Propaganda postcards and posters from the times of the Great Patriotic War They are known to the modern generation as museum and exhibition exhibits, from relevant thematic publications and films. The most apt and memorable works of this cycle were created by artists Kukryniksy. The community of these young people is a rare combination of talent, common interests, mutual support and complementation of each other. The authorship of this group includes not only graphic works. The Kukryniksy were equally successful in creating paintings, illustrations for literary publications, and tried their hand at designing theatrical scenery and sculpture. Who were these talented people?
How was Kukryniks born?
Talented young artists Kupriyanov, Krylov and Sokolov began their journey in art in different ways, and their first teachers and schools were completely different, and were born in different cities. They met within the walls of the Higher State Artistic and Technical Workshops, abbreviated as VKHUTEMAS. At first Kupriyanov and Krylov became friends. Their funny caricatures and caricatures decorated student newspapers and were signed with the names of Krykul or Kukry. “Knicks,” or Nikolai Sokolov, joined the guys two years later, and then his initials were added to the anagram.
Collaborative creativity
The cheerful trio became known to a wider public after they began working in the Komsomoliya magazine, whose editor-in-chief was the famous poet Zharov. This was in 1924. The guys created caricatures and funny satirical drawings easily. It looked something like this: one person took a sheet and began to draw, then the drawing was passed from hand to hand. What came out in the end was amazing and ingenious.
After some time, many celebrities began ordering friendly cartoons from their friends. The first five-year plans and the construction of a new state economy captivated friends. They traveled around the country, the topics for creativity became more serious than a light joke. Artists Kukryniksy in a satirical form denounced unscrupulous performers, political situation around the Land of Soviets.
The team's propaganda work during the Great Patriotic War brought particular popularity to the team. Many events took place in the lives of the artists themselves and in their circle, but the trio managed to maintain their community until 1990 and disbanded only after Krylov’s death. The Kukryniks are called the founders of a new direction in art - journalistic graphics.
Mikhail Kupriyanov (1903-1991)
A talented boy was born on the banks of the Volga, in the small town of Tetyushi. Even in his childhood, his watercolor landscape won a prize at a city exhibition. The events of the turbulent revolutionary times were not conducive to artistic pursuits - it was necessary to survive in the new environment. This circumstance brought Misha Kupriyanov to the coal mines of Turkestan.
But a happy accident brought him together with people who recognized his talent and sent the guy to study at an art boarding school, and after graduation, to VKHUTEMAS. Kupriyanov painted several successful landscapes, but most of all he was drawn to the cheerful and funny. It is no coincidence that he met an equally cheerful comrade on his way.
Porfiry Krylov (1902-1990)
Unlike his new acquaintance, Porfiry was seriously attracted to watercolor painting; at VKHUTEMAS he completed a course in this specialization. The son of a Tula arms factory worker impressed university teachers with his youthful works. Krylov's hobby - warm and sensual landscapes. In later works, Krylov emerged as a portrait painter. It was this artist who was entrusted with making portrait sketches of the criminals of fascism at the Nuremberg trials. But with all these talents, it was the community of the Kukryniks, the work of a graphic artist, cartoonist, decorator, and illustrator that brought the greatest popularity to the artist.
Knicks
Like the other members of the famous troika, Nikolai Sokolov (1903-2000) came to graphics in his own way, distinctive from the rest. What was common to all students of the art workshop was a passion for their favorite activity from early childhood. Sokolov was no exception. He considered his mother's gift, a box of watercolors, to be his most vivid and exciting childhood memory. The boy came to the art studio while working as a clerk at the Rybinsk Water Transport Department. It was then that the active young man showed an interest in displaying events in public life in the form of posters, leaflets, and playbills. It is not surprising that this hobby brought Sokolov together with Kupriyanov and Krylov. So the Kukras were supplemented by Nyx.
Graphics by Kukryniksy
The Union of Gifted Creative People gave the world an unsurpassed master of journalistic graphics and artistic satire. There was no such event in the country and in the world, starting in the thirties of the last century, to which the artists of Kukryniksy would not respond. Their humorous cartoons on everyday topics are still no less successful. The talent of friends in propaganda leaflets and posters from the Second World War turned out to be especially valuable. The graphics of that period are striking in their accuracy and ability to raise the morale of the army.
Individual painting
Despite more than half a century of close collaboration, the Kukryniksy artists each retained their own individual vision of the world. Both jointly created paintings and individual works every master. After them, no one has yet managed to create such a team where the peak of joint popularity would be reached and the uniqueness of individuality would be preserved.
Kukryniksy is the pseudonym of a creative team of three Soviet painters and graphic artists who worked together. It is 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 Nikolai Sokolov. Three artists worked using the method of collective creativity. At the same time, everyone worked individually - on portraits and landscapes. They became most famous for their numerous caricatures, cartoons and book illustrations.
The joint creativity of the Kukryniks began during their student years at the Higher Art and Technical Workshops. They came to Moscow from different parts of the country. Kupriyanov from Kazan, Krylov from Tula, Sokolov from Rybinsk. In 1922, Kupriyanov and Krylov met and began working together as Kukry. Sokolov, while still in Rybinsk, signed Nix on his drawings. Since 1924, the three artists worked as Kukryniksy. “Our team, to tell the truth, consists of four artists: Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov and Kukryniksy. All three of us treat the latter with great care and concern,” write the Kukryniksy and emphasize: “What was created by the team could not be mastered by any of us individually. The artists' artistic talent developed in full force during the Great Patriotic War. A significant moment in creativity was the military poster “We will ruthlessly defeat and destroy the enemy!” He was one of the first to appear on the streets of Moscow in June - immediately after the attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR. The Kukryniksy went through the entire war: their leaflets accompanied Soviet soldiers all the way to Berlin. They continued Mayakovsky's tradition by creating posters for the TASS Windows series. They became classics of Soviet political caricature, which was understood as a weapon in the fight against the enemy. How many times in Kukryniksy’s cartoons did Hitler command skeletons and turn into a skeleton himself! How many times did Soviet cartoonists predict the end of the bloody adventure, how many times did they celebrate the “collapse” of the Reich! Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov reflected the entire history of the Great Patriotic War and created famous caricatures of the rulers of the Third Reich. First, as a rule, a text appeared - something like “The bastard Hitler’s plans are being disrupted. However, it is not he who is to blame for their failure, but the red fighters are giant heroes.” On the posters, he, the viper, was strangled, pierced with a sharp spear, and shackled. Caricatures were another of our powerful weapons and hit the mark. Napoleon was defeated and the same will happen to the arrogant Hitler!
There are rolls in Moscow,
Hot as fire.
In the nights of fascist bastards
A hail of fiery shells
Muscovites are treating you!
An exhibition opened in Moscow coincides with Victory Day. It is called “History through the eyes of the Kukryniks.” The team was awarded the Lenin Prize (1965), the Stalin Prize (1942, 1947, 1949, 1950, 1951). The painting “The End” is the pinnacle in Kukryniksy’s painting. This is the fruit of artistic invention, and at the same time it is the truth of art, based on a deep knowledge of life. The artists' trips to Berlin played an extremely important role in the history of this painting. So they go down into the dungeon of the Reich Chancellery, walk through its gloomy corridors, see shell craters with their own eyes, sketch living Nazis, think... All this fed the imagination of artists, and thought worked in a certain direction. For a series of paintings, dedicated to events Great Patriotic War - “Tanya” (1942), “The End” (1948) and “Flight of the Germans from Novgorod” (1944), - the creative team was awarded State Prize(1975). Their art remains topical in our time. Especially when NATO is attacking to the east! Please note that all Kukryniksy are colonels of the Soviet Army. A characteristic sign of the times. The Kukryniksy worked together until their old age, striking everyone with a surprising unanimity for a group of creative people. All the paintings were saved and restored. Today, the works of artists made during the war years are in the same hands - with a private collector.
PUBLISHING HOUSE SOVIET ARTISTKUKRYNIKS
MIKHAIL VASILIEVICH KUPRIYANOV
PORFIRY NIKITICH KRYLOV
NIKOLAY ALEXANDROVICH SOKOLOV
It happens like this: the sources of a large river do not give an idea of its wide flood in the future. At its sources there are bright, icy springs, cheerful streams, rivulets, then forming a powerful stream, which along the way overcomes rapids, is enriched with lakes and, finally, makes a river bed, rushing its waters to the expanses of the seas.
