The exhibition of the Iskitim Museum of Arts and History features a watercolor painting “Cold May in Srostki” by Ivan Petrovich Popov.

The artist became fascinated with watercolors in the late 1960s. His interest in this medium culminated in a solo exhibition of his watercolor works organized at the Novosibirsk Museum in 1972. The main themes of both oil and watercolor paintings by Ivan Popov were his native land and Vasily Makarovich Shukshin. The art historian Pavel Dmitriyevich Muratov said, “In his transparent watercolors, Popov creates decorative effects and complex textures, even ripping the top layer of the paper slightly in some areas. These effects cannot be achieved by painting directly from nature, only in the studio. This suggests that Popov’s watercolor studies are not merely studies, but rather small landscape and portrait paintings that are based on other studies.”

In the painting “Cold May in Srostki”, against the backdrop of other village houses, Ivan Popov depicted the house of the writer’s mother Mariya Sergeyevna on Shirokiy Lane where she lived between 1957 and 1963. Ivan Popov himself had left Srostki with his mother after his father’s death. Later, he would come back to his home village only during his academic training or to visit his friends and relatives and paint en plein-air. Every time he came to Srostki, Popov would meet with Mariya Sergeyevna to chat with her and learn what was going on in the lives of their relatives and his second cousin Vasily Shukshin. In his autobiography, “Diary of an Artist”, Ivan Popov recalled these visits with great fondness. He wrote,