Sokolov nikolai aleksandrovich painter. Artists of Kukryniksy: composition and biography of the team, paintings

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Sokolov Nikolai Alexandrovich(1903-2000). Soviet graphic artist and painter. Active member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR, People's Artist of the RSFSR, People's Artist of the USSR, Hero of Socialist Labor.

Since 1924, together with students M.P. Kupriyanov and P.N. Krylov, he began work under the joint pseudonym Kukryniksy. The works of the Kukryniksy were included in the golden fund of Soviet art, the Kukryniksy were laureates of the Lenin Prize, the State Prizes of the USSR, the State Prize of the RSFSR, were awarded the gold medal of the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937 and Brussels in 1958 and many other awards.

The future artist was born into a merchant family, was the eldest of six children who lost their father's support early. Started working at the age of 14. In the spring of 1920, after a fire in their Moscow apartment, the Sokolov family moved to Rybinsk, to the homeland of their mother, nee Maria Alekseevna Shemyakina, settling in several rooms of the former Shemyakin house (Lenina Ave., now Krestovaya, 3). In Rybinsk, N. Sokolov, working as a clerk in the Department of Water Transport, graduated from secondary school No. 1 in 1923 and studied at the art studio of Proletkult, having received his first professional skills in drawing and painting under the guidance of artist M. M. Shcheglov. Passed away in February 2000.

In the summer of 1923 he entered the VKhUTEMAS (from 1926 - VKhUTEIN), graduating from its printing department. Since 1924, together with students M.P. Kupriyanov and P.N. Krylov, he began work under the joint pseudonym Kukryniksy. Their cartoons soon appeared on the pages of central publications. In 1932, on the advice of A.M. Gorky, who became interested in young artists, a solo exhibition was organized.

The multifaceted talent of artists manifested itself both in painting and in book illustrations, plastic arts and even theatrical productions of VV Mayakovsky's plays at the Meyerhold Theater. However, their work in the field of caricature received special fame. Starting with friendly cartoons and everyday caricatures, during the Great Patriotic War the artists became famous for their anti-fascist works from newspaper cartoons to the monumental "TASS Windows", gaining worldwide fame, which was continued by anti-imperialist posters of the Cold War period. The works of the Kukryniksy entered the golden fund of Soviet art, were exhibited in the USSR and abroad, receiving numerous awards and diplomas. The Kukryniksy are laureates of the Lenin Prize in 1965, the State Prizes of the USSR in 1942, 1947, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1975, the State Prize of the RSFSR in 1982, they were awarded the gold medal of the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937 and Brussels in 1958 and many other awards.

N.A.Sokolov kept a good memory of Rybinsk for the rest of his life, where he "was born as an artist." Starting in the 1950s, he donated about 300 works by both the Kukryniksy and other masters of Soviet art, as well as numerous documentary materials, to the Rybinsk State Historical, Architectural and Art Museum-Reserve. Until the last months of his life, he maintained a correspondence with the Rybinsk Museum-Reserve and the Rybinsk Drama Theater. In Rybinsk, 5 exhibitions dedicated to the work of the Kukryniksy and N.A. Sokolov took place.

In 1985, the artist was awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of Rybinsk.

Soviet graphic artist and painter, member of the creative group of Kukryniksy.
Sokolov Nikolai Aleksandrovich was born on July 8 (21), 1903 in the village of Tsaritsyno into a merchant family. He was the eldest of six children who lost their father's support early. Started working at the age of 14. In the spring of 1920, the Sokolov family moved to Rybinsk (now in the Yaroslavl region) to their mother's homeland. Here Nikolai Sokolov, working as a clerk in the Department of Water Transport, graduated from the second stage school. At the same time, he studied at the art studio of Proletkult and received his first professional skills in drawing and painting.
In the summer of 1923, he left for Moscow and entered the printing department of the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops (VHUTEMAS), where his teachers were N.N. Kupreyanov, P.I. Lvov and P.V. Miturich. During the years of study, he became friends with Kupriyanov M.V. and Krylov P.N. Created in the mid-1920s, the creative union lasted more than 60 years, striking with its surprisingly fruitful creative longevity. The collective pseudonym Kukryniksy was composed of the first syllables of the surnames of Kupriyanov and Krylov, as well as the first syllable of the name and the first letter of the surname of Sokolov. Three artists worked by the method of collective creativity (each also worked individually - on portraits and landscapes).
The team is best known for its numerous skillfully executed caricatures and cartoons, as well as book illustrations created in a characteristic caricature style.
The Kukryniksy also acted as illustrators, referring to works of literature with a deep understanding of the features of the depicted era and the language of the writer. The range of their creativity in this area is very wide - from sharp graphic grotesque to lyrical picturesque images. Among the works illustrated by them: "12 Chairs" and "The Golden Calf", Ilf and Petrov, "Golovlevs" and other works by Saltykov-Shchedrin, "The Lady with the Dog" and other works by Chekhov, "The Life of Klim Samgin", "Foma Gordeev" and "Mother" by M. Gorky, "Don Quixote" by Cervantes.
The team was awarded the Lenin Prize (1965), the Stalin Prize (1942, 1947, 1949, 1950, 1951), the USSR State Prize (1975), the gold medal of the World Exhibition in Paris (1937) and Brussels (1958) and many other awards.
Sokolov N.A. - Member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR since 1947.
In 1958 the artist was awarded the title of "People's Artist of the USSR".
By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of July 20, 1973, for outstanding services in the development of Soviet fine arts and in connection with his 70th birthday, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Sokolov was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the Order of Lenin and the Hammer and Sickle gold medal.
Awarded two Orders of Lenin, Order of the Patriotic War 1st degree, Friendship of Peoples (1993), medals. Honorary citizen of the city of Rybinsk (1985)
Passed away April 15, 2000. He was buried in Moscow, at the Novodevichy cemetery, next to his fellow writers - Kupriyanov and Krylov.
Paintings by N.A. Sokolov are in the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, private collections and galleries in Russia, Ukraine, England, France, Italy, Germany and other countries.

The picture presented on the site has an expert opinion of the National Research Restoration Center of Ukraine.

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Exhibition of works

WITH okolov Nikolai Alexandrovich - Soviet graphic artist and painter, member of the creative group Kukryniksy, Moscow.

Born on July 8 (21), 1903 in the village of Tsaritsyno, since 1960 within the city of Moscow (Southern Administrative District) in a merchant family. Russian. He was the eldest of six children who lost their father's support early. Started working at the age of 14. In the spring of 1920, the Sokolov family moved to Rybinsk (now in the Yaroslavl region) to their mother's homeland. Here Nikolai Sokolov, working as a clerk in the Department of Water Transport, graduated from the second stage school. At the same time, he studied at the art studio of Proletkult and received his first professional skills in drawing and painting.

In the summer of 1923 he left for Moscow and entered the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops (VHUTEMAS), the printing department. During his studies, M.V. became friends. Kupriyanov and P.N. Krylov Created in the mid-1920s, the creative union called "Kukryniksy" lasted more than 60 years, striking with its surprisingly fruitful creative longevity. The collective pseudonym Kukryniksy was composed of the first syllables of the surnames of Kupriyanov and Krylov, as well as the first syllable of the name and the first letter of the surname of Sokolov. Three artists worked by the method of collective creativity (each also worked individually - on portraits and landscapes).

The team is best known for its numerous skillfully executed caricatures and cartoons, as well as book illustrations created in a characteristic caricature style. Grotesque topical caricatures on topics of domestic and international life were landmark works for artists. Since 1933, the Kukryniksy have been permanent cartoonists for the Pravda newspaper, which made them the main conductors and propagandists (in a satirical form) of the official political line in the country.

During the Great Patriotic War, along with cartoons, a number of posters were released (among them - the very first poster after the German attack "We will mercilessly defeat and destroy the enemy!", June 1941 - with a caricature of Hitler) and satirical "TASS Windows", completed more than a four-year epic in Nuremberg as correspondents for the newspaper Pravda.

At the same time, since the 1920s, the Kukryniksy also acted as illustrators, referring to works of literature with a deep understanding of the features of the era depicted and the language of the writer. The range of their creativity in this area is very wide - from sharp graphic grotesque to lyrical picturesque images. Among the works illustrated by them: "12 Chairs" and "The Golden Calf", Ilf and Petrov, "Golovlevs" and other works by Saltykov-Shchedrin, "The Lady with the Dog" and other works by Chekhov, "The Life of Klim Samgin", "Foma Gordeev” and “Mother” by M. Gorky, “Don Quixote” by Cervantes.

In easel painting, the Kukryniksy also set themselves tasks of great political significance, creatively developing the traditions of Russian realistic art and sometimes using individual techniques of their satirical graphics. They turn to historical subjects, giving a significant place to the theme of the heroism of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War.

The team won the Lenin Prize (1965, for a series of political cartoons published in the Pravda newspaper and the Krokodil magazine), 4 Stalin Prizes of the 1st degree (1942, for a series of political cartoons; 1947, for illustrations to the works of A.P. Chekhov, 1949, for the painting "The End", 1951, for a series of posters "warmongers" and other political cartoons, as well as illustrations for the novel by M. Gorky "Mother"), Stalin Prize 2nd degree (1950, for political cartoons and illustrations for the book by M. Gorky “Foma Gordeev”), the State Prize of the USSR (1975, for the design and illustrations for the book by N.S. Leskov “Lefty”), the State Prize of the RSFSR named after I.E. Repin (1982, for the design and illustrations for the book by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "The History of a City"). He was also awarded the gold medal of the World Exhibition in Paris (1937) and Brussels (1958) and many other awards.