This image involuntarily appears when you remember the beginning of the creative path of artists M. V. Kupriyanov, P. N. Krylov, N. A. Sokolov. Their creative path originates in working studios, in wall newspapers, and 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 “to become an artist.”
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. The young men Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov acquired the rudiments of artistic knowledge in local studios. They participated in the design of festive demonstrations, amateur performances, painted posters, eagerly studied nature, sketching their impressions. In the early 1920s. they met within the walls of the art institute, having some training and full conviction that a deep study of nature, the artist’s loyalty to life are the basic principles of art.
In a short essay it is not possible to cover in sufficient detail academic years and the early work of artists who entered the big life of art in the late 1920s - early 1930s. However, it must be borne in mind that in the life of the Kukryniks, the early period of their creative formation was of especially great, in many ways even decisive, importance.
While still on the student bench, Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov united into a team, which predetermined their fate in the future.
The team entered the history of Soviet art under the “collective” name of Kukryniksy. In the 1920s, artists began to sign their collective caricatures with this pseudonym.
Kupriyanov gave “KU”, Krylov added “KRY”, and Nikolai Sokolov concluded “NICS”. The letter “Y” was added to them by the editors. Thus, with their characteristic humor, artists talk about the origin of their surname, which at first intrigued the reader.
Opening the latest issue of a newspaper or magazine, readers of the 1920s - 1930s looked with more and more interest for the satirical drawings and cartoons of the Kukryniks, always witty, sometimes angry and harsh, sometimes warmed by humor and sly mockery, but always accurately hitting the target . Expanding their horizons and arena of action, improving their skills, the Kukryniksy are now in the fighting ranks of the greatest masters of political satire.
The Kukryniksy team began their illustrating activities in the 1920s, and somewhat later they took up painting. Three types of fine art - political caricature, illustration, painting - currently determine the role, significance and great specific gravity popular artists Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov and their “fourth brother” - Kukryniksy, to whom all three give their best achievements.
Nationality and party spirit - the fundamental qualities of the Kukryniksy team - were formed during the period of the widespread offensive of socialism along the entire front, when the people were implementing the first five-year plan, and the country, led by the great Communist Party, was on the eve of transformation from an agricultural country to an industrial country. Having accomplished the urgent political task of defending the socialist fatherland, the party launched the colossal work of building a socialist society and socialist culture.
Great October Socialist Revolution, victories on the fronts civil war, the labor exploits of the people showed to their fullest extent the selfless heroism of the working class, the Soviet man, and the inexhaustible creative energy of the masses 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 person of free labor. Art, saturated with life-giving Soviet patriotism, played a huge role in the fight against external and internal enemies of the young Soviet Republic. A new creative method was born in the process of studying and understanding by artists of the new reality, 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.
Higher art school During her school years, Kukryniksov 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 called Vkhutemas (Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops) for short. The young artists became friends and worked together, drawing sharp cartoons for the institute’s wall newspaper, famous throughout Vkhutemas “Arapotdel”. This department of humor “pushed through”, regardless of the faces of the formalists and cosmopolitans who stood at the helm of the institute’s board, and burned out the backward sentiments among the students with the fire of ridicule. And the amateur theater "Petrushka", which performed at student evenings with the active participation of the Kukryniksy, like "Arapotdel", refreshed the atmosphere, attacked formalism and naturalism, 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 progressive students, helped the Kukryniks sharpen the pen of caricaturists, caricaturists of a pronounced socio-political nature. Young satirists were noticed by the Komsomol and party press. A collectively executed cartoon published in 1925 in the magazine “Komsomoliya” dates back to the “official” birth of the Kukryniksy triumvirate, so to speak, its “legitimation” by the general public.
Together with his comrades from the institute, the Kukryniksy were indispensable designers of student columns at demonstrations in honor of the October Revolution and May Day, painted posters for Red Army clubs, made sketches at work meetings, and breathed the heroic atmosphere of Soviet reality in the second half of the 1920s.
Soon the Kukryniksy began to illustrate mass-produced little 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 already familiar “ruffy” signature of Kukryniksa.
The poet A. A. Zharov talks interestingly about the early work of the Kukryniks: “Our acquaintance,” he says, “began in 1925. I was the executive editor of the Moscow literary magazine "Komsomoliya"
Three poorly dressed young men once entered my editorial room (on Neglinnaya Street) and said:
- We are artists. That is, we are students of Vkhutemas. Is there any work in the magazine?
“Our magazine is literary, without pictures,” I said, “so there won’t be any work for you, and besides, there are too many of you three.”
- And we draw together and it’s like there’s one of us.
- But you sign with three names?
- No, with one last name: Kukryniksy!
- What can you do?
- We know how to draw cartoons.
“Well, try drawing a cartoon of these comrades,” I pointed to the poets sitting next to me.
Without saying a word, the guys got to work. At first I drew alone. Then another one silently took the drawing and added his own touches to it, then a third acted, and so the drawing went around in circles before our eyes.
A fair number of spectators had gathered at the door of the room. We all looked with curiosity at this unprecedented process of collective creativity. And they unanimously and enthusiastically applauded the result of this process: the cartoon was magnificent. We published it in the magazine “Komsomoliya”, where we had to create a department “Friendly cartoons” especially for young artists, about whom Bezymensky and I say among ourselves, not without pride: our discovery!” - (From the unpublished memoirs of A. A. Zharov.)
The Kukryniksy’s connection with literature and writers deepened and acquired various shapes. Very peculiar and characteristic of the Kukryniksy was the artistic life visual criticism of the works of contemporary writers (as well as artists). Caricatures and cartoons on literary themes attracted young artists into literary circles, into literary magazines and for a long time cemented the connection between the “many-headed Kukryniksa” 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 magazine "Workers' and Peasants' Correspondent"), with Soviet literature, the artists responded to their spiritual need as publicists in a wide public platform and predetermined some essential features of their work further.
Kupriyanov and Sokolov graduated from the Faculty of Graphics, Krylov from the Faculty of Painting. As it turned out in the course of their collective activities, this circumstance not only did not prevent unity, but, on the contrary, cemented it. All three complemented each other, and then each of the three artists mastered the specialties needed by the team. This triple alliance of friends and masters was strengthened on the principle of creative equality, each of whom began to give all his talent, all his skill “into a common pot.”
The creative collaboration of the Kukryniks with writers is one of the most interesting phenomena of Soviet art. This in itself testifies to the synthetic nature of our artistic culture. Speaking in the public arena during the difficult fighting years of the formation of a socialist society, when the role of agitation and propaganda acquired exclusively important, literature and fine arts, uniting, reinforced each other in battle formation.
Already at the end of the 1920s, Kukryniksy’s drawings can be found in almost all illustrated magazines in Moscow; the artists also became regulars in literary magazines in the humor department. 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 similarities, such fidelity to the image that even now their best cartoons, “isoparodies” retain all their meaning.
The Kukryniksy exposed the deviations of individual writers into philistinism, the abstruse poetry and painting of the formalists, the aesthetics and cosmopolitanism of other critics, the naturalistic elements of artists’ creativity, etc. The confusion and enemies of proletarian literature were severely affected. The Kukryniksy’s satire and caricature acquired the features of a truly military weapon, and was part of a large and serious political struggle for strengthening 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 unerringly, generally correctly navigating the complex situation of the literary struggle at the turn of the 1920s - 1930s. They also had breakdowns when they involuntarily succumbed to the groupism that was instilled in the editorial offices. So, for example, working together with a number of writers in the same ranks, they in their satirical drawings addressed to them often exceeded the boundaries of friendly cartooning. But basically, the cleansing work of the Kukryniksy satirists and parodists was highly appreciated by the public.
In the very nature of the talent, the creative character of the members of the Kukryniksy team there were features that were strengthened in social work, in student dormitory, which allowed them to easily create “in public,” to unite in creative communities with satirical poets. The mutual attraction between artists and writers is also not accidental. People 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, united for creative work.
There is no doubt that V.V. Mayakovsky played a major role in the formation of the Kukryniksy satirists, and moreover, in the decisive years of their creative youth. The Kukryniksys first saw and heard Mayakovsky as students of Vkhutemas, where the poet often visited and performed. Young artists loved Mayakovsky as a poet-tribune, an innovator; they saw in him the living embodiment of their thoughts and dreams about a new type of art, addressed to millions.
Mayakovsky’s work in “Windows of Satire of Growth” was a school for the entire galaxy of caricaturists, distinguished by political purposefulness, nationalism, and Bolshevik passion. Mayakovsky attracted the Kukryniks with the journalistic pathos of his creativity, the deep vitality and partisanship of his art.
