The Soviet artist, academician and member of the “Kukryniksy” artistic group Porfiry Krylov was not only a brilliant cartoonist, but also a master of landscape. His painting “Morning in Koktebel” is dedicated to one of the most beautiful places on the Black Sea coast of Crimea. The first Greek settlements appeared here in ancient times. Later at various moments in history the site of future Koktebel belonged to Slavs, Armenians, Italians, Turks, Bulgarians and Tatars.

The majestic peaks of the extinct Kara Dag volcano are shrouded in light fog. A small village peacefully slumbers in the rays of the rising southern sun. In Crimean Tatar, “Koktebel” means “valley of the blue hills”. It was the center of attraction of the creative intelligentsia of the 20th century. The location was en vogue among literary figures thanks to the poet Maximilian Voloshin, who settled in Koktebel in 1907. Marina Tsvetaeva, Nikolai Gumilev, Alexey Tolstoy, Mikhail Bulgakov, Nikolai Chukovsky visited Voloshin’s residence.

After the October Revolution, the popularity of Koktebel only grew. People of academic and creative professions came to the village for inspiration and relaxation. The artist Porfiry Krylov was one such person. He stayed at the House of Writers, the building of which formerly belonged to Maximilian Voloshin and his family.

Krylov dedicated a series of his landscapes to the surroundings of Koktebel. The village at that time bore a different name — Planerskoye (“planer” in Russian means glider). The reason for that was because the village was the center of gliding sports in the USSR in the mid-1920s. To the north of Koktebel is the Uzun-Syrt ridge with Mount Klementyev as its highest point. Steady winds from the sea create updrafts on the mountain, ideal for gliding. The great-grandfathers of modern aircraft, the first Russian gliders were flown there. Now Koktebel has a gliding sports center and a museum dedicated to gliding.