At Kazom of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of July 20, 1973 for outstanding services in the development of Soviet fine arts and in connection with the 70th anniversary Sokolov Nikolai Alexandrovich He was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the Order of Lenin and the Hammer and Sickle gold medal.

Nikolai Alexandrovich Sokolov continued to paint until the last days of his life and maintained an incredible clarity of mind. Sokolov was rightfully called a witness of the 20th century: he remembered to the smallest detail his meetings with Mayakovsky, Gorky, Ilf and Petrov, Shostakovich ... He was the oldest member of the Russian Academy of Arts (since 1947). By his 95th birthday, he managed to release the book Sketches from Memory. He died by an absurd accident: from a complication after surgery on a broken leg.

Passed away April 15, 2000. He was buried in Moscow, at the Novodevichy Cemetery, next to his fellow writers - Kupriyanov and Krylov (plot 10).

Awarded 2 Orders of Lenin (05/04/1962; 07/20/1973), Orders of the October Revolution (07/21/1983), Patriotic War 1st degree (09/23/1945), Friendship of Peoples (10/20/1993), medals. People's Artist of the USSR (11/24/1958). Honorary citizen of the city of Rybinsk (1985).

KUKRYNIKS

MIKHAIL VASILIEVICH KUPRIANOV
PORFIRY NIKITICH KRYLOV
NIKOLAY ALEKSANDROVICH SOKOLOV

It happens like this: the sources of a large river do not give an idea of ​​its wide overflow in the future. At its source are bright, icy springs, cheerful streams, rivulets, then forming a powerful stream, which overcomes rapids along the way, enriches itself with lakes and, finally, a river makes its way, striving its waters to the expanses of the seas.
This image involuntarily arises when you remember the beginning of the creative path of the artists M. V. Kupriyanov, P. N. Krylov, N. A. Sokolov. Their creative path originates in working studios, in wall newspapers, in amateur circles in provincial cities.
Almost the same age (Kupriyanov and Sokolov were born in 1903, Krylov in 1902), they all studied at school before the revolution, Kupriyanov in Tetyushi, near Kazan, Krylov in Tula, Sokolov in Moscow, and then in Rybinsk. Living in different places, all three cherished the dream of studying "as an artist."
The Great October Socialist Revolution opened the doors of educational institutions to the children of working people, and they were able to develop their natural talents. Young men Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov acquired the rudiments of artistic knowledge in local studios. They participated in the design of festive demonstrations, amateur performances, drew posters, eagerly studied nature, sketching their impressions. In the early 1920s they met within the walls of the art institute, having some training and complete conviction that a deep study of nature, the artist's fidelity to life are the basic principles of art.
In a brief essay, it is not possible to cover in sufficient detail the academic years and the early work of artists who entered the big life of art in the late 1920s and early 1930s. However, it must be borne in mind that in the life of the Kukryniksy, the early period of their creative formation was especially important, in many ways even decisive.
While still on the student bench, Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov united in a team, which predetermined their fate in the future.
The team entered the history of Soviet art under the "collective" surname Kukryniksy. In the 1920s, artists began signing their collective caricatures with this pseudonym.
Kupriyanov gave "KU", Krylov added "KRY", and Nikolai Sokolov concluded "NIKS". The letter "Y" was added to them by the editors. So, with their characteristic humor, the artists tell about the origin of their surname, which at first intrigued the reader.
Opening a fresh issue of a newspaper or magazine, readers of the 1920s and 1930s, with greater and greater interest, looked for satirical drawings and cartoons of the Kukryniksy, always witty, sometimes angry and sharp, sometimes warmed by humor and sly mockery, but always aptly hitting the target. . Expanding their horizons and the arena of action, improving their skills, the Kukryniksy are now in the battle ranks of the largest masters of political satire.
By the 1920s, the beginning of the illustrative activity of the Kukryniksy team dates back, a little later they took up painting. Three types of fine arts - political caricature, illustration, painting - currently determine the role, significance and large proportion of popular artists Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov and their "fourth brother" - Kukryniksy, to whom all three give their best achievements.
Nationality, party spirit - the fundamental qualities of the Kukryniksy team - were formed during the period of a full-scale offensive of socialism along the entire front, when the people carried out the first five-year plan, and the country, led by the great Communist Party, was on the eve of transformation from an agrarian country into an industrial country. Having carried out the urgent political task of defending the socialist fatherland, the Party launched the colossal work of building a socialist society and socialist culture.
The Great October Socialist Revolution, the victories on the fronts of the civil war, the labor feats of the people showed in full growth the selfless heroism of the working class, the Soviet man, the inexhaustible creative energy of the masses of the people, led by the Communist Party.
Art solved problems of unprecedented scope and significance, reflecting the heroic struggle of the people, the spiritual beauty of a man of free labor. Art, saturated with life-giving Soviet patriotism, played a huge role in the struggle against the external and internal enemies of the young Soviet Republic. A new creative method was born in the process of studying, comprehending the new reality by artists, in the process of their direct participation in the construction of Soviet society. Young artists could and did rely on the advanced phenomena of Soviet culture, which by that time had considerable achievements.
The Higher Art School during the academic years of the Kukryniksy experienced an acute crisis, growing pains, there was a continuous struggle between advanced art and art understanding with the heavy legacy of the pre-revolutionary crisis of bourgeois culture, which was expressed in the dominance of formalistic attitudes in teaching methods.
The creative friendship of Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov originated at the Art Institute, which was abbreviated as Vkhutemas (Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops). The young artists became friends and worked together, drawing sharp caricatures for the famous for the whole Vkhutemas "Arapotdel" wall institute newspaper. This department of humor "pulled", regardless of the faces, the formalists and cosmopolitans who stood at the helm of the board of the institute, burned out the backward moods among the students with the fire of ridicule. And the amateur theater "Petrushka", performing at student evenings with the most active participation of the Kukryniksy, like the "Arapotdel", refreshed the atmosphere, beat on formalism and naturalism, on the most harmful scholastic curricula, theoretical gibberish, implanted by the reactionary part of the professors and students.
All these and similar satirical amateur performances, organized by advanced students, helped the Kukryniksy to hone the pen of caricaturists, caricaturists of a pronounced socio-political nature. Young satirists were noticed by the Komsomol and party press. A collectively executed caricature, placed in 1925 in the magazine "Komsomolia", dates from the "official" birth of the Kukryniksy triumvirate, so to speak, its "legitimization" by the general public.
Together with their comrades at the institute, the Kukryniksy were indispensable designers of student columns at demonstrations in honor of the October Revolution and May Day, drew posters for the Red Army clubs, made sketches at workers' meetings, and breathed the heroic atmosphere of Soviet reality in the second half of the 1920s.
Soon, the Kukryniksy began to illustrate mass books, the authors of which were often their peers - young writers. Under these, sometimes rather weak in skill, but still expressive illustrations (mostly satirical), the reader recognized the “ruffy” signature of Kukryniksy, already familiar to him.
The poet A. A. Zharov tells about the early work of the Kukryniksy in an interesting way: “Our acquaintance,” he says, “began in 1925. I was the executive editor of the Moscow literary magazine "Komsomolia"
Three poorly dressed young men once entered my editorial room (on Neglinnaya Street) and declared:
- We are artists That is, we are students of Vkhutemas. Is there any work in the magazine?
- Our literary magazine, without pictures, - I said, - therefore, there will be no work for you, besides, there are a lot of three of you
- And we draw together and we seem to be one.
- But you sign with three names?
- No, one last name: Kukryniksy!
- What do you know how to do?
- We know how to draw cartoons.
- Well, try to draw a cartoon on these comrades, - I pointed to the poets who were sitting next to me.
Without saying a word, the guys set to work. At first I drew one. Then another silently took the drawing and added his strokes to it, then, the third one acted And so the drawing went around in a circle before our eyes.
A fair number of spectators gathered at the door of the room. We all looked with curiosity at this unprecedented process of collective creativity. And together, enthusiastically applauded the result of this process: the caricature was magnificent. We published it in the Komsomoliya magazine, where we had to start a section called “Friendly Caricatures” especially for young artists, about whom Bezymensky and I are proud to say: our discovery! - (From the unpublished memoirs of A. A. Zharov.)
The connection of the Kukryniksy with literature and writers deepened and took on various forms. Very peculiar and characteristic for the Kukryniksy was the pictorial criticism of the works of contemporary writers (as well as artists) introduced by them into the everyday life of art. Caricatures and cartoons on literary themes involved young artists in writers' circles, in literary magazines and for a long time consolidated the connection between the "many-headed Kukryniksy" and writers.
Having linked their fate with the Komsomol and party press, with the workers' press (the Kukryniksy actively worked in those years in the journal Workers' and Peasants' Correspondent), with Soviet literature, the artists answered their spiritual need for publicists in a wide public platform and predetermined some essential features of their work. further.
Kupriyanov and Sokolov graduated from the graphic department, Krylov graduated from the painting department. As it turned out in the course of their collective activity, this circumstance not only did not prevent unity, but, on the contrary, cemented it. All three complemented one another, and then each of the three artists mastered the specialties needed by the team. On the principle of creative equality, this triple alliance of friends and craftsmen was strengthened, each of whom began to give all his talent, all his skill “into a common cauldron”.
The creative community of the Kukryniksy with writers is one of the most interesting phenomena of Soviet art. In itself, it testifies to the synthetic nature of our artistic culture. Speaking on the public arena in the difficult fighting years of the formation of socialist society, when the role of agitation and propaganda acquired exceptional importance, literature and fine arts, united, reinforced each other in the battle formation.
Already at the end of the 1920s, the drawings of the Kukryniksy can be found in almost all illustrated magazines in Moscow, the artists became regulars in literary magazines in the department of humor. Speaking in collaboration with the masters of literary parodies - Arkhangelsky, Bezymensky, Shvetsov and a number of others, the Kukryniksy not only illustrated the text, they created their own "isoparodies", in which they eloquently and sharply criticized, parodied writers, artists and their work, achieving such similarity, such fidelity of the image that even now their best caricatures, "isoparodies" retain all their significance.
The Kukryniksy exposed the biases of individual writers towards philistinism, the abstruse poetry and painting of the formalists, the aestheticism and cosmopolitanism of other critics, the naturalistic elements of the work of artists, etc. The confusion and enemies of proletarian literature were hit hard. The satire and caricature of the Kukryniksy acquired the features of a truly military weapon, was part of a large and serious political struggle to strengthen literature and art of a new type, vitally connected with socialist construction.