Mayakovsky himself noticed young cartoonists who were more and more decisively entering into battle with the enemies of the Soviet Republic, with the philistinism, and advocating for a new socialist art. In 1928, Mayakovsky invited the Kukryniksy to participate in the stage design of his “enchanting comedy” “The Bedbug”. The comedy attacked the philistines, degenerates, Nepmen, and exposed the cruelty and inertia of a proprietary way of life, hostile to socialist society.
In 1929, the year of graduation educational institution Kupriyanov and Sokolov (Krylov finished it earlier), the Kukryniksy completed an extremely poignant series of satirical watercolor sketches for “The Bedbug.” This was far from the only, but their most striking work for the stage. In contrast to Rodchenko’s thin formalistic scenery (who designed part of the performance), the Kukryniksy created a “type” and costumes in which they vividly and realistically embodied both Mayakovsky’s theme and the features of his dramaturgy. Mayakovsky's dramaturgy demanded satire “out loud” without halftones, without compromises; it boldly operated with hyperbole as a method of typification.
“Weightily and visibly” the artists recreated the images of comedy. The method of sharply sharpening the features of the characters adopted by the Kukryniksys was based on a living, realistic perception of reality and characteristic everyday features. The types and costumes were mainly chosen at the then existing “Sukharevka”, a crowded market, where the capitalist rabble was still swarming, traders and speculators were working, and where, for this reason, comedy designers made sketches.
Having a great sense of the nature of Mayakovsky’s theater, the Kukryniksy willingly used bright, open colors and expressive lapidary patterns. The fishmonger in the Kukryniksy’s sketch (this was how it was embodied on stage) has the purple nose of a bitter drunkard, a fiery red mustache, and a red scarf; The red-cheeked apple seller is dressed in a red checkered skirt. The costumes of Prisypkin, Rosalia Pavlovna and other characters were approved by the Kukryniksy as the brightest satirical characteristics of the characters.
Portrait makeup served the same purpose of revealing the essence of all this rabid philistinism. The most characteristic was the makeup for the artist Igor Ilyinsky, who played the main role of Prisypkin. The makeup was supposed to transform the sweet, good-natured face of a young talented comedian, a favorite of the public, into the rough face of a former party member, a former worker, and now a “regenerate” and groom of the Elzevira Renaissance.
Turning to theatrical painting, the Kukryniksys 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.
Without intending to become professionals in the field of theatrical painting, the Kukryniksys repeatedly turned to the stage. In the early 30s. they designed the play “The First Candidate” by A. Zharov, “Anxiety” by F. Knorre and the Satire Theater’s play “City of Foolies” based on Saltykov-Shchedrin.
So in theatrical activities, which, unfortunately, remained an episode in the creative biography of the Kukryniksy, the fundamental properties of the team were revealed: the combative temperament of Soviet publicists, brilliant talent in the field of satire.
Subsequently, the artists did not return to the theater, although the nature of their talents contained theatrical features. These traits are reflected in their director’s ability to build a mise-en-scène (in a painting, in an illustration), to base the picture on an acute dramatic conflict, and in the “sense of audience” characteristic of the Kukryniks.
In 1931, an event occurred in the life of the Kukryniksy that played a vital role in their art and had a fruitful influence on their creative growth. The Kukryniksy met with Alexei Maksimovich Gorky. Great writer became interested in a team of talented satirists, whose art was distinguished by its political purposefulness, was oriented towards the broad masses of the people and contained rich development opportunities.
Conversations with Gorky helped the artists expand their range of topics, enter the arena of international politics as cartoonists, and develop the full breadth of their talents. The meeting with Gorky had another important consequence for the Kukryniksy: the artists found themselves as illustrators of classics, creating, with the writer’s blessing, drawings for his novel. Subsequently they joined the ranks of the largest Soviet illustrators and strengthened with their art the front of realist book masters.
In 1932, on Gorky’s initiative, the first exhibition of the Kukryniksy’s works was organized at the Writers’ Club. This exhibition - a major milestone in the life of young artists - summed up the “prehistory” of their work.
Even then, at the exhibition of 1932, the political orientation of creativity, the versatility of interests and activities characteristic of the collective, was evident. Along with graphic works made in various genres (a large series of everyday caricatures “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 catalog, Gorky highly appreciated the creative activity of the group 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 remember: “It didn’t work out for you, this is not your area yet.” (Emphasis by me - N.S.).
Indeed, the first collective paintings of the Kukryniksy: “Entry of the Whites,” “Gentlemen of the Intervention,” “Nationalization of the Factory,” “Funeral of the Commissar” and others, shown at the exhibition in 1932, were only an application for full-fledged easel painting. Artists in those years did without sketches from life; the color and composition of their early works were distinguished by conventional features. However, in the crude sketches, which were very weak in design, extraordinary painters were already discernible at that time.
Having received a baptism of fire in the Soviet and party press, the Kukryniksy set politically significant goals for themselves in painting. They sought to capture the struggle of the Soviet people against the invaders and the White Guard. They branded the enemies of the young Soviet Republic, resorting to methods of satire.
The reason the Kukryniksy became innovators, paved new paths in art, is that they boldly invade life, fighting for the new, the advanced, not in words, but in deeds. They became innovators because they put their art at all stages of the country’s life at the service of the socialist Motherland, the Communist Party.
The Kukryniksy exhibition underwent, one can say without exaggeration, a passionate public discussion in the light of the historical resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of April 23, 1932. This discussion, in which writers, poets, and artists took part, was supported by many reviews of popular criticism (the exhibition was then postponed in the Gorky Central Park of Culture and Recreation), helped the Kukryniks see their fundamental shortcomings.
A group of Ural workers wrote in a book of reviews about a personal exhibition of young artists: “Of course, one cannot help but point out that in the works of the Kukryniksy there are still significant gaps, haste, too incomplete processing, etc. But we remember that they are our own artists, born of the revolution. By learning and improving, they will achieve mastery and high artistry, which is what we sincerely wish for them.”
Criticism noted the well-known narrowness of the Kukryniksy’s themes, “incomplete processing,” that is, the amorphousness and intricacy of some of their drawings of that time, and the deliberate sketchiness of the form. The instructions the artists received from Gorky (who quite rightly believed that they should expand their political horizons and thematic scope), from subsequent comradely criticism, and from the mass audience helped the Kukryniks in their further work.
The period from 1931 to 1934 was rich in decisive events in the history of the Soviet state and in the history of Soviet artistic culture. In the summer of 1930 at the XVI Congress. Party J.V. Stalin said: “We are on the eve of transformation from an agricultural country into an industrial country,” and three and a half years later, the congress of victors stated that “During this period, the USSR has changed radically, throwing off the guise of backwardness and the Middle Ages. From an agricultural country it became an industrial country.” The capitalist encirclement, trying to weaken the power of the fatherland of the working people, is intensifying its subversive activities. But all the warmongers, the enemies of the working class, are now opposed by the powerful fortress of the country of victorious socialism.
In January 1930, Gorky received a letter from I.V. Stalin, which clearly highlighted the party’s 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 directed against the enemies of the people, against everything that hinders the development of society forward along the path to communism, is a high and necessary genre, that it is a powerful weapon it must be directed both against backward people who are hindering the growth of the country, and against the forces of world reaction.
Since the early 1930s. Gorky's books became reference books for many artists. The Kukryniksys 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 works by B. Ioganson, B. Dekhterev and others appeared.
The more mature the Kukryniksy became, the more deeply they mastered Gorky’s lessons. It was necessary to develop a simple and strong realistic visual language to express the rich life material and ideological content that was contained in the writer’s immortal creations.
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 at their disposal in the early 1930s. The image of Klim Samgin himself - characteristic, expressive - and to this day influences subsequent illustrators of Gorky, however, they rarely turn to this novel, which is extremely difficult for plastic embodiment.
Pointing out many serious shortcomings in the Kukryniksy’s illustrations, Gorky emphasized the inappropriateness of caricature methods in illustrating a novel of a non-satirical nature.
The 1930s were a period of high growth in Soviet fine art, which drew themes and inspiration from the depths of socialist reality. Suffice it to recall the canvases of Grekov, the painting “Interrogation of Communists” by Ioganson, the largest exhibitions of the era.
