced to hide from the bloodhounds of the Provisional Government. How did the artist himself imagine the plot of this drawing? According to him, here he wanted to show Lenin the theorist, scientist, thinker, who daily appeared in those days with articles that armed the party in its struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat; the specific moment that needs to be depicted, the artist described as follows: “... Lenin, as was his nature, walked around the room, pondering the huge material that life delivered every day and in which he had to catch the most important thing, what it is necessary to aim the party with another article in Pravda. Having found this main thing, he quickly sat down at the table, immediately forgetting about everything in the world, plunged into work. Characteristically, Kibrik imagines an image in motion and, drawing a single moment in the chain of others, he also takes into account the previous one. The silence of a small solitary room is full of the tension of great labor. The artist was able to convey Levin's busyness and preoccupation with his work with the concentrated expression of his face, his posture of a quickly writing person.

The picture "V. I. Lenin in Razliv" is different in mood: it has an agitation, a restrained impulse. The stream of Lenin's thoughts is far from the surroundings, and the expanses of the lakeside landscape also, as it were, expand the scope of the sheet. In the book cited above, Kibrik details the process of his work on these compositions, and anyone familiar with his drawings will be interested in reading these pages,

By the mid-1950s, beautiful things about our modern times appear in graphics. The artist Yu. I. Pimenov, a painter, graphic artist and theater decorator, opened for us a whole big world full of bright joy of life with his large series "Moscow Region". Pimenov has a rare gift of poetic everyday life, the ability to see the beauty of everyday life. And beauty, noticed in the ordinary, always finds its especially close paths to the heart of the viewer. The heated air of a hot day in the suburbs and the figure of a girl on a boardwalk, fervent workers at the construction site of new houses and the radiance of rain on a Moscow outskirts square - these are the simple plots of Pimenov's drawings and watercolors. “For a genre painter, it seems to me,” he wrote, “the most precious finds are those genuine pieces of life seen, where in ordinary, unimagined, real cases of every day, the great truth of the country is revealed.” The impetuous working rhythm of our time, its special, energetic and business-like beauty live in the artist's works (see cover). Perhaps, the main charm of Pimenov's images, and in particular, his constant heroines - women working at a construction site, renovating apartments, sewing, household chores, lies in activity, activity. The light, light color of his watercolors gives festivity to even the most seemingly ordinary scenes and things. The artist also brings great picturesqueness to the technique of black watercolor and charcoal. With gradations of black, he is able to convey the depth of the shadows that fall on the water from the trees, and the transparent cold of early spring, and the freshness of rain on the station platform, and the resinous comfort of the forest road. Pimenov is a very integral artist. His point of view of the world, the range of his favorite subjects remains the same in a series of paintings of the 1940s - 1950s - genre scenes, still lifes, which so simply and poetically tell about a contemporary, and in his graphics, and even in prose - in a book about the Moscow region, written by with ardent enthusiasm, swiftly, gracefully and easily, with a purely artistic vision of life in its truly beautiful, multi-colored guise.

Life in motion, new and joyful, born every day, hurries to capture Pimenov in his later series "New Quarters".

Having traveled abroad more than once in the 1950s, Pimenov created a whole series of small canvases and sketches based on the impressions of these trips or directly during his travels. Here, too, his gaze remains primarily the gaze of a person in love with beauty; journalism is not peculiar to him. But the sadness-filled lyrics of some of his foreign works involuntarily sounds like a contrast to the sonorous happiness of his sheets devoted to ordinary days and affairs of our life.

Pimenov's foreign works were not alone in our schedule. In the 1950s and later, when the international cultural relations of our country expanded and many artists traveled to various countries of the world, a whole group of series appeared based on the impressions of these trips. They usually contained scenes of street life, landscapes, individual portrait sheets. The artists talked about what they saw, showing the picturesque corners of nature, the famous monuments of architecture and sculpture, the features of life, people encountered on trips. Forced fluency characterized most of these works. But as a result of travels, completed series were also created, in which reportage, sketchiness were replaced by real artistic generalization. From acquaintance with such cycles, the viewer received not only a chain of vivid tourist impressions, but also new knowledge of a particular country and aesthetic pleasure.

