Kukryniksy kupriyanov krylov. Kukryniksy (artists). Influence on world culture, awards

KUKRYNIKS

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 on the way overcomes rapids, enriches with lakes and, finally, a river plows for itself, striving its waters to the vastness of the seas.
This image involuntarily arises when you remember the beginning of the creative path of the artists M.V. Kupriyanov, P.N.Krylov, N.A. Sokolov. Their creative path originates in workers' studios, in wall newspapers, in amateur circles in provincial cities.
Almost the same age (Kupriyanov and Sokolov were born in 1903, Krylov in 1902) they all went to 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 be an artist."
The Great October Socialist Revolution opened the doors of educational institutions to the children of working people, and they were able to develop their natural talents. Young men Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov acquired the rudiments of artistic knowledge in local studios. They took part 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 complete 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 the academic years and the early work of artists who entered the big life of art in the late 1920s - early 1930s. However, it should be borne in mind that in the life of the Kukryniksy, the early period of their creative formation was especially important, in many respects even decisive.
While still on the student's bench, Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov united into a team, which predetermined their fate in the future.
The collective went down in the history of Soviet art under the collective name of Kukryniksy. With this pseudonym, artists began to sign in the 1920s collectively caricatures they made.
Kupriyanov gave "KU", Krylov added "KRY", and Nikolai Sokolov concluded "NIKS". The letter "Y" was added to them by the editions. So, with their characteristic humor, artists tell about the origin of their surname, which at first intrigued the reader.
Opening the latest issue of a newspaper or magazine, the readers of the 1920s - 1930s were looking for satirical drawings and caricatures of the Kukryniksy with greater and greater interest, always witty, sometimes angry and harsh, sometimes warmed by humor and sly mockery, but always accurately hitting the target ... Expanding their horizons and the arena of action, improving their skills, the Kukryniksy are now in the battle ranks of the largest masters of political satire.
The beginning of the illustrating activity of the Kukryniksy collective dates back to the 1920s, a little later they took up painting. Three types of fine arts - political caricature, illustration, painting - currently determine the role, significance and a large proportion of popular artists Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov and their "fourth brother" - Kukryniksy, to whom all three give their best achievements.
Nationality, partisanship - the fundamental qualities of the Kukryniksy collective - were formed during the unfolded 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 agrarian country into an industrial country. Having accomplished the urgent political task of defending the socialist fatherland, the party launched a colossal work of building a socialist society and socialist culture.
The Great October Socialist Revolution, victories on the fronts of the civil war, labor exploits of the people showed at full height the selfless heroism of the working class, the Soviet people, 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 man of free labor. Art, saturated with life-giving Soviet patriotism, played a huge role in the struggle against external and internal enemies of the young Soviet Republic. A new creative method was born in the process of studying and comprehending the new reality by artists, in the process of their direct participation in the building of Soviet society. Young artists could rely and relied on the advanced phenomena of Soviet culture, which by that time had considerable achievements.
During the academic years of the Kukryniksy, the Higher Art School experienced an acute crisis, growing pains, there was a continuous struggle of advanced art and art understanding with the heavy legacy of the pre-revolutionary crisis of bourgeois culture, which was expressed in the dominance of formalistic attitudes in teaching methods.
The creative friendship of Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov originated at the Art Institute, which was abbreviated as Vkhutemas (Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops). The young artists became friends and worked together, drawing sharp caricatures for the wall newspaper of the institute, famous for the whole Vkhutemas "Arapotdel". This department of humor "pulled through", regardless of the faces, formalists and cosmopolitans who stood at the helm of the institute's board, burned out backward moods in the student environment with a fire of ridicule. And the amateur theater "Petrushka", performing at student evenings with the active participation of the Kukryniksy, like "Arapotdel", refreshed the atmosphere, beat formalism and naturalism, according to the most harmful scholastic curricula, theoretical gibberish, imposed by the reactionary part of the professors and students.
All these and similar satirical amateur performances, organized by the advanced students, helped the Kukryniksy to hone the pen of cartoonists, cartoonists of a pronounced socio-political nature. Young satirists were noticed by the Komsomol and party press. The collectively executed caricature, placed in 1925 in the magazine "Komsomol", dates the "official" birth of the Kukryniksy triumvirate, so to speak, "legalization" of it by the general public.
Together with fellow institutes, the Kukryniksy were indispensable decorators of student columns at demonstrations in honor of the October Revolution and May Day, drew posters for Red Army clubs, made sketches at workers' meetings, breathed the heroic atmosphere of Soviet reality in the second half of the 1920s.
Soon the Kukryniksy began to illustrate mass books, the authors of which were often their peers - young writers. Under these, at times weak in skill, but nevertheless expressive illustrations (mostly satirical), the reader recognized the already familiar "ruffled" signature of Kukryniksy.
The poet A. Zharov tells interestingly about the early work of the Kukryniksy: “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 literary magazine, without pictures, - I said, - so there won't be work for you, besides, there are too many of you three
- And we draw together and we seem to be one.
- But do you sign with three names?
- No, one last name: Kukryniksy!
- What can you do?
- We know how to draw caricatures.
“Well, try to draw a cartoon of these comrades,” I pointed to the poets sitting next to me.
Without saying a word, the guys set to work. First I drew alone. Then the other silently took the drawing and introduced his own strokes into it, then the third acted. And so the drawing went around in a circle before our eyes.
A fair number of spectators gathered at the door of the room. We all looked with curiosity at this hitherto unprecedented process of collective creativity. And together, enthusiastically applauded the result of this process: the cartoon was magnificent. We published it in the magazine "Komsomol", where we had to create a department "Friendly caricatures" especially for young artists, about whom Bezymensky and I speak among ourselves not without pride: our discovery! " - (From the unpublished memoirs of A.A.Zharov.)
The relationship of the Kukryniksy with literature and writers deepened and acquired various forms. The pictorial criticism of the works of contemporary writers (as well as artists), which they introduced into the everyday life of artistic life, was very peculiar and characteristic of the Kukryniksy. Cartoons and caricatures on literary themes drew young artists into literary circles, literary magazines and for a long time consolidated the connection between the "many-headed Kukryniksy" and writers.
Connecting 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 emotional needs of publicists in a broad public platform and predetermined some essential features of their work further.
Kupriyanov and Sokolov graduated from the graphic faculty, Krylov - the pictorial one. As it turned out in the course of their collective activity, this circumstance not only did not prevent unity, but, on the contrary, cemented it. All three complemented each other, and then each of the three artists mastered the specialties the team needed. On the principle of creative equality, this triple alliance of friends and masters was strengthened, each of whom began to give all his talent, all his skill "into the common pot."
The creative collaboration of the Kukryniksy with writers is one of the most interesting phenomena of Soviet art. By itself, it testifies to the synthetic nature of our artistic culture. Speaking on the public arena during the difficult years of the formation of socialist society, when the role of agitation and propaganda became extremely important, literature and art, uniting, reinforced each other in a battle formation.
Already at the end of the 1920s, Kukryniksy's drawings can be found in almost all illustrated magazines in Moscow, artists have become 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 "isoparody", in which they eloquently and sharply criticized, parodied writers, artists and their work, achieving such similarities, such fidelity of the image that even now their best caricatures, "isoparody", retain all their meaning.
The Kukryniksy exposed the deviations of individual writers towards philistinism, the abstruse poetry and painting of the formalists, the aesthetics and cosmopolitanism of other critics, the naturalistic elements of the work of artists, etc. The confusion and enemies of proletarian literature were hit hard. The satire and caricature of the Kukryniksy acquired the features of a truly military weapon, and was part of a large and serious political struggle to strengthen literature and art of a new type, vitally connected with socialist construction.
We must give justice to the young artists, they chose the targets of their critical arrows almost unmistakably, in general, correctly orienting themselves in the difficult situation of the literary struggle at the turn of the 1920s - 1930s. They also had breakdowns, when they involuntarily succumbed to the groupism that was implanted in the editorial offices. So, for example, working together with a number of writers in the same ranks, in their satirical drawings addressed to them, they often overstepped the boundaries of a friendly cartoon. But basically the cleansing work of satirists and parodists Kukryniksy was highly appreciated by the public.
In the very nature of the talent, the creative character of the members of the Kukryniksy collective, there were traits that were entrenched in public work, in the student dormitory, which allowed them to easily create "in public", to unite in creative collaborations with satirical poets. The mutual attraction of artists and writers is also not accidental. For creative work, people united who shared certain creative attitudes, close in the type of weapon and in the goals of the struggle that they waged on the art front.
There is no doubt that V.V. Mayakovsky played an important role in the formation of the Kukryniksy-satirists, and moreover in the decisive years of their creative youth. For the first time, the Kukryniksy saw and heard Mayakovsky, being students of the Higher Art Museum, where the poet often visited and performed. Young artists loved the poet-tribune and innovator in Mayakovsky; they saw in him a living embodiment of their thoughts and dreams of a new type of art, addressed to millions.
Mayakovsky's work in the "Windows of Rosta Satire" was a school for the entire galaxy of cartoonists, distinguished by political determination, nationality, and Bolshevik passion. Mayakovsky attracted the Kukryniksy with the publicistic pathos of creativity, the deep vitality and partisanship of his art.
Mayakovsky himself noticed young cartoonists who more and more resolutely entered into battle with the enemies of the Soviet Republic, with the philistine, and stood up 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 fell upon the bourgeoisie, degenerates, Nepmen, exposed the cruelty and inertia of a proprietary life hostile to socialist society.
In 1929, the year Kupriyanov and Sokolov graduated from a higher educational institution (Krylov graduated from it earlier), the Kukryniksy executed an extremely sharp series of satirical watercolor sketches for The Bedbug. It was far from the only, but the brightest of their work for the stage. In contrast to the skinny formalistic scenery of Rodchenko (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 peculiarities of his drama. Mayakovsky's dramaturgy demanded satire "at the top of his voice" without halftones, without compromises, she boldly operated with hyperbole as a method of typification.
"Significantly and visibly" the artists recreated the images of the comedy. The method of sharply sharpening the features of the characters, adopted by the Kukryniksy, was based on a lively, realistic perception of reality, characteristic everyday features. The types and costumes were mainly found on the then existing "Sukharevka", a busy market, where the capitalist rabble still swarmed, traders, speculators ascended, and where, for this reason, the designers of the comedy made sketches.
Perfectly feeling the nature of the Mayakovsky theater, the Kukryniksy willingly used the bright, open color, expressive lapidary drawing. The fishmonger in the Kukryniksy sketch (as it was embodied on the stage) has a purple nose of a bitter drunkard, a fiery red mustache, a red scarf; a red-faced apple trader is dressed in a checkered red skirt. The costumes of Prisypkin, Rosalia Pavlovna and other characters are allowed by the Kukryniksy as the brightest satirical characteristics of the characters.
The 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 make-up was supposed to turn the sweet, good-natured face of a young talented comedy artist, a favorite of the public into the rough face of a former party member, a former worker, and now a "reborn" and fiancé of Elsevira Renaissance.
Turning to theatrical painting, the Kukryniksy based on the same principles that they developed in graphics. The satirical genre in all its forms had become their main specialty by that time. The satirical genre corresponded to the essence of the talent of each member of the collective.
Not at all intending to become professionals in the field of theatrical painting, the Kukryniksy repeatedly turned to the stage. In the early 30s. they designed the play by A. Zharov "The First Candidate", "Anxiety" by F. Knorre and the performance of the Satire Theater "The City of Fools" based on Saltykov-Shchedrin.
So in theatrical activity, which, unfortunately, remained an episode in the creative biography of the Kukryniksy, the fundamental properties of the collective were manifested: the fighting temperament of Soviet publicists, a bright talent in the field of satire.
In the future, the artists did not return to the theater, although in the nature of their talents there are features of theatricality. These features 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, in the “sense of the audience” characteristic of the Kukryniksy.
In 1931, an event took place in the life of the Kukryniksy, which played an important role in their art, had a fruitful impact on their creative growth. The Kukryniksy met with Alexei Maksimovich Gorky. The great writer became interested in a team of talented satirists, whose art was distinguished by political purposefulness, was oriented towards the broad masses and concealed in itself the richest opportunities for development.
Conversations with Gorky helped the artists expand the range of topics, enter the arena of international politics as cartoonists, and expand their talents. The meeting with Gorky had another important consequence for the Kukryniksy: the artists found themselves as illustrators of the classics, having created, with the blessing of the writer, drawings for his novel. Subsequently, they joined the ranks of the largest Soviet illustrators and strengthened the front of realist book masters with their art.
In 1932, on the initiative of Gorky, the first exhibition of Kukryniksy's works was organized in 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 in 1932, the political orientation of creativity, the diversity of interests and activities, characteristic of the collective, was manifested. Along with graphic works made in various genres (a large series of everyday cartoons "Old Moscow", etc.), the Kukryniksy showed their first paintings on the themes of the Civil War and sketches of theatrical performances.
In his article for the catalog of the exhibition, Gorky highly appreciated the creative activity of the collective 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 recalls: “It didn’t work out for you, this is not your area yet”. (Emphasized by me - N. S.).
Indeed, the first collective paintings of the Kukryniksy: "Entry of the Whites", "Lord Interventions", "Nationalization of the Factory", "Funeral of the Commissar" and others, shown in 1932 at the exhibition, were only an application for a full-fledged easel painting. Artists in those years did without sketches from nature, the color and composition of their early works were distinguished by the features of convention. However, in the damp sketches, very weak in drawing, then outstanding painters were already guessed.
Having received the baptism of fire in the Soviet and party press, the Kukryniksy and in painting set themselves politically significant tasks. They strove to capture the struggle of the Soviet people against the interventionists and the White Guards. They branded the enemies of the young Soviet Republic by resorting to satire methods.
That is why the Kukryniksy became innovators, paved new paths in art, because they boldly invade life, fighting for the new, progressive, 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 has undergone, it can be said without exaggeration, a passionate discussion of the public in the light of the historical decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of April 23, 1932. This discussion, in which writers, poets, artists took part, was supported by many reviews of popular criticism (the exhibition was then postponed to the Gorky Central Park of Culture and Rest), helped the Kukryniksy people see their fundamental shortcomings.
A group of Ural workers wrote in the book of reviews about the personal exhibition of young artists: “Of course, one cannot but point out that there are still significant gaps in the works of the Kukryniksy, haste, too incomplete processing, and so on. But we remember that they are their own artists, born of the revolution. Learning and improving, they will achieve mastery, high artistry, which we sincerely wish them. "
Critics noted the well-known narrowness of the Kukryniksy subjects, "incomplete processing", that is, the amorphousness, intricacy of some of their drawings of that time, deliberate sketchiness of the form. The instructions received by the artists from Gorky (who quite rightly believed that they should broaden their political horizons and scope), from the subsequent comradely criticism, from the mass audience helped the Kukryniksy in their future work.
The period from 1931 to 1934 is rich in decisive events in the history of the Soviet state, in the history of Soviet artistic culture. In the summer of 1930, at the 16th Congress. Party JV Stalin said: “we are on the eve of transformation from an agrarian country into an industrial country,” and three and a half years later the congress of the winners stated that “during this period the USSR was radically transformed, casting off the guise of backwardness and the Middle Ages. From an agrarian country, he became an industrial country ”. The capitalist encirclement, seeking to weaken the might of the working people's fatherland, is intensifying subversive activity. But all the warmongers, the enemies of the working class, are now confronted by the mighty fortress of the country of victorious socialism.
In January 1930, Gorky received a letter from JV Stalin, which clearly illuminated 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 attitudes.
The main conclusion that the Kukryniksy could draw for themselves from their conversation with Gorky was that satire, correctly sharpened against the enemies of the people, against everything that hinders the development of society along the path to communism, is a high and necessary genre, that it is a powerful weapon it is necessary to direct both against the backward people who are hindering the growth of the country, and against the forces of world reaction.
Since the early 1930s. Gorky's books have become the reference books of many artists. The Kukryniksy are pioneers in illustrating Gorky's works. Following their first experience (drawings for Gorky's novel The Life of Klim Samgin), illustrations by D. Shmarinov to The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin, S. Gerasimov to The Artamonovs' Case, appeared, then works by B. Ioganson, B. Dekhterev and others.
The more mature the Kukryniksy became, the more deeply they mastered the lessons of Gorky. It was necessary to develop a simple and strong realistic pictorial language to express the richest vital material and ideological content that were contained in the writer's immortal creations.
The illustrations for "The Life of Klim Samgin" vividly, vividly reflected both the advantages and disadvantages of the Kukryniksy's skill, which they had in the early 1930s. The image of Klim Samgin himself - characteristic, expressive - and to this day influences the subsequent illustrators of Gorky, however, who rarely refer to this novel, which is extremely difficult for plastic embodiment.
Pointing out many serious shortcomings in the illustrations by the Kukryniksy, Gorky emphasized the inappropriateness of the methods of caricature in illustrating a novel of a non-satirical nature.

