The Great Patriotic War was a tragic period in the Russian history. The Kurgan painter Ivan Lokhmatov met the beginning of this war as a 11-year-old boy and in the rear he went through the suffers, hunger, and deprivation.
Lokhmatov was a painter from the Sixtiers Group and one of the first students of Valerian Ilyushin, who was the founder of professional art education in Kurgan district. The graduate of the Sverdlovsk Art College, he became an active participant of exhibitions as an author of portraits, landscapes, theme paintings. The severe style prevailing in the art circles in the 1960s greatly influenced his art.
The keynote of Ivan Lokhmatov’s art is a complex and in many ways unrevealed subject of life and heroic efforts in the rear during the Great Patriotic War.
The work ‘Roads of the Soldiers’ Wives. Bread. 1943’ was painted between 1964 and 1970 and was the painter’s programmatic opus.
During that time the painter created multiple sketches and elaborated different variants of composition. In the first version Ivan Lokhmatov wanted to depict the nurses trying to push the carriage with wounded soldiers out of the mud, but in the end he opted for a dramatic subject of everyday peasants’ work.
The painter was looking for the most convincing and strong angles of figures and spent much time elaborating the complex tonality of a harsh climate. The artist told that in his work “the sky mixed with the ground”.
In a lot of ways this work is a family chronicle of the author. This is exactly how the carriages with grain were pushed out during the autumn’s muddy season by his mother and sisters while the future painter was helping them lead the bulls.
Twenty years after the war ending the painter’s mother agreed to be his model. In spite of the specifics of the real characters of the painting, Lokhmatov managed to create generalized and typical images of peasant women. In this painting one can see the features characteristic for the painting art of the time, such as the monumental images, dark and gloomy palette, laconism in depiction of objects and people.
The last fourth version of the painting entitled Bread for the Battle Front was exhibited in Moscow during the republican exhibition Defended Peace and the All-Union exhibition dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic Was in 1985. The painting was bought by the Armed Forces Museum and put into its permanent exposition where it’s being kept up to this day.
Lokhmatov was a painter from the Sixtiers Group and one of the first students of Valerian Ilyushin, who was the founder of professional art education in Kurgan district. The graduate of the Sverdlovsk Art College, he became an active participant of exhibitions as an author of portraits, landscapes, theme paintings. The severe style prevailing in the art circles in the 1960s greatly influenced his art.
The keynote of Ivan Lokhmatov’s art is a complex and in many ways unrevealed subject of life and heroic efforts in the rear during the Great Patriotic War.
The work ‘Roads of the Soldiers’ Wives. Bread. 1943’ was painted between 1964 and 1970 and was the painter’s programmatic opus.
During that time the painter created multiple sketches and elaborated different variants of composition. In the first version Ivan Lokhmatov wanted to depict the nurses trying to push the carriage with wounded soldiers out of the mud, but in the end he opted for a dramatic subject of everyday peasants’ work.
The painter was looking for the most convincing and strong angles of figures and spent much time elaborating the complex tonality of a harsh climate. The artist told that in his work “the sky mixed with the ground”.
In a lot of ways this work is a family chronicle of the author. This is exactly how the carriages with grain were pushed out during the autumn’s muddy season by his mother and sisters while the future painter was helping them lead the bulls.
Twenty years after the war ending the painter’s mother agreed to be his model. In spite of the specifics of the real characters of the painting, Lokhmatov managed to create generalized and typical images of peasant women. In this painting one can see the features characteristic for the painting art of the time, such as the monumental images, dark and gloomy palette, laconism in depiction of objects and people.
The last fourth version of the painting entitled Bread for the Battle Front was exhibited in Moscow during the republican exhibition Defended Peace and the All-Union exhibition dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic Was in 1985. The painting was bought by the Armed Forces Museum and put into its permanent exposition where it’s being kept up to this day.