One of these things was the series of N. A. Ponomarev (b. 1918) "Northern Vietnam", created in 1957. The image of this country, seen by the artist, is full of charm: a gray-blue high sky, expanses of calm waters, rice fields and a chain of lilac rocks on the horizon, either clearly visible, or melting in a pearly haze. Calm, slightly contemplative poetry of everyday life lives in these sheets. People are depicted with deep sympathy - the modest hardworking people of Vietnam - fishermen, miners, women going to the market (ill. 19), waiting for the crossing by the bay. Delicate and subtle coloring gives expressiveness to the drawings. The Vietnamese series was in many ways a turning point for its author. The artist began his career with charcoal and black gouache drawings dedicated to the miners of Donbass (1949-1950). They had a lot of conscientiousness and work and less creative inspiration. Drawing Vietnam, the artist discovered in his work not only new poetic notes, but also the ability of a colorist who can see the harmony and decorativeness of the mixed technique of gouache and pastel.

Of the series based on foreign impressions, the works of O. G. Vereisky (b. 1915) were also interesting. O. Vereisky, now a prominent illustrator of books by Soviet writers and an easel graphic artist, owes his first knowledge of art to his father G. S. Vereisky. He also studied at the Academy of Arts in Leningrad. With equal freedom, O. Vereisky masters both the soft picturesqueness of a tone drawing in black watercolor or ink, and the bright contrasts of a clear, definite technique of drawing with a pen. Recently, the artist became interested in some engraving techniques, and he repeated some of his drawings, executed as a result of trips to Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, in prints. One of the best among them is a sheet called "Rest on the way. Syria" (ill. 20). He is beautiful in color and laconic composition, but his main charm is in the image of a woman. The refined beauty and slight sadness of the face, the restrained tenderness of the gesture and the natural grace of the woman are reproduced by the artist with real aesthetic pleasure. The sheets of O. Vereisky's "American Series" are also full of precise observations, and he saw not only the ceremonial, but also the shady, everyday features of American life.

Our knowledge about this country is also replenished with graceful, in its linear sketchiness, pen drawings by V. Goryaev, an artist with a sharp, somewhat sarcastic manner, illustrator Mark Twain, a permanent contributor to the Crocodile magazine.

Post-war graphics are characterized by great successes of the artists of the Union republics. The strongest teams of graphic artists have now formed in Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. Both drawing and watercolor have their great artists in these republics, and the art of printmaking was developed here and then, when in the late 1940s and early 1950s it was in decline in the RSFSR.

As an example of Ukrainian easel graphics, one can cite the series "Ukrainian Folk Thoughts and Songs" by M. Deregus. Broadly conceived, including sheets of various moods and themes, this cycle characterizes the maturity of Ukrainian graphics, although in the work of Deregus himself - a landscape painter and illustrator par excellence - stands somewhat apart. The sadness and hope of the sheet "The Thought of Marus Boguslavka" and the tragedy of loneliness, deceived faith in people in the sheet "The Thought of the Three Brothers of Azov" are replaced by the courageous poetry of our days in the composition "The Thought of Partisans" with the central image of Kovpak. Young Ukrainian artists V. Panfilov, who dedicated his engravings to steelworkers, and I. Selivanov, who created sheets on historical and revolutionary themes, are successfully working in printmaking. A typical genre for Ukrainian graphics is an industrial landscape, usually executed in engraving techniques. Its masters are V. Mironenko, A. Pashchenko, N. Rodzin and others.

In the Baltic republics, landscape graphics are very diverse. There is a strong stream of chamber lyrical landscape, emotional, with great charm. Its creators are Estonian artists, masters of engraving R. Kaljo, A. Keerend, L. Ennosaar, watercolorist K. Burman (junior), graphic artists of Latvia - A. Junker, Lithuanian - N. Kuzminskis and others. In their works there are lyrical reflections, and close communication with nature that enriches the soul, and each time the beauty of their native fields, the picturesque ancient Tallinn, etc., is understood in a new way.