The 1930s were a period of high upsurge in Soviet art, drawing on themes and inspiration from the depths of socialist reality. Suffice it to recall the canvases of Grekov, the painting "Interrogation of the Communists" by Ioganson, the largest exhibitions of the era.
The "deep raid" of the Kukryniksy into life, which was of great importance for the development of their work, were their trips around the country on the instructions of the editorial board of "Pravda". These trips were made by a team during 1933 - 1934. The main object where the Kukryniksy were sent along with a large brigade of railway workers was transport. Transport in those years was a "bottleneck" in the national economic life of the country. Its reconstruction was such an urgent matter that a special paragraph was devoted to this issue in the political report of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) to the 16th Party Congress. The Moscow-Donbass highway, where the Kukryniksy editors were sent, became the first object in a large program of radical reconstruction of railway transport, outlined by the XVII party conference.
The activity of the Kukryniksy in transport is one of many in those years and yet outstanding examples of the participation of the fine arts in the hot battle of the new with the old, the advanced with the lagging behind in production, in everyday life, in the minds of people. Artists who were called to participate in a large party assignment of great state importance were to lead everyday satire along the main road of art.
Laughter "is a very powerful weapon, for nothing discourages a vice like the consciousness that it has been guessed and that there has already been laughter about it," Saltykov-Shchedrin said. The cartoons of the Kukryniksy, exposing the scammers, slovens, and even direct enemies of the Soviet regime, who made their way onto the transport with sabotage purposes, can serve as an excellent illustration of this position of the great satirist.
In a series of correspondences from the work correspondents and cartoons of the Kukryniksy, the state of transport was reflected, the perpetrators of evil were ridiculed - negligent station managers and heads of large railway junctions, reckless machinists who violated the statutes, blatant cases of careless storage of goods, mistreatment of the depot with steam locomotives and carriage facilities, and many other shortcomings that required immediate elimination.
The first caricature of the Kukryniksy on a transport theme appeared in Pravda on September 22, 1933, on the fourth day after the start of the raid. She figured prominently in the center of the second lane. The perpetrators of the violation of discipline at one of the stations of the Kharkov railway junction were exposed with a sharp, very expressive drawing, observing the portrait resemblance.
The cartoons were of a genre nature, based on personal, carefully verified observations, and always had an exact address. Witty, funny, but rather sharp cartoons had the broadest response among the masses, were discussed by collectives of workers and employees, and made it possible for Party organizations and the railway service to take decisive measures to improve the health of the entire railway economy. Placed in Pravda, the cartoons acquired a nationwide sound.
The successful raid on transport was followed by business trips of the Kukryniksy to waterways, to lagging factories, to small towns, to an agricultural commune, etc.
The principles of portraiture and narrative plot were carried out by the artists quite consciously and consistently. Nature sketches are always felt at the heart of their cartoons, the artists tried not to sin against the truth in anything.
In cartoons on transport themes, the Kukryniksy willingly used their favorite genre - caricature. Perfectly capturing the similarities, the artists were able to sharpen the features of nature with great humor and so boldly generalize the typical shortcomings that caricatures and cartoons acquired effective social significance.
The Kukryniksy cartoons were released in the album under the eloquent title "Hot flushing". Demyan Bedny met with poetry a series of cartoons by the Kukryniksy on transport topics. For their part, the Kukryniksy illustrated the satirical works of the proletarian poet, thereby consolidating the new creative community of fine arts and literature.
A new stage in the development of Russian democratic satire is defined by the names of Gorky, Mayakovsky, D. Bedny, and in terms of graphic art - by the galaxy of the best Soviet cartoonists, masters of satirical posters. The peculiarities of this stage are due to the fact that Soviet satire is directly related to the struggle of the people, the party for the building of a communist society. This determined the content of Soviet satire and its democratic form, designed for the perception of the broadest masses and the exceptionally important place that it was given in the system of artistic culture and social life of the country.
The Kukryniksy returned from their business trips on the instructions of Pravda 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 abandon the thought of large forms.
art, about paintings in which they could achieve broader and deeper generalizations of their life experience. The satirists and "malformists" Kukryniksy cherished the dream of a painting, of large, impressive forms of art, of recreating a positive image in painting and graphics from the very first steps of their independent artistic activity. This is one of the most important features of the Kukryniksy collective, not at all obligatory for cartoonists, however, characteristic of Soviet satirists, who perfectly know the goal, that positive ideal in the name of which they fight with their thundering satire weapon.
In 1933, Soviet artists were preparing for a large all-Union exhibition: "15 years of the Red Army and the Navy." It was supposed to reflect the rapid growth of the USSR, which under the leadership of the Communist Party turned from an agrarian country to an industrial country, the victory of socialism in all areas of the national economy and culture, the might of the Red Army, which defeated the interventionists and White Guards. The exhibition summed up the results of the intense struggle for realistic art.
Having begun their creative life in easel painting with works on the themes of the Civil War, which everyone still remembered, the Kukryniksy again turned to this harsh era, which decided the fate of the young Soviet Republic. For this large, politically important exhibition, the artists created a series of satirical portraits of White Guard generals who were beaten by the Red Army.
Depicting Wrangel, Denikin, Kolchak, Yudenich and other White Guard "leaders" in a satirically pointed and catchy artistic manner, the artists reflected the thoughts and feelings of the people, who destroyed the worst enemies of the Republic, the Communist Party in a hard and right battle.
Kolchak looms in a dark, gloomy silhouette against the background of a snowy field and the corpses of people executed by him. In the foreground, as if paving the way for the admiral, the bayonets and bayonets of the invaders stick out. Also using the expressiveness of the silhouette, they depict Kukryniksy and Wrangel. His look is anger and doom. A pitiful renegade, a stranger on Russian soil, the Baron is like a rat in a trap. He sits, staring blankly at one point. Yudenich is ridiculous and terrible, Makhno is disgusting.
These satirical portraits are not conventional masks, but a realistic satire, using the individual traits of the characters known to all.
The appearance of these works by the Kukryniksy marked the birth of a new kind of portrait genre - a compositional satirical portrait, which attracted the attention of a wide audience with its political acuity, nationality of artistic speech, bright, witty, biting and expressive.
Having achieved the individual expressiveness of their faces, the artists also exposed the typical properties of the White Guards - the frenzied anger of the fierce enemies of the people, their connection with foreign bayonets - and showed their doom. The pathos of the series is in the public ridicule of evil, in an angry, scourging laughter.
Amateur theater groups performing in workers' clubs and squares on holidays picked up this scourging laughter of the Kukryniksy, and the satirical images created by artists for the exhibition halls went for a walk around the country, recreated by actors and cartoonists, causing hatred and destructive, contemptuous laughter of the wide audience ... Whiteguard generals, beaten by the Red Army on all fronts of the civil war, put on display, were again and again subjected to ridicule.
The works of young painters, which immediately gained popularity, evoked a poetic response from Demyan Bedny. The poet accompanied the satirical portraits of the "Kukryniksovskaya" generals with sharp verses-ditties, which further enhanced the intelligibility of these peculiar creatures by the Kukryniksy brush: "Twisting like a dog, Borka Annenkov is looking - a bandit", or "General Yudenich is brave, he was also a bloody executioner, so that arrange a parade there "
“In your person, poetry,” wrote MI Kalinin to Demyan Bedny, “perhaps for the first time in history, so vividly linked its destinies with the destinies of humanity fighting for its liberation, and from creativity for a select few, it became creativity for the masses.” In these words, addressed to the popular Soviet satirist, the most important features, peculiarities and meaning of the existence of Soviet satire in the broadest sense of the word are formulated. At the 19th Party Congress, we again heard a reminder of the great role of satire, with the help of which everything negative, rotten, everything that slows down the movement forward is burned out of life.
The First Congress of Soviet Writers, which opened in Moscow in August 1934, played an enormous role in the development of Soviet artistic culture.The Congress of Writers with renewed vigor drew the attention of literary and art workers to the problems of craftsmanship and highlighted the most important issues of socialist realism. As one of the urgent tasks, the party set before the writers and artists the task of critically assimilating the legacy.
Lenin's teaching on the need to master the best achievements in the field of culture penetrated ever deeper into the consciousness of the artistic intelligentsia. Sharp criticism of formalism and naturalism, developed in the pages of the party press of the 1930s - 1940s, illuminated the artists' path to the heights of socialist art.
In the 1930s. before the Kukryniksy, the most important source of skill and inspiration was revealed 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 of skill. If in their student years and at the first time of their independent work the Kukryniksy limited their study of the heritage mainly to the art of Daumier and Goya, then from the beginning of the 1930s, that is, from the moment of systematic work on painting, they deeply and thoughtfully study the Russian masters of the 19th century ...
A series of satirical portraits by the Kukryniksy brush "The Face of the Enemy" occupies an intermediate place between a poster and an easel painting. Artists painted in oil on canvas, achieving the transfer of plastic volume and depth of space. And at the same time, they used the method of poster and caricature in interpreting the form, convention in a combination of planar and volumetric elements. Of course, the absence of preliminary work on nature made itself felt - a necessary prerequisite for a full-fledged realistic painting.
