The painting ‘Self-portrait in a Red Shirt’ is the best example of Oleg Filatchev’s artwork of the 1960s. During those years, intellectual characters, that distanced themselves from the mundanity and commotion of life, became primary in Soviet paintings.

Art experts view this self-portrait as a certain archetype painting: Filatchev depicted himself without any intention of specifying the exact time or circumstances related to the canvas. There are a few significant details that enhance this idea. The back of the chair seems to have taken the shape of an architectural object, which supports the painter’s strong body despite how elegant the chair’s silhouette is. With this image, the painter aimed to hint at the symbolic presence of classical art in his artwork. Oleg Filatchev also placed himself in a workshop that is free from time or space.

Oleg Filatchev is mostly known as a muralist (an artist who creates mural, mosaic and stained-glass paintings) and a talented portraitist. Experts of the Russian Academy of Arts noticed the elements of monumentalism even in his smaller paintings, saying,

Filatchev often painted in the genre of portrait, and each time he managed to create profound images. He preferred to portray the members of his close circle — his friends, wife, mother. His self-portraits are of special importance, for they help to track the changes in the painter’s attitude towards the modern world, the art of the past, as well as his own artwork.

Art experts of the Russian Academy of Arts believe that the maturity found in the portraits by Filachev and the pictorial techniques, that he meticulously chose for them, came from a thorough study of not only life, but also classical art. The artist was fond of Botticelli, Piero della Francesca, as well as murals of the Renaissance period. Filatchev strove to paint in the artistic manner of the old masters, so he would use the same materials as them. The early Renaissance artists mainly preferred painting with tempera — a paint based on a glutinous material such as egg yolk. This method was used on wooden panels covered with a mixture of chalk and gypsum — gesso. Oleg Filatchev often chose both levkas and tempera to paint on a fiberboard (a board made of wood fibers).