The Kukryniksy’s “deep raid” into life, which was of great importance for the development of their creativity, were 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 Kukryniksys were sent along with a large team 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 XVI Party Congress. The Moscow-Donbass highway, where Kukryniksy was sent by the editors, became the first object in big program 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 yet outstanding examples of the participation of fine art in the heated battle of the new with 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 discourages a vice more than the consciousness that it has been guessed and that laughter has already been heard about it,” said Saltykov-Shchedrin. Caricatures by Kukryniksy, exposing defectors, slobs, and even outright enemies Soviet power who sneaked onto transport for sabotage purposes can serve as an excellent illustration of this position of the great satirist.
In a series of correspondence from workers' correspondents and cartoons by Kukryniksy, the state of transport was reflected, the perpetrators of evil were ridiculed - negligent station masters and heads of large railway junctions, reckless drivers who violated regulations, egregious cases of careless storage of goods, poor treatment of locomotives and carriage facilities in the depot, and many other shortcomings that required immediate eradication.
The Kukryniksy's first cartoon on the transport topic appeared in Pravda on September 22, 1933, on the fourth day after the start of the raid. She appeared prominently in the center of the second page. A sharp, very expressive drawing, maintaining a portrait likeness, exposed the perpetrators of violations of discipline at one of the stations of the Kharkov railway junction.
The cartoons were of a genre nature, based on personal, carefully verified observations, and always had the exact address. Witty, funny, but quite sharp caricatures had the widest response among the masses, were discussed by groups of workers and employees, and gave the opportunity to party organizations and the railway service to take decisive measures to improve the health of the entire railway economy. Placed in Pravda, the caricatures acquired a nationwide resonance.
The successful raid on transport was followed by Kukryniksy’s business trips to waterways, to lagging factories, to small towns, to an agricultural commune, etc.
The principles of portraiture and narrative plotting were pursued by the artists quite consciously and consistently. Their caricatures are always based on sketches from nature; the artists strived not to sin in any way against the truth.
In cartoons on transport topics The Kukryniksy willingly used their favorite genre - cartoons. Perfectly capturing similarities, artists were able to sharpen the features of nature with great humor and so boldly generalize typical shortcomings that cartoons and caricatures acquired effective social significance.
The Kukryniksy cartoons were released in an album under the eloquent title “Hot Washing.” Demyan Bedny greeted with poetry a series of cartoons by Kukryniksy on transport topics. For their part, the Kukryniksy illustrated the satirical works of the proletarian poet, thereby consolidating a new creative community of fine arts and literature.
The names of Gorky, Mayakovsky, D. Bedny, and in terms of art - the galaxy of the best Soviet caricaturists, masters of satirical posters, define a new stage in the development of Russian democratic satire. The peculiarities of this stage are due to the fact that Soviet satire is directly related to the struggle of the people and the party to build a communist society. This determined the content of Soviet satire and its democratic form, designed for the perception of the broadest masses and exclusively important place, which is provided to her in the system of artistic culture and public life of the country.
From their business trips on behalf of Pravda, the Kukryniksys returned enriched with life and artistic experience, brought a lot of sketches, sketches, observations. Being born newspapermen, possessing by that time the necessary skill and a “sense of efficiency,” the Kukryniksy did not give up thinking about large forms
art, about paintings in which they could achieve broader and deeper generalizations of their life experiences. The dream of a painting, of large impressive forms of art, of recreating a positive image in painting and graphics, the satirists and “low-formists” Kukryniksy cherished from the first steps of their independent artistic activity. This is one of the most important features of the Kukryniksy team, not at all obligatory for cartoonists, however, characteristic of Soviet satirists who perfectly know the goal, the positive ideal in the name of which they fight 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 had transformed from an agricultural country into an industrial country, the victory of socialism in all areas of the national economy and culture, and 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 was still in everyone’s memory, the Kukryniksys 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 sharpened and catchy artistic manner, the artists reflected the thoughts and feelings of the people who, in a hard and rightful battle, destroyed the worst enemies of the Republic, the Communist Party.
Kolchak emerges as a dark, gloomy silhouette 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 interventionists. Also using the expressiveness of the silhouette, Kukryniksy and Wrangel are depicted. There is anger and doom in his gaze. A pathetic renegade, a stranger on Russian soil, the baron looks like a rat in a trap. He sits, staring blankly at one point. Yudenich is funny and scary, Makhno is disgusting.
These satirical portraits are not conventional masks, but realistic satire using personality traits characters known to everyone.
The appearance of these works by the Kukryniksy marked the birth of a new type of portrait genre - a compositional satirical portrait, which attracted the attention of a wide audience with its political acuity, the nationality of artistic speech, bright, witty, biting and expressive.
Having achieved individual expressiveness of their 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 lies in the public ridicule of evil, in angry, scourging laughter.
Amateur theater groups performing in workers' clubs and squares in holidays, picked up this flagellating laughter of the Kukryniksy, and the satirical images created by artists for exhibition hall, went for a walk around the country, recreated by actors and caricaturists, causing hatred and destroying, contemptuous laughter from a wide audience. The White Guard generals, beaten by the Red Army on all fronts of the civil war, were put on display and were ridiculed again and again.
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 enhanced the intelligibility of these peculiar creations by the Kukryniksovs: “Borka Annenkov, a bandit, looks like a dog,” or “The brave General Yudenich, was also a bloody executioner, broke into Leningrad, so that have a parade there"
“In your face, poetry,” wrote M.I. Kalinin to Demyan Bedny, “perhaps for the first time in history, it so vividly linked its destinies with the destinies of humanity fighting for its liberation, and from creativity for the chosen few became creativity for the masses.” These words, addressed to the popular Soviet satirist, formulate the most important features, features and meaning of the existence of Soviet satire in the broad sense of the word. 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 slows down the movement forward 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 art workers on the problems of craftsmanship and illuminated the most important issues of socialist realism. As one of the urgent tasks, the party set before writers and artists the task of critically developing the heritage.
V. I. Lenin’s teaching on 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 in 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 from this treasury the most valuable lessons in craftsmanship. If in their student years and in the early days of their independent work the Kukryniksys limited their study of the heritage mainly to the art of Daumier and Goya, then from the beginning of the 1930s, that is, from the moment of systematic work on painting, they studied Russian masters of the 19th century in depth and thoughtfully .
A series of satirical portraits by Kukryniksy, “The Face of the Enemy,” occupies an intermediate place between posters and easel painting. Artists painted in oil on canvas, trying to convey plastic volume and depth of space. And, at the same time, they used the method of poster and caricature in the interpretation of form, convention in the combination of planar and volumetric elements. Of course, the lack of preliminary work on location 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 advanced painters, realized that in solving the enormous tasks that the country and the party had set for them, compositional painting with clearly defined characters and plot.
The Kukryniksy mastered easel painting, in the literal sense of the word, while working on the triptych “Old Masters” and the painting “The Morning of an Officer tsarist army" The three paintings that make up the “Old Masters” series appeared before the viewer for the first time at the exhibition “Industry of Socialism”,
opened in the historical days of the XVIII Congress of the Communist Party.
The exhibition has been prepared for a long time. Soviet artists collected material for their works where work was in full swing, new buildings were erected, where in the battles for the industry of socialism a new person was forged, a new socialist attitude to work.
The spectators, who poured into the spacious halls of the exhibition “Industry of Socialism” in a live stream, perceived it with with good reason as a holiday of Soviet culture. The Kukryniksy triptych “Old Masters” was a very noticeable feature 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 Factory” by B. Ioganson, attracted attention.
In their new work, the Kukryniksy spoke simply and expressively about the enemies of the working class, about forced labor in Tsarist Russia, which ruined the working man, plundered his energy, and threatened life itself. The ability to find a topic that would touch the deepest interests of the people, to simply and expressively reveal an acute social conflict, to notice the ripening of something new in a pressing reality are the characteristic features of the Kukryniksy.
The main characters in all three films are factory owners, contractors, police officers and other old “masters”. At the same time, characteristic The artistic thinking of the Kukryniks lies in the fact that, by depicting the “masters,” the artists allow the viewer to feel the historical force that was preparing retribution against capitalist society.
The triptych is based on an acute social conflict. The first picture - “Prayer service at the foundation of the factory” - is like the beginning of a future drama. The pop in a lilac-golden robe is written perfectly by nature. The owners are depicted with excessive exaggeration; behind these inflated arrogance “images”, somewhat conventional, one does not feel the artists’ conversations with nature.
The second picture, “Mine Disaster,” is much sharper and more effective in composition. A primitive mine is depicted. In the foreground is the director, apparently a foreigner, a bailiff, an official. They draw up a report on the death of the workers, whose corpses are spread out on the ground. The foreground figures are painted from nature. Artists struggled for a long time to paint the landscape and sky as expressively as possible, to make them consonant in color and character with the dramatic intent of the picture.
