Aleksandr Deineka (1899-1969) : an avant-garde for the proletariat

380

Art and Contemporaneity

1928

D44

Iakov Tugenkhol’d 

. . . OST’s dynamic orientation has been expressed in a sequence of instances. 

It is evident in the influence of the newest achievements of snapshot photog-

raphy, which destroys the usual perspective, gives unexpected viewpoints, and 

fixes the fortuitous poses and turns of the human figure in motion (as in the re-

verse perspective that appears in Luchiskhin’s work 

The Ballon Flew Away; Shi-

frin and Labas’s landscapes depicted from above, and Pimenov and Deineka’s 

instantaneously captured poses of athletes). Further on is the influence of the 

Swiss artist Hodler with his dynamic (sometimes even choreographed) unfold-

ing compositions and rhythms of bodily movement—an influence that imposes 

upon several OST works an impression not only of monumentality but also the 

aff ectation intrinsic to this Swiss master. Finally, there is also the influence of our 

master—of Favorskii, with his beloved method of the superimposition upon one 

surface of three-dimensional moments (protuberances) with planar moments 

(silhouettes)—a method that OST artists transfer from graphics to painting, using 

it as a means to display movement, the flight of seized and “unfolding” form. We 

see this method in Pimenov, Deineka and at the fourth OST exhibition in Goncha-

rov, in his Tennis Court Oath,

1

 where the artist strives to depict diff erent moments 

in time carried out by one and the same human group on a single canvas. Of 

course, this is all rather debatable, but all the same here there is a wish to take a 

step forward in comparison with the impressionists, who showed the movement 

of the object only by means of vibration and its dispersion in space. The OST art-

ists strive to find a diff erent, sharper formula for translation of the moving form . . . 

. . . OST should be credited for this entire pursuit of dynamism, all these attempts 

to depart from a passive understanding of the world as inert material and to pass 

on above all the functional side of a thing.

And then there is one more characteristic: the desire for production accuracy, for 

good craftsmanship of product, for a high quality of facture, which comes essen-

tially from Shterenberg.

2

 It would be incorrect to look at Shterenberg’s still lives as 

purely “aesthetic” exercises, as just sheer gourmandize. Besides this purely gusta-

tory voluptuousness of color, peculiar to Shterenberg is a purely rational, original 

objective approach to the object. With the help of his varied facture (smooth, 

shining and rough), he wants to suggest to us the sensation of the materiality 

and structure of the things represented—wood, marble, table cloths, fruit, meat. 

Equally, in order to show the “objective” form of objects, he destroys illusionistic 

perspective and shows them as if from two perspectives (for example, the round-

ness of a table—from above) . . .

Such is the complex amalgamation, which presents itself as the “face” of OST, 

and which in its very complexity is the source of some of its weakness, eclecti-

cism and wackiness. 

One of the most “whimsical” phenomena in OST is Tyshler, who of late has be-

come a sort of talk of the town.

3

 Opponents of OST select him in particular as the 

target for their blows . . . 

. . . In another series, which appeared in the exhibition for the 10th Anniversary of 

the October Revolution, Tyshler showed the Makhnovists,

4

 in their mutinous ele-

ment, yet with a special tinge, also characteristic of German expressionism and 

Babel—with an emphasis on the erotic side of mutiny: the Makhnovists carry off  

the living and drag along dead women. 

This peculiar inclination of Tyshler and this specific keenness of his eye are also 

evident in “Crimea” (watercolor), his third series at the fourth OST exhibition. A 

sandy shore and rocks, covered with the naked “meat” of male and female bath-

ers, wicker cabins filled with them as well . . . The Crimea of an unrestrained resort 

life and, along with that, a semi-fantastic Crimea, which resembles Indian minia-

tures, satire and erotica, sinister grotesque and exotic beauty. Yet there is another 

Crimea—a health resort, healthy youth, happy children: Tyshler does not notice 

this Crimea. Finally, in the most recent “lyrical” cycle the young artist has once 

and for all departed from reality, and that same braided cabin becomes for him a 

symbolic receptacle of the human and animal world. Baskets of the most diverse 

forms, a whole sea of baskets. Here, we are on the other side of consciousness, in 

the sphere of the delirious and subconscious. Is Tyshler insane? Fortunately, no. 