We must do justice to the young artists, they chose the targets of their critical arrows almost unmistakably, in general, correctly orienting themselves in the difficult situation of the literary struggle at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. They also had breakdowns, when they involuntarily succumbed to the groupism that was planted in the editorial offices. So, for example, working together with a number of writers in the same ranks, in their satirical drawings addressed to them, they often overstepped the boundaries of a friendly caricature. But in general, the cleansing work of the satirists and parodists Kukryniksy was highly appreciated by the public.
In the very nature of the talent, the creative nature of the members of the Kukryniksy team, there were features that were strengthened in social work, in a student hostel, which allowed them to easily create "in public", to unite in creative communities with satirical poets. Mutual attraction of artists and writers is also not accidental. People united for creative work who shared certain creative attitudes, similar in the type of weapons and in the goals of the struggle they waged on the front of art.
There is no doubt that V. V. Mayakovsky played a big role in the formation of the Kukryniksy-satirists, and moreover, in the decisive years of their creative youth. For the first time, the Kukryniksy saw and heard Mayakovsky, being students of the Vkhutemas, where the poet often visited and spoke. Young artists loved the poet-tribune, the innovator in Mayakovsky, they saw in him the living embodiment of their thoughts and dreams of a new type of art, addressed to millions.
Mayakovsky's work in "Windows of Satire Growth" was a school for the whole galaxy of cartoonists, distinguished by political determination, nationality, Bolshevik passion. Mayakovsky attracted the Kukryniksy with the journalistic pathos of creativity, the deep vitality and partisanship of his art.
Mayakovsky himself noticed young cartoonists who more and more decisively entered into battle with the enemies of the Soviet Republic, with the bourgeoisie, and stood up for the new socialist art. In 1928, Mayakovsky invited the Kukryniksy to take part in the stage design of his "enchanting comedy" The Bedbug. The comedy attacked the philistines, degenerates, NEPmen, exposed the cruelty and inertness of a property-owning way of life, hostile to socialist society.
In 1929, the year Kupriyanov and Sokolov graduated from a higher educational institution (Krylov graduated earlier), the Kukryniksy completed an extremely sharp series of satirical watercolor sketches for The Bedbug. It was far from the only, but their brightest work for the stage. In contrast to the meager formalistic scenery of Rodchenko (who designed part of the performance), the Kukryniksy created a “type” and costumes in which both Mayakovsky’s theme and the features of his dramaturgy were vividly and realistically embodied. Mayakovsky's dramaturgy demanded satire at the top of his voice, without semitones, without compromises, she boldly operated with hyperbole as a method of typification.
"Weighty and visible" the artists recreated the images of the comedy. The method of sharply sharpening the features of the characters, adopted by the Kukryniksy, was based on a lively, realistic perception of reality, the characteristic features of everyday life. Types and costumes were mainly looked out for at the then-existing Sukharevka, a crowded market, where the capitalist rabble was still swarming, merchants, speculators labored, and where, for this reason, comedy designers made sketches.
Feeling the nature of the Mayakovsky theater perfectly, the Kukryniksy willingly used bright, open color, expressive lapidary pattern. The fishmonger in the sketch of the Kukryniksy (as it was embodied on the stage) has the purple nose of a bitter drunkard, a fiery red mustache, a red scarf; the red-cheeked apple vendor is dressed in a plaid red skirt. The costumes of Prisypkin, Rosalia Pavlovna and other characters are allowed by the Kukryniksy as the brightest satirical characteristics of the characters.
Portrait make-up served the same purpose of revealing the essence of all this frenzied philistinism. The most characteristic was the make-up for the artist Igor Ilyinsky, who played the main role of Prisypkin. The make-up was supposed to turn the sweet, good-natured physiognomy of a young talented comedy artist, a favorite of the public, into the rude muzzle of a former party member, a former worker, and now a “reborn” and fiance of Elsevira Renaissance.
Turning to theatrical painting, the Kukryniksy were based on the same principles that they developed in graphics. The satirical genre in all its forms had by that time become their main specialty. The satirical genre corresponded to the essence of the talent of each member of the team.
Not at all intending to become professionals in the field of theatrical painting, the Kukryniksy repeatedly turned to the stage. In the early 30s. they designed the play by A. Zharov "The First Candidate", "The Alarm" by F. Knorre and the performance of the Satire Theater "The City of Fools" based on Saltykov-Shchedrin.
So in theatrical activity, which, unfortunately, remained an episode in the creative biography of the Kukryniksy, the fundamental properties of the team manifested themselves: the fighting temperament of Soviet publicists, a bright talent in the field of satire.
In the future, the artists did not return to the theater, although the nature of their talents contains features of theatricality. These features are reflected in their director's ability to build a mise-en-scene (in a painting, in an illustration), to put an acute dramatic conflict at the basis of the picture, in the "sense of the audience" characteristic of the Kukryniksy.
In 1931, an event took place in the life of the Kukryniksy, which played a crucial role in their art, had a fruitful impact on their creative growth. The Kukryniksy met with Alexei Maksimovich Gorky. The great writer became interested in a team of talented satirists, whose art was distinguished by political purposefulness, focused on the broad masses of the people and concealed the richest opportunities for development.
Conversations with Gorky helped the artists expand the range of topics, enter the arena of international politics as caricaturists, and develop their talents to the full extent. The meeting with Gorky had another important consequence for the Kukryniksy: the artists also found themselves as illustrators of the classics, creating, with the blessing of the writer, drawings for his novel. Subsequently, they entered the ranks of the largest Soviet illustrators and strengthened the front of realist book masters with their art.
In 1932, at the initiative of Gorky, the first exhibition of the works of the Kukryniksy was organized in the writers' club. This exhibition - a major milestone in the life of young artists - summed up the "prehistory" of their work.
Already then, at the exhibition of 1932, the political orientation of creativity characteristic of the collective, the versatility of interests and activities, manifested itself. Along with works of graphics made in various genres (a large series of everyday cartoons "Old Moscow", etc.), the Kukryniksy showed their first paintings on the themes of the Civil War and sketches of theatrical productions.
In his article for the exhibition catalogue, Gorky praised the collective's creative activity as a bright and purely modern phenomenon of Soviet artistic culture. As for their first collective experiments in easel painting, Gorky did not hide their failures from the artists. He said, as the Kukryniksy recall: “It didn’t work out for you, this is not yet your area.” (I emphasized - N. S.).
And indeed, the first collective paintings of the Kukryniksy: "The Entry of the Whites", "Messengers of the Intervention", "Nationalization of the Factory", "The Funeral of the Commissar" and others, shown in 1932 at the exhibition, were only an application for a full-fledged easel painting. Artists in those years did without sketches from nature, the color and composition of their early works were distinguished by conventional features. However, in damp sketches, very weak in drawing, then outstanding painters were already guessed.
Having received a baptism of fire in the Soviet and party press, the Kukryniksy set themselves politically significant tasks in painting. They sought to capture the struggle of the Soviet people with the interventionists, the White Guard. They branded the enemies of the young Soviet Republic, resorting to the methods of satire.
That is why the Kukryniksy became innovators, paved new paths in art, because they boldly invade life, fighting for the new, the advanced, not in words, but in deeds. They have become innovators because they place their art at all stages of the life of the country at the service of the socialist Motherland, the Communist Party.
The exhibition of the Kukryniksy was subjected, without exaggeration, to a passionate discussion of the public in the light of the historic decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of April 23, 1932. This discussion, in which writers, poets, artists took part, supported by many reviews of popular criticism (the exhibition was then postponed to the Central Park of Culture and Leisure named after Gorky), helped the Kukryniksy to see their fundamental shortcomings.
A group of Ural workers wrote in a book of reviews about a solo exhibition of young artists: “Of course, one cannot but point out that there are still significant gaps in the works of the Kukryniksy, haste, too incomplete processing, and so on. But we remember that they are their own, artists born of the revolution. By learning and improving, they will achieve mastery, high artistry, which we wish them from the bottom of our hearts.”
Criticism noted the well-known narrowness of the Kukryniksy themes, “incomplete processing”, that is, the amorphousness, the intricacy of some of their drawings of that time, the deliberate sketchiness of the form. The instructions received by the artists from Gorky (who quite rightly believed that they should expand their political horizons and the scope of subjects), from subsequent comradely criticism, from the mass audience helped the Kukryniksy in their further work.
The period from 1931 to 1934 is rich in decisive events in the history of the Soviet state, in the history of Soviet artistic culture. In the summer of 1930 at the XVI Congress. Party I. V. Stalin said: “We are on the eve of transformation from an agrarian country into an industrial country,” and three and a half years later, the congress of winners stated that “the USSR has changed radically during this period, throwing off the guise of backwardness and the Middle Ages. From an agrarian country it became an industrial country. The capitalist encirclement, seeking to weaken the might of the fatherland of the working people, intensifies its subversive activities. But all the warmongers, the enemies of the working class, are now confronted by the mighty fortress of the country of victorious socialism.
In January 1930, Gorky received a letter from I. V. Stalin, which clearly illuminated the party point of view on criticism and self-criticism - an effective, powerful weapon in the movement of our Soviet society forward. In his subsequent speeches, in particular, in his conversations with the Kukryniksy, Gorky was guided by these party guidelines.
The main conclusion that the Kukryniksy could draw for themselves from a conversation with Gorky was that satire, correctly pointed against the enemies of the people, against everything that hinders the development of society forward along the path to communism, is a lofty and necessary genre, that it is a powerful weapon must be directed both against the backward people who are hindering the growth of the country, and against the forces of world reaction.
From the beginning of the 1930s Gorky's books have become reference books for many artists. The Kukryniksy are pioneers in illustrating Gorky's works. Following their first experience (drawings for Gorky's novel The Life of Klim Samgin), illustrations by D. Shmarinov for The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin, S. Gerasimov for The Artamonov Case, then the works of B. Ioganson, B. Dekhterev and others.
The more mature the Kukryniksy became, the more deeply they mastered the lessons of Gorky. It was necessary to develop a simple and strong realistic pictorial language to express the richest material and ideological content of life, which were contained in the immortal creations of the writer.
The illustrations for "The Life of Klim Samgin" vividly and clearly reflected both the advantages and disadvantages of the Kukryniksy's skill, which they had in the early 1930s. The image of Klim Samgin himself - characteristic, expressive - and to this day influences subsequent illustrators of Gorky, who, however, rarely turn to this novel, which is extremely difficult for plastic embodiment.
Pointing out many serious shortcomings in the illustrations of the Kukryniksy, Gorky emphasized the inappropriateness of caricature methods in illustrating a novel that is not of a satirical nature.