In the work of the oldest Estonian draftsman G. Reindorf, landscape images acquire a more philosophical coloring. It is difficult for us now to fully imagine the long creative path of this artist, since almost all of his pre-war works perished during the Great Patriotic War. But the post-war period of his activity was also fruitful. Reindorf was born in 1889 in St. Petersburg. Having successfully graduated from the Stieglitz School of Technical Drawing, he received the right to a business trip abroad and left for France. The short period of foreign pensioners was interrupted by the First World War. Returning to his homeland, Reindorf works in the field of applied and landscape graphics, and is engaged in teaching activities. His main creative interests in the 1940s - 1950s were absorbed by the landscape and, to some extent, book illustration. He performs his things in these years mainly in the form of drawings; earlier, the artist also created expressive engraving sheets. The desire for objective accuracy of the image sometimes goes to the detriment of Reindorf's emotional richness of his sheets, but in his best works these two principles are combined. Most characteristic in this regard are his sheets "On the Hot Days of August" (1955). A kind of harmony unites everything living in this rural landscape, and the virtuosic technique of graphite pencil drawing gives the sheets a tonal richness and a special filigree execution.

There is also a line of romantic landscape in the graphics of the Baltic states, saturated with the pathos of stormy restless human feelings. In the engravings of the Latvian artists P. Upitis, O. Abelite, in separate sheets by M. Ozoliņš, images of nature are colored with acute emotionality, full of inner tension.

In the etchings of the Riga resident E. Anderson, the landscape becomes the environment where the majestic action of labor unfolds.

Many Baltic artists act both as landscape painters and as authors of thematic works, and this only enriches their works. In the versatile work of the Estonian artist E. K. Okas (b. 1915), for example, one can find landscape sheets, portraits, and thematic things. Okas was born in Tallinn in a working-class family and studied there - first at the State Artistic and Industrial School, and then at the State Higher Art School. During the Great Patriotic War, he worked as a front-line artist. Okas is both a painter and a master of book illustration. But if the images he created for book pages are sometimes separated from us by decades and centuries, the heroes of his easel works always live in modernity, breathe its by no means serene atmosphere. A sense of the complexity of the modern world with its sharp social contradictions fills, for example, the sheets of the Dutch and Italian series of Okas' travel sketches, fundamentally executed by him in various engraving techniques. Sharp-sighted and sternly truthful, these engravings sound like real journalism. The Lithuanian artist V. Yurkunas (b. 1910) also works in book and easel graphics. He graduated from the Kaunas Art School in 1935 and is constantly engaged in teaching activities. In his engravings, people seem to be especially closely connected with their native nature, their native land. Such are the heroes of Maironis's poem (1960; ill. 21), reproduced by him, such is the little collective farmer who won the sympathy of many viewers - the image of youth walking on the beautiful land, artlessly simple and provocative, stunning with a unique integrity of feelings ("I will be a milkmaid", 1960). The technique of linocut in sheets by V. Yurkunas has both conciseness and flexibility, it naturally serves to create his bright, optimistic images.

The Baltic traffic in the field of portrait work with enthusiasm, And if among the works of artists of the RSFSR we now have, in addition to the invariably successful, but already rare performances by G. S. Vereisky, only sharply characteristic etching portraits by M. Feigin, in the Baltic we will be pleased with the subtle and varied skill a number of portrait painters.

The Estonian artist E. Einmann (born 1913) achieved a lot in this genre. He was educated at the State School of Applied Arts and the Higher Art School in Tallinn. His creative path began during the Great Patriotic War. Now, in a long series of his works, the features of his talent are clearly visible. Thoughtful and careful attitude of the artist to the inner world of his models. Respect for a person is a characteristic feature of his work. It always manifests itself, whether the artist paints an old fisherman or a young vocational school student, a nurse or an actress. At the same time, the author's direct experience, the assessment of the model, remains somewhere aside, the main thing is a restrained and objective story about it. Einmann's portraits captivate with the subtlety of the graphic manner, alien to external effects. This subtlety distinguishes his sheets, executed with graphite or Italian pencil, and watercolor, and lithography.

Emotional and lyrical is the portrait work of the Estonian artist A. Bach-Liimand, who is especially good at portraying women and children. The portraits and self-portrait of the Lithuanian artist A. Makunaite, who works in linocut, are full of serious thoughts. The charcoal portraits created by the young Latvian draftswoman F. Pauluk are expressive.

Graphics in Ukraine and the Baltic States has a long tradition, and therefore its success is largely natural. But even in such republics as, for example, Kyrgyzstan or Kazakhstan, where graphic art is quite young, it has already made noticeable progress.