Tyshler is a theater person, a decorator, a property man, and here is one of the 

keys to the solution of the Tyshler “question.” . . . These drawings by Tyshler are 

some dreams about theatrical productions. Here in this theatricality of Tyshler, in 

his inclination to make faces, perhaps this guarantees that all of Tyshler’s extrava-

gance is not so serious, as it seems, that this is a theatrical blend of the tragic with 

the comic, and that the artist will be able “to make a complete recovery” from all 

of his “childish illness of leftism.”

But we may and should say that Tyshler threatens decadence,

5

 that he is shoved 

in one direction, that he knows only half of contemporary life, that is still unable to 

be inspired by other, optimistic feeling, he knows only the horrors and grotesques 

of our fraught era. Specifically here a line must be drawn to separate the Soviet 

artist from the German expressionist, who could not see leaving the world of an-

guish and chaos. George Grosz, in fact, changed from his nihilistic Dadaism and 

individualism to the camp of militant communist art. 

The opponents of OST accuse it, essentially, of “formalism.” Formalist searches 

are necessary for the development of our artistic culture and to demand from 

our art only a single understanding is equivalent to demand from science only 

popularity. Being deeply utilitarian in its final goal, science all the same progress-

es not thanks to popular brochures but due to advanced work and discoveries. 

Formalism is harmful and anti-social, when it is self-contained and non-objective. 

Yet even the thematically narrow, still-life paintings of Shterenberg, which are in-

spired purely by colorful joy, are only inevitable preliminary steps towards that 

utilitarian, decorative painting of social walls (clubs, cafeterias, etc.), for which 

the decorative talent of Shterenberg was born and which we still do not possess. 

Socialist culture may not exist without a love for the craft of painting, without a 

joyful attitude towards labor . . .

. . . Here it is necessary to refer to Pimenov’s general sympathy for the depiction of 

taverns, cafes, actor’s dressing rooms, etc., motifs of a foreign-bohemian genre, 

utterly alien to us ideologically. Here “Europeanization” goes too far; this is not the 

“urbanism” that is needed . . .

Sport, radio, motoring, we need all these new technical preoccupations and their 

depiction in art is, of course, a step forward. We need even more the demonstra-

tion of socialist construction, the demonstration of the new contemporary “living 

person.” For the western European artist technical preoccupation is an end in 

itself, a fetish, but for us it is a means for the socialist reconstruction of society. 

OST approaches the solution of this problem only now. Here, in the first place, 

is Deineka (until just recently he belonged to OST), who in his artworks of labor 

themes (

Building New Factories and FemaleTextile Workers) strove to show the 

new, Soviet, proletarian “types,” images of new, already unforgettable, coura-

geous and cheerful women workers, and in his recent 

Defense of Petrograd he 

was able to show the firm collective step of worker-fighters in place of Hodler-

esque choreography. This is already the start of something new and truly healthy. 

Let me remind you, that even the “formalist” Shterenberg in 

Meeting in the Coun-

tryside (in the exhibition for the 10th Anniversary of the October Revolution) was 

a disinterested attempt to juxtapose the mottled crowd of peasants to an urban 

worker orator, an example of energy and commitment. In the 4th exhibition of 

OST we see new steps in the direction of great psychological insight, great emo-

tionality, for example in a number of portraits by Goncharov, where the artist finds 

for each model their own form, their own color range. 

From the one-sided cult of external technical preoccupation towards deeper, 

more emotionally rich realism—this is the desired path for OST. 

1.  The subject of this painting is probably the Tennis Court Oath of 1789, a key early event of the French Revolution 

[Trans.]. 

