Reborn Art. Post-war Painting by Ivan Zakharovich Pushkarev (1904–1991)

On November 14 at 4:00 p.m. the Kaluga Museum of Fine Arts (103 Lenin St.) will host the opening of the anniversary exhibition “Revived Art. Post-war Painting by Ivan Zakharovich Pushkarev (1904 – 1991)”, which is dedicated to the 129th anniversary of the artist’s birth.

I. Z. Pushkarev was born on June 24, 1904 in Smolensk in the family of an employee, lived a long and difficult life, experienced a lot, was a witness to many historical events. At the beginning of his life, I. Z. Pushkarev studied, albeit briefly, at the architectural faculty of the Smolensk Polytechnic Institute, and at the same time in 1921-1922 he studied at the Proletkult studio under V. F. Shtranikh (1888-1981), who graduated from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, was a student of the famous Russian impressionist K. A. Korovin. He adopted his expressive pictorial style of painting, which he passed on to his students, including I. Z. Pushkarev.

In the early 1920s, I. Z. Pushkarev lived in Moscow for several years, where he immersed himself in the atmosphere of the stormy artistic life of that time. From the early 1930s, he lived and worked in Rostov-on-Don, studied at the art studio of the Workers’ Palace under E. A. Steinberg (1937-2012). Since 1932, he took part in art exhibitions, and in 1933 he became a member of the Rostov-on-Don Association of Artists.

In 1934, I. Z. Pushkarev returned to Smolensk, joined the Smolensk Artist association, where he occupied the position of one of the leading artists of the region, and was part of the initiative group for the creation of the Smolensk branch of the Union of Artists, which was established in December 1939. His works were exhibited in the 1930s at Smolensk and Moscow exhibitions.

With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the artist went to the front. Together with his unit, he was surrounded near Vyazma in October 1941, was taken prisoner, and was released only in January 1945. After passing through the filtration unit, he was acquitted and returned to his native Smolensk. Here he learns that all the works he created in the pre-war period perished in the summer of 1941 in the destroyed and burned Smolensk.

After the war, the artist opened a new page in his creative life. In 1947, I. Z. Pushkarev moved to Kaluga, worked in the Kaluga Artist partnership, and from that same year participated in exhibitions of Kaluga artists. From 1953, he worked in the Kaluga branch of the Art Fund of the RSFSR. M. M. Dneprovsky, director of the Kaluga Regional Art Museum, highly appreciated his creative potential. His works were eagerly acquired. Today they are in the Kaluga Museum of Fine Arts, the State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics in Kaluga, the Kaluga United Museum-Reserve, and in private collections.

Of the entire artistic heritage of I. Z. Pushkarev, this small exhibition includes: landscapes, portraits, several still lifes and sketches created by the artist in the post-war period from 1946 to 1991. "There is true beauty in his still lifes and landscapes, but perhaps his portraits are especially remarkable. The most important thing here is the revelation of the spiritual life of the individual. And every portrait is an artistic discovery in a person - a vibrant alloy of personal traits, momentary and eternal" (V. M. Obukhov). The earliest of them is "Portrait of a Frontline Soldier", painted in 1946 in Smolensk.

Despite all the hardships of life that he had to endure, I. Z. Pushkarev is a happy man: he survived German captivity, returned to his homeland, found his family again and began a new creative life, became an artist and left his mark on Russian art.