Deeply moved by the 1917 revolution, Alexander Gerasimov was eager to make a portrait of Vladimir Lenin. For years, the artist was obsessed with the idea. He looked everywhere for meetings with Vladimir Ilyich, and never missed an opportunity to attend events where Lenin would speak publicly: at rallies, meetings, conferences, and congresses. Again and again, Gerasimov sketched vivid impressions on his large notebook sheets. Watching Lenin during speeches, the artist tried to remember the nature of the movements and gestures of the leader speaking from the podium.

Striving for factual accuracy and a careful attitude to history, Alexander Gerasimov restored Lenin’s body language from available reminiscences: whether Lenin walked quickly, the way he held his hand, and the way he laughed. The painter aimed to convey the historical, solemn moment with utmost authenticity, convincing details, and the most subtle points of the situation. The work was based not just on a single episode recorded on a sketch, but the leader’s determined revolutionary activity, seen by the artist in the light of the future, breaking the way through all the obstacles of tsarism, reactionary forces, full of stress and risk. The portrait has both implicit dynamism and precision of form. The figure of Lenin is picked out of the crowd by spotlights. The artist grasps the specific features of Lenin’s facial expressions: these naturally complement the semantic nuances of speech. Unwavering conviction, delight in achieving the goal, and ardent faith in the coming victories of the proletariat determine the psychology of Lenin’s image. This is exactly what Lenin looks like on Gerasimov’s canvas.

One of the prominent party figures, the writer Alexander Arosev emphasized individual details when describing Lenin’s appearance, “… a sandy-colored face, wrinkles radiating from the nose as if carved in stone, black and fiery pupils. The face is plain. If not for the eyes, it could even seem boring. As for the eyes, these have a contradiction hidden in them: they are both kind and stern. But this combination — of kindness and severity, laughter and intelligence — merged into something very special yet deeply human.”

The artist’s work was highly appreciated by the leader’s contemporaries, the country’s public, foreign critics, and art historians. Gerasimov’s painting, which immediately became popular, has remained one of the best Soviet works of art even decades later. The artist’s work on the image of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is amazing in its purposefulness, great earnestness and brilliant talent, which distinguishes everything created by the People’s Artist of the USSR Alexander Gerasimov.