The conflict is resolved in the third film, “The Flight of the Manufacturer.” This is the third act of the drama. There, behind the broken window, 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 viewer’s eyes is determined precisely by what is happening outside the picture and what is hinted at by the broken glass and the frightened clerk at the window. The well-found type, the well-written interior with a suite of rooms is noteworthy.
The triptych “Old Masters” (1936 - 1937) is the beginning of a new period in Kukryniksy’s painting. There have been fundamental changes 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 studies and sketches have survived to the present day, but they also give an idea of the creative quest of the artists, of their deep internal restructuring.
The entire process of working on the “Old Masters” series - from the first sketches to the end - was carried out collectively. There were no differences between the artists in their worldview, in their understanding of the tasks of art, or in their working methods. As for private issues of skill, each of the three artists was ready to submit to a majority of two votes
Each of the three artists independently thought through 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 agreed was contained in each of the other two.
All three were looking for sitters. While working on the triptych, the artists fully experienced the joy of discovery, when they managed to find a characteristic type, and the difficulties when the model “reluctantly”, not wanting to portray a priest or a policeman. However, often the artists themselves replaced the sitters; working together, the three of them learned to pose for each other, while discovering the theatrical streak inherent in all of them.
Nature was painted together, arranged in such a way as to cover it comprehensively; then the most successful solutions were selected from all the material.
All parts of the triptych - “Prayer at the foundation of the factory”, “Disaster 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 the artists’ mastery of the realistic method in painting.
If at the beginning of the work the artists still timidly used nature, then the last, best part was painted entirely from nature. Since then, artists have never painted a picture “from themselves”, without nature. In the original sketch of The Manufacturer's Flight, the back wall of the room is blank; in subsequent sketches and in the painting itself, a suite of rooms is unfolded, beautifully and densely written. The picture has gained significantly: the flatness has disappeared, the feeling of vitality has increased.
Both professional critics and working audiences highly appreciated the paintings “The Old Masters,” especially the last two parts. “It’s very interesting,” wrote B. Joganson, “the Kukryniksy artists acted as painters. In three paintings (the “Old Masters” series), dedicated to the pre-revolutionary life of workers, the Kukryniksy remained true to their satirical calling, but avoided the hyperbolism characteristic of caricaturists. They achieved great expressiveness of their social type, achieved 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 Kukryniks of 1936 - 1937 are much more obvious. Artists at one time saw them themselves, but so far they could not overcome them. They made up for serious gaps in their education by persistent study “on the go.” They worked tirelessly, studied nature, drew, wrote sketches.
Only one year separates the Kukryniksy’s next painting, “The Morning of an Officer in the Tsarist Army,” from the triptych “Old Masters.” Over the course of this year, the artist’s skills have noticeably strengthened; they have achieved much greater clarity in understanding the tasks and features of easel painting.
The composition of “The 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 specific images of the orderly and officers of the tsarist army. This time both sides are present on stage.
In the foreground, the artists showed a young boy, an orderly, picking up fragments of broken dishes after the officers' night of drinking. He frowns at his master, yawning and sleep-deprived after a sleepless night, depicted in the right corner of the picture. In the back of the room, the viewer sees another officer who has fallen asleep at the table.
However, it is not the life of the officers of the tsarist army with its established, stable features that attracts attention, but rather those elements of the new, progressive, which are ripening in the public life of pre-revolutionary Russia and will inevitably triumph. In the expression of the blond boy's face there is hatred for the gentlemen, whose idle and dissolute life he sees and condemns.
The orderly from “The Morning of the Officer” is the first to be clearly and clearly depicted positive character in the paintings of Kukryniksy. He is one of those simple people who are still half-consciously burdened by the slave 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 setting complete his portrait.
The Kukryniksy's theatrical experience helped them successfully build and develop the mise-en-scène. The orderly and the officer are brought to the fore. The owner's drinking companion, who had fallen asleep at the table, positioned himself in the background, convincingly and unobtrusively complementing the story about the main thing.
The gray-blue morning light from the large window competes with the faint golden glow of an unextinguished lamp. This color “roll call”, based on additional yellow-blue tones, enriches the color of the painting and contributes to an in-depth interpretation of its meaning.
This time the artists showed great attention to the details of the setting, painted skillfully and with love. In those years when the painting “The Morning of an Officer in the Tsarist Army” was painted, love for detail was a very rare quality in our artists. Of the paintings of that time, one can point out very few where the details were painted as lovingly, generally and artistically. There is no doubt that greatest role The exhibitions of Russian classics that opened at the Tretyakov Gallery in the mid-1930s played a role in enriching the Kukryniksy’s painting skills and establishing them in the positions of realism in painting.
Looking at the painting “Morning,” the viewer recalled Fedotov by association. About the great master household painting made us remember a plot from the life of officers, 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 design 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 rivet the viewer’s attention to the psychological grain of the plot, evoke sympathy for the common man, and ridicule the vulgar, empty life of the “existent” officers.
In mastering this narrative-psychological side of Fedotov’s painting was what was especially important, which the Kukryniksy gleaned from the richest source of Fedotov’s creativity. They 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 themes. The peculiarity of the Kukryniksy’s painting was that it was based on a social conflict. It was built on a sharp contrast between old and 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.
Having turned to painting, the Kukryniksy, as we have seen, did not change the nature of their subject matter. And in painting, with the same directness as in graphics, they pronounced a harsh verdict on the old system, exposed the difficult conditions of life and forced labor in capitalist society, and branded the enemies and traitors of the Soviet people.
With the deepest interest of the Soviet people in the victory of the new, 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 Hitler's army, healed the wounds of war and entered a period of gradual transition from socialism to communism.
Soviet art of the post-war period developed under the sign of historical decisions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on ideological issues.
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 youth. A number of important tasks were set before the workers of the ideological front. Having exposed manifestations of apolitism, lack of ideas, and the most harmful cosmopolitanism, the party called on artists to create works of high ideology 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 was 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.
Soon after this historical event, which marked the complete victory of the Soviet country, the Kukryniksy were sent to Berlin. “From May 21,” say the artists, “we worked for a month in the capital of Germany. For several days in a row, from 11 pm to 3 am, we went to write sketches of the interior of the hall where the signing of the capitulation took place, for one hour we wrote and drew Marshal G. K. Zhukov from life.”
The surviving sketches of the Kukryniks give an idea of the destroyed streets of Berlin, of Hitler's Reich Chancellery outside and inside, and of Hitler's office. The artists went down to Hitler's bomb shelter, walked along its gray corridors, visited the district commandant's offices of Berlin, listened to the commandants' conversations with the Germans. We made sketches. Subsequently, during the trial of war criminals, the Kukryniksys traveled to Nuremberg.
The painting “The Surrender of Germany” - a large multi-figure canvas - was created by the Kukryniksy based on many portraits painted from life. They worked on every detail of the interior, from the brown paneling of the walls, the bright colorful banners of the Allies, to the “same” inkwell and “same” decanter that stood on the table when the German surrender was signed.
Individual portraits, especially expressive, “luscious” portrait studies, painted from life, are truthful and temperamental. The details are very true. But overall the picture is cold and monotonous in color. While preserving the value of the artistic document, it does not worry. Apparently, the genre of official documentary portraits is not in the nature of the Kukryniksys, who are incomparably more successful in thematic paintings full of drama. Moreover, it is precisely these kinds of themes, which give artists the opportunity to expressively show a social conflict, to develop a plot with a clearly expressed dramatic plot, that are characteristic of the work of the Kukryniksy.
Vivid evidence of this situation is the painting “The End” - the pinnacle in Kukryniksy’s painting, one of those outstanding works art with which Soviet artists summed up their colossal life and creative experience during the Great Patriotic War. Painting “The End. Last days Hitler’s headquarters in the dungeon of the Reich Chancellery” dates back to 1948.
Working from life in Berlin and Nuremberg gave the Kukryniks the opportunity to strongly, vividly, and accurately characterize typical representatives of the “Reich” and the moral, political and military defeat of the fascist regime.
Of course, working from life in Berlin, observations accumulated during the trial of the main war criminals in Nuremberg, when they stood trial, allowed the Kukryniks to write with such convincing power and expressiveness both the types of characters and the setting of the basement, which became the last refuge of Hitler and his companions.
