Alexander Alexandrovich Deyneka was a Soviet painter, muralist, graphic artist, teacher, and professor. He was born in 1899 into the family of a railway worker in Kursk. He studied at the Kharkov Art College and Vkhutemas, at the publishing industry department. His teachers were Vladimir Andreevich Favorsky and Ignatiy Ignatievich Nivinsky. His acquaintance with the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky had a great influence on the artist.

The artist’s works are in the collections of the Kursk Art Gallery named after A.A. Deyneka, the Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, and the Institute of Russian Realist Art.

In his works, Deyneka depicted Soviet people involved in sports and working in factories, plants and mines.

Deyneka succeeded in the theme of sports, constantly returning to it in his graphic works, paintings, sketches, and mosaics.

Sports became a popular form of mass entertainment in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After the October Revolution of 1917, sports, like other areas of life, were taken under centralized control. And artists depicted sports life on their canvases.

His archive contained numerous sketches made during boxing fights, ski races, hockey and football matches. The painter often used photography to study fleeting movements.

The thematic painting “Hockey” was a preparatory work for the mosaic panel “Hockey Players”, included in the series of mosaics “People of the Land of the Soviets”. The picture features a compelling scene of struggle, and the excitement of a sports competition. The figures of hockey players look dynamic, the artist successfully managed to capture them in motion. The sportsmen embody the general idea of youth, struggle, victory, trial and faith in the future.

In 1964, Alexander Alexandrovich Deyneka was awarded the Lenin Prize for a set of mosaics, including the “Hockey Players”.