Many paintings by Nikolay Vasilyevich Shuvalov (1929–1984) are reflections and meditations on everything that makes up life. In 1966, the artist created “Ancestors” — one of his major paintings, in which he turned to the traditions of folk art with characteristically simplified shapes, brightness and decorativeness.

Shuvalov’s “Ancestors” is firmly grounded in mythological motifs. He painted a generalized image of old Russian culture. For references he turned to Russian wooden sculpture, folk art, bee hives carved in the form of people.

Frozen, static, with deliberately rough generalized features, these wooden sculptures are in themselves extremely expressive: each “ancestor” has a distinct face with a look of surprise or a silent question in their eyes. The composition is completed with the image of Paraskeva Friday — the patron saint of the household and trade.

The artist recalled:

Shuvalov’s appeal to folk art proved to be quite beneficial. He tapped into the origins of Russian artistic tradition. His experiments with tempera, which was the medium of old Russian easel painting, grew into a fascination with the possibilities it provided. Shuvalov learned the technique of painting with just tempera.

The working albums of the Kostroma artists contain hundreds of studies for the future painting. The museum presents one of the sketches for “Ancestors”, which was made in 1965. The image may seem gloomy and frightening. A poeticized folklore model of the world appears before the viewer, where ancestors and descendants form a single sacred community.

Veneration of the dead existed in all cultures. It is rooted in respect, reverence for the fathers, the belief that ancestors continue to magically participate in the lives of their descendants. Death was likened to life, it was only the border, after which a “new life” began in the “new world”; the existence of man on earth was one of the links in the chain of all the departed generations.