Vitaly Ivanovich Tyulenev was a painter, graphic artist, Honored Artist of the RSFSR, and member of the Saint Petersburg Union of Artists. He was born in 1937 in Leningrad.
At the age of 12, Vitaly Tyulenev enrolled at the Leningrad Secondary Art School, which is now the Art Lyceum named after the painter and graphic artist Boris Vladimirovich Johanson.
In 1956, Vitaly Tyulenev entered the Department of Painting at the Repin Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. In 1962, he attended classes in the studio of the painter and teacher Yevsey Yevseyevich Moiseyenko.
After graduating from the Institute, from 1962 to 1966, Vitaly Tyulenev further pursued studying art at the workshop of the USSR Academy of Arts, where he was under the guidance of the painter and portraitist Viktor Mikhailovich Oreshnikov. In 1964, he became a regular participant of all exhibitions moving forward. Vitaly Tyulenev painted landscapes, portraits, and genre compositions; he used the techniques of oil painting and watercolor.
The beginning of Vitaly Tyulenev’s career as a painter coincided with the era of the “austere style”: the artist liked it yet did not adhere to it himself. He found another way of creative expression, which was associated with the use of associations, metaphors, and editing techniques, much closer to his heart. This style was typical for a number of young artists of the 1970s and 1980s.
The pictorial space of the painting “Thunderstorm in June” is notionally divided in half widthways. The outlines of village houses and a church with a bell tower are visible on the uneven horizon. More to the right side, there is a building with a red flag — the village council hall.
In the lower part of the composition, the artist depicted a green field with figures of people amid tall grass.
A small group of armed villagers, who have almost crossed the field, is moving forward diagonally from the depth of the painting closer to the lower right edge. Not particularly distinguished by physical or psychological characteristics, the faces of the departing people express a shared sense of detachment. The villagers, frozen like statues, stare after them for the last time. The main action is taking place in the upper part of the painting: the huge sky overhead with the crimson eye of the sun and flashes of lightning, as if expressing the anger of nature.
The work was first shown in 1985 at the Leningrad Manege at an exhibition commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Victory.