2.  Works by the students of Shterenberg at the exhibition of Vkhutein provide evidence of this; it is precisely in the 

workshop of Shterenberg that they most seriously study problems of color and facture. 

3.  The editors believe that comrade Tugendkhol’d has failed to suff iciently accentuate the evolution of Tyshler’s 

creative work and reveal the roots of the sickly one-sided depressive character of his latest works. 

4.  Nestor Makhno was a Ukrainian anarchist of peasant origin. During the Civil War that followed the October Revolu-

tion, he led a guerilla anarchist army in Ukraine that sought to establish an anarchist order that was in opposition 

to the Bolsheviks, who he saw as oppressive dictators [Trans.]. 

5.  A new Chagallism of his own sort. But in this is also the issue that the artist Marc Chagall with all of his mysticism 

grew upon a definite objective ground—the former Jewish ghetto with its pogrom fears. Tyshler works in a diff er-

ent time, when there is already no room for Chagall-like elements.

Originally published in Russian as Iakov Tugenkhol’d, “Iskusstvo i sovremennost’,” Revoliutsiia i kul’tura 11 (June 15, 

1928): 66–69. For a German translation see 

Zwischen Revolutionskunst und Sozialistischen Realismus: Dokumente 

und Kommentare. Kunstdebatten in der Sowjetunion von 1917 bis 1934, ed. Hubertus Gassner and Eckhardt Gillen 

(Cologne: DuMont, 1979), 356–61.

The version here has been translated from the Russian original by Erika Wolf.

Fundación Juan March

Cinema and Painting

1928

D45

A. Mikhailov 

. . . This question is posed only theoretically and only in relationship to painting 

and film. However, on the larger scale we should take into consideration the ques-

tion of production art as the organizer of collective everyday life and photography 

as documentation and so forth, and, finally, practically about those transitional 

forms, which are conceivable in our time, for example, about fresco. Yet in the 

broad theoretical plan of analysis of the progressive development of types of art, 

the question about these other forms is of no importance. It is raised only practi-

cally, as we have shown in the past. 

It is important for us to reach a conclusion here, that painting, like cinema, is an 

art of organization and display of visible images (which is usually called a “visual” 

art), and as such it is the highest step, a new type of development for this art, 

which destroys the need for the reproduction of old forms.

1

 In this case, progres-

sive artists and artistic groups should draw practical conclusions from all of this. 

Besides the principles of visual art, cinema includes the principles of theater, mu-

sic, and so forth. This circumstance speaks to the fact that from the synthesis of a 

single type of art—“visual”—it has crossed over to the synthesis of all types of art. 

Analysis of cinema shows, as we have seen, its entire adequacy (according to its 

possibilities) for the psycho-ideological aspirations of the proletariat. It is “mate-

rialistic” and “dialectic.” It is therefore the most progressive art of socialist soci-

ety; and it is not by accident that initially its importance was understood not by 

bourgeois art specialists or theoreticians but by the leader of the proletariat and 

the greatest dialectician, V. I. Lenin, who said to A. B. Lunacharskii: “You have a 

reputation among us as a protector of art, so you should remember that of all the 

arts cinema is the most important for us.” . . . 

Concluding Discussion

. . . As I already noted in my presentation, we are not saying that easel painting 

should now die off . We insist that it will die off  as we approach socialist society, 

and it will die slowly, and this process of dying will have its justification not just 

in that easel painting was and is an individual endeavor, that it is a handicraft, 

but also because this easel painting does not satisfy us based on its content. 

In other words, by the possible inclusion of a known psychological complex, a 

known emotional state . . . We state that one cannot provide a dialectical image 

of contemporary life and its dynamics within the construct of easel painting. It is 

impossible to activate through such an art form any sense of the contemporary. 

No one here has disproved this assertion, and it cannot be disproved. 

