The art collection of the Penza Literature Museum features an illustration to the story “Birch Grove” by Fyodor Gladkov, created by Penza artists Nikolai Mikhailovich Sidorov and Anna Stepanovna Korol. In the illustration, the artists depicted the main character — Martyn Martynovich, an old country schoolteacher who cares for the fate of a birch grove.

In the illustration, the old sprawling birch trees, babbling brooks, and new urban buildings in the background merge into a single landscape. To contrast the lyrical rural image and the modern city under construction, the artists artfully combined smooth, blurred lines with more schematic, minimalist, and even austere strokes. This technique allowed them to convey the atmosphere created by the writer in the story, to feel the protagonist, who “enjoyed the morning hour, when the air is still blue, cool, and poignant. With the mist left over from the night, with the dew on the grass and the thick odor of the earth.”

Having moved to Penza in the early 1950s, they fully associated their work with the life of the Sura region, telling in their creations about Penza, its inhabitants and fate. Most often the artists worked in etching technique. In their sketches one can easily recognize lyrical and romantic images of Penza, its antiquities, working people, writers, and actors.