The 1930s were a period of high growth in Soviet fine arts, drawing themes and inspiration from the depths of socialist reality. Suffice it to recall the paintings of Grekov, the painting "Interrogation of the Communists" by Ioganson, the largest exhibitions of the era.
The “deep raid” of the Kukryniksy in life, which was of great importance for the development of their work, was their trips around the country on the instructions of the editors of Pravda. These trips were made by the team during 1933-1934. The main object where the Kukryniksy were sent along with a large brigade of railway workers was transport. Transport in those years was a bottleneck in the national economic life of the country. Its reconstruction was such an urgent matter that a special paragraph was devoted to this issue in the political report of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks to the 16th Party Congress. The Moscow-Donbass highway, where the Kukryniksy were sent by the editors, became the first object in a large program for the radical reconstruction of railway transport, outlined by the XVII Party Conference.
The activities of the Kukryniksy in transport are one of many in those years and still outstanding examples of the participation of fine arts in a heated battle between the new and the old, the advanced with the lagging behind in production, in everyday life, in the minds of people. The artists, called to participate in a major party task of great national importance, had to lead everyday satire along the high road of art.
Laughter is “a very powerful weapon, for nothing so discourages vice as the consciousness that it has been guessed and that laughter has already been heard about it,” said Saltykov-Shchedrin. The cartoons of the Kukryniksy, exposing swindlers, slobs, and even direct enemies of the Soviet regime, who made their way onto transport for sabotage purposes, can serve as an excellent illustration of this position of the great satirist.
In a series of correspondence from worker correspondents and caricatures of the Kukryniksy, the state of transport was reflected, the perpetrators of evil were ridiculed - negligent stationmasters and heads of large railway junctions, reckless machinists who violated charters, egregious cases of careless storage of goods, poor treatment of locomotives and wagons in the depot, and many other deficiencies that required immediate eradication.
The first caricature of the Kukryniksy on a transport theme appeared in Pravda on September 22, 1933, on the fourth day after the start of the raid. She featured prominently in the center of the second strip. With a sharp, very expressive drawing, with the observance of portrait resemblance, the perpetrators of the violation of discipline at one of the stations of the Kharkov railway junction were exposed.
The cartoons were of a genre nature, based on personal, carefully verified observations, and always had an exact address. Witty, funny, but rather sharp cartoons had the widest response among the masses, were discussed by collectives of workers and employees, made it possible for party organizations and the railway service to take decisive measures to improve the entire railway economy. Placed in Pravda, the cartoons acquired a nationwide sound.
The successful raid on transport was followed by business trips by the Kukryniksy to waterways, to lagging factories, to small towns, to an agricultural commune, etc.
The principles of portraiture and narrative plot were pursued by the artists quite consciously and consistently. At the heart of their caricatures, sketches from nature are always felt, the artists tried not to sin against the truth in anything.
In caricatures on transport topics, the Kukryniksy willingly used their favorite genre - caricature. Perfectly capturing the similarities, the artists were able to sharpen the features of nature with great humor and so boldly generalize the typical shortcomings that caricatures and caricatures acquired an effective social significance.
The Kukryniksy cartoons were released in an album under the eloquent title "Hot Wash". Demyan Bedny met with poems a series of caricatures of the Kukryniksy on transport topics. For their part, the Kukryniksy illustrated the satirical works of the proletarian poet, thereby securing a new creative community of fine arts and literature.
The names of Gorky, Mayakovsky, D. Poor, and in terms of pictorial - a galaxy of the best Soviet caricaturists, masters of satirical posters define a new stage in the development of Russian democratic satire. The features of this stage are due to the fact that Soviet satire is directly related to the struggle of the people, the party for the construction of a communist society. This determined the content of Soviet satire and its democratic form, designed for the perception of the broadest masses and the exceptionally important place that it was given in the system of artistic culture and social life of the country.
From their business trips on the instructions of Pravda, the Kukryniksy returned enriched with life and artistic experience, brought many sketches, sketches, and observations. Being born newspapermen, possessing by that time the necessary skill and “sense of efficiency”, the Kukryniksy did not leave thoughts about large forms either.
art, about pictures in which they could achieve broader and deeper generalizations of their life experience. The dream of a painting, of large impressive forms of art, of recreating a positive image in painting and graphics, satirists and "small-formists" Kukryniksy cherished from the first steps of their independent artistic activity. This is one of the most important features of the Kukryniksy team, which is by no means obligatory for caricaturists, however, it is characteristic of Soviet satirists who are well aware of the goal, that positive ideal, in the name of which they are fighting with their thunderous weapon of satire.
In 1933, Soviet artists were preparing for a large all-Union exhibition: "XV Years of the Red Army and the Navy." It was supposed to reflect the rapid growth of the USSR, which under the leadership of the Communist Party turned from an agrarian country into an industrial country, the victory of socialism in all areas of the national economy and culture, the power of the Red Army, which defeated the interventionists and White Guards. The exhibition summed up the intense struggle for realistic art.
Having begun their creative life in easel painting with works on the themes of the civil war, which everyone still remembered, the Kukryniksy again turned to this harsh era, which decided the fate of the young Soviet republic. For this large, politically important exhibition, the artists created a series of satirical portraits of White Guard generals beaten by the Red Army.
Depicting Wrangel, Denikin, Kolchak, Yudenich and other White Guard "leaders" in a satirically pointed and catchy artistic manner, the artists reflected the thoughts and feelings of the people, who in a hard and right battle destroyed the worst enemies of the Republic, the Communist Party.
A dark, gloomy silhouette looms Kolchak against the backdrop of a snowy field and the corpses of the people he executed. In the foreground, as if paving the way for the admiral, bayonets stick out, the bayonets of the invaders. Also using the expressiveness of the silhouette, they depict Kukryniksy and Wrangel. In his eyes, anger and doom. A pitiful renegade, a stranger on Russian soil, the baron is like a rat in a trap. He sits, staring blankly at one point. Ridiculous and terrible Yudenich, disgusting Makhno.
These satirical portraits are not conditional masks, but realistic satire, using the individual features of well-known characters.
The appearance of these works by the Kukryniksy marked the birth of a new kind of portrait genre - a compositional satirical portrait, which attracted the attention of a wide audience with political sharpness, folk art speech, bright, witty, biting and expressive.
Having achieved individual expressiveness of faces, the artists also exposed the typical properties of the White Guard - the furious anger of the fierce enemies of the people, their connection with foreign bayonets - and showed their doom. The pathos of the series is in the public ridicule of evil, in angry scourging laughter.
Amateur theatrical groups that performed in workers' clubs and squares on holidays picked up this scourging laughter of the Kukryniksy, and the satirical images created by artists for exhibition halls went for a walk around the country, recreated by actors and cartoonists, causing hatred and annihilating, contemptuous laughter from a wide audience. . The White Guard generals, beaten by the Red Army on all fronts of the civil war, put on display, were again and again subjected to ridicule.
The works of young painters, which immediately gained popularity, evoked a poetic response from Demyan Bedny. The poet accompanied the satirical portraits of the “Kukryniksov’s” generals with sharp ditty verses, which further strengthened the intelligibility of these peculiar creatures of the Kukryniksy’s brush: “Borka Annenkov, a bandit, looks twisted like a dog,” or “General Yudenich, brave, was also a bloody executioner, broke through to Leningrad so that make a parade there"
“In your face, poetry,” M. I. Kalinin wrote to Demyan Bedny, “perhaps for the first time in history so vividly connected its destinies with the destinies of humanity fighting for its liberation, and from creativity for the few chosen ones it became creativity for the masses.” In these words, addressed to the popular Soviet satirist, the most important features, features and meaning of the existence of Soviet satire in the broad sense of the word are formulated. At the 19th Party Congress, we again heard a reminder of the great role of satire, with the help of which everything negative, rotten, everything that hinders progress is burned out of life.
The First Congress of Soviet Writers, which opened in Moscow in August 1934, played a huge role in the development of Soviet artistic culture. The Congress of Writers with renewed vigor focused the attention of literary and artistic figures on the problems of craftsmanship and highlighted the most important issues of socialist realism. As one of the urgent tasks, the party set before the writers and artists the task of critical development of the heritage.
The teachings of V. I. Lenin about the need to master the best achievements in the field of culture penetrated deeper and deeper into the consciousness of the artistic intelligentsia. The sharp criticism of formalism and naturalism, deployed on the pages of the party press of the 1930s and 1940s, illuminated the path for artists to the heights of socialist art.
In the 1930s the most important source of skill and inspiration opened up before the Kukryniksy in all its beauty and grandeur: young artists became regulars at the Tretyakov Gallery and collectors of works of Russian classics, drawing the most valuable lessons of mastery in this treasury. If in their student years and at the first time of their independent work, the Kukryniksy limited their study of the heritage mainly to the art of Daumier, Goya, then from the beginning of the 1930s, that is, from the moment of systematic work on painting, they study Russian masters of the 19th century in depth and thoughtfully .
A series of satirical portraits by the Kukryniksy “The Face of the Enemy” occupies an intermediate position between poster and easel painting. Artists painted with oil on canvas, trying to convey plastic volume and depth of space. And, at the same time, they used the method of posters and caricatures in the interpretation of form, conventionality in the combination of planar and volumetric elements. Of course, the lack of preliminary work on nature also made itself felt - a necessary prerequisite for full-fledged realistic painting.
The very goal that the artists were striving for became clearer gradually, as the Kukryniksy team, like all progressive painters, realized that in solving the enormous tasks that the country, the party had set for them, the compositional picture with well-defined characters and a plot twist.
In the literal sense of the word, the Kukryniksy mastered easel painting, working on the triptych "Old Masters" and the painting "Morning of an officer of the tsarist army." Three paintings that make up the "Old Masters" series appeared before the viewer for the first time at the "Industry of Socialism" exhibition,
opened in the historic days of the XVIII Congress of the Communist Party.
The exhibition has been in preparation for a long time. Soviet artists collected material for their works where work was in full swing, new buildings were erected, where a new man, a new socialist attitude to work, was forged in the battles for the socialist industry.
The spectators, who poured into the spacious halls of the exhibition "Industry of Socialism" in a living stream, perceived it with good reason as a celebration of Soviet culture. The triptych of the Kukryniksy "Old Masters" was a very noticeable phenomenon of the exhibition. It was exhibited in the "Pages of the Past" department, where one of the most remarkable works of socialist realism, "At the Old Ural Plant" by B. Ioganson, attracted attention.
The Kukryniksy simply and expressively told in their new work about the enemies of the working class, about forced labor in Tsarist Russia, which ruined the working man, plundered his energy, threatened life itself. The ability to find a topic that would touch the deep interests of the people, to simply and expressively reveal an acute social conflict, to notice the maturation of the new in the burning reality - these are the characteristic features of the Kukryniksy.
The main characters of all three films are manufacturers, contractors, police officers and other old "masters". At the same time, a characteristic feature of the artistic thinking of the Kukryniksy is that, depicting the "masters", the artists make the viewer feel the historical force that was preparing retribution against capitalist society.
At the heart of the triptych is an acute social conflict. The first picture - "Prayer at the laying of the factory" - is, as it were, the beginning of a future drama. Excellent by nature, the pop is written in a lilac-golden riza. The hosts are depicted with excessive exaggeration, behind these puffed up arrogance "images", somewhat conditional, one does not feel the conversations of artists with nature.
The second picture - "Catastrophe at the mine" is much sharper, more effective in composition. A primitive mine is depicted. In the foreground - the director, apparently a foreigner, bailiff, official. They draw up a protocol on the death of the workers, whose corpses are spread out on the ground. The first-plan figures are painted by nature. For a long time the artists struggled to paint the landscape and the sky as expressively as possible, to make them consonant with the dramatic idea of ​​the picture in terms of color and character of the image.
The conflict is resolved in the third picture "The Flight of the Manufacturer". This is the third act of the drama. There, behind the broken window, the workers are worried. The manufacturer is preparing to escape There are no images of workers in the picture, but everything that is done before the eyes of the viewer is due precisely to what is happening outside the picture and what the broken glass hints at, the frightened clerk at the window. The successfully found type, well-painted interior with a suite of rooms attracts attention.
The triptych "Old Masters" (1936 - 1937) - the beginning of a new period in the painting of the Kukryniksy. There has been a fundamental change in the way they work. Now they could not imagine working on a painting without nature, creating a composition without a long “prehistory”. Only a part of the sketches and sketches have survived to this day, but even they give an idea of ​​the creative quest of artists, of their deep internal restructuring.
The whole process of working on the "Old Masters" series - from the first sketches to the end - was carried out collectively. There were no differences in the worldview, in understanding the tasks of art, in the methodology of work between the artists. As for the private issues of skill, each of the three artists was ready to submit to a two-vote majority.
Each of the three artists independently thought over and made a preliminary sketch of the composition. Then all three discussed these sketches, taking one of the three options as a basis, they strengthened it with the best that they generally recognized contained in each of the other two.
All three were looking for sitters. While working on the triptych, the artists fully experienced both the joy of discoveries, when they managed to find a characteristic type, and the difficulties when the nature “stumbled”, not wanting to portray a priest or a policeman. However, the artists themselves often replaced the sitters; working together, they learned to pose for each other, while discovering the theatrical vein inherent in all km.
Nature was written together, arranged in such a way as to cover it comprehensively; then the most successful solutions were chosen from the entire material.
All parts of the triptych - "Prayer at the laying of the factory", "Catastrophe at the mine", "Flight of the manufacturer" - represent three links in the development of the theme, although the characters change. All three paintings are successive stages in mastering the realistic method in painting by artists.
If at the beginning of the work the artists still timidly used nature, then the last, best part is entirely painted from nature. Since then, artists have never painted a picture "on their own", without nature. In the original sketch for The Factory Owner's Flight, the back wall of the room is blank; in subsequent sketches and in the picture itself, a suite of rooms is deployed, beautifully, densely painted. The picture won significantly: the flatness disappeared, the feeling of vitality intensified.
Both professional criticism and the working audience highly appreciated the pictures of The Old Masters, especially the last two parts. “Very interesting,” wrote B. Ioganson, “the artists Kukryniksy acted as painters. In three films (the "Old Masters" series) dedicated to the pre-revolutionary life of workers, the Kukryniksy remained true to their satirical vocation, but avoided the hyperbolism characteristic of caricaturists. They achieved great expressiveness of the social type, reached a high
picturesque quality.
At present, when Soviet painting has come a long way in development and the demands placed on artists have increased incomparably, the shortcomings of these paintings by the Kukryniksy of 1936-1937 are much more obvious. Artists at one time saw them themselves, but so far they could not overcome them. Serious gaps in their education, they made up for hard study "on the go." They worked tirelessly, studied nature, drew, wrote sketches.
Only one year separates the next picture of the Kukryniksy “Morning of an Officer of the Tsarist Army” from the triptych “Old Masters”. During this year, the skill of artists has noticeably strengthened, they have achieved much greater clarity in understanding the tasks and features of the easel painting.
The composition "Morning of an Officer" entirely grows out of an ideological plan - to reveal a social conflict by a dramatic opposition of two hostile forces. They are embodied in concrete images of a batman and officers of the tsarist army. This time both parties are present on stage.
In the foreground, the artists showed a young lad, a batman, picking up pieces of broken dishes after a night of drinking of officers. He frowns at his master, yawning, sleepless after a sleepless night, depicted in the right corner of the picture. At the back of the room, the viewer sees another officer who fell asleep at the table.
However, attention is drawn not to the life of the officers of the tsarist army with its established, stable features, but to those elements of the new, progressive, which is maturing in the public life of pre-revolutionary Russia and will inevitably triumph. In the facial expression of the blond boy - hatred for the gentlemen, whose idle and dissolute life he sees and condemns.
The batman from "The Officer's Morning" is the first brightly and distinctly depicted positive character in the painting of the Kukryniksy. He is one of those simple people who are still half-consciously weighed down by the slavish conditions of their lives. But a feeling of hatred for their oppressors is already awakening in them.
Moral rightness is on his side. The artists leave no doubt about this. In the officer, on the contrary, the primitiveness of his nature is emphasized. He is depicted satirically, in fact, his entire characterization is exhausted by the fact that he is depicted yawning. Eloquent details of the situation complete his portrait.
The theatrical experience of the Kukryniksy helped them successfully build and develop the mise-en-scene. The batman and the officer are brought to the fore. The owner's drinking buddy, who fell asleep at the table, settled in the background, convincingly and unobtrusively completing the story about the main thing.
The gray-blue morning light from the large window argues with the faint golden glow of an unextinguished lamp. This color "roll call", based on additional yellow-blue tones, enriches the color of the picture and contributes to an in-depth interpretation of its meaning.
This time the artists showed great attention to the details of the furnishings, painted masterfully and with love. In those years when the canvas “Morning of an Officer of the Tsarist Army” was painted, love for detail was a very rare property of our artists. Of the paintings of that time, very few can be pointed out, where the details would have been written in the same loving, generalized and artistic way. There is no doubt that the exhibitions of Russian classics that opened at the Tretyakov Gallery in the mid-1930s played the greatest role in enriching the painting skills of the Kukryniksy, in asserting them on the positions of realism in painting.
Looking at the picture "Morning", the viewer recalled Fedotov by association. About the great master of everyday painting, they were forced to recall a plot from the life of an officer, the sharpness of the psychological development of the plot, the satirical coloring of the images. The Kukryniksy learned from Fedotov the skillful selection of details, the beauty of the picturesque solution of the interior, where each element deepens the main theme. So they came up with a lamp that was not extinguished in the morning, a glass of wine forgotten on the piano keys - evidence of the officers' nightly entertainment.
Having painted the details of the situation with that beauty of color that involuntarily attracts the eye, the artists managed to rive the viewer's attention to the psychological grain of the plot, arouse sympathy for the common man, and ridicule the vulgar, empty life of officers-"existents".
In the development of this narrative-psychological side of Fedotov's painting, there was something especially important that the Kukryniksy drew from the richest source of Fedotov's work. They also learned from him to achieve beauty and materiality of color.
At the exhibition "XX Years of the Red Army and the Navy" there were many paintings on everyday topics. The peculiarity of the picture of the Kukryniksy was that it was based on a social conflict. It was built on a sharp contrast between the old and the new and, above all, on the satirical coloring of one of the central characters. This brought her closer to the best, most effective paintings of her time.
Turning to painting, the Kukryniksy, as we have seen, did not change the nature of their subject matter. And in painting, with the same frankness as in graphics, they passed a harsh sentence on the old system, exposed the harsh conditions of life and forced labor in capitalist society, branded the enemies and traitors of the Soviet people.
With the deepest interest of the Soviet people in the victory of the new, the artists depicted the awakening of revolutionary consciousness among the masses, the moral formation of man in the high, Gorky sense of the word.