Why do we turn from easel painting to fresco? We turn to fresco because, we 

think—and we cannot always prove this—that fresco, as a definite principle, a defi-

nite type of art (and not only as a technical method), has certain rather progres-

sive points in contrast with easel painting, especially in our time. What are these 

points? First of all, fresco allows a plot to be unfolded by means of narrative. It an-

swers approximately our desire to present not just a single moment or fact of an 

event, but rather to depict the facts in their development. At the same time, the 

very form of fresco is completely diff erent compared to the form of easel paint-

ing. I already showed that the tasks of easel painting were a reflection of only one 

fact, one moment, one exclusive phenomenon, and that this phenomenon was 

not perceived in its logical and dialectical connection with others, but as some-

thing exclusive and self-referential. Yet for us right now, the most important thing 

(our materialist worldview suggests it) is to capture all the complexities of what 

is happening in reality. Yet once the content becomes more complex, entirely 

diff erent forms are needed, forms that are more laconic, more rational, more con-

centrated in order to enable the greatest number of people to be more powerfully 

aff ected by these images. In our times, it is already impossible to imagine that a 

person, who would actively approach art, could look at a still-life for five hours. It 

really is necessary to give him diversity, a known connection. Fresco may provide 

this more immediately than easel painting. 

The second argument is that fresco, to a certain extent, solves the question about 

the use of art by the masses. If you take easel painting, then aside from the fact 

that it is a single moment, it represents private property. In the museum, these 

easel paintings are not coordinated with each other, they do not provide any 

completeness of emotion nor do they off er any sort of useful image. On the other 

hand, if you take a fresco, this fresco will decorate the walls of some club, a build-

ing, and thus will provide the opportunity to explore in sequence many moments 

of development of a known event, and to provide a known connection. Here the 

images will be much closer, much more intelligible. Of course, it is not necessary 

to think, as some restorers believe, that we want to shift to the ready clichés of a 

long forgotten fresco and conserve these clichés. 

Finally, I want to introduce one additional argument, which may play a decisive 

role. We speak all the time about art in this auditorium. Yet in Moscow, every year 

there are dozens of exhibitions, but how many people visit them? Well, AKhRR 

had good luck. About 100,000 passed through there, yet all the same, this is few 

for a multi-million population. Right now there is a burning question about con-

nection, union with the countryside. If we apply this to the art front, then it turns 

out that . . .

Kiselis: It is necessary to paint frescos. 

Kurella: Correct.

Mikhailov: In the countryside, there isn’t any sort of art, with the exception of 

murals in churches. The ruling groups of the feudal epoch used these murals in 

order to organize collective consciousness in a direction desirable to them. They 

knew very well that the collective needs forms and images that can be under-

stood by the collective. That’s right, what do we have in every village? We have 

only murals in churches. You think that peasants do not look at these images? 

Wrong, they look at these murals a lot. Art also fulfills its role there, as a conduit 

for some ideas, it also infects the peasant, yet it infects him with images alien to 

us. Perhaps, instead of all the conversations it would be better to put forth the 

sharper and deeper question about the advancement of art in the countryside, 

because I maintain that the village mural possibly means much more than some 

of the exhibitions that are taking place here in Moscow. We now plan this work 

for several decades; work on the economic cultural reconstruction of the coun-

tryside—we have a fundamental slogan, which will be valid for ten, twenty years. 

If you artists paint some club or a church transformed into a club—and I hope 

that soon all churches will be transformed into clubs—if you paint this club and 

provide meaningful content in the images, then the peasant who goes to this club 

will see these images all the time. I say that this will be a truly great thing, because 

in due time, perhaps in a few years, these images will have an influence on the 

peasant masses. This is the work which we need to begin. We are not saying that 

fresco should be dragged on for thousands of years, but we take into account 

our concrete abilities, the factual content of our era and we say that in the course 

of ten to fifteen years fresco will perhaps become more progressive than easel 

painting and that in this fresco it is necessary to present images, the fundamental 

slogans of our time, about which I spoke and which are not at all transient, but 

intended for a long time. 