But the picture is not the sum of sketches, but a new creative formation. The sketches as such “die” in the process of creating a painting. From their birth to “death” they obey the artist’s plan, creative work his general idea.
The Kukryniksys painted Hitler many times. The satirically portrayed image of this evil buffoon with a tuft of hair on a balding skull and round bulging eyes has firmly entered into the consciousness of people. Hitler is depicted at the moment of his fall, engulfed
Once drawn by artists, it is “played out” in a completely new and unusually expressive way. The head is raised up, a wandering gaze is focused on the ceiling, which is about to collapse under the blows of Soviet aviation and artillery. You can’t escape responsibility. With one hand, Hitler grabbed the collar of his uniform, the uniform was strangling him, his other hand rested against the wall. It seems that there is a rocking, and the “Fuhrer” who suffered an accident can barely stay on his feet.
Hitler's bomb shelter in Kukryniksy's interpretation resembles a sinking ship. Pictures in golden frames are askew, a chair is overturned, papers and orders are scattered on the floor, the handset of the telephone, already inactive, dangles helplessly on the cord. Everything is in a state of unstable equilibrium, everything has moved out of place, everything is falling apart
The seasoned fascist, sitting in the foreground, convulsively grabbed the table and the back of the chair with both hands, as if afraid to fall. He stared wildly into space, anticipating death; He no longer needs the suitcase next to him, it’s late, there’s nowhere to run.
The third fascist - Hitler's young pet - got drunk and fell asleep. Just like everyone else, he is not able to courageously face death and well-deserved punishment: 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 is thrown back.
The fourth fascist is a sinister person. He is the only one in full uniform, his military cap pulled low, hiding his gaze. "Herr Oberst" crouched down, as if preparing for the last death leap. He, like everyone else, didn’t even look at the “Führer” when he appeared at the door. The “Reich” disintegrated, everyone was left to their own devices.
During the war, Soviet artists created many paintings that exposed the Nazis in different periods their criminal activities. These works, of course, played a big role in the fight against fascism. Most of them concerned significant, but separate aspects of anti-national 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 the unmistakably accurate way these experienced artists found an angle of view on historical events. From the entire set of phenomena, they chose the moment of “culmination”, when just punishment, the retribution passionately awaited by the peoples, fell on the heads of the fascists.
Reflecting this popular dream of victory, Soviet humanist artists extremely clearly, with great psychological depth, showed the corrupting impact of fascism on people. By imprisoning 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, an understanding of events in the perspective of their progressive development.
The film “The End” combines the strongest aspects of the Kukryniksy’s talent and skill, the passionate journalism of anti-fascists, psychological expressiveness, the ability to dramatically reveal an acute social conflict, and, with the help of a successfully found plot, to show the essence of this social force, its typical features. The artists showed brilliant skill in constructing the mise-en-scène, psychologically motivating every look, gesture, pose, and movement of the characters.
Having shown with exceptional relief the agony of a handful of fascists, the artists compose the picture as a whole and in individual parts in such a way that they give the viewer full opportunity feel an opposing historical force beyond what is depicted. One crazy look from Hitler, directed upward, is enough to emphasize the meaning of what is happening. It is absolutely clear to the viewer that the fates of those hiding in the bomb shelter are being decided up there.
Driven by horror of an imminent catastrophe, Hitler takes refuge in a bomb shelter and freezes in the doorway. An ominous shadow from his figure fell on the metal-bound door. The “Führer’s” face and hands are illuminated with a cold, deathly light.
Hitler, the focal point of the composition, is placed not in the center (as was intended in the first draft sketch) and not in the foreground, but in the background, diagonally, to the left. This is very important compositional device, conditioned by design, enhancing the dynamism of the picture. The action develops and increases from the first shot to the next one. An uneven, spasmodic rhythm also increases. Bright, hard artificial light from an invisible source combats the sharp, slanting shadows cast by objects in the room.
The energy, dynamics of the composition, and the struggle of light and shadow increase the tension of the moment. The artists managed to depict not frozen existence, but the rapid development of action.
Each character is a necessary link in the development of a dramatic conflict. All characters and objects introduced into the composition are involved in the action. With the entire set of artistic means, the authors of the film lead the viewer to an independent conclusion about an inevitable shameful catastrophe, a well-deserved punishment that has fallen on war criminals.
The denouement is near, things are 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 painting. In this work, the artists achieved true realism in the interpretation of a complex historical theme and in the depiction of enemies. They characterized the situation in which the “Führer” and his associates found themselves with tragicomic features. The presence of an acute grotesque gave the whole work the unique character of “Kukryniks” satire.
In the painting “The End,” the artists seemed to summarize their rich experience as international cartoonists, cartoonists and painters. How the Kukryniksy painters had mastered the mastery of plastic form and expressiveness of color by that time, that is necessary qualities masters of easel painting.
In this original work, innovative and profound, the lessons of the masters of the past are translated creatively.
Before us is the creative development and implementation of the great Repin tradition of subject painting on the fundamental themes of our time, where the historicism of the artists’ thinking is permeated with the living 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 learned the art of satirically exposing the darker sides of reality, the sharpness of characterizations.
There is also no doubt about the great role that art played in the development of Kukryniksy’s painting. Soviet masters the older generation, in particular, the paintings of B.V. Ioganson, imbued with the pathos of the struggle for human liberation, built on the most acute class conflicts. The art of socialist realism, cementing the masses of artists with common ideals, common tasks of creating truly folk art, and a single creative method, creates a favorable atmosphere of growth and mutual exchange of experience among artists of all generations. The Marxist-Leninist worldview and the historical experience of the people who built communism provide the Soviet people with correct understanding events are a reliable foundation for historical painting.
The painting “The End” gives us the key to clarifying the main features, style, and creative “handwriting” of the Kukryniksy, since in this work the most stable features of their team, which were encountered in different combinations throughout their creative life, merged into an indissoluble unity.
Based on fundamental principles common to all Soviet realists and masters of easel painting, the Kukryniksy developed a sharply individual style. In the creation of this style, a significant role was played by their temperament as publicists, their talent as satirists, their organic, deep understanding of dramatic, social conflict - the soul of the thematic picture, their keen interest in human psychology.
By uniting personal talents, in which there is much in common and much that is different, the artists achieved an individual “Kukryniksov” style in painting to the same extent as in graphics. Their “handwriting” is distinguished, first of all, by an organic fusion of “weighty”, material painting, usually built on color contrasts and light and shade, and a characteristic, sharp drawing. Their creativity is characterized by a clearly expressed strong-willed character and a mature outlook on life.
The painting "The End" is a fruit modern painting, bearing the stamp of the trials that befell the people in their unprecedented struggle against fascism, the stamp of the wisdom of the victorious people.
The painting took an outstanding place in Soviet painting. With its accusatory pathos, it meets the interests and expresses the aspirations of the broad democratic masses around the world, emphasizing once again the global significance of Soviet art. For the painting “The End” the Kukryniksys 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 and received very high ratings as an outstanding piece of art modernity.
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 soulful love for nature, their love of peace 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 in Razliv”. There are many merits in this picture. The expression of a thoughtful face, a gaze directed into the distance, as if discerning something important in this distance, characterize the essential features of Lenin the thinker. There is a lot of soulful lyricism in this picture, but it does not have the proper significance and content necessary to tackle 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 sense of nature has never manifested itself with such force as in the post-war years. The trials of war, the invasion of occupiers, the heroic defense of the socialist Fatherland - all this evoked a lively response in the souls of artists. The heightened sense of the Motherland gave impetus to the development of landscape art. Deep ideological and creative processes that are evident in the Soviet landscape post-war years, found their bright revelation in the work of 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, and Sokolov is clearly manifested.
Each of the three members of the team has their own favorite landscape motifs. Thus, Kupriyanov is primarily a singer of the city and nature inhabited by man. His landscapes belong to the best city 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 expanses. Sokolov’s favorite landscape motifs are very diverse, but most inspiredly he paints the banks of the Volga, where his youth passed, the Volga, finding more and more beauty in its vastness.
An exhibition of works by academicians, organized by the USSR Academy of Arts in 1952, demonstrated the Kukryniksy’s work in full and diversity. Along with the graphics performed by the team, Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov showed their personal works in painting. Kupriyanov - exclusively landscapes (1947 - 1952), Krylov - landscapes, portraits, still lifes, Sokolov - landscapes and self-portraits (1950 - 1952).
All these works testify to the constant quest of the artists, their deep study of national traditions in the field of landscape, the maturity of skill acquired through in-depth observations of nature, recording it in numerous sketches and further processing of the sketches.
