Exhibition "War and Peace" in the hall of the Kaluga Museum of Fine Arts

May 7 at 16-00 in the exhibition hall of the Kaluga Museum of Fine Arts opens the exhibition "War and Peace" from the funds of the Pushkin Museum.

The victory of the Soviet Union and the entire anti-Hitler coalition over Nazi Germany is one of the greatest events in the recent history of Russia, Europe, and the whole world. The price of this victory was great. And, of course, it is unlikely it will ever be possible to fully understand and appreciate the scale of the Patriotic War, the very essence of the tragic events that cut off or turned over millions of fates.

The exhibition "War and Peace" allows you to see the Patriotic War, through the eyes of artists who knew about it firsthand, as a series of emotional artistic narratives, as life imprinted in the flows of artistic imagery, as an eternally living memory.

But this exhibition is not only about the war. It is also about the world, the memory of which constantly lived in the souls of people involved in the tragedy of war. It is also about the restoration of a peaceful life that began long before the end of the war.

The exposition includes paintings, drawings and sculptures, created, for the most part, by well-known masters of Russian fine art. Perhaps the most interesting are the works that arose during the war years. After all, this, among other things, is artistic evidence of the crimes of the Germans, the life of the fronts and the rear, and military suffering.

F.S. Artamonov and D.M. Tarkhov depicted Kaluga crippled by the war almost immediately after it was liberated by our troops. Then N.N. Volkov paints a picture “On the old Kaluga road”, and A.E. Kulikov creates the painting “Partisan raid on the headquarters of the German unit”. The ruins of New Jerusalem were depicted by V.A. Vasiliev. On full-scale pictorial sketches of K.G. Dorokhov - everyday life of the besieged Leningrad. During the war, a portrait of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief I.V. Stalin was also created by the famous master of socialist realism A.M. Gerasimov.

The life of the war was most fully reflected in the works of Soviet graphic artists V.S.Bibikov, P.Ya. Kirpichev, I.A. Sokolov, E.I.Komarov, A.E. Glukhovtsev, A.F. Pakhomov. These are compositional works that include not only observations, but also reflections on the war. And not only about her - one of EI Komarov’s lithographs is called “We Fight, We Live.” There are graphic sheets on which the days of the Victory are recreated: these are the works of V.V. Bogatkin.

Paintings and graphic sheets created in the post-war era are compositions with a high degree of artistic generalization. However, they are most often created in the wake of the war; they carry within it its echoes and responses. Already in 1946, B.V. Johanson creates a sketch of the painting "Liberation" that he never wrote. And T.G. Gaponenko paints a picture “After the Germans left” - the image he created is perceived as a terrible art document, an artistic denunciation. The classic creation of Soviet art was the painting by A. Laktionov “Letter from the Front”, a sketch of which is now stored in our museum.

The post-war reconstruction of the country, the memory of the tragedy of the war - the themes of the works of V. A. Plokhinsky (“Construction on the collective farm”), Z. M. Timofeeva (“Soldier widows”), I. Vorobyeva (“Song of the white cranes”).

Of course, the works presented on display are often full of tragedy. Nevertheless, the exhibition "War and Peace" has a powerful charge of optimism: after all, no matter how unimaginably terrible the victims made by our people, he was able to overcome the forces of fascist Europe that seemed to be irresistible. He could because he was spiritually strong, because the truth was on his side.

The exhibition runs from May 7 to June 7, 2015 in the exhibition hall of the Kaluga Museum of Fine Arts (104 Lenin St.).

We bring to your attention a video using sign language to familiarize hearing-impaired users with the exhibition "War and Peace" dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945: