Alexander Deineka "Defense of Petrograd"

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

In the article you will find information about the Soviet artist A. A. Deineka, the famous author of monumental works, painter and graphic artist. His painting "The Defense of Petrograd" and its artistic features are described in detail.

Short biography

Artist Alexander Alexandrovich Deineka (1899-1969) is a Soviet artist. He received the title of People's Artist of the USSR in 1963, full member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR since 1947, Hero of Socialist Labor (1969).

A. A. Deineka - teacher (professor since 1940) at Vkhutein and other Moscow art institutes.

Best of:

• "Defense of Petrograd", 1928
• "Mother", Tretyakov Gallery, 1932
• “Donbass. Lunch Break, Art Museum of the Latvian SSR, 1935
• “Future Pilots Tretyakov Gallery, 1938
• Sevastopol series, Tretyakov Gallery 1932-1934
• "Defense of Sevastopol", Russian Museum, 1942 and many others.

Artist - Authormosaic works-plafonds decorating such metro stations:

1. Mayakovskaya (1938-1939).
2. Novokuznetskaya (1943) in Moscow.
3. Frieze in the foyer of the Palace of Congresses (Moscow, Kremlin, 1960-1961), as well as many other graphic and pictorial works.

His awards: Order of Lenin, Order of the Red Banner of Labor, medals.

The style and manner of the artist

Back in the 1920s, the artist developed his own range of themes and images in painting and drawing, which determined the nature of A. A. Deineka's work as a whole. This is industrial work, less often - the work of the villagers, urban life and sports. Everywhere the artist seeks and finds the heroism of labor and heroes, seeks to express new, socialist and communist moods and relationships, to determine the features of the worldview of the new Soviet man. His works are filled with the pathos of the military and labor heroic everyday life of the Land of the Soviets.

The works of A. A. Deineka in the 1920s are almost monochrome. They are very expressive, distinguished by their monumental forms. Their peculiarity is the dynamics of compositions, which is usually built on a sharp opposition of planes and volumes, black and white, a variety of plans for the entire space and a graphically clear, often very sharp, style of writing.

The depicted images are groups of people: workers, soldiers, athletes, demonstrators, etc. These images, as a rule, are generalized and typified by submission to the general rhythm of the movement, the common aspiration and unambiguouslyreveal the plan, as can be seen in the painting by Alexander Deineka - "Defense of Petrograd".

Description of the painting "Defense of Petrograd"

"Defense of Petrograd" was created by the artist in the late 1920s (1928, author's repetition - 1956). This work by A. A. Deineka is considered his best work on the historical and revolutionary theme, is stored in the capital's Central Museum of the USSR Armed Forces.

The author compositionally organizes the space as in ancient friezes, choosing the motif of the procession of the defenders of the city - soldiers of the revolution. This gives the picture flatness, regularity, movement in two directions. The composition is built in three plans, with three ribbons.

In the foreground, the Red Army soldiers - men and women - going to the front, with rifles on their shoulders, dressed in everyday clothes, their clothes are ordinary, working. Their purposeful faces are resolute and severe. The figures move from left to right with force and relentlessness. The artist clearly conveys their faith in the future, the greatness of their feat

In the background, on the top ribbon, a picture of the return of the wounded from the battle, exhausted, but piously believing in the victory of soldiers, unfolds. They have already experienced what war is. The rhythm of the movement of this tape is slowed down, as it were, by the distortion, skewness of the figures, they have lost pressure, but there remains the belief that others will finish the work they have begun. This part of the picture "Defense of Petrograd" leaves the viewer with a deep inner rejection of the war. Anti-militarism is generally characteristic of the artist's works.

Contrast betweenmovements of the figures of Deineka's painting "The Defense of Petrograd" on these two tapes is huge. Groups of people move in different directions and at different speeds. The wounded are wandering, their figures are silhouetted. Whereas those going in the opposite direction are the figures of people striving for the “last mortal battle”, which are interpreted in volume. Generalization, typification of the images of both groups, their departure “from nowhere to nowhere” give the movement of Alexander Deineka’s painting “The Defense of Petrograd” the character of a vicious circle. The repetition of events is traced. This movement, like the color and volume of the figures of the foreground of the picture, the silhouette of the upper and the immobility of the landscape give the picture a kind of three-dimensional depth and expressiveness, make you think about the cyclicity and continuous connection of heroism and the price paid for it. This method of solving the composition will be repeated by the author of "The Defense of Petrograd" Alexander Deineka in the future more than once.

In the distance, on the third insignificant and narrow ribbon of the picture, a landscape is depicted: the Neva with ships and part of the embankment. Frozen from frost, icy from the B altic winds, the coast emphasizes the rigidity and severity of the canvas, unites the dynamics of the intense rhythm of movement on the other two tapes.

Working on the painting

"Defense of Petrograd" artist Deineka completed in two weeks. But the work on the picture was preceded by a long and difficult preliminary stage of life. The concept of the work, and, accordingly, its composition has changed several times. The author made a number of sketches for the canvas from real, specific people who defended revolutionary Petrograd from Yudenich. The sketch of the commander by the artist is made from a real combat commander-Red Army soldier.

The artist Alexander Deineka in "The Defense of Petrograd" deliberately limited the color palette of the canvas, choosing cold bluish-steel, grayish, brown tones, whitened the background as much as possible. Almost black bridge structures, clear and strong, emphasize the clarity and unbending strength of the foreground figures. Deineka himself knew firsthand about the civil war: he himself participated in the defense of Kursk. Perhaps that is why in the painting "Defense of Petrograd" there is not only an unbending faith in the triumph of the ideals of the revolution, but also the theme of human suffering. All this conveys the image of a revolutionary city, the events of that heroic era, which were still alive in the memory of people in the late 20s.