Still Life by Soviet Artists

Working on genres such as landscape, still life, and interiors was a manifestation of artists' independence from the official ideology. Lyrical genres attracted many artists as a "rest" from working on officially ordered pictures dealing with "socially relevant" and revolutionary subjects.
But namely the ambivalence in artists' free expression of feelings to be found in these genres was inadmissible for the officialdom and lots of fine works were gradually deemed to the dust of artists' studios.

The unofficial art of the '60s and '70s resulting from a synthesis of the traditions of the Russian avant-garde of the early XX century and modern Western art, was remarkable by a great variety of stylistic trends - from Impressionism and Expressionism to Realism and the so called "Russian Cezannism".

The works included here are as varied as the period: Tereschenko's expressionistic and colourful works, Pyotr Sholokhov's classical works with an avantgarde touch, Natalia Gippius' works on the 1930s and 1940s, the classical lyrical vein of Roman Zhidkov's flowers, the straightforward modernist compositions of Vitaly Davydov, Marina Uspenskaya light and floating flowers, and Gneushev's impressionism.

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