In fresco, we are able to present more meaningfully the images, content and 

ideas which we want to share with our peasants, with our workers. However, this 

will be impossible if the entire process remains as it was before. To date it has 

only consisted of various artistic directions with a narrow professional point of 

view fighting between each other, when they speak in the majority of cases in 

disputes with each other, like vendors of pictures. When any of the leading crit-

ics points out some inadequacy, it is treated like damage to the asking price of 

their paintings and they begin to protest against this from the viewpoint of their 

narrow professional interests. This is entirely unnecessary. What is needed is the 

organization of all artists around some sort of nucleus, around some sort of major 

center, which will provide an organizational line, which will provide specific direc-

tives for collaboration between artists on drawing art closer to the masses, but in 

reality and not only in words.

This, I believe, was the goal of this dispute, and if this has been achieved to some 

extent, then this already represents a valuable positive fact. 

1.  However, of course, petit-bourgeois groups will continue for a long time to reproduce easel forms. Therefore, it 

is also necessary to talk about them and it is necessary to guide their development, directing it towards more 

progressive forms. 

Originally published in Russian as A. Mikhailov, “Kino i zhivopis’,” 

Iskusstvo SSSR i zadachi khudozhnikov. Disput. 

(Moscow, 1928): 70–71, 107–10. For a German translation see 

Zwischen Revolutionskunst und Sozialistischen Realis-

mus: Dokumente und Kommentare. Kunstdebatten in der Sowjetunion von 1917 bis 1934, ed. Hubertus Gassner and 

Eckhardt Gillen (Cologne: DuMont, 1979), 468–70.

The version here has been translated from the Russian original by Erika Wolf.

Fundación Juan March

382

Why do We Need Fresco?

1929

D46

A. Mikhailov 

. . . In our time painting is gradually giving way to other forms of art, which better 

organize collective consciousness (cinema), fixate life (photography) and orga-

nize mass everyday life (production art) . . .

But all of this, of course, is in the future. In order to arrive at this a certain transi-

tional period is necessary, during which there will be both easel art and along with 

it transitional forms. We place fresco among the latter . . .

. . . According to their principles, [easel painting] provides commensurate with 

its abilities, not the combination of events but discrete unrelated facts with all 

their insignificant and unimportant specifics. It uses formal approaches that are 

both broken and exclusively externally descriptive. It is designed for sustained 

viewing. On the contrary, fresco is more laconic, its forms are more rational and 

concentrated. 

Originally published in Russian as A. Mikhailov, “Pochemy nam nuzhna freska?” 

Vecherniaia Moskva 12 (May 30, 1929). 

For a German translation see 

Zwischen Revolutionskunst und Sozialistischen Realismus: Dokumente und Kommen-

tare. Kunstdebatten in der Sowjetunion von 1917 bis 1934, ed. Hubertus Gassner and Eckhardt Gillen (Cologne: Du-

Mont, 1979), 473–74. 

The version here has been translated from the Russian original by Erika Wolf.

Soviet Monumental Painting 

1929

D47

F. Nevezhin and D. Mirlas 

. . . We insist that while designing a club, housing or communal buildings, the 

Soviet architect, while mindful of costs and the economy of materials should not 

forget the artistic design of the building. He should employ for this purpose ele-

ments and artistic architectural forms that organically grow on the soil of Soviet 

reality, as well as the achievements of our fine arts—fresco, easel painting, sculp-

ture. Here, of course, we are not talking about the mechanical “allotment of a 

place” for decoration, but the organic artistic design, considered during the plan-

ning and construction of a building . . . 

Recently in the pages of 

Vecherniaia Moskva [Moscow Evening Paper] comrade 

Mikhailov attempted to defend Soviet fresco, of course, as a temporary transi-

tional form of Soviet fine art. We are amazed by the instantaneous changes of 

opinion of Mikhailov and like-minded persons, the temporary and “transitive” na-

ture of their own principles. For goodness sake, not so long ago they were singing 

a requiem over unburied paintings, and suddenly such an unexpected change:  

“Agreed, let there be fresco for the time being!” It turns out they did not notice 

that young Soviet artists were falling in love and fell in love with monumental 

painting, so as this is the case and it can’t be helped, now it’s time to grant a stay 

of execution for fresco painting. 