Under the leadership of the Communist Party, our country, having defeated the Nazi army, healed the wounds of the war and entered a period of gradual transition from socialism to communism.
Soviet art of the post-war period developed under the sign of the historical decisions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on ideological issues.
The resolutions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks emphasized the enormous role that literature and art are called upon to play in the education of people, especially young people. A number of important tasks were set before the workers of the ideological front. Having exposed manifestations of apoliticalism, lack of ideas, and the most harmful cosmopolitanism, the party called on artists to create works of high ideological content and skill, to educate the masses in the spirit of communism, in the spirit of selfless devotion to the Soviet Motherland.
The post-war period in the creative life of the Kukryniksy is a series of great achievements in the art of political caricature, illustration, and painting.
On May 8, 1945, representatives of the German High Command, in the presence of the Supreme High Command of the Soviet and Allied Forces, signed an act of surrender in Berlin.
Shortly after this historic event, which marked the complete victory of the Soviet country, the Kukryniksy were sent to Berlin. “Since May 21,” the artists say, “we have been working in the capital of Germany for a month. For several days in a row, from 11 pm to 3 am, they went to write sketches, the interior of the hall where the signing of the surrender took place, for one hour they wrote and drew from nature Marshal G.K. Zhukov.
The surviving sketches by the Kukryniksy give an idea of ​​the ruined streets of Berlin, of Hitler's Reich Chancellery inside and out, and of Hitler's office. Artists descended into the Nazi bomb shelter, walked along its gray corridors, visited the district commandant's offices in Berlin, listened to the commandants' conversations with the Germans. They did sketches. Subsequently, during the trial of war criminals, the Kukryniksy went to Nuremberg.
The painting "The Surrender of Germany" - a large multi-figure canvas - was created by the Kukryniksy on the basis of many portraits painted from life. They worked out every detail of the interior, from the brown wall paneling, bright colorful Allied banners, to the "same" inkwell and "same" decanter that stood on the table when the German surrender was signed.
Separate portraits, especially expressive, "juicy" portrait sketches, painted from life, are truthful, temperamental. Very accurate details. But in general, the picture is cold, monotonous in color. Retaining the value of an art document, she doesn't care. Apparently, the genre of a documentary official portrait is not in the nature of the Kukryniksy, who are incomparably more successful in thematic paintings full of drama. Moreover, it is precisely this kind of themes, which give artists the opportunity to expressively show social conflict, to develop a plot with a pronounced dramatic plot, that are characteristic of the Kukryniksy's work.
A vivid evidence of this situation is the painting "The End" - the pinnacle in the painting of the Kukryniksy, one of those outstanding works of art with which Soviet artists summed up their colossal life and creative experience during the Great Patriotic War. Painting “The End. The last days of Hitler's headquarters in the dungeon of the Reich Chancellery" dates back to 1948.
Work from nature in Berlin and Nuremberg enabled the Kukryniksy to strongly, vividly, and correctly characterize the typical representatives of the "Reich", the moral, political and military defeat of the fascist regime.
Of course, working from nature in Berlin, the observations accumulated during the trial of the main war criminals in Nuremberg, when they were brought to trial, allowed the Kukryniksy to write with such persuasive power and expressiveness both the types of characters and the atmosphere of the basement, which became the last refuge of Hitler and his associates.
But after all, the picture is not the sum of sketches, but a new creative formation. Studies as such "die" in the process of creating a picture. From their birth to "death" they obey the artist's plan, the creative work of his generalizing thought.
Many times Kukryniksy painted Hitler. The appearance of this evil buffoon with a tuft of hair on a balding skull, with round bulging eyes, firmly entered into the consciousness of people. Hitler is depicted at the moment of his fall, covered
drawn by artists, it is "beaten" in a completely new way and unusually expressive. The head is turned up, the wandering gaze is riveted to the ceiling, which is about to collapse under the blows of Soviet aviation and artillery. You can't get away from responsibility With one hand, Hitler grabbed the collar of his uniform, the uniform was strangling him, the other hand rested against the wall. It seems that pitching is taking place, and the “Fuhrer” who has crashed is barely able to stay on his feet.
Hitler's bomb shelter in the interpretation of the Kukryniksy resembles a dying ship. Pictures in gold frames squinted, the chair was overturned, papers, orders were scattered on the floor, the handset of the telephone, already inactive, dangled helplessly on the cord. Everything is in a state of unstable balance, everything has shifted, everything is falling apart
The seasoned fascist, sitting in the foreground, convulsively grabbed both hands on the table and the back of the chair, as if afraid to fall. He stared wildly into space, anticipating doom; he no longer needs the suitcase standing next to him, it's late, there's nowhere to run.
The third fascist - Hitler's young pet - got drunk and fell asleep. Like everyone else, he is not able to face death and deserved punishment courageously: the decay of the "Reich" has gone too far. The figure of the young fascist is very expressive. He is completely exhausted, his uniform is unbuttoned, his head thrown back.
The fourth fascist is a sinister person. He is the only one in full uniform, his military cap pulled low, obscuring his gaze. The Herr Oberst crouched down, as if preparing for a final lethal leap. He, like everyone else, did not even look at the "Fuhrer" when he appeared at the door. The "Reich" collapsed, each left to himself.
during the war years, Soviet artists created many paintings that exposed the Nazis in different periods of their criminal activity. These works, of course, played a big role in the fight against fascism. Most of them dealt with essential, but separate aspects of anti-people inhuman "Hitlerism".
The painting "The End" entered the history of Soviet art as a broad and deep artistic generalization. In a convincing expressive form, she exposed the very essence of the bloody fascist regime, which collapsed under the blows of the Soviet Liberating Army.
The ideological-political and creative maturity of the team, the culture of design developed by the Kukryniksy over the years, was reflected, first of all, in how accurately these experienced artists found a point of view on historical events. From the totality of phenomena, they chose the moment of "climax", when a just punishment fell on the heads of the Nazis, the retribution passionately expected by the peoples.
Reflecting this nationwide dream of victory, Soviet humanist artists showed extremely vividly, with great psychological depth, the corrupting effect of fascism on man. Having imprisoned Hitler and his associates in a stone bag, the artists showed typical representatives of the Hitler regime in their complete and hopeless isolation from all the living forces of the country, while demonstrating historicism of thinking, understanding of events in the perspective of their progressive development.
In the film “The End”, the strongest aspects of the talent and skill of the Kukryniksy, the passionate publicism of the anti-fascists, psychological expressiveness, the ability to dramatically reveal an acute social conflict, show the essence of this social force, its typical features with the help of a successfully found plot, merged together. The artists showed brilliant skill in constructing the mise-en-scene, psychologically motivated every look, gesture, posture, and movement of the characters.
Having shown the agony of a handful of fascists with exceptional relief, the artists compose the picture as a whole and in separate parts in such a way that they give the viewer a full opportunity to feel the opposing historical force beyond the depicted. One crazy glance of Hitler, directed upwards, is enough to emphasize the meaning of what is happening. It is quite clear to the spectator that the fates of the persons hiding in the air-raid shelter are being decided up there.
Horrified by the imminent catastrophe, Hitler flees to a bomb shelter and freezes in the doorway. An ominous shadow from his figure fell on the metal-bound door. The face and hands of the "Fuhrer" are illuminated by a cold, dead light.
Hitler - the focus of the composition - is placed not in the center (as it was supposed in the first draft sketch) and not in the foreground, but in the depth, diagonally, to the left. This is a very important compositional technique, due to the idea, which enhances the dynamism of the picture. The action develops and grows from the first plan to the next. An uneven, spasmodic rhythm also grows. Bright, hard artificial light from an invisible source fights against sharply defined oblique shadows cast by objects in the room.
The energy, the dynamics of the composition, the struggle of chiaroscuro enhance the tension of the moment. The artists managed to depict not a frozen being, but the rapid development of action.
Each character is a necessary link in the development of a dramatic conflict. All actors and objects introduced into the composition are involved in the action. With the whole set of artistic means, the authors of the picture lead the viewer to an independent conclusion about the imminent shameful catastrophe, the well-deserved punishment that fell on war criminals.
The denouement is near, the matter is coming to an end - this feeling is conveyed with great force.
The color scheme, built on the predominance of dark and cold tones, the materiality of painting - all this helps to reveal the essence of the phenomenon, the main idea of ​​the picture. In this work, the artists have achieved genuine realism in the interpretation of a complex historical theme, in the depiction of enemies. They described the situation in which the "Führer" and his associates fell into, with tragicomic features. The presence of a sharp grotesque gave the whole work the unique character of "Kukryniksovskaya" satire.
In the painting “The End”, the artists, as it were, summed up their richest experience as international caricaturists, caricaturists and painters. As painters, the Kukryniksy mastered by that time the mastery of plastic form and the expressiveness of color, that is, the necessary qualities of easel painting masters.
In this original work, innovative and profound, the lessons of the masters of the past are creatively translated.
Before us is the creative assimilation and implementation of the great Repin tradition of storytelling on the fundamental themes of modernity, where the historicism of the artists' thinking is permeated with the lively and passionate progressive worldview of the era. There is no doubt that one can recall the names of other advanced artists, the same Daumier, from whom the young Kukryniksy studied the art of satirical exposure of the gloomy sides of reality, the sharpness of the characteristics.
There is also no doubt about the great role that the art of the older Soviet masters played in the development of the Kukryniksy painting, in particular, the painting of B.V. Ioganson, imbued with the pathos of the struggle for the liberation of man, built on the most acute class conflicts. The art of socialist realism, by cementing the masses of artists with common ideals, the common tasks of creating truly folk art, a single creative method, creates a favorable atmosphere for the growth and mutual exchange of experience among artists of all generations. The Marxist-Leninist worldview, the historical experience of the people building communism, provides the Soviet people with a correct understanding of events - a reliable foundation for historical painting.
The painting “The End” gives us the key to clarifying the main features, style, creative “handwriting” of the Kukryniksy, since in this work the most stable features of their team, which were encountered in various combinations throughout their creative life, merged into an indissoluble unity.
Based on fundamental principles common to all Soviet realists, masters of easel painting, the Kukryniksy developed a sharply individual style. In the creation of this style, their temperament as publicists, their giftedness as satirists, their organic, deep understanding of the dramatic, social conflict - the soul of the thematic picture, their keen interest in human psychology played a significant role in the creation of this style.
Combining personal talents, in which there is much in common and much different, the artists achieved an individual "Kukryniksov" handwriting in painting to the same extent as in graphics. Their "handwriting" is distinguished, first of all, by an organic alloy of "weighty", material painting, usually built on color contrasts and chiaroscuro, and a characteristic, sharp drawing. Their creativity is characterized by a pronounced strong-willed character, a mature outlook on life.
The painting "The End" is the fruit of modern painting, bearing the stamp of the trials that befell the lot of the people in their unprecedented struggle against fascism, the stamp of the wisdom of the victorious people.
The painting took a prominent place in Soviet painting. With its accusatory pathos, it meets the interests, expresses the aspirations of the broad democratic masses of the whole world, emphasizing once again the global significance of Soviet art. For the painting "The End" Kukryniksy were awarded the Stalin Prize of the first degree. At all foreign exhibitions, and in particular, in democratic Germany, where this painting was exhibited, it attracted attention, caused very high marks as an outstanding work of art of our time.