The very goal to which the artists aspired became clear gradually, as the Kukryniksy collective, like all the leading painters, realized that in solving the enormous tasks set before them by the country, the party, the compositional painting with brightly outlined characters and plot plot.
Easel painting, in the literal sense of the word, the Kukryniksy mastered, working on the triptych "Old Masters" and the painting "Morning of an officer of the tsarist army." Three paintings that make up the "Old Masters" series appeared before the viewer for the first time at the "Industry of Socialism" exhibition,
opened in the historic days of the XVIII Congress of the Communist Party.
The exhibition has been preparing for a long time. Soviet artists collected material for their works where work was in full swing, new buildings were erected, where a new person, a new socialist attitude to work, was forged in the battles for the socialist industry.
Spectators who flooded into the spacious halls of the "Industry of Socialism" exhibition rightfully perceived it as a holiday of Soviet culture. The triptych of the Kukryniksy "Old Masters" was a very noticeable phenomenon of the exhibition. It was exhibited in the “Pages of the Past” section, where attention was drawn to one of the most remarkable works of socialist realism - “At the Old Ural Factory” by B. Ioganson.
Simply and expressively, the Kukryniksy told in their new work about the enemies of the working class, about the 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 offend the deep interests of the people, to simply and expressively reveal an acute social conflict, to notice the ripening of the new in the burning reality - the characteristic features of the Kukryniksy.
The main characters in all three paintings are manufacturers, contractors, police officers and other old "owners". At the same time, a characteristic feature of the artistic thinking of the Kukryniksy is that, depicting the "masters", the artists let the viewer feel the historical force that was preparing retribution for the capitalist society.
The triptych is based on an acute social conflict. The first picture - "Prayer at the Foundation of the Factory" - is, as it were, the beginning of a future drama. The pop is written perfectly by nature in a lilac-golden robe. The owners are depicted with excessive exaggeration, behind these inflated arrogance "images", somewhat conventional, one does not feel the conversations between the artists and nature.
The second picture - "The Mine Disaster" is much sharper, more effective in composition. A primitive mine is depicted. In the foreground is a director, apparently a foreigner, a bailiff, an official. They draw up a protocol on the deaths of workers, whose corpses are sprawled on the ground. The first-plan figures were painted from nature. The artists fought for a long time to paint the landscape, the sky as expressively as possible, to make them in color and the nature of the image consonant with the dramatic concept of the picture.
The conflict is resolved in the third scene, The Flight of the Manufacturer. This is the third act of the drama. There, behind the broken window, workers are worried. The manufacturer prepares to flee The picture of the workers is not in the picture, but everything that is done in front of the viewer's eyes is conditioned by what is happening outside the picture and what the broken glass hints at, the frightened clerk at the window. Attention is drawn to a well-found type, a well-written interior with a suite of rooms.
Triptych "Old Masters" (1936 - 1937) - the beginning of a new period in the painting of the Kukryniksy. 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 sketches and sketches have survived to this day, but they also give an idea of ​​the creative quests of artists, of their deep internal restructuring.
The whole process of work on the series "Old Masters" - from the first sketches to the end - was done collectively. In the worldview, in the understanding of the tasks of art, in the methodology of work, there were no differences between the artists. As for the particular 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. The three then discussed these sketches, based on one of the three options, they reinforced it with the best that they admittedly contained in each of the other two.
All three were looking for sitters. Working on the triptych, the artists fully learned both the joy of the finds, when they managed to find a characteristic type, and the difficulties when nature “fiddled”, not wanting to portray a priest or a policeman. However, the artists themselves often replaced the sitters; working together, they learned to pose for each other, while discovering the theatrical vein inherent in all km.
Nature was painted together, positioned in such a way as to embrace it comprehensively; then the most successful solutions were chosen from all the material.
All parts of the triptych - "Prayer at the Foundation of the Factory", "Disaster at the Mine", "Flight of the Factory Owner" - represent three links in the development of the theme, although the characters change. All three paintings are successive stages in the mastery of the artists of the realistic method in painting.
If at the beginning of the work the artists still timidly used nature, then the last, best part is entirely written from nature. Since then, artists have never painted a picture "from themselves", without nature. In the original sketch for The Flight of the Manufacturer, the back wall of the room is blank; in subsequent sketches and in the picture itself, a suite of rooms is deployed, beautifully, densely painted. The painting won a lot: the flatness disappeared, the feeling of vitality increased.
Both professional critics and the working viewer highly appreciated the films "The Old Masters", especially the last two parts. “It is very interesting,” wrote B. Ioganson, “that the artists of Kukryniksy acted as painters. In three pictures (the series "Old Masters"), dedicated to the pre-revolutionary life of the workers, the Kukryniksy remained true to their satirical vocation, but avoided the hyperbolism characteristic of cartoonists. They achieved great expressiveness of social type, reached a high
picturesque quality ".
At the present time, when Soviet painting has gone a long way of development and the requirements for artists have incomparably increased, the shortcomings of these paintings by the Kukryniksy 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, painted, painted sketches.
Only one year separates the following picture of the Kukryniksy "Morning of an officer of the tsarist army" from the triptych "Old masters". During this year, the skill of the artists has become noticeably stronger, they have achieved much greater clarity in understanding the tasks and features of easel painting.
The composition of "An Officer's Morning" grows entirely out of an ideological plan - to reveal a social conflict by 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 on stage.
In the foreground, the artists showed a young boy, a batman, picking up pieces of broken dishes after a night of drunkenness of officers. He frowns at his master, depicted in the right corner of the picture, who is yawning, sleepy after a sleepless night. In the back of the room, the viewer sees another officer asleep at the table.
However, attention is riveted not to the life of the officers of the tsarist army with its established, stable features, but to those elements of the new, progressive, which matures in the social life of pre-revolutionary Russia and will inevitably triumph. In the expression on the face of the blond boy, there is hatred for the masters, whose idle and dissolute life he sees and condemns.
The batman from "An Officer's Morning" is the first brightly and distinctly outlined positive character in the Kukryniksy painting. He is one of those ordinary people who are still semi-consciously burdened by the slavish conditions of their life. But the 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, all of his characteristics are exhausted by the fact that he is depicted yawning. Eloquent details of the furnishings complete his portrait.
The theatrical experience of the Kukryniksy helped them to successfully build and develop a mise-en-scène. The orderly and the officer are brought to the fore. The host's drinking companion, who fell asleep at the table, sat in the background, convincingly and unobtrusively complementing the story about the main thing.
The blue-gray morning light from a large window argues with the faint golden glow of an un-extinguished lamp. This color "roll call", based on additional yellow-blue tones, enriches the color of the picture and contributes to an in-depth interpretation of its meaning.
This time the artists showed great attention to the details of the furnishings, painted with skill and love. In those years when the painting "Morning of an officer of the tsarist army" was painted, love for detail was a very rare property of our artists. Of the paintings of that time, very few can be indicated where the details were painted in the same loving, generalized and artistic way. There is no doubt that the exhibitions of Russian classics that opened in the Tretyakov Gallery in the mid-1930s played the greatest role in enriching the artistic skill of the Kukryniksy, in establishing them in the positions of realism in painting.
Looking at the painting "Morning", the viewer recalled Fedotov by association. The great master of everyday painting was forced to recall the plot from the life of the officers, the sharpness of the psychological development of the plot, the satirical coloring of the images. Fedotov taught the Kukryniksy the skillful selection of details, the beauty of the picturesque interior design, 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 written out the details of the situation with that beauty of color that involuntarily attracts the eyes, the artists managed to rivet the viewer's attention to the psychological grain of the plot, arouse sympathy for the common man, and ridicule the vulgar, empty life of officers-“existing”.
The development of this narrative-psychological side of Fedotov's painting was especially important that the Kukryniksy learned from the richest source of Fedotov's work. They also learned from him to achieve beauty and materiality of color.
At the exhibition "XX Years of the Red Army and the Navy" there were many paintings on everyday topics. The peculiarity of the Kukryniksy painting was that it was based on a social conflict. It was built on a sharp contrast between the old and the new and, above all, on the satirical coloring of one of the central characters. This brought her closer to the best, most effective paintings of her time.
Turning to painting, the Kukryniksy, as we have seen, did not change the nature of their subject matter. And in painting, with the same directness as in graphics, they passed a harsh sentence to the old system, exposed the difficult living conditions and forced labor in capitalist society, branded the enemies and traitors of the Soviet people.
With the deepest interest of the Soviet people in the victory of the new, the artists depicted the awakening of revolutionary consciousness among the masses, the moral formation of man in the high, Gorky meaning of the word.

