Jurgis Preiss painted Vera’s Portrait in 1954 with oil paint on a canvas. He depicted a student of Tomsk Medical Institute. ‘Author seems to be afraid to scare away the one-minute daydreams of the girl bending her head over a book. He admires flowing motions of her hands, her withdrawn and self-absorbed stare, the lush locks of her beautiful hair casually gripped on the back of her head… Charm and magnificent femininity, gentleness — that’s the core motif of this portrait’, this is what the researchers of Preiss work wrote in their article for the arts catalogue in 1974.

Vera’s Portrait is part of the series of portraits of Tosk Medical Institute staff. Jurgis Preiss arrived to Tomsk in 1940-s: after the start of the Great Patriotic War, he, along with many other Germans, was exiled to Siberia. He stayed there until his death.

In the post-war years, the Soviet government was especially intolerant to Western influences. The focus on lines, composition and straight coloring received the contemptuous name of formalism. The general belief was that art should be realistic and focus on the content, not on the form. Paintings had to glorify the achievements of the revolution and the labour of workers.

Vera’s Portrait was created in an academic manner supported and promoted by socialist realism. Preiss depicted volumes with light and shade, built the single point perspective. There are no asperities or voluminous color strokes on the surface of the canvas, the painting is smooth.

The artist paid special attention to plausible colors: the entire color range of the painting corresponds to real hues.

In 1956, Vera’s Portrait made its way to a major regional exhibition The Artists of Siberia and Russian Far East. The painting easily passed all the censorship instances — the exhibition committees of municipal and regional levels. This meant that the painting was indeed in line with all the requirements of official art.

Preiss himself was not in favour of socialist realism. His work was then divided into two parts: one was official for the exhibitions; the other was unofficial, for himself. He wrote about the Tomsk period: ‘Of course, I was not happy about it, because they wanted not painting, but colorful oil pictures in the bad sense of the word, according to Stalin”s taste. Later, I trained myself in producing such kitsch, because I needed to earn a living somehow’.

Kemerovo Regional Museum of Fine Arts received the painting in 1974 from the Regional Department of Culture.