In the post-war years, Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov worked a lot both collectively and separately in the field of painting. And in painting, as well as in graphics, the humanism of artists, their penetrating love for nature, their peacefulness is manifested. In the painting of the late 1940s and early 1950s, artists strive to embody positive images.
In 1949, the Kukryniksy painted the painting "Lenin at Razliv". There are many virtues in this picture. The expression of a thoughtful face, a look directed into the distance, as if seeing something important in this distance, characterize the essential features of Lenin the thinker. There is a lot of sincere lyrics in this picture, but it does not have the proper significance, richness, necessary for solving such a topic.
The beautiful landscape in this picture is new evidence of the deep feeling of Russian nature, which Kupriyanov, Krylov and Sokolov are gifted to a high degree. And, perhaps, this feeling of nature has never manifested itself in them with such force as in the post-war years. The trials of the war, the invasion of invaders, the heroic defense of the socialist Fatherland - all this evoked a lively response in the souls of the artists. A heightened sense of the Motherland gave impetus to the development of landscape art. Deep ideological and creative processes, which are obvious in the Soviet landscape of the post-war years, found their vivid disclosure in the work of the Kukryniksy. It is in the landscape, which requires a purely personal experience of nature, a purely personal understanding of the world, that the lyricism characteristic of Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov is clearly manifested.
Each of the three members of the team has their favorite landscape motifs. So, Kupriyanov is primarily a singer of the city and nature, inhabited by man. His landscapes are among the best urban landscapes in Soviet painting. Krylov is also not alien to these motives, but he is most attracted by the free nature of the Moscow region, Polenovo with water meadows and blue distances. Sokolov's favorite landscape motifs are very diverse, but most of all he paints with inspiration the banks of the Volga, where his youth passed, the Volga, finding more and more beauty in its expanses.
An exhibition of works by academicians, organized by the Academy of Arts of the USSR in 1952, demonstrated the work of the Kukryniksy in full and in many ways. Along with the graphics performed by the team, Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov showed their personal works in painting. Kupriyanov - exclusively landscapes (1947 - 1952), Krylov - landscapes, portrait, still life, Sokolov - landscapes and self-portrait (1950 - 1952).
All these works testify to the unceasing quest of artists, their deep study of national traditions in the field of landscape, the maturity of skill acquired through in-depth observations of nature, fixing it in numerous sketches and further processing of sketches.
A high level of skill, a variety of motifs, carefully selected in the richest world of nature, indicate that three popular, richly gifted artists work tirelessly day after day. Talent requires relentless polishing of its every facet. Without this, even the most talented artist will slide into vulgar amateurism.
Often the Kukryniksy bring their works to the judgment of the landscape master N. P. Krymov. M. V. Kupriyanov, P. N. Krylov, N. A. Sokolov attach great importance to criticism and advice that they hear from the lips of this artist. These tips, as the Kukryniksy say, help them to set certain tasks in their work on a landscape-picture, to achieve the integrity of color.
All three artists are characterized by lyricism in the transfer of nature, the ability to choose a characteristic motif that evokes many associations, various moods. None of the three artists will sit down to write a sketch, so to speak, where they have to. All three take a long look at the surroundings, "shoot", sketch, choose, and then write what most captured their imagination.
To paint such inspired landscapes as Kupriyanov, Krylov and Sokolov showed at an academic exhibition, of course, you need high technique, which is enriched by daily training, and a huge culture, and the ability to see the world through the eyes of a poet, and a passionate desire to evoke a deep emotional response in the viewer. .
The concept of the general culture of the artist, of course, includes the study of great traditions. Mastering the experience of classical realists does not mean simply “quoting” Savrasov or Levitan, endlessly varying long-discovered motives and states of nature. To master the experience of the classics creatively means, having accumulated great technical skills, to reveal with their help new aspects of reality, a modern view of the world with the same content of thought, with the same stock of unspent feelings, life observations, as the great masters of the past did.
The national school of the Russian landscape of the second half of the 19th century saturated the art of landscape with a deep ideological content, gave it a scope characteristic of the artistic culture of a great people. She raised the importance of this genre highly; the landscape painter was able to defend democratic ideals with his artistic means - the life-giving source of the realistic art of the era.
Savrasov, Shishkin, Vasiliev, Levitan, Nesterov, Vasnetsov, Serov and other major masters of the Russian national landscape were able to reveal people's thoughts about the Motherland through the image of nature, to nurture love for their native expanses, for the incomparable charm of the Russian northern spring, for the white birches along which the Russian a person longs for a foreign land, for blue forest expanses, for villages on a slope, for everything that was associated with the appearance of the Motherland.
Setting common goals, landscape painters reflect their personal, cherished, long-term attitude to the world in the pictures of nature.
By the nature of the motives, Kupriyanov's landscapes consist of three cycles: landscapes of Leningrad with a massive dome of St. Isaac and the Neva, with subtly felt silhouettes of architecture and green massifs of foliage, the coast of the Caspian Sea with longboats, landscapes of the Moscow region. For the most part, these paintings are full of light and sun, nature is animated by human figures. Having chosen the motive that interested him, Kupriyanov tries to write it right away, trying to convey this state of nature and his feeling from it. But in order to master the possibility of terribly intense speed of writing, so to speak "in hot pursuit", the artist, like a pianist, must first train the eye and hand, having mastered the perfect technique. Having paid tribute in the past to the passion for fluency, sketchiness of writing, Kupriyanov has been especially stubbornly striving in recent years for strict completeness of form, compositional integrity.
In contrast to Kupriyanov, Krylov and Sokolov paint the landscape for a long time. Artists believe that it is possible to achieve clarity of expression of a given motif, the concreteness of an image, only by returning to it repeatedly. For example, the landscape "Mallow" Krylov wrote seven long sessions in those early mornings when nature kept approximately the same state. The artist painted “Zaoksky Dali” based on sketches in the studio, retaining a completely lively direct feeling of a piece of nature that captivated him. Sokolov devoted five sessions to "Evening on the Volga". In the landscapes, the Kukryniksy are captivated by the humanity that permeates them, the concentration of feelings, the organic combination of closeness to nature with spacious, captivating distances.
Sokolov often begins a landscape with small preliminary pencil sketches, in which he finds a compositional solution in general terms. The artist's method is unique. He begins work with what he considers the most interesting in this landscape, the brightest. "Evening on the Volga", "Volga at the Plyos" and other landscapes by Sokolov 1950 - 1952 - landscape paintings, in which the accuracy, "portrait" of the image is combined with subtle lyricism, imposing on his paintings the stamp of a great personal feeling.
The desire to generalize one's impressions into a picture, to achieve completeness of form, clarity and integrity of the composition, is manifested in modern landscapes by Kupriyanov, Krylov, and Sokolov. However, each of them finds an individual expression.
Of the three artists, Krylov more than two others and longer works on a portrait in painting. Krylov's portraits-paintings have long won the viewer's sympathy, including the delicately felt children's portrait "Natalka Kupriyanov", female portraits in the open air, etc. And in the portrait, the artist achieves picturesqueness, completeness, plasticity. The portrait of the Korean dancer Ahn Sung-hee is distinguished by a delicate characterization of a person. This portrait would have benefited, however, if the artist had paid more attention to the dancer's hands, would have found their individual "expression", because the hands in the portrait in general, and in the portrait of the dancer in particular, play a very significant role.
At the academic art exhibition in 1952, P. Krylov's Rosehip Bouquet attracted everyone's attention. A modest bouquet of white flowers seemed to be fragrant - each flower is written with such expressiveness, fidelity, and care.
The path that the Kukryniksy landscape painters traveled together with the largest Soviet landscape painters is the path from sketch to painting, to a generalized, felt image of nature.