Under the leadership of the Communist Party, our country, having defeated the Hitlerite army, healed the wounds of the war and entered a period of gradual transition from socialism to communism.
Soviet art of the post-war period developed under the sign of the historical decisions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on ideological issues.
The resolutions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks emphasized the enormous role that literature and art are called upon to play in educating people, especially young people. The workers of the ideological front were faced with a number of important tasks. Having exposed the manifestations of apoliticalism, lack of ideas, the most harmful cosmopolitanism, the party called on art workers 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 is a number of great achievements in the art of political caricature, illustration, painting.
On May 8, 1945, representatives of the German High Command, in the presence of the Supreme High Command of the Soviet and Allied Forces, signed an act of surrender in Berlin.
Shortly after this historic event, which marked the complete victory of the Soviet country, the Kukryniksy were sent to Berlin. “Since May 21,” the artists say, “for a month we have been working in the capital of Germany. For several days in a row from 11 pm to 3 am we went to paint sketches, the interior of the hall where the signing of the surrender took place, for one hour they wrote and drew from life Marshal G.K. Zhukov. "
The surviving sketches of the Kukryniksy give an idea of ​​the destroyed streets of Berlin, of Hitler's Reich Chancellery outside and inside, of Hitler's office. The artists descended into the Hitlerite bomb shelter, walked along its gray corridors, visited the district commandant's offices in Berlin, listened to the conversations of the commandants with the Germans. We made sketches. Subsequently, during the trial of war criminals, the Kukryniksy traveled to Nuremberg.
The painting "Capitulation of Germany" is a large multi-figured canvas, created by the Kukryniksy on the basis of many portraits painted from life. They have worked out every detail of the interior, from the brown wall cladding, bright colorful banners of the Allies, ending with the "very" inkwell and "the same" decanter, which were on the table when signing the surrender of Germany.
Some portraits, especially expressive, "juicy" portrait sketches, painted from nature, are truthful and temperamental. The details are very correct. But on the whole, the picture is cold, monotonous in color. Keeping the value of the art document, she doesn't care. Apparently, the genre of a documentary official portrait is not in the character of the Kukryniksy, who are incomparably more successful with thematic paintings, full of drama. Moreover, it is precisely this kind of themes that give artists the opportunity to expressively show social conflict, to develop a plot with a clearly pronounced dramatic plot that is characteristic of the work of the Kukryniksy.
A vivid evidence of this situation is the painting "The End" - the pinnacle in the painting of the Kukryniksy, one of those outstanding works of art with which Soviet artists summed up their colossal life and creative experience of the period of the Great Patriotic War. The painting “The End. The last days of Hitler's headquarters in the underground of the Reich Chancellery "dates back to 1948.
Working from nature in Berlin and Nuremberg made it possible for the Kukryniksy to strongly, vividly, correctly characterize the typical representatives of the "Reich", the moral, political and military defeat of the fascist regime.
Of course, the work from nature in Berlin, the observations accumulated during the trial of the main war criminals in Nuremberg, when they were brought to trial, allowed the Kukryniksy to write with such persuasive force 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 a sum of sketches, but a new creative formation. Sketches as such "die" in the process of creating a picture. From their birth to "death" they obey the artist's intention, the creative work of his generalizing thought.
Many times the Kukryniksy painted Hitler. The satirical appearance of this evil buffoon with a tuft of hair on a balding skull, with round bulging eyes, has firmly entered the minds of people. Hitler is depicted at the time of his fall, overwhelmed
once drawn by artists, it has been "played out" in a completely new way and unusually expressive. The head is tilted up, the wandering gaze is fixed on the ceiling, which is about to collapse under the blows of Soviet aviation and artillery. From the responsibility not to escape With one hand, Hitler grabbed the collar of his uniform, the uniform strangled him, the other hand rested against the wall. It seems that there is a pitching, and the crashed "Fuehrer" can barely keep on his feet.
Hitler's bomb shelter, as interpreted by the Kukryniksy, resembles a dying ship. Pictures in gold frames are sideways, a chair is overturned, papers, orders are scattered on the floor, the receiver of a telephone, already inactive, dangles powerlessly on a cord. Everything is in a state of unstable equilibrium, everything has budged, everything goes to dust
The hardened fascist, sitting in the foreground, convulsively grabbed the table and the back of the chair with both hands, as if afraid to fall. He gazed wildly into space, anticipating death; the suitcase standing next to him no longer needs him, it is too late, nowhere to run.
The third fascist - Hitler's young pet - got drunk and fell asleep. Like everyone else, he is not able to courageously face death and well-deserved punishment: the disintegration 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, a military cap pulled low, hiding his gaze. The Herr Oberst ducked, as if preparing for the last fatal leap. He, like everyone else, did not even glance at the "Fuehrer" when he appeared at the door. The "Reich" has disintegrated, each is left to his own devices.
During the war years, Soviet artists created many paintings that exposed the fascists at different periods of their criminal activities. These works, of course, played a big role in the fight against fascism. Most of them dealt with essential, but separate aspects of the anti-popular inhuman "Hitlerism".
The painting "The End" went down in 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 Liberation Army.
The ideological, political and creative maturity of the collective, the culture of conception that the Kukryniksy had developed over the years, was reflected, first of all, in how accurately these experienced artists found an angle of view on historical events. From the totality of the phenomena, they chose the moment of "culmination", when just punishment fell upon the heads of the fascists, the retribution that the peoples passionately awaited.
Reflecting this popular dream of victory, Soviet humanist artists extremely vividly, with great psychological depth, showed the corrupting influence of fascism on a person. 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, showing at the same time historicism of thinking, an understanding of events in the perspective of their progressive development.
The painting "The End" merged together the strongest sides of the Kukryniksy's talent and skill, the passionate journalism of anti-fascists, psychological expressiveness, the ability to dramatically reveal an acute social conflict, using a well-found plot to show the essence of this social force, its typical features. The artists showed brilliant skill in the construction of the mise-en-scene, psychologically motivated every look, gesture, pose, movement of the characters.
Having shown the agony of a handful of fascists with exceptional relief, the artists put together the picture as a whole and in individual parts in such a way that they give the viewer the full opportunity to feel the opposing historical force outside the framework of the depicted. Hitler's one insane upward glance is enough to emphasize the meaning of what is happening. It is perfectly clear to the viewer that the fate of the persons hiding in the bomb shelter is decided up there.
Horrified by an imminent disaster, Hitler escapes to a bomb shelter and freezes at the door. An ominous shadow from his figure fell on the metal-bound door. The face and hands of the "Fuhrer" are illuminated by a cold, deathly light.
Hitler - the focus of the composition - is placed not in the center (as suggested in the first draft sketch) and not in the foreground, but in the depth, diagonally, to the left. This is a very important compositional technique, conditioned by the intention, which enhances the dynamism of the picture. The action develops and grows from the first plan to the next. An uneven, spasmodic rhythm also grows. Bright, harsh artificial light from an invisible source fights against the sharply defined slanting shadows cast by objects in the room.
The energy, dynamics of the composition, the struggle of light and shade intensify the tension of the moment. The artists managed to portray not a frozen being, 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 whole set of artistic means, the authors of the picture lead the viewer to an independent conclusion about the inevitable shameful catastrophe, a well-deserved punishment that has befallen the war criminals.
The denouement is close, the matter is coming to an end - this feeling is conveyed with great force.
The color scheme, built on the predominance of dark and cold tones, the materiality of painting - all this helps to reveal the essence of the phenomenon, the main idea of ​​the picture. In this work, the artists achieved true realism in the interpretation of a complex historical theme, in the depiction of enemies. They characterized the situation in which the "Fuhrer" and his associates found themselves, tragicomic features The presence of sharp grotesque gave the whole work the unique character of "Kukryniksovskaya" satire.
In the painting "The End" the artists, as it were, summarized their rich experience of international cartoonists, cartoonists and painters. How painters Kukryniksy had mastered by that time the skill of plastic form and expressiveness of color, that is, the necessary qualities of masters of easel painting.
In this original work, innovative and deep, the lessons of the masters of the past are creatively translated.
Before us is the creative assimilation and implementation of the great Repin tradition of plot paintings on the fundamental themes of our time, where the historicism of the artists' thinking is permeated with a lively and passionate advanced worldview of the era. There is no doubt that one can recall the names of other leading artists, the same Daumier, from whom the young Kukryniksy learned the art of satirical exposure of the dark sides of reality, the acuteness of their characteristics.
There is no doubt also the great role that the art of Soviet masters of the older generation played in the formation of the Kukryniksy painting, in particular, the painting of B.V. Ioganson, imbued with the pathos of the struggle for the liberation of man, built on the most acute class conflicts. The art of socialist realism, cementing the masses of artists with common ideals, common tasks of creating truly folk art, using a single creative method, creates a favorable atmosphere for 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 Soviet people with a correct understanding of events - a reliable foundation of historical painting.
The painting "The End" gives us a key to clarifying the main features, style, and creative "handwriting" of the Kukryniksy, since in this work the most stable features of their collective merged into an indissoluble unity, in various combinations encountered throughout their creative life.
Based on principles common to all Soviet realists, masters of easel painting, the Kukryniksy developed a sharply individual style. In the creation of this style, an essential role was played by their temperament of publicists, their giftedness as satirists, their organic, deep understanding of the dramatic, social conflict - the soul of the thematic picture, their keen interest in human psychology.
By combining personal talents, in which there are many similarities and many different things, the artists achieved an individual "Kukryniksovian" handwriting 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 chiaroscuro, and a characteristic, sharp drawing. Their creativity is characterized by a pronounced strong-willed character, a well-worn outlook on life.
The painting "The End" is the fruit of modern painting, bearing the seal of the trials that befell the people in their unparalleled struggle against fascism, the seal of the wisdom of the victorious people.
The painting took an outstanding place in Soviet painting. With its accusatory pathos, it meets the interests, expresses the aspirations of the broad democratic masses of the whole world, emphasizing once again the world significance of Soviet art. For the painting "The End" Kukryniksy was awarded the Stalin Prize of the first degree. At all foreign exhibitions, and in particular in democratic Germany, where this picture was exhibited, it attracted attention, aroused very high marks as an outstanding work of art of our time.

