The painting Danae (Version 1) was painted by Anatoly Kalashnikov. The painter was born in 1947, he graduated from the Sverdlovsk Art School. He is a prominent representative of the Sverdlovsk art. In the art world Kalashnikov was famous as a muralist. The features defining the mural art, such as the decorative and flat manner, were used by him in his paintings. In many of his works Anatoly Kalashnikov’s depicted the antique and mythological plots, such as the Argonauts, Herakles, Danae, Samson and Delilah, Bathsheba, The Rape of the Sabine women. The art of such modernists and postmodernists as Modigliani, Gaugin, and Picasso influenced the creative search of many Soviet artists in the mid-to-late 20th century.

The stylization became ingrained in the arsenal of artistic means of the contemporary art. Having escaped from the usual forms and the classic composition, the artists were trying to analyze the world through the feelings of objects and their colours. Therefore, they could express their creativity brighter and to the full extent as well as widen their technical side without limiting themselves to the tradition artistic methods.

The classic story of Danae interpreted by Anatoly Kalashnikov illustrates such approach. The antique myth describes Zeus’s appearance to Danae, who was incarcerated in the tower, as a golden rain. The girl was locked in the tower by her father due to the oracle’s prophesy.

In Kalashnikov’s painting Danae is thought of as an ecstatic bacchante hunger for feelings. She distinctly accepts Zeus as a rain made of gold coins, her maid with her huge hand reminds of a procuress. Looking at the painting one automatically recollects Pablo Picasso’s creative language.

Anatoly Kalashnikov reconsidered the plot of Danae. In the painting made in 1989 Danae looks like an innocent sleeping girl. And in the version made in 2006 “And Zeus Came Down Like a Golden Rain” painted for the 400th anniversary of Rembrandt’s birth, there’s a motif of Indian summer. Scene with Danae is shown with the autumn Ural landscape in the background. As we can see, the artist moved from the ironical concept to the more metaphorical and lyrical representation of Danae’s image.