The leading master of graphics in Kyrgyzstan is L. Ilyina (born 1915), a pupil of the Moscow Polygraphic Institute, who worked for many years in the city of Frunze. Monumentality, large forms, laconicism are the characteristic features of her linocuts. In recent years, Ilyina, somewhat moving away from book illustration, performs many easel works, and in particular the landscape series of woodcuts "Native Land" (1957), and a large series of colored linocuts dedicated to the woman of her republic. The features of the new, which distinguish our life, are perhaps especially noticeable in the women's destinies shown by the Kyrgyz artist. Work does not bend women now, but only gives majesty and significance to posture. A free, unconstrained attitude distinguishes both the girl-beet grower (1956) and the delegates of the distant Tien Shan, attentively listening to the speaker (1960). Linocuts by L. Ilyina are plastic, the volume is freely molded into them with a lively, rough stroke, large color spots. At the same time, the silhouette decorative effect of the sheet is always preserved (ill. 22).

In Azerbaijan, the artist M. Rahman-zade (b. 1916), who depicts offshore oil fields in the Caspian, works interestingly in the field of color lithography. She knows how to introduce into her series a variety of motifs that seem to be similar and, at the same time, each time revealing something new in the industrial landscape. The flyover sheet from her 1957 work stands out among others for its slenderness of composition, sonorous combination of bright yellow water and black openwork structures. Such are some of the achievements of republican engravers and draftsmen.

Today's graphics are very different from those of the first post-war decade. What is new, so unlike the previous one, appeared in it? If earlier modernity was captured with a genuine poetic generalization only in individual things, now its living features are scattered in many graphic works. Mass turn of artists to the present gives its results. Modernity is being assimilated in its non-external, deep-seated features; the artists are discovering, as it were, a new face of our country, the Soviet man. In many ways, the graphics of recent years have something in common with painting. The artists of these arts see the stern and impetuous face of time, a special activity of attitude pervades their works. And the craving for new, untested art forms also turns out to be common to them. In graphics, all this primarily refers to printmaking. Its rise began in the mid-1950s, and now we can talk about its real heyday. This heyday is associated primarily with the influx of new young forces into easel engraving. But already experienced artists also contributed to it. In the landscapes of A. Vedernikov, for example, Leningrad, burdened with many traditions of its depiction, suddenly appears in such a new appearance, sparkling with pure colors, that it seems to be seen for the first time. Vedernikov's color lithography technique does not imitate either a colored pencil drawing or a detailed watercolor painting. The artist operates with generalized forms, bold combinations of several pure tones. His search for decorativeness in color lithography is one of the many characteristic prints today.

Among the successes of printmaking, we can also attribute the woodcuts of F. D. Konstantinov about rural labor, and especially his landscape sheet "Spring on the Collective Farm" (1957; ill. 23), and the landscapes of the Armenian artist M. M. Abeghyan - "Rocky Shore of Zanga", "In the mountains of Bjni" (1959) and many other works by artists of the older and middle generations.

But the new, which distinguishes modern printmaking, is felt especially clearly in the things of the young. I. Golitsyn, A. Ushin, G. Zakharov, Ya. Manukhin, I. Resets, L. Tukachev, K. Nazarov, V. Popkov, D. Nodia, I. Nekrasov, V. Volkov - a whole galaxy of young people who performed brightly in print. We see ordinary suburban landscapes in A. Ushin's "Suite on Wires" (born 1927), a graduate of the Leningrad Art and Pedagogical School (ill. 24). No events happen in its sheets, only electric trains rush in silence, and at the same time, a lot is happening here - steel trusses rise up to support the wires, sheaves of light from the train window tear the thick night darkness, white lightning of rain crosses it, and clouds pile up in a dazzling heap in the black skies - life is going on, unique, alive, felt very sharply, in its most active, tense state. It is this sharp, active perception of life in its constant dynamics that distinguishes many works of the young. It unites their works. But, in addition, young people are very individual in their work. Each of these artists already has his own face in art, his own opinion about life, his own understanding of the engraving language.

Spacious landscapes and lyrical scenes by G. Zakharov with their emphasized rhythm of large black-and-white strokes and spots sound unique. Thoughtful, slightly ironic landscape novels by I. Golitsyn are detailed, where each house is a whole story about the life of a huge city, and a street intersection unfolds for us in an instant and somewhat pessimistic vision a scroll of human everyday life. The flexible silver engraving technique of Golitsyn was largely formed under the influence of Favorsky. The subtlety of the woodcut, its tonal richness, so subject to Favorsky, as if expanded the horizons of Golitsyn, the artist of a larger, more courageous linocut technique (ill. 25),

Slightly harsh, significant, and in its most ordinary manifestations, life flows 24. A. A. U Shin. Rain. 1960 of a big city in etchings by V. Volkov from Leningrad. Free from the hustle and bustle of trifles, his sheets monumentalize reality, as if exposing its courageous majestic rhythm in the stream of everyday life. And the people are shown by the artist in some one, but significant aspect - these are harsh, laconic people of labor.