In the postwar 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 heartfelt love for nature, their peacefulness is manifested. In the painting of the late 1940s and early 1950s, artists strive to embody positive images.
In 1949, the Kukryniksy painted the painting "Lenin in Razliv". There are many virtues in this picture. The expression of a thoughtful face, a gaze directed into the distance, as if revealing something important in this distance, characterize the essential features of Lenin the thinker. There is a lot of soulful lyrics in this picture, but it lacks the proper significance, meaningfulness, necessary when solving such a topic.
The beautiful landscape in this picture is a new evidence of the deep feeling of Russian nature, which Kupriyanov, Krylov and Sokolov are gifted with in a high degree. And, perhaps, never this feeling of nature manifested itself in them with such force as in the post-war years. The trials of war, the invasion of the occupiers, the heroic defense of the socialist Fatherland - all this evoked a lively response in the souls of the artists. The heightened sense of the Motherland gave impetus to the development of the art of landscape. The deep ideological and creative processes that are evident in the Soviet landscape of the post-war years found their vivid disclosure in the work of the Kukryniksy. It is in the landscape, which requires a purely personal experience of nature, a purely personal understanding of the world, that the lyricism characteristic of Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov is clearly manifested.
Each of the three members of the team has their own favorite landscape motives. So, Kupriyanov is primarily a singer of the city and nature, inhabited by man. His landscapes are among the best urban landscapes in Soviet painting. Krylov is also not alien to these motives, but most of all he is attracted by the free nature of the Moscow region, Polenovo with flooded meadows and blue distances. Favorite landscape motifs of Sokolov are very diverse, but most of all he paints the Volga shores, where his youth, the Volga passed, finding more and more new beauty in its expanses.
The exhibition of works by academicians, organized by the Academy of Arts of the USSR in 1952, demonstrated the work of the Kukryniksy in full and diverse. Along with the graphics performed by the team, Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov showed their personal works in painting. Kupriyanov - exclusively landscapes (1947 - 1952), Krylov - landscapes, portrait, still life, Sokolov - landscapes and self-portrait (1950 - 1952).
All these works testify to the incessant searches of artists, to their deep study of national traditions in the field of landscape, to the maturity of skill acquired through in-depth observations of nature, fixing it in numerous studies and further processing of studies.
A high level of craftsmanship, a variety of motives carefully selected in the richest world of nature, indicate that three popular, richly gifted artists work tirelessly day in and day out. Talent requires relentless polishing of every facet. Without this, even the most talented artist will slide into vulgar amateurism.
Quite often the Kukryniksy bring their works to the judgment of the master of landscape N.P. Krymov. Criticism and advice that they hear from the lips of this artist, M. V. Kupriyanov, P. N. Krylov, N. A. Sokolov attach great importance. These tips, as the Kukryniksy say, help them to set certain tasks in working on a landscape painting, to achieve integrity of color.
All three artists are characterized by lyricism in the transmission of nature, the ability to choose a characteristic motive that evokes many associations, various moods. None of the three artists will sit down to write a sketch, so to speak, wherever they have to. All three take a long look at the surroundings, "shoot", sketch, choose, and then write what most captured their imagination.
To write such inspired landscapes, which Kupriyanov, Krylov and Sokolov showed at the academic exhibition, one needs, of course, high technique, which is enriched by daily training, and a huge culture, and the ability to see the world through the eyes of a poet, and a passionate desire to evoke a deep emotional response in the viewer. ...
The concept of the artist's general culture, of course, includes the study of great traditions. To master the experience of the classic realists does not at all mean simply “citing” Savrasov or Levitan, endlessly varying the 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 meaningfulness of thought, with the same supply of unspent feelings, life observations, as the great masters of the past did.
The National School of Russian Landscape of the second half of the 19th century imbued the art of landscape with a deep ideological content, gave it the scope inherent in the artistic culture of a great people. She raised the importance of this genre highly; the landscape painter was able to defend democratic ideals with his artistic means - the life-giving source of the realistic art of the era.
Savrasov, Shishkin, Vasiliev, Levitan, Nesterov, Vasnetsov, Serov and other major masters of the Russian national landscape were able to reveal people's thoughts about the Motherland through the image of nature, to cherish the love for their native spaces, for the incomparable charm of the Russian northern spring, for white birches, according to which Russian a person yearns in a foreign land, to the blue forest distances, to the villages on the hillside, to everything that was associated with the appearance of the Motherland.
Setting common goals, landscape painters reflect in the pictures of nature their personal, cherished, well-worn attitude to the world.
By the nature of the motives, Kupriyanov's landscapes consist of three cycles: the landscapes of Leningrad with the massive dome of Isaac and the Neva, with subtly felt silhouettes of architecture and green foliage, the Caspian Sea coast with longboats, landscapes of the Moscow region. For the most part, these paintings are full of light and sun, nature is enlivened by the figures of people. Having chosen the motive that interested him, Kupriyanov tries to write it right away, trying to convey this state of nature and his feeling from it. But in order to master the possibility of a terribly intense speed of writing, so to speak “in hot pursuit,” an artist, like a pianist, must first train his eye and hand, having mastered the perfect technique. Having paid tribute in the past to his enthusiasm for fluency and sketchiness of writing, Kupriyanov has especially stubbornly pursued in recent years a strict completeness of form, compositional integrity.
In contrast to Kupriyanov, Krylov and Sokolov paint the landscape for a long time. Artists believe that it is possible to achieve clarity in the expression of a given motive, the concreteness of an image, only by returning to it repeatedly. For example, the landscape "Malvy" Krylov painted seven long sessions in those early mornings when nature retained approximately the same state. "Zaokskie Dali" the artist wrote from sketches in the studio, preserving a completely vivid direct feeling of the piece of nature that captivated him. Sokolov devoted five sessions to "Evening on the Volga". In the landscapes, the Kukryniksy is captivated by 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 generally finds a compositional solution. The artist's method is peculiar. He begins work with what he considers the most interesting in this landscape, the most striking. "Evening on the Volga", "Volga near Plyos" and other landscapes of Sokolov 1950 - 1952. - landscapes-paintings, in which the accuracy, "portraiture" of the image is combined with subtle lyricism, imposing a stamp of great personal feeling on his paintings.
The desire to generalize his impressions into a painting, to achieve the completeness of the form, clarity and integrity of the composition, is manifested in the modern landscapes of Kupriyanov, and Krylov, and Sokolov. At the same time, it finds individual expression in each of them.
Of the three artists, Krylov, more than two others, and more of them are working on a portrait in painting. Krylov's portraits-paintings have long won the sympathy of the viewer, including the delicately felt portrait of children "Natalka Kupriyanova", female portraits in the open air, etc. And in the portrait the artist achieves picture quality, completeness, plasticity. The portrait of Korean dancer Ahn Sung Hee is distinguished by a subtle characterization of a person. This portrait would win, however, if the artist paid more attention to the dancer's hands, would find their individual "expression", because hands in a portrait in general, and in a dancer's portrait in particular, play a very significant role.
At the 1952 academic art exhibition, everyone's attention was drawn to P. Krylov's Rosehip Bouquet. The modest bouquet of white flowers seemed to be fragrant - each flower was painted with such expressiveness, fidelity, care.
The path that the Kukryniksy landscape painters traveled together with the largest Soviet landscape painters is the path from a sketch to a painting, to a generalized, felt image of nature.
Modern Soviet man is an innovator, master of his land, creator and creator of communist society. These features of the high spiritual culture of the new man should and are reflected in the landscapes of Kupriyanov, Krylov and Sokolov. We feel them in the major, in the breadth of their constructions, in their natural connection with life. The Kukryniksy continue and develop the democratic traditions of the Russian national landscape. MV Nesterov, who highly appreciated the art of three artists, used to say: "The Kukryniksy are talented caricaturists, and the Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov are the most talented painters." Indeed, caricaturists by vocation and main occupation, in their individual work, Kukryniksy 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 Kukryniksy.
Twenty years ago, criticism pointed out that the individual development of each of the three artists is inseparable from the growth of their collective as a whole, for it relies on the support and experience of comrades. We can speak about this with even greater grounds now, when the Kukryniksy have three decades of fraternal creative friendship behind them. Collective labor did not erase the individual characteristics of Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov, but, on the contrary, strengthened and sharpened them with mutual support.
It is enough to compare two recent portraits by Krylov and Sokolov to reveal the peculiarities of the creative manner of each master. Thus, the portrait of the Korean dancer Ahn Sung Hee was painted with that richness of color, with that love for the open sonorous color that gives out the "purebred" painter PN Krylov. Sokolov's Self-Portrait characterizes the author, first of all, as an artist-psychologist who would rather sacrifice the chromaticity of a 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 in painting, moreover, there is a constant mutual enrichment between them. The great culture of drawing is also felt at the basis of Sokolov's paintings.
In the collective work of the Kukryniksy, there is a complex process of interaction, mutual reinforcement of talents, when homogeneous features seem to add up, and different in contrast set off each other. The amount of effort, increasing, 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) each of them individually. In the process of honest and disinterested dedication to the team of all the best achievements, a certain "fourth" artist appeared, who is, in fact, Kukryniksy. Taking care of their personal growth, artists are constantly improving the skill of the team.
From the very beginning of the collective activity of the Kukryniksy and to this time, both spectators and comrades-in-arms have been interested in: “So how, after all, is the creative process going in the Kukryniksy collective? How is an artistic image born under conditions of collective labor - usually the fruit of individual work? On what principles has the creative community of talented masters formed and has been maintaining for three decades, what exactly cements it? "
There is no doubt that the possibility of such a strong friendship, indestructible brotherhood, complete disinterested dedication of each member of the collective to the common cause is rooted in the nature of a socialist society. all sides of the multifaceted personality of each artist were revealed, and where the personal and the public merged into one, in the name of a conscious high goal.
Socialist society, which developed a new attitude towards work, created a fertile ground on which new labor relations could flourish based on free competition, on deep mutual trust in each other, on the socialist understanding of the artist's labor as a matter of honor, as the primary human need.
A Marxist-Leninist worldview, a clear party orientation of creativity - the necessary prerequisites for the moral stability of the Kukryniksy collective, its strength. The party press introduced the Kukryniksy to the urgent tasks of building communism, helping them to correctly and deeply comprehend the current reality.
There is also no doubt that the mutual attraction of the three artists, which was 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 collective, a deep and ineradicable sense of duty, which has become into the core character of all three artists.
“The basis of the team is, first of all, a strong friendship, - say the Kukryniksy. - It is hardly possible to create a good team without interest in each other. Interest gives rise to respect, and respect gives rise to trust. Trust helps you correct mistakes and value your friend's achievements as if they were your own. "
Long-term joint work allows the Kukryniksy team to do without a permanent director. The three of them have both directors and performers, but these roles change.
“That director,” they say, “who at this moment, by touching the work, has improved at least some part of it. Further it was developed by another, then the role of the director passes to him. We do not and cannot have a permanent director. "
There was a short period during the war when, living in different cities, all three artists painted and painted separately, and each coped with the work enough to sign his work with the name of the Kukryniksy collective. However, each of them dreamed of teaming up again with the other two.
“In our collective work on a painting,” the artists say, “it often happens like this: one stands by the picture and writes a place. Two walked away and told the writer from a distance how much to change the color in one direction or another. The writer asks: “Colder still? 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 wrote which part.
Giving the best achievements to the "fourth" artist, which is, in fact, "Kukryniksy", Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov from a young age and all their lives have also worked separately, constantly improving in the skill of drawing and painting. This zealous all-consuming love for the artist's work is the most important character trait of each of the three members of the Kukryniksy creative community, the "secret" of their indestructible, lifelong friendship. No matter how highly one appreciates the individual creativity of Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov, it is quite obvious that their joint work is more significant, more diverse, more original. It is her, this collective work, inherent in those features for which the people appreciate their work so highly, and by which the unique Kukryniksovian style is recognized.
I would like to end this short essay on the art of academicians M.V. Kupriyanov, P.N.Krylov, N.A.
“Only that collective will become viable,” say the Kukryniksy, “which aims to serve the people, serve the Motherland, that is, become a living part of the huge collective of the country. We always feel the tremendous concern shown to our collective by the Communist Party, the Soviet government and the people. We feel this help at every step. We are aware of the great responsibility this imposes on us. Our team is happy that he is a native of the Soviet Union. "
The popularity of the Kukryniksy is great, their works are known and appreciated by the widest audience and art connoisseurs. The popularity of the Kukryniksy spreads far beyond the borders of our country, they are well known and authoritative among our friends abroad, they are hated by warmongers, fascists of all formations and generations. Undoubtedly, the large and fruitful role of the Kukryniksy in the development of not only Soviet, but also foreign progressive cartoons. Undoubtedly, 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 the phenomena of life.
The Soviet government highly and repeatedly noted the merits of the creative team of the Kukryniksy to the Motherland. Kukryniksy
awarded the title of People's Artists of the RSFSR, Honored Art Workers. The artists were awarded the title of laureates of the Stalin Prize five times: for political posters and cartoons, for illustrations to the works of Chekhov and Gorky, for the painting "The End".