In the opinion of Mikhailov and his associates, the future art of the proletariat will 

be laconic, will not demand great time for viewing, will be quickly produced—in 

sum it will be similar to cinema or photography. We cannot achieve this presently 

due to technical conditions, and thus we make do with an old “crutch,” i.e. easel 

painting and fresco. Looking at the fluid views of Mikhailov, we must agree that 

only cinema may keep pace with such changes in world-view. If this is true, and 

we all changed with such speed, then what would remain of “Marxism” according 

to Mikhailov and his colleagues? Of course, his beloved monumental painting, in 

his words, contains a foundation for its existence in the future, with the excep-

tion of a few elements incompatible with the coming culture. For example, to 

Mikhailov’s displeasure, art cannot shift and cannot represent random discrete 

moments of life. We think the opposite—his is not a minus but a plus for fresco. 

The fact is that fresco is able to encompass broadly the synthetic artistic image 

and therefore can remain topical for many years. The fact that it is not portable is 

also in its favor, since it has its own specific place, and does not serve both yours 

and ours, as does your photography, comrade Mikhailov, which is “one size fits 

all.” 

Let the reader, if he so desires, familiarize himself with the “latest” opinions of 

Mikhailov, but for the present we will try to explain what has inspired young artists 

to “take a great interest” in fresco . . . We fell in love not with the ecstatic eyes of 

saints, gazing down from the old church walls, but rather with monumental paint-

ing itself, with its means and possibilities. 

The diff erence between our proletarian everyday life and bourgeois everyday life 

is, of course, collectivism. The changed form of communal life, the construction 

of enormous clubs, of parks of culture, etc., the presence of an organized viewer, 

who is living with collective social aspirations, of course, all of this presents the 

artist with specific tasks, and monumental painting, as one of the forms of fine art, 

can and should address these needs . . .

The most important thing is that the work the AKhR youth, which was completed 

in the club of VKhUTEIN and the Dzerzhinskii club, is without a doubt a phenom-

enon of great social and cultural significance. This is due to the very fact that at 

the moment of the greatest infatuation of youth with formalist aestheticism and 

easel painting, a group of young artists left behind easelism and took up wall 

painting, which has no living tradition in the recent past upon which it could be 

based. Despite the sneers of all lovers of “pure art,” this group with their social aim 

and productivity conquers a specific place and succeeds in bringing art towards 

laborers. They gain attention not by talking but by doing, even if initially in a timid 

manner and with big mistakes. 

Let this be a dream of cultural revolution, but the AKhR dream is a thousand times 

better than the reality of immaterial formalism or “your,” comrade Mikhailov, cur-

rent “Octoberite” infatuation with “photo-cinema-ism.” . . . 

Fundación Juan March

Using the language of the masses and artistic images, the monumental artist may 

force the walls to speak about the diff icult past and unfold upon them a heroic 

tale about the recent achievements of the masses. 

The artist will unfold grandiose synthetic images of socialist construction, images 

of the international solidarity of the working class. Finally, one cannot exclude 

from the scope of attempts of monumental painting to provide enthusiastic im-

ages of the future, of the best future, for which we cannot cease to fight persis-

tently and selflessly. 

Thus, the tasks of monumental painting, in line with a number of other arts, fall 

within the general scope of worldwide socialist construction.

Originally published in Russian as F. Nevezhin and D. Mirlas, “Sovetskaia monumental’naia zhivopis’,” 

Iskusstvo v 

massy 1–2 (April-May 1929): 11–15. For a German translation see Zwischen Revolutionskunst und Sozialistischen Real-

ismus: Dokumente und Kommentare. Kunstdebatten in der Sowjetunion von 1917 bis 1934, ed. Hubertus Gassner and 

Eckhardt Gillen (Cologne: DuMont, 1979), 474–75. 

The version here has been translated from the Russian original by Erika Wolf.