Paintings by Aleksandr Deyneka

Aleksandr Deyneka was a Soviet painter, monumentalist and graphic artist, teacher, professor. He was an academician of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1947), People’s Artist of the USSR (1963), Hero of Socialist Labor (1969), the winner of the Lenin Prize (1964), member of the CPSU since 1960.
Alexander Alexandrovich Deyneka was born on May 8, 1899 in Kursk into the family of a railway worker. He received his primary education at the Kharkov Art College (1915-1917). The artist’s youth, like many of his contemporaries, was associated with revolutionary events.
In 1918 he worked as a photographer, headed the art section, decorated agitation trains, theatrical performances, participated in the defense of Kursk.

Before descending into the mine. 1925

From 1919 to 1920, Deyneka served in the Red Army, where he directed the art studio. From the army he was sent to study in Moscow, where his teachers were V. A. Favorsky and I. I. Nivinsky (1920-1925). Meetings with V. V. Mayakovsky were very important in the creative development of the artist.
In 1924 there was the First Discussion Exhibition of the Unions of Active Revolutionary Art, where Deyneka took part together with A. D. Goncharov and Yu. I. Pimenov.
In 1928, Deyneka created the first Soviet truly monumental historical and revolutionary picture Defense of Petrograd.
In 1930, the artist created expressive in color and composition posters We Mechanize Donbass and Physical Culture Girl.
A new stage in Deyneka’s work began in 1932. The most significant work of this period is the painting Mother (1932). In the same years, the artist created The Night Landscape with Horses and Dry Herbs (1933), Bathing Girl (1933), Noon (1932), Behind the Curtain (1933), etc.
From the beginning of the 1930s, the artist turned to the theme of aviation (Parachutist over the Sea, 1934), illustrations for the children’s book by G. F. Baidukov – Through the Pole to America (published in 1938).
During the Great Patriotic War, Deyneka lived in Moscow and created political posters. In 1942, together with the artist G. G. Nysskii, he made a trip to the front. In 1942, Deyneka created the heroic picture Defense of Sevastopol (1942), which was a kind of anthem to the courage of the defenders of the city.
The artist’s mosaics decorates the Moscow metro stations Mayakovskaya (1938) and Novokuznetskaya (1943).
Deyneka died on June 12, 1969.
His picture Behind the Curtain was sold at MacDougall’s for 2 million 248 thousand pounds.
Source: http://www.deineka.ru/