Not so long ago, a collective self-portrait of the Kukryniksy appeared in Ogonyok: “the consubstantial and 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 venerable age, the "hero of the day" is in the prime of his creative powers and talent. "He" works tirelessly over new works of book graphics and painting. And again, as in old times, political cartoons signed by Kukryniksy are constantly being printed in Pravda and Krokodil.
The works of recent years testify that the Kukryniksy are still always ready to defend the world with their art, to strike with weapons the satire of the warmongers, to glorify their great Motherland - the standard-bearer of peace in the whole world!

_____________________

Recognition, identification and formatting - BK-MTGK.

Kukryniksy - a creative team of Soviet graphic artists and painters, which included full members of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1947), People's Artists of the 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 name and the first letter of the surname of Nikolai Sokolov. A similar example of the compilation of a pseudonym is the pseudonym of the creative collective of Soviet writers "Grivadiy Gorpozhaks".

Three artists worked by the method of collective creativity (each also worked individually - on portraits and landscapes). They are best known for their numerous skillfully executed cartoons and caricatures, as well as book illustrations created in a characteristic caricature style.

The joint work of the Kukryniksy began as a student in the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops. Artists came to the 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 to work together in the VKHUTEMAS wall newspaper as Kukry and Krykup. At this time, Sokolov, while still living in Rybinsk, put Nyx's signature on his drawings. In 1924, he joined Kupriyanov and Krylov, and the three of them worked in the wall newspaper as Kukryniksy)

The group searched for a new unified style that used the skill of each of the authors.
The first to fall under the pen of cartoonists were the heroes of literary works.
Later, when the Kukryniksy became permanent employees of the Pravda newspaper and the Krokodil magazine, they were mainly engaged in political caricature. According to the memoirs of the artist of the magazine "Krokodil" German Ogorodnikov, since the mid-1960s, the Kukryniksy practically did not visit the magazine:

The milestone works for the Kukryniksy were grotesque topical caricatures on themes of domestic and international life (series "Transport", 1933-1934, "Warmongers", 1953-1957), propaganda, including anti-fascist, posters ("We will mercilessly crush and destroy the enemy! ", 1941), illustrations for the works of Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (1939), Anton Chekhov (1940-1946), Maxim Gorky (" The Life of Klim Samgin "," Foma Gordeev "," Mother ", 1933, 1948-1949 ), Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov (The Golden Calf), Miguel Cervantes (Don Quixote).

The military poster "We will mercilessly crush and destroy the enemy!" Became a significant moment in his work. He was one of the first to appear on the June streets of Moscow - 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 cycle of posters "Windows TASS" was very popular.

They became classics of Soviet political caricature, which they understood as a weapon of struggle against a 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 Literaturnaya Gazeta (humor department "Club of 12 Chairs" ). Their political cartoons, often published in the newspaper Pravda, belong to the best examples of this genre ("Pincers in Pincers", "I Lost a Ringlet ..." share ", a series of drawings" Warmongers ", etc.). The collective owns numerous political posters ("The transformation of the Fritzes", "The peoples are warning", etc.). The Kukryniksy are also known as painters and masters of easel drawing. They are the authors of the paintings "Morning", "Tanya", "Escape of the Germans from Novgorod", "The End" (1947-1948), "Old Masters" (1936-1937). They made drawings with pastels - “I. V. Stalin and V. M. Molotov "," I. V. Stalin in Kureyka "," Barricades in Presnya in 1905 "," Chkalov on the Udd Island "and others.

The team members also worked separately - in the field of portrait and landscape.

An extensive collection of artwork belonging to the pen of the Kukryniksy 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 Kukryniksy. 1928-1945. Military poster. Caricature. Painting. Graphics"

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Kukryniksy - a creative team of Soviet graphic artists and painters, which included full members of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1947), People's Artists of the USSR (1958), Heroes of Socialist Labor Mikhail Kupriyanov (1903—1991), Porfiry Krylov (1902-1990) and Nikolay Sokolov (1903—2000).

Mikhail Kupriyanov Porfiry Krylov Nikolay Sokolov

The pseudonym "Kukryniksy" is composed of the first syllables of the surnames NS Priyanova and Crimea fishing, as well as the first three letters of the name and the first letter of the surname Nick olaya WITH okolova.

Three artists worked by the method of collective creativity (each also worked individually - on portraits and landscapes). They are best known for their numerous skillfully executed cartoons and caricatures, as well as book illustrations created in a characteristic caricature style.

The joint work of the Kukryniksy began as a student in the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops. Artists came to the 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 to work together in the VKHUTEMAS wall newspaper as Kukry and Krykup. At this time, Sokolov, while still living in Rybinsk, put Nyx's signature on his drawings. In 1924, he joined Kupriyanov and Krylov, and the three of them worked in the wall newspaper as Kukryniksy.

The group searched for a new unified style using the skill of each of the authors. The first to fall under the pen of cartoonists were the heroes of literary works. Later, when the Kukryniksy became permanent employees of the Pravda newspaper and the Krokodil magazine, they were mainly engaged in political caricature.

The milestone works for the Kukryniksy were grotesque topical cartoons on themes of domestic and international life (series Transport, 1933-1934, Warmongers, 1953-1957), propaganda, including anti-fascist, posters (“We will mercilessly crush and destroy the enemy! ", 1941), illustrations for the works of Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (1939), Anton Chekhov (1940-1946), Maxim Gorky (" The Life of Klim Samgin "," Foma Gordeev "," Mother ", 1933, 1948-1949 ), Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov (The Golden Calf), Miguel Cervantes (Don Quixote).

The military poster "We will mercilessly crush and destroy the enemy!" Became a significant moment in his work. He was one of the first to appear on the June streets of Moscow - 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 cycle of posters "Windows TASS" was very popular.

Kukryniksy at the front, 1942

They became classics of Soviet political caricature, which they understood as a weapon of struggle against a political enemy, and did not at all recognize other trends in art and caricature, which were fully manifested primarily in the new format of Literaturnaya Gazeta (humor department "Club of 12 Chairs" ). Their political cartoons, often published in the Pravda newspaper, belong to the best examples of this genre (Pincers in Pincers, I Lost a Ringlet ... " share ", a series of drawings" Warmongers ", etc.). The collective owns numerous political posters ("The transformation of the Fritzes", "The peoples are warning", etc.). The Kukryniksy are also known as painters and masters of easel drawing. They are the authors of the paintings Morning, Tanya, The Flight of the Germans from Novgorod, The End (1947-1948), The Old Masters (1936-1937). They made drawings with pastels - “I. V. Stalin and V. M. Molotov "," I. V. Stalin in Kureyka "," Barricades in Presnya in 1905 "," Chkalov on Udd Island "and others.

ABOUT THE WORKS OF THE ARTISTS OF KUKRYNIKA

The famous Soviet poet Alexander Zharov recalls that in 1925, when he was the editor of a youth magazine, three students-artists once came to his office and offered their services. "What can you draw?" Zharov asked. Then the young people immediately got down to business and, in the process of handing over the drawing to one another, quickly sketched several apt cartoons on the writers who were present at the same time, which caused general admiration. Since that time, sharp and expressive drawings of young authors, signed by the compound surname of Kukryniksy, began to appear regularly in the magazine.

This was at the dawn of the joint creative activity of the talented Soviet artists Mikhail Vasilyevich Kupriyanov, Porfiry Nikitich Krylov and Nikolai Alexandrovich Sokolov.

The creativity of the Kukryniksy amazes with its diversity. Thoughtful artists work with inspiration and persistence on large paintings, caricatures, posters, book illustrations and even on sculptural portraits, achieving high results in every art form. The extraordinary relevance of the subject matter, the ideological orientation and clarity of the content, the originality and laconicism of the artistic language - these advantages of the Kukryniksy works, clearly visible to everyone, make them understandable to the widest circle of Soviet viewers and readers.

CARICATORS BY ARTISTS KUKRYNIKS

Being gifted painters, the Kukryniksy, above all and most of all, are the most prominent mastersSoviet political graphics, artistic satire. It is difficult to name even one significant event in international life, starting from the 30s and ending with today, that would not have caused a corresponding response in their work.

At one time, the caricatures of the Kukryniksy mercilessly exposed the conspiracy of the imperialist powers against the republican Spain, the preparation of the Second World War ("Scheme of strict control of the Spanish borders", "Continuation of the last war" and others). In these, as in all other works, artists act as spokesmen for the views and interests of our people, who are tirelessly fighting for world peace.

Kukryniksy performs with equal success in the region household satire... Their blows are directed against everything obsolete, inert and ugly, which hinders the movement of the Soviet people towards a wonderful future. From the extensive cycle of works by the Kukryniksy on everyday topics, the series "Transport", drawings "Hopeless Day off", "Memorandum", "Toadstools" (about young people servile to foreignism) should be distinguished.

The Kukryniksy cartoons are so unique in form that the viewer immediately recognizes their authors, without even looking at the signature. Inexhaustible in artistic invention and ingenuity, the Kukryniksy are able to recreate in front of us the appearance of this or that political degenerate (Stolypin, Kerensky, Wrangel) in several bold and precise lines, to show the typical in the images of a bureaucrat, eyewash, grabber. The perfection of Kukryniksov's graphics is a vivid example of the great importance of collectivity in creativity: each of the artists offers his own solution to the topic, in the process of discussion, all the best is selected from them, and then all the efforts of the team are directed to working out the final version.

WWII POSTERS IN THE WORKS OF THE KUKRYNIKS

Still fresh in our memory are numerous posters in TASS Windows, created by the Kukryniksy in the harsh years of the struggle against the fascist invaders: harvest - a formidable blow to the enemy ”and others. Responding to the most pressing tasks of the time, extremely expressive, they were a powerful ideological weapon, giving even more strength to the Soviet soldiers at the front and the laboring population in the rear.

