In the 1960s — 1970s, Soviet painters often pictured exotic elements of the northern region, for there was active territorial development going on in the country, and people admired the heroic polar explorers and pioneer builders. Former wastelands were now occupied by buildings, and many painters went to the North to capture this historic view.

Yevgeny Gudin was luckier than other artists, for he had firsthand knowledge of the northern region. He did not just go there on short trips, but rather ventured long hiking tours all by himself, burdened by a huge backpack. His adventure could start in the Carpathian Mountains and go all the way to the Kamchatka Peninsula, and he would power through northern blizzards, continuous heavy showers and storms. The art expert Stepan Yarkov wrote,

Stepan Yarkov also mentioned that Gudin used to be fond of unique color combinations, like the blackish-blue of water and the cold gray of the sky, or the muted white of tundra together with the foggy polar night. Gudin reminisced that, when the temperature dropped to -50°C, he could not use either oil paints or a paint thinner, so he would simply sketch the mountain outlines using pastels or colored pencils.

Suddenly one day Gudin experienced a whole new feeling. During one of his travels to the northern part of the Ural Mountains, he could not only see the beauty of white snow or the varying color light of an aurora, but also feel the balanced harmony between everything that exists in nature. By that time, he was already known as a talented painter, but only after that eye-opening experience would he consider himself a true artist.

The painting ‘Arctic Weather Station’ was created by Gudin in the late 1970s after his life-changing trip. In those years, he strove to render that feeling of the wholeness of nature he had experienced during his travels. At the same time, he realized all the difficulties that came with the territorial development of the North: the admiration for the difficult job, that polar explorers and frontier guards were doing, did not change the fact that the hills were disfigured by dug-out trenches, the ground was covered with lakes of oil and mazut, the new cities were enveloped in smoke and the endless lands were occupied by labor camps.

Gudin’s paintings were marked by a deep understanding of life in the North, which he depicted with sincere fondness and no unnecessary exaggeration. The picture from the museum’s collection is no exception.

Gudin pictured a bird’s-eye view of the polar station. But it was not his intention to celebrate the human achievements, that is why the buildings are moved upwards, away from the composition center. The first thing that the viewers see is an area of hummocky land that still obeys its own laws despite the presence of people. The main character here is the North itself, and not the polar explorers, who are simply strangers in these parts.