During the first five-year plan of the USSR (which was implemented in 1928 and took effect until 1932), a big construction site appeared in Sverdlovsk, marking the start of the famous Uralmash — the Ural Heavy Machine-Building Plant.

The pace of constriction was astounding: the foundation was laid on July 31, 1928, and just five years later, on the very same day, the plant was opened. In order to launch it on time, the plant equipment had to be installed at the same time as the buildings were prepared. Along with that, a new district was under construction to provide housing to future workers — the socialist city Uralmash. The old photographs show countrymen in bast shoes holding axes and shovels in their hands, whose hard work is the reason why that plant was launched on time.

In this painting, Samuil Adlivankin depicted Uralmash builders. The central figure of the picture is a young woman, who shows great skill with a heavy shovel.

Adlivankin was one of the founding members of the New Society of Painters that existed in the 1920s. The society painters created genre paintings with comic inflection, using simplified lines and vivid saturated colors typical of Neo-primitivism. In one of his articles, Adlivankin reminisced about how the Soviet audience reacted to this movement:

Children’s drawings were in demand among intellectuals of the early 20th century. Futurists Kamensky and Kruchyonykh had a penchant for them, and many others viewed children’s creativity as genuine primitive art. In this case, the term “primitive” does not mean inept but rather characterizes a certain base and beginning of art, where simplified forms count as an advantage. Samuil Adlivankin used to say:

Nevertheless, emotional spontaneity was not crucial for Neo-primitivism when it came to applying paints to the canvas — painting based on national traditions and samples of folk art was far more important. Adlivankin also mentioned that his style was influenced by the French self-taught artist Henri Rousseau.

“At the Construction Site of Uralmash” is a unique example of merging that manner of painting of the 1920s with the fledgling style of Socialist realism. This Adlivankin’s neo-primitive painting already took on a didactic meaning.