On the pages of Pravda, Krokodil and other Soviet publications, sharp caricatures of the Kukryniksy always appeared, nailing the troubadours of the Cold War and their accomplices to the pillory. In 1958-1959, the cartoons "The Berlin Question", "The Militant Parrot" and others were published. In 1960, No. 2 of "Crocodile", dedicated to the memory of AP Chekhov, one remembers the witty caricature "Intruder on an International Scale": the West German Chancellor Adenauer diligently unscrews the nuts from the rails, which have a sign "To peaceful coexistence."

PAINTINGS BY ARTISTS KUKRYNIKS

Veliky Novgorod in January 1944. Against the background of the gloomy sky, the majestic bulk of the St. Sophia Cathedral rises. Fragments of the barbarously destroyed monument "Millennium of Russia" stick out from under the snow. Near the buildings, Hitler's warriors are scurrying about with torches. Forced shamefully to flee from the ancient city under the mighty blows of the Soviet Army, they are trying in impotent rage to destroy the priceless treasures of Russian culture.

This is the content of the widely known Kukryniksy paintings"Flight of the Nazis from Novgorod". Despite the dramatic tension of the moment, well conveyed by the contrasts of dark and light spots, the picture is imbued with an optimistic mood. The artists were able to show in it the utter doom of the degenerates, intending to enslave our socialist homeland.

Other paintings by the Kukryniksy, dedicated to the events of the Great Patriotic War, - "Tanya", "Pravda", "The End" are also penetrated with a patriotic feeling.

"Tanya"

"End"

In the last picture, in images of great artistic power, the inglorious death of Hitlerism is shown, in the defeat of which the Soviet Union played a decisive role.

Illustrating the works of Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Chekhov and Gorky, the artists strive to fully reveal to the reader the humanistic orientation of the great Russian literature. The most successful in this respect are Kukryniksy's drawings for Gogol's "Overcoat", Chekhov's stories "Tosca" and "I Want to Sleep".

"Yearning"

"Overcoat"

Fable "Fox and Beaver"

"Tsar Nicholas examines a flea"

It should be noted that each of the Kukryniksy possessed a bright creative personality and worked a lot independently. So, M. Kupriyanov was especially fascinated by the landscapes of the Moscow region and the Volga, P. Krylov performed many portraits and perfectly conveyed the picturesque originality of Paris, Rome and Venice, and N. Sokolov lovingly depicted the life of his native Moscow and the touching beauty of Russian nature. Continuously enriching their knowledge and experience, the artists combined them in one or another general concept, persistently striving for ever greater completeness of the plot and its artistic embodiment in each new work.

By the time of the Great Patriotic War, the art of the Kukryniksy satirists had reached full, deep maturity. The creative methodology was finally formed, a very wide range of artistic techniques was determined, the visual technique was perfected to brilliance. And most importantly, the enemy was targeted, studied and understood. It was understood by artists not only specifically politically, but also morally and aesthetically (strange as such words sound in this context). From the tower of socialist humanism, the Kukryniksy vigilantly saw and recognized not only the social essence of fascist concepts, but also all their relationship with the life of the era as a whole and each of its contemporary separately. Before the eyes of the masters stood not abstract theses, but living destinies. And this is already a topic of full-blooded art. Exposing inhumanity as the reverse side and the inner impulse of any theories and actions of fascism, the Kukryniksy were inspired by a figurative idea full of noble ethical meaning and high content. This is the fundamental principle of their creative and civil feat during the struggle against the fascist invasion.

His first work of the 1941-1945 era was a poster "We will mercilessly crush and destroy the enemy!" - The Kukryniksy was executed on the very first day, "more precisely, on the very first evening of the war - June 22, 1941. On June 24, the poster became an integral part of the instantly changed, severely tense image of Moscow, and then other" our cities. It entered the life of Soviet people. like draft summons and darkened windows. In it, with the lapidary clarity of a short formula, the whole situation of the great struggle that began: Hitler who threw off his mask against the Red Army, against freedom; cannibal against man. Rough, blunt to the point? Yes! And some other posters of the Kukryniksy, made during the war years, they are the same. They could not be otherwise. This is not a spectacle for a slow-pensive museum contemplation. It was necessary to create images that could break through the storm of rumbling events and unrest of wartime, capture everyone's imagination with their anger and passion, tell about the main, decisive features of what is happening in the language of simple, clearly clear truths.
The Kukryniksy managed it. Their art, as never before, has acquired a national character. And it did the same thing. It fought. Artists have resorted to different genres as to different types of weapons. They hit the enemy with long-range volleys of posters, fired at hordes of invaders with mines and torpedoes of their cartoons, and threw satirical leaflets into their rear.

The wartime situation required the utmost efficiency of work. For many drawings for newspapers and magazines, for "Windows TASS" the artists had a few hours. There was no question of complex, long searches for an image, of options, alterations. If a different thing came out schematically, without a "zest" - it was unthinkable to postpone it, hide it in the archive. The new works of the Kukryniksy in the most literal sense of the word were torn from their hands. And it would be snobbish hypocrisy to condemn artists for the fact that in the huge mass of their works of the war era there is a certain number of "passable", unsuccessful ones. Moreover, such works have served their, albeit short-lived, but necessary and noble service. But judging by the best works of the period, the Kukryniksy not only generally retained a high level in their work, but also gave it new strength and sharpness of artistic impact. The energy of full dedication, internal mobilization of artists, born of high pathos, the fierce inspiration of the struggle, gave their art a living juice and gave it a new impetus for development. The satirical fantasy, the metaphorical structure of the image, so characteristic of artists in their caricatures of the war years, are embodied with a special capacity and lapidarity of allegorical generalization.

For example, in The Transformation of the Fritzes (1943), the ranks of German soldiers, guided by Hitler's pointing finger, are “transformed” first into walking fascist signs, and then into rows of birch crosses on snow-covered Russian fields. The metaphorical action of the caricature, with the clarity of aphorism, captures the entire history of Hitler's invasion - from the beginning to the final, which the artists foresaw with full conviction.

In a similar order, the metaphor in many other works - easily visible, clear and catchy in its rapid figurative dynamics - in its own manner interprets significant events of the time, sums up their results, reveals the most important and essential. Hitler tried to surround his tank divisions with spider paws, to take Moscow in pincers, but ran into the death grip of other pincers - the retaliatory strike of the Soviet Army ("Pincers in Pincers", 1941). The same strong, working pincers (the assimilation, of course, is not accidental), bending into the number "3", squeeze the Fuhrer's throat with their ends ("Three Years of War", 1944). The empty-headed fanatic in Berlin already has a "pot does not cook" - and this is the result of his brainless strategy - "Russian cauldron near Minsk," in which the butt of a Soviet soldier kills heaps of Germans ("Two Cauldrons", 1944).
The traitor Laval is tied with a fascist rope to the chair of the prime minister of the Vichy puppet government, but this dilapidated Rococo furniture cannot be comfortably seated: the blade of the Fighting France bayonet pierced the seat through, and the dwarf Laval is balancing in despair on his arms (“Don't sit down, not get off ... ", 1943). This is a whole chapter in the history of the war years, embodied with inconceivable eccentricity, but absolutely correct and accurate in essence, an assessment of the very real state of affairs.

In general, the obvious majority of satirical allegories created by the Kukryniksy during the war years has a deep and multifaceted expressiveness. They, these allegories, are based on specific situations that the artists rearranged and altered in their works with amazing ingenuity and brilliance of wit. The notorious gospel of fascism - "Mein Kampf" - is transformed by the artists into a cash cow with Hitler's face, which Hitler himself milks - after all, the Fuhrer's income from this book was fabulous ("Cash Cow", 1942). Fascist leaders squeezed the last juices out of their European satellites - and now in a 1942 cartoon, it is shown how Hitler and Mussolini, like dirty linen, twist Laval, while other quislings are already hanging on a rope like pitiful, wasted rags. The Nazis shamelessly fanned the myth about the power of the "Atlantic Wall" they created on the northern shores of France - and the Kukryniksy show what this "inflated size" is: a long row of some patched cannon-like firecrackers, which, like football cameras, are inflated by the monkey Goebbels ("Continuous swindle" , 1943). The content of all these and a lot of similar satirical fantasies is easily deciphered, but they are full of significant historical meaning, with the help of a figurative X-ray they get to the background, to the hidden depths of many events and characters of the era.

I deliberately lined up descriptions of several randomly taken Kukryniksy cartoons. This not only allows one to get an idea of ​​the range of subjects chosen by the artists. Sometimes the descriptions can serve purely art history purposes. Here they are somewhat paradoxical: the author strove to prove that it is impossible to create an exact verbal parallel to the works of artists: the satirical works of the Kukryniksy constitute an exclusive belonging to the visual series of impressions, the elements of visual images. It may be objected that the fine arts, like music and architecture, have always had their own special and unique artistic speech, for which it is unthinkable to find an exhaustively accurate verbal equivalent. I do not argue, but this well-known truth almost does not apply to modern caricature. A huge part of it is much closer to literature than to the fine arts. True, letters and words are replaced in thousands of newspaper and magazine caricatures of the 20th century with dashed hieroglyphs, but by themselves they do not yet create either visual images or fine art. These cartoons are reminiscent of ancient pictography - drawing, depicting events and actions using conventional symbols. The whole essence of these "pictographic" cartoons is in such and such situations, such and such actions, even more often in the replicas of characters. Not only the visual image, but even the technical quality of the drawing is practically irrelevant here. This kind of cartoons are invented and perceived according to the laws of literature; dashed hieroglyphs serve in this case as a kind of printed letters.

These caricatures can not only be retellable, but without any loss, fully replaced with words. I do not intend to use qualitative criteria, to talk about how good or bad the genre of "pictographic" caricature is - it exists and is a special phenomenon that must be understood in detail and thoroughly. But as for the Kukryniksy, their work entirely and undividedly belongs to the fine arts, the age-old tradition of satirical graphics, based on the techniques of purely visual characteristics, assimilations, metaphors. During the war years, not only the drawing skill of artists, but also their visual-figurative thinking, reached deep maturity and virtuoso artistry. The free play of satirical fantasy, the lightness and elastic force of its flight, the ability to instantaneously and every time original figurative improvisation on a topical, even now emerging topic - all this has become the everyday atmosphere of the artists' creativity. In 1941-1945 they created hundreds of cartoons, and any of them - even a tiny splash screen for a leaflet, even a picture of a sticker on the wrapper of a food concentrate - contains its own satirical image. The Kukryniksy simply cannot do otherwise: the pictorial metaphor is the native language of their caricatures. By the way, the organic nature of this speech is one of the obvious proofs of the full-blooded vitality of classical traditions in the field of satire, the ability of these traditions to give new shoots, to enter into a live conjunction with our modernity.