The Georgian artist D. Nodia actively sees the industrial landscape and labor scenes in dynamics. The transparent world of youth, a wonderful fusion of childish clarity of soul and adult subtlety of spiritual movements, is revealed by Y. Manukhin in the fragile image of his popular Grass of Grass.

The same artist, in an engraving dedicated to the struggle for peace, achieves a special expression of the image that embodies the anger and pain of Hiroshima. At the same time, Manukhin learned a lot from the closeness of his easel sheet to the art of the poster (ill. 26).

V. Popkov (ill. 27) talks in detail about the work of transport workers in a series of engravings and gouaches, who has also acted interestingly in recent years as a painter. In all these works, young artists reveal to us different facets of our modernity, seen in their own way and very freshly.

Of course, not everyone in printmaking is now only successful. There is also small everyday writing, illustrativeness. We often come across them in series devoted to work, as well as with boring protocol in the industrial landscape. There are also things, the whole meaning of which is exhausted by their external decorativeness. On the other hand, what was new in printmaking in recent years was born in drawing, although such a powerful detachment of young people did not appear here. Indicative in this regard is the creative path of V. E. Tsigal (born 1916). It began in the first post-war years with a series of ink and watercolor drawings, in which the life and work of the Soviet people were shown authentically, and often lyrically and warmly, but still without great artistic discoveries. Tsigal was partly hampered by his excessive activity, the desire to cover with his art too wide a range of life phenomena. Tsigal worked quickly, large series of his sheets appeared at almost all major exhibitions. But real creative concentration came to him only when, having begun to travel and study the life of peasants in the mountain villages of Dagestan, he was carried away for a relatively long time by this one topic, which, of course, was quite grateful for the artist. This is how his series "Dagestan" (1959 - 1961) appeared, which was a big step forward for Tsigal. In this cycle there is also the inexhaustible charm of the novelty of the life of the highlanders, which was revealed to the artist, and some very intimate, everyday features noticed by a friendly look, and a peculiar feeling of harmony between man and nature. Its sheets are built on a subtle juxtaposition of motifs common to Dagestan, but suddenly revealing to us both the specifics of the way of life and the relationships of people, eternal and at the same time subtly modern (ill. 28).

In the current rise of easel graphics, the complex / subtle art of watercolor has found its place. In watercolor, a sure eye and a quick, precise hand are especially needed. Corrections are almost impossible in it, and the movement of the brush with paint and water is deceptively easy and requires strict discipline from the artist. But the coloristic possibilities of watercolors are rich, and the translucence of paper under a transparent layer of paint gives it a unique lightness and grace. “Watercolor is painting that secretly would like to become graphics. Watercolor is graphics that becomes painting politely and delicately, building its achievements not on killing paper, but on outlandish revealing of its elastic and unsteady surface,” once wrote one of the greatest connoisseurs of Soviet graphics A. A. Sidorov. Even now, as in the 1930s, landscape painters are the masters of watercolor in our country. The works of S. Boym, N. Volkov, G. Khrapak, S. Semenov, V. Alfeevsky, D. Genin, A. Mogilevsky and many others show the life of a modern city, nature in the richness of its colors, in its wonderful diversity. And less and less often passive descriptiveness finds its shelter in the landscape.

These are some of the features of modern Soviet graphics. However, her picture is so complex and rich that, of course, deserves a separate description. Our goal was only to get acquainted with the work of the most famous masters of easel graphics and individual moments of its history.

The artist Yu. I. Pimenov, whose drawings were discussed above, wrote: “The path of the artist is the path of enchantment with life and the path of its expression full of disappointments and failures. But in every sincere thing there is a grain, a microparticle of the desired, then an echo, somewhere a wave of this feeling is received and flourishes. For the sake of this "grain of what is desired", for the sake of a reciprocal wave of feeling, which is absolutely necessary for the artist, all his hard and joyful work is done.