Modern Soviet man is an innovator, the owner of his land, the builder and creator of communist society. These features of the high spiritual culture of the new man should and are reflected in the landscapes of Kupriyanov, Krylov and Sokolov. We feel them in a major, in the breadth of constructions, in their natural connection with life. The Kukryniksy continue and develop the democratic traditions of the Russian national landscape. M. V. Nesterov, who highly appreciated the art of the three artists, used to say: “The Kukryniksy are talented cartoonists, and Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov are the most talented painters.” And indeed, cartoonists by vocation and main occupation, in their individual work, Kukryniksy are most of all and above all painters.
Landscapes, portraits, still lifes painted by Kupriyanov, Krylov and Sokolov are often used by them subsequently in the collective work of the Kukryniksy.
Twenty years ago, criticism pointed out that the individual development of each of the three artists is inseparable from the growth of their team as a whole, because it relies on the support and experience of colleagues. We can talk about this with even greater reason now, when the Kukryniksy have three decades of fraternal creative friendship behind them. Collective work did not erase the individual characteristics of Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov, but, on the contrary, strengthened and sharpened them with mutual support.
It is enough to compare two recent portraits by Krylov and Sokolov to reveal the peculiarities of the creative manner of each master. Thus, the portrait of the Korean dancer An Sung-hee was painted with that richness of color, with that love for open sonorous color, which betrays the “purebred” painter P. N. Krylov. Sokolov's "Self-portrait" characterizes the author, first of all, as an artist-psychologist who is more willing to sacrifice the color of the portrait than to deviate from the psychological drawing of the image.
In this regard, it is necessary to emphasize the special predilection and successes of N. A. Sokolov in the field of psychological portrait-drawing, which was greatly facilitated by his deep understanding of Serov's portrait drawings. There is, of course, no impenetrable boundary between the work of an artist in graphics and painting, moreover, there is constant mutual enrichment between them. A great culture of drawing is also felt in the basis of Sokolov's paintings.
In the collective work of the Kukryniksy, there is a complex process of interaction, mutual reinforcement of talents, when homogeneous features seem to add up, and different ones set off each other in contrast. The amount of effort, growing, reinforcing one another, forms a new quality. The artists themselves claim that something created by their team could not be mastered (not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively) by each of them individually. In the process of honest and selfless dedication to the team of all the best achievements, a certain “fourth” artist appeared, who, in fact, is Kukryniksy. Taking care of their personal growth, the artists are constantly improving the skills of the team.
From the very beginning of the collective activity of the Kukryniksy and to this day, both spectators and comrades-in-arms are interested in: “So how, after all, does the creative process proceed in the Kukryniksy team? How is an artistic image born in conditions of collective labor - usually the fruit of individual work? On what principles has the creative community of talented craftsmen been formed and has been based for three decades now, what exactly cements it?
There is no doubt that the possibility of such strong friendship, indestructible brotherhood, complete disinterested self-giving of each member of the collective to the common cause, is rooted in the nature of socialist society. all aspects of the multifaceted personality of each artist were revealed, and where the personal and the public merged together, in the name of a conscious high goal.
Socialist society, which developed a new attitude towards work, created fertile ground on which new labor relations could flourish, based on free competition, on deep mutual trust in each other, on the socialist understanding of the work of the artist as a matter of honor, as the first human need.
The Marxist-Leninist worldview, a clear party orientation of creativity are the necessary prerequisites for the moral stamina of the Kukryniksy team, its strength. The party press introduced the Kukryniksy to the urgent tasks of building communism, helping them to correctly and deeply comprehend the current reality.
There is also no doubt that the mutual attraction of the three artists, determined in early youth on the basis of common interests and strengthened in creative work, also implies character traits, the presence of high moral principles in each member of the team, a deep and indestructible sense of duty, which has become into a fundamental character trait of all three artists.
“The basis of the team is, first of all, strong friendship,” the Kukryniksy say. - It is hardly possible to create a good team without having interest in each other. Interest breeds respect, and respect breeds trust. Trust helps to correct mistakes and appreciate the achievements of a comrade as if they were your own.”
Long-term collaboration allows the Kukryniksy team to do without a permanent director. The three of them have both directors and performers, but they change these roles.
“The director,” they say, “who at this moment, by touching his work, has improved at least some part of it. Further it was developed by another, then the role of the director passes to him. We do not and cannot have a permanent director.
There was a short period during the war when, living in different cities, all three artists drew and painted separately, and each coped with the work enough to sign his work with the name of the Kukryniksy collective. However, each of them dreamed of uniting again with the other two.
“In our collective work on a picture,” the artists say, “it often happens like this: one person stands by the picture and writes some place. Two of them moved away and told the writer from a distance how much the color should change in one direction or another. The writer asks: “Even colder? So good?".
Which of the three in this case - the writer or the speaker - is the director? Almost all three work. There are paintings about which the authors themselves do not remember which of them wrote which part.
Giving the best achievements to the "fourth" artist, who is, in fact, "Kukryniksy", Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov from a young age and all their lives also work separately, constantly improving their skills in drawing and painting. This zealous all-consuming love for the artist's work is the most important character trait of each of the three members of the Kukryniksy creative community, the "secret" of their indestructible, lifelong friendship. No matter how highly we evaluate the individual creativity of Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov, it is quite obvious that their joint work is more significant, more diverse, more original. It is she, this collective work, that has those features for which the people so highly appreciate their work, and by which the unique Kukryniks style is recognized.
I would like to end this brief essay on the art of academicians M. V. Kupriyanov, P. N. Krylov, N. A. Sokolov with words that reveal the meaning and purpose of the birth of the team and in which the voice of the artists themselves is felt.
“Only that collective will become viable,” the Kukryniksy say, “which will set as its goal the service of the people, the service of the Motherland, that is, it will become a living particle of the country’s huge collective. We always feel the tremendous concern shown to our collective by the Communist Party, the Soviet government and the people. We feel this help at every step. We are aware of the great responsibility this imposes on us. Our team is happy that it is a native of the Soviet Union.”
The popularity of the Kukryniksy is great, their works are known and appreciated by both the widest audience and art connoisseurs. The popularity of the Kukryniksy extends far beyond the borders of our country, they are well known and authoritative among our friends abroad, they are hated by warmongers, fascists of all formations and generations. Undoubtedly, the large and fruitful role of the Kukryniksy in the development of not only Soviet, but also foreign progressive caricature. Undoubtedly, the significance of their painting "The End" for creating works based on an acute and effective social conflict, on a broad and deep typification of the phenomena of life.
The Soviet government highly and repeatedly noted the merits of the creative team of the Kukryniksy to the Motherland. Kukryniksy
awarded the title of People's Artists of the RSFSR, Honored Artists. Artists have been awarded the title of Stalin Prize laureates five times: for political posters and cartoons, for illustrations to the works of Chekhov and Gorky, for the painting The End.

Not so long ago, a collective self-portrait of the Kukryniksy appeared in Ogonyok: the “consubstantial and inseparable trinity,” as Gorky once called Kukryniksov, appeared this time in the form of an old man with a bushy beard. And in fact, M. V. Kupriyanov, P. N. Krylov, N. A. Sokolov - all three of them turned 150 years old together!
But despite such a respectable age, the "jubilee" is in the prime of his creative powers and talent. “He” is working tirelessly on new works of book graphics and painting. And again, as of old, political cartoons signed by Kukryniksy are constantly printed in Pravda and Krokodil.
The works of recent years testify that the Kukryniksy are still always ready to defend the world with their art, to smash the warmongers with satire, to glorify their great Motherland - the standard-bearer of peace throughout the world!

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Recognition, efication and formatting - BK-MTGC.