High level skill, a variety of motifs carefully selected from the richest world of nature, indicate that three popular, richly gifted artists work tirelessly every day. Talent requires the tireless polishing of every facet of it. Without this, even the most talented artist will slide into vulgar amateurism.
The Kukryniksy often bring their works to the court of landscape master N.P. Krymov. M. V. Kupriyanov, P. N. Krylov, N. A. Sokolov give criticism and advice that they hear from the lips of this artist great importance. These tips, as the Kukryniksy say, help them set certain goals when working on a landscape painting and achieve color integrity.
All three artists are characterized by lyricism in conveying nature, the ability to choose a characteristic motif that evokes many associations and various moods. None of the three artists will sit down to write a sketch, so to speak, wherever necessary. All three look closely at the surroundings for a long time, “take aim”, sketch, choose, and then write what most captured their imagination.
To paint such inspired landscapes as Kupriyanov, Krylov and Sokolov showed at the academic exhibition, one needs, of course, high technique, which is enriched by daily training, and enormous 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 classic 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 reserve of unspent feelings, life observations, as did the great masters of the past.
The national school of Russian landscape of the second half of the 19th century imbued the art of landscape with deep ideological content and 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 artistic means defend democratic ideals - the life-giving source of realistic art of the era.
Savrasov, Shishkin, Vasiliev, Levitan, Nesterov, Vasnetsov, Serov and other major masters of the Russian national landscape were able to, through the depiction of nature, reveal people's thoughts about the Motherland, nurture love for their native spaces, for the incomparable charm of the Russian northern spring, for the white birches along which Russian a person yearns for a foreign land, for the blue forest expanses, for the villages on the slope, for everything that is associated with the appearance of the Motherland.
Setting common goals, landscape painters reflect their personal, cherished, mature attitude towards the world in pictures of nature.
According to the nature of the motifs, Kupriyanov’s landscapes consist of three cycles: landscapes of Leningrad with the massive dome of St. Isaac’s and the Neva, with subtly felt silhouettes of architecture and green foliage, the shore 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 enlivened by human figures. Having chosen the motif that interested him, Kupriyanov tries to write it right away, trying to convey the given state of nature and his feeling from it. But in order to master the possibility of terribly intense writing speed, so to speak, “hot on the heels,” the artist must, like a pianist, first train his eye and hand, mastering the perfect technique. Having paid tribute in the past to his passion for fluency and sketchy writing, Kupriyanov has been especially persistent in recent years in achieving strict completeness of form and compositional integrity.
In contrast to Kupriyanov, Krylov and Sokolov paint landscapes for a long time. Artists believe that it is possible to achieve clarity of expression of a given motif and concreteness of the image only by returning to it repeatedly. For example, Krylov painted the landscape “Mallow” in seven long sessions in those early mornings when nature maintained approximately the same state. The artist painted “The Zaokskie Dali” from sketches in the studio, preserving a completely alive, direct feeling of the piece of nature that captivated him. Sokolov devoted five sessions to “Evening on the Volga.” What captivates the Kukryniksy landscapes is the humanity that permeates them, the concentration of feeling, 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 a given landscape, the most striking. “Evening on the Volga”, “Volga near Plyos” and other landscapes by Sokolov 1950 - 1952. - landscape paintings in which the accuracy and “portrait quality” of the image is combined with subtle lyricism, imposing on his paintings the stamp of great personal feeling.
The desire to summarize one’s impressions into a picture, to achieve completeness of form, clarity and integrity of the composition, is manifested in the modern landscapes of Kupriyanov, Krylov, and Sokolov. At the same time, each of them finds individual expression.
Of the three artists, Krylov works more than the other two and longer than them on portrait painting. Krylov’s portraits and paintings, including the subtly felt child portrait“Natalka Kupriyanova”, female portraits in the open air, etc. And in the portrait the artist strives for picturesqueness, completeness, and plasticity. The portrait of Korean dancer Ahn Sun-hee is distinguished by its subtle characterization of a person. This portrait would have benefited, however, if the artist had paid more attention to the dancer’s hands and found their individual “expression,” because hands in a portrait in general, and in a portrait of a dancer in particular, play a very significant role.
At the academic art exhibition of 1952, P. Krylov’s “Bouquet of Rose Hips” attracted everyone’s attention. A modest bouquet of white flowers seemed to be fragrant - each flower was painted with such expressiveness, fidelity, and care.
The path that the Kukryniksy landscape painters took together with the largest Soviet landscape painters was the path from a sketch to a painting, to a generalized, heartfelt image of nature.
Modern Soviet man is an innovator, the owner of his land, the creator and creator of a communist society. These features of the high spiritual culture of the new person should and are reflected in the landscapes of Kupriyanov, Krylov and Sokolov. We feel them in their majority, in the breadth of construction, 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 caricaturists, and Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov are the most talented painters.” And indeed, caricaturists by vocation and main occupation, in their individual work the Kukryniksys are above all and above all painters.
Landscapes, portraits, still lifes painted by Kupriyanov, Krylov and Sokolov are often used by them later in the collective work of the Kukryniks.
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 their comrades. We can talk about this with even greater justification now, when the Kukryniks 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, through mutual support it strengthened and sharpened them.
It is enough to compare two recent portraits by Krylov and Sokolov to reveal the peculiarities of the creative style of each master. Thus, the portrait of the Korean dancer Ahn Sun 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 would rather sacrifice the color of the portrait than deviate from the psychological drawing of the image.
In this regard, it is necessary to emphasize the special passion and success 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 impassable border between the artist’s work in graphics and painting; moreover, there is constant mutual enrichment between them. A great culture of drawing can be felt at the heart of Sokolov’s paintings.
In the collective work of the Kukryniksy, a complex process of interaction occurs, the 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, artists constantly improve the skills of the team.
From the very beginning of the Kukryniksy collective activity to this day, both viewers and comrades in arms have been 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 work - usually the fruit of individual work? On what principles has the creative community of talented masters been formed and maintained for three decades, what exactly cements it?”
There is no doubt that the possibility of such strong friendship, unbreakable brotherhood, complete selfless dedication of each member of the team to the common cause is rooted in the nature of socialist society. Socialist society, which promotes the completeness and harmonious development of man, is the life-giving environment in which only the all sides of the multifaceted personality of each artist were revealed, and where the personal and public merged together, in the name of a conscious high goal.
Socialist society, which developed a new attitude towards work, created favorable soil on which new labor Relations, based on free competition, on deep mutual trust in each other, on the socialist understanding of the artist’s work as a matter of honor, as the primary need of man.
The Marxist-Leninist worldview, a clear party orientation of creativity are necessary prerequisites for the moral fortitude 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 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 presupposes character traits, the presence of high moral principles in each member of the team, a deep and ineradicable sense of duty, which has become a fundamental character trait of all three artists.
“The basis of the team is, first of all, strong friendship,” say the Kukryniksy. - It is hardly possible to create a good team without interest in each other. Interest breeds respect, and respect breeds trust. Trust helps you correct mistakes and value your friend’s achievements as if you 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.
“That director,” they say, “is the one who at a given moment, with his touch on the work, has improved at least some part of it. It was further developed by someone else, then the role of 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 well 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 painting,” the artists say, “it often happens like this: one person stands by the painting and writes some place. Two of them moved away and from a distance told the writer how much to change the color in one direction or another. The writer asks: “Is it even colder? So good?".
Which of the three in this case - the writer or the speaker - is the director? Almost all three are working.” There are paintings about which the authors themselves do not remember which of them painted which part.
Giving the best achievements to the “fourth” artist, who is, in fact, “Kukryniksy”, Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov also work separately from a young age and all their lives, constantly improving their skills in drawing and painting. This diligent, 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 unbreakable, lifelong friendship. No matter how highly we value the individual creativity of Kupriyanov, Krylov, and Sokolov, it is quite obvious that their joint work is more significant, more diverse, and more original. It is this collective work that has those features for which people value their creativity so highly, and by which the unique Kukryniks style is recognized.
I would like to end this short essay about the art of academicians M.V. Kupriyanov, P.N. Krylov, N.A. Sokolov with their words, which reveal the meaning and purpose of the birth of the collective and in which the voice of the artists themselves is felt.
“Only that collective will become viable,” say the Kukryniksy, “whose goal is to serve the people, serve the Motherland, that is, become a living part of the country’s huge collective. We always feel the great care that is shown to our team Communist Party, Soviet government, people. We feel this help at every step. We are aware of the great responsibility this places on us. Our team is happy that he is a native of the Soviet Union.”
