Vasily Baranov’s painting “View of the Water Area Protection Headquarters and the Ekaterininskaya Harbor” was painted in 1950 and presented by the artist to Isai Shoikhet, the chief director of the Drama Theater of the Northern Fleet. For many years the painting decorated the Shoikhet apartment in Leningrad. It was a reminder of the North and the North Fleet theater. The reverse side of the painting features an inscription:“To our hometown of Polyarny from the Shoikhet family.”
Vasily Grigoryevich Baranov (1912–1966) was born on April 10, 1912 in the village of Potashino, Novoduginsky district, Smolensk Oblast. The artist’s youth coincided with the tough post-revolutionary years. In the early 1930s, Vasily Baranov entered the Art and Pedagogical College in Leningrad (currently, Tavricheskaya Art School in St Petersburg). After graduating in 1937, he was drafted to serve in the Northern Fleet. He worked as a sailor-artist of the Drama Theater of the Northern Fleet in Polyarny, made propaganda posters and did set design for the theater.
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Vasily Baranov was transferred to a technical laboratory in Murmansk. He took part in applying camouflage onto ships, anti-aircraft batteries and other military objects. He also contributed to the production of such satirical posters as “Battering Ram” and “Windows of the Polar Truth”. In frontline Murmansk, which was almost daily subjected to enemy aircraft raids and bombings, the artist found the opportunity to make studies.
Vasily Baranov was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of the Red Star, the medal “For Military Merit”, the medal “For the Defense of the Soviet Arctic” and the medal “For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945”. After the war, Baranov worked as an artist of the Drama Theater of the Northern Fleet and the House of Officers of the Northern Fleet. Subsequently, he headed the branch of the Museum of the Northern Fleet in Polyarny and became the first chairman of the regional branch of the Union of Artists in Murmansk.
In 1970, Vasily Baranov’s first solo exhibition was held at the Murmansk Regional Museum of Local Lore. The artist presented his works several times in museums and galleries in Norway, Finland and Sweden. The lyrical northern landscape became Baranov’s hallmark. Most of the works and images in the artist’s work are connected with the sea and nature of the North, the lives of the people who live and serve their Fatherland in the harsh conditions of the Arctic.