But back to the content of the Kukryniksy military cartoons. Was there not some relief in them, did they not show a strong and merciless enemy as just pathetic and ridiculous?
This question cannot be answered in monosyllables. For all the outward simplicity and general comprehensibility of the Kukryniksy cartoons, they contain several figurative layers. Of course, the fascists are ridiculed in them. The artists were trying to ensure that the first emotional reaction that their drawings and posters could evoke was the laughter of Soviet spectators at the Nazis, even in the most difficult periods of the war for us (I would say, especially during such periods). For this laughter gave strength in a mortal battle, turned into an empty legend the myth of the invincibility of the fascist hordes, inspired contempt for the enemy, and the ridiculous and despised enemy is not terrible.
But it is worth considering the nature and the basis of this laughter. It is not just fictitious comic situations, it is caused, not deliberate stupidity of the Nazis, their appearance and actions. This is the laughter of historical justice over dirty wrong, laughter from the standpoint of moral and social superiority. When Hitler and his associates are portrayed as brainless, empty-headed, it’s not the same thing that the artists want to convince the audience of the clinical psychopathy of the leaders of fascism, that these “figures” are uniform idiots who, by a game of chance, found themselves at the helm of power. This is so simple, but then the real situation of the great struggle would have been subjected to an unacceptable distortion: a tragedy, not an operetta, took place on the fields of the Patriotic War.

There is no trace of such a distortion in the works of the Kukryniksy. Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Mussolini and others appear in their satire not so much as concrete personalities, but as personified images of fascism in general. Mr. Adolf Hitler could be naturally smart or stupid, talented or untalented, but the Nazi dogma that pushed him into the political arena was historically doomed, hostile to reason and the prospects for the development of human civilization. Mr. Joseph Goebbels could have had remarkable eloquence, but everything he said was dirty lies and vile demagogy aimed at justifying the most cruel crimes and disgusting injustice - this was determined not only by his personal qualities, but above all by the nature of the case to which he was devoted served. In the same way, Goering, Himmler, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Frank, Hess, Bormann, Kaltenbrunner and other large and small demons of Nazism could have these or those shades of individual qualities, but they were all bloody monsters, cannibals just because they became active practitioners fascism: only such types did he need. Someone he picked up already an established villain, someone gradually turned into a voluntary executioner - the shades are insignificant, the result is important. In the dark fascist kingdom, the logic of the formation of individual characters, the logic of individual destinies was determined by the general logic of fascism, its social content and historical function. The Kukryniksy felt and understood all this very well. "Hitlers of all stripes" appear in their cartoons as typical representatives of fascism in general. Artists sarcastically ridicule and stigmatize not the pathology of individuals, but the perverse nature of the Nazi abomination hostile to humanity.
It is precisely with the fact that fascism so basely and vilely distorts the human in man, monstrously deforms the human soul and human actions, that the frequent appearance of motives of "bestialness" in the antifascist caricatures of the Kukryniksy is naturally connected. It has already been said that these motifs were encountered in the pre-war works of artists on similar topics. Now the "brutal beginning" is being developed by the craftsmen with special acuteness and strength.

The similarity with the fable transfer of concepts here is purely external and secondary. After all, the artists had no need for the Aesopian language. The inner spring of the "brutal" images in the Kukryniksy cartoons is completely different. Brutality is the soul of fascism; the power of base instincts is at the heart of all the motives and actions of its leaders. Therefore, everything animal in their image is quite portrait, and all human is improbable, fake, looks like a mask. This paradox - terrible, but absolutely real - is embedded in the very essence of "nature", which was used in their works by the authors of anti-fascist cartoons.

The Kukryniksy play this disgusting paradox not only as material for artistic metaphors and hyperbole, but also as a “formula of accusation”, if we speak in the language of jurisprudence. They throw at the beastly face of fascism the prosecutor's charge of their satire, "drenched in bitterness and anger." They accuse fascism of inhumanity. Visually accused of cartoons are perceived as material evidence of the most despicable crimes. The fantastic eccentriad of drawings, absolutely far from "external plausibility", not only does not interfere with their vital persuasiveness, but, on the contrary, is here its surest guarantee. Is there any similarity between the patient's appearance and the virus that caused the illness? And the Kukryniksy show exactly the virus of the fascist epidemic, reveal its hidden, hidden essence.

The animals in the Kukryniksy cartoons are of a special kind. You will not find them in any zoos. They have nothing to do with the animalistic genre. This is not surprising: after all, even the most insolent jackal, the most venomous snake, the most vicious shark is much nobler and more attractive than a fascist. They, jackals and snakes, in fact, have nothing to blame - they live according to the laws that nature itself has prescribed for them. And fascism is a vile perversion of human nature, an outrage against it. He is the culprit of a disgusting metamorphosis: people, preserving their human appearance, behave like predators and reptiles. These are monstrous centaurs, equally dissimilar to both the normal "homo sapiens" and the ordinary animal. By the way, this very collision is very accurately embodied by the artists in one of the TASS Windows (Krylovskaya monkey about Goebbels, 1934); a miserable, dejected monkey with frightened amazement examines the portrait of the last times, perhaps, have become even more severe and harsher in their sharp and angry sarcasm, they do not entertain, do not amuse at their leisure. They call for struggle, for a high tension of forces in the name of protecting the ideals of goodness and justice. Evaluating specific political situations from the standpoint of socialist ideology, the Kukryniksy give their creativity a universal human character, reflect on the fate of the entire human civilization, and fight for its bright future. Artists attack the enemies of peace and freedom with all the crushing force of their mature, unquenchable talent. They could, referring to the former to the newly-minted "Hitlers of all stripes", whip them with the scourge of angry contemptuous Pushkin's lines: "I will torment all your bastard with the execution of shame." This furious tirade would sound like the motto of all their work in satire, like the oath they kept, to which they are sacred to this day.
1969
Alexander KAMENSKY

From the album "KuKryNiksy POLITICAL SATIRE 1929-1946", "Soviet Artist", 1973

The famous Soviet poet Alexander Zharov recalls that in 1925, when he was the editor of a youth magazine, three students-artists once came to his office and offered their services. “What can you draw?” Asked Zharov. Then the young people immediately got down to business and, in the process of handing over the drawing to one another, quickly sketched several apt cartoons on the writers who were present at the same time, which caused general admiration. Since that time, sharp and expressive drawings of young authors, signed by the compound surname of Kukryniksy, began to appear regularly in the magazine.

This was at the dawn of the joint creative activity of the talented Soviet artists Mikhail Vasilyevich Kupriyanov, Porfiry Nikitich Krylov and Nikolai Alexandrovich Sokolov.

The creativity of the Kukryniksy amazes with its diversity. Thoughtful artists work with inspiration and persistence on large paintings, caricatures, posters, book illustrations and even on sculptural portraits, achieving high results in every art form. The extraordinary relevance of the subject matter, the ideological orientation and clarity of the content, the originality and laconicism of the artistic language - these advantages of the Kukryniksy works, clearly visible to everyone, make them understandable to the widest circle of Soviet viewers and readers.

Caricatures of artists Kukryniksy

Being gifted painters, the Kukryniksy, above all and above all, are the most prominent masters of Soviet political graphics and artistic satire. It is difficult to name even one significant event in international life, from the 1930s to the present day, that would not have caused a corresponding response in their work.

At one time, the cartoons of the Kukryniksy mercilessly exposed the conspiracy of the imperialist powers against the republican Spain, the preparation of the Second World War ("Scheme of strict control of the Spanish borders", "Continuation of the last war" and others). In these, as in all other works, artists are the spokesmen for the views and interests of our people, who are tirelessly fighting for world peace.

Kukryniksy performs with equal success in the region household satire... Their blows are directed against everything obsolete, inert and ugly, which hinders the movement of the Soviet people towards a wonderful future. From the extensive cycle of works by the Kukryniksy on everyday topics, the series "Transport", drawings "Hopeless Day off", "Memorandum", "Toadstools" (about young people servile to foreignism) should be distinguished.

The Kukryniksy cartoons are so unique in form that the viewer immediately recognizes their authors, without even looking at the signature. Inexhaustible in artistic invention and ingenuity, the Kukryniksy are able to recreate in front of us the appearance of this or that political degenerate (Stolypin, Kerensky, Wrangel) in several bold and precise lines, to show the typical in the images of a bureaucrat, eyewash, grabber. The perfection of Kukryniksov's graphics is a vivid example of the great importance of collectivity in creativity: each of the artists offers his own solution to the topic, in the process of discussion, all the best is selected from them, and then all the efforts of the team are directed to working out the final version.

WWII posters in the work of the Kukryniksy

Still fresh in our memory are numerous posters in TASS Windows, created by the Kukryniksy in the harsh years of fighting the fascist invaders: “We will mercilessly crush and destroy the enemy!” " other. Meeting the most pressing tasks of the time, extremely expressive, they were a powerful ideological weapon, giving even more strength to the Soviet soldiers at the front and the working population in the rear.

On the pages of Pravda, Krokodil and other Soviet publications, sharp caricatures of the Kukryniksy always appeared, nailing the troubadours of the Cold War and their accomplices to the pillory. In 1958-1959 the cartoons "The Berlin Question", "The Militant Parrot" and others were published. In 1960, No. 2 of "Crocodile", dedicated to the memory of A.P. Chekhov, one remembers the witty caricature "Intruder on an International Scale": the West German Chancellor Adenauer diligently unscrews the nuts from the rails, which have a sign "To Peaceful Coexistence."

Paintings by artists Kukryniksy

Veliky Novgorod in January 1944. Against the background of the gloomy sky, the majestic bulk of the St. Sophia Cathedral rises. Fragments of the barbarously destroyed monument "Millennium of Russia" stick out from under the snow. Near the buildings, Hitler's warriors are scurrying about with torches. Forced shamefully to flee the ancient city under the mighty blows of the Soviet Army, they, in impotent rage, are trying to destroy the priceless treasures of Russian culture.

This is the content of the well-known Kukryniksy paintings"Flight of the Nazis from Novgorod". Despite the dramatic tension of the moment, well conveyed by the contrasts of dark and light spots, the picture is imbued with an optimistic mood. The artists were able to show in it the utter doom of the degenerates who intended to enslave our socialist homeland.

Other paintings by the Kukryniksy, dedicated to the events of the Great Patriotic War - "Tanya", "Pravda", "The End" are also imbued with a patriotic feeling.

In the last picture, in the images of great artistic power, the inglorious death of Hitlerism is shown, in the defeat of which the Soviet Union played a decisive role.

Illustrating the works of Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Chekhov and Gorky, the artists strive to fully reveal to the reader the humanistic orientation of the great Russian literature. The most successful in this respect are Kukryniksy's drawings for Gogol's "Overcoat", Chekhov's stories "Tosca" and "I Want to Sleep".

It should be noted that each of the Kukryniksy has a bright creative personality and works a lot independently. So, M. Kupriyanov is especially fascinated by the landscapes of the Moscow region and the Volga, P. Krylov performed many portraits and perfectly conveyed the picturesque originality of Paris, Rome and Venice, and N. Sokolov lovingly depicts the life of his native Moscow and the touching beauty of Russian nature. Continuously enriching their knowledge and experience, the artists combine them in one or another general concept, persistently striving for ever greater completeness of the plot and its artistic embodiment in each new work.

How many artists are Kukryniksy?

What does the pseudonym "Kukryniksy" mean - decryption

* The pseudonym "Kukryniksy" is composed of the first syllables of the surnames of Kupriyanov and Krylov, as well as the first three letters of the name and the first letter of the surname of Nikolai Sokolov.

Years of life

* Mikhail Vasilievich Kupriyanov 1903-1991

Porfiry Nikitich Krylov 1902-1990

Nikolai Alexandrovich Sokolov 1903-2000 (source - Wikipedia)

Tags: biography and work of artists Kukryniksy.

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