The popularity of the Kukryniks is great; their works are known and appreciated by both the widest audience and art connoisseurs. The popularity of the Kukryniks extends far beyond the borders of our country, they are well known and respected among our friends abroad, they are hated by warmongers, fascists of all formations and generations. There is no doubt about the large and fruitful role of the Kukryniksy in the development of not only Soviet, but also foreign progressive caricature. Of course, the significance of their painting “The End” for the creation of works based on an acute and effective social conflict, on a broad and deep typification of life phenomena.
The Soviet government highly and repeatedly noted the services of the Kukryniksy creative team to the Motherland. Kukryniksy
awarded the title of People's Artists of the RSFSR, Honored Artists. Artists were awarded the title of Stalin Prize laureates five times: for political posters and caricatures, for illustrations to the works of Chekhov and Gorky, for the painting “The End”.
Not long ago, a collective self-portrait of the Kukryniksov appeared in Ogonyok: “the consubstantial and indivisible trinity,” as Gorky once called Kukryniksov, appeared this time in the form of an old man with a thick beard. And in fact, M.V. Kupriyanov, P.N. Krylov, N.A. Sokolov - all three together turned 150 years old!
But despite such a respectable age, the “celebrator” is in the prime of his creative powers and talent. “He” works tirelessly on new works book graphics and painting. And again, as of old, political cartoons signed “Kukryniksy” are constantly published in Pravda and Krokodil.
The works of recent years testify that the Kukryniksy are still always ready to defend the world with their art, strike down the satires of warmongers with weapons, and glorify their great Motherland - the standard-bearer of world peace!
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Recognition, identification and formatting - BK-MTGC.
Mikhail Kupriyanov (1903-1991), Porfiry Krylov (1902-1990) and Nikolai Sokolov (1903-2000).
Biography of the team
Three artists worked using the method of collective creativity (each also worked individually - on portraits and landscapes). They became most famous for their numerous skillfully executed caricatures and cartoons, as well as book illustrations created in a characteristic caricature style.
The joint creativity of the Kukryniks began during their student years at the Higher Art and Technical Workshops. Artists came to Moscow VKHUTEMAS from different parts of the Soviet Union. Kupriyanov from Kazan, Krylov from Tula, Sokolov from Rybinsk. In 1922, Kupriyanov and Krylov met and began working together in the wall newspaper of VKHUTEMAS as Kukry and Krykup. At this time, Sokolov, still living in Rybinsk, signed Nix on his drawings. In 1924, he joined Kupriyanov and Krylov, and the three of them worked in the wall newspaper as Kukryniksy)
The group was searching for a new unified style that would use the skills of each of the authors. Heroes were the first to come under the pen of cartoonists literary works. Later, when the Kukryniksys became permanent employees of the Pravda newspaper and the Krokodil magazine, they focused primarily on political cartoons. According to the recollections of the artist of the Krokodil magazine German Ogorodnikov, since the mid-1960s the Kukryniksys practically did not visit the magazine:
The Kukryniksys have almost never been to Krokodil. Never been! I don't remember the incident. Sokolov was only there once, but I never saw Krylov, and I never saw Kupriyanov either. But I worked since 1965, so maybe there were before me, but I never saw them on our floor.
The milestone works for Kukryniksy were grotesque topical cartoons on topics of domestic and international life (the series “Transport”, “Warmongers”, -), propaganda, including anti-fascist, posters (“We will ruthlessly defeat and destroy the enemy!”, 1941) , illustrations for the works of Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (), Anton Chekhov (-), Maxim Gorky (“The Life of Klim Samgin”, “Foma Gordeev”, “Mother”, 1933, -), Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov (“ The Golden Calf"), Miguel Cervantes (Don Quixote).
A significant moment in creativity was the military poster “We will ruthlessly defeat and destroy the enemy!” He was one of the first to appear on the streets of Moscow in June - immediately after the attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR.
The Kukryniksy went through the entire war: their leaflets accompanied Soviet soldiers all the way to Berlin. In addition, the series of posters “TASS Windows” was very popular.
They became classics of Soviet political caricature, which they understood as a weapon in the fight against the political enemy, and did not at all recognize other trends in art and caricature, which were fully manifested primarily in the new format of the Literary Newspaper (the humor department of the 12-Chair Club ). Their political cartoons, often published in the Pravda newspaper, belong to the best examples of this genre (“Ticks in Ticks”, “I Lost a Ring...”, “Back at the Eagle, Responsible in Rome”, “Wall-haircut”, “Lion’s share”, series of drawings “Warmongers”, etc.). The team owns numerous political posters (“The Transformation of the Krauts”, “People Warn”, etc.). The Kukryniksy are also known as painters and masters of easel drawing. They are the authors of the films “Morning”, “Tanya”, “Flight of the Germans from Novgorod”, “The End” (1947-1948), “Old Masters” (1936-1937). They made pastel drawings - “I. V. Stalin and V. M. Molotov", "I. V. Stalin in Kureika”, “Barricades on Presnya in 1905”, “Chkalov on the island of Udd” and others.
The members of the team also worked separately - in the field of portrait and landscape.
Works and exhibitions
An extensive collection of artworks written by the Kukryniks is collected in the private collection of the Mamontov family.
Since April 30, 2008, the Tsaritsyno Museum-Reserve has exhibited a posthumous exhibition dedicated to Victory Day, “History through the eyes of the Kukryniks. 1928-1945. Military poster. Caricature. Painting. Graphic arts"
Quotes
Our team, in truth, consists of four artists: Kupriyanova, Krylova, Sokolova and Kukryniksy. All three of us treat the latter with great care and concern. What was created by the collective could not be mastered by any of us individually.
... Creative disputes occur in isolated cases, but they do not violate unanimity in the work. But it is joyful to see how some of our common work is enriched by bringing into it all the best that each of us has. And everyone contributes, without sparing or saving it for themselves personally. In such work there should be no painful pride or indifferent attitude.
Kemenov V. S. Articles about art. - M., 1965. - P. 104-105.
Kukryniksy in art
- Painting “Kukryniksy” (Portrait of People’s Artists of the USSR M. V. Kupriyanov, P. N. Krylov, N. A. Sokolov) (1957)
The creative team of Soviet graphic artists and painters, which included full members of the USSR Academy of Arts, folk artists USSR (1958), Heroes of Socialist Labor Mikhail Kupriyanov (1903–1991), Porfiry Krylov (1902–1990) and Nikolai Sokolov (1903–2000).
The pseudonym “Kukryniksy” is made up of the first syllables of the surnames of Kupriyanov and Krylov, as well as the first three letters of the first name and the first letter of the surname of Nikolai Sokolov. The artists always worked together, and this was the phenomenon of their collective creativity. The greatest fame of “Kukryniksy” came from numerous skillfully executed caricatures, cartoons, posters and book illustrations, created in a characteristic satirical style.
The joint creativity of the Kukryniks began during their student years at the Higher Art and Technical Workshops. Artists came to Moscow VKHUTEMAS from different parts of the USSR. Kupriyanov from Kazan, Krylov from Tula, Sokolov from Rybinsk. In 1922, Kupriyanov and Krylov met and began working together in the wall newspaper of VKHUTEMAS as Kukry and Krykup. At this time, Sokolov, still living in Rybinsk, signed Nix on his drawings. In 1924, he joined Kupriyanov and Krylov, and since then the three of them worked as Kukryniksy.
At the beginning of their creative journey, the group was searching for a new unified style that used the skills of each of the authors. The first to come under the pen of caricaturists were the heroes of literary works. Later, when the Kukryniksys became permanent employees of the Pravda newspaper and the Krokodil magazine, they focused primarily on political cartoons.
A major role in the patriotic education of Soviet people was played by cartoons, posters and “TASS Windows” created by the Kukryniksy during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945, combining evil satire and heroism in symbolically generalized images (“We will ruthlessly defeat and destroy the enemy!”, 1941) . The post-war works of Kukryniksy, which expose warmongers, imperialists, enemies of peace and socialism, also have significant political power. For political cartoons and posters, Kukryniksy was awarded the USSR State Prize (1942) and the Lenin Prize (1965).
Kukryniksy's works are in almost all major museum collections in Russia; State Tretyakov Gallery, Russian State Library, Rybinsk and Yaroslavl State Historical and Architectural Art Museums-Reserves, Tula Museum of Fine Arts, private collections in Russia and abroad.
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