Dmitry Nalbandyan was born in Georgia in 1906. He studied at the Tbilisi Academy of Arts under renowned masters Eugene Lansere and Yeghishe Tadevosyan. In 1931, the artist moved to Moscow, where the prime of his career coincided with the development of the officially approved style — the Socialist Realism.
Since the mid-1930s, the government required all Soviet artists to create paintings following special rules: the masters had to glorify the ideals of the ruling party, and the subject matter of their paintings had to be devoted to the achievements of the Soviet Union and the idealized prosperity of the workers and peasants. Additionally, focusing too much on the external qualities of a painting was considered shameful: artists were expected to depict people and surrounding objects with convincing realism and clarity.
Dmitry Nalbandyan shared these values and became one of the top-ranked masters of Socialist Realism. He was called the ‘first brush of the Politburo’, as at various times he painted portraits of Voroshilov and Budyonny, Khrushchev and Brezhnev, and became one of the few masters for whom Stalin posed in person. Even during his life, politicians, military leaders, famous writers, and actors visited the artist’s studio. Today, this studio in Moscow was turned into a museum, more than 1.500 works of the master are housed there.
Apart from Socialist Realism paintings, Nalbandyan enjoyed creating still lifes and landscapes. He created them in a free painting manner: visible brush strokes, bright color combinations. These works fully reflected the energetic personality of the artist.
For the “Still Life with Horn”, he also chose a bright cheerful color scheme. The master created a typical Georgian still life: juicy fruits, a glass full of thick wine, a clay jar, and a drinking-horn inlaid with silver. All these items lie on a colorful scarf. It is important that the artist did not smooth out every brush stroke to a perfectly flat surface, but remained faithful to the realistic method: he carefully conveyed the patterns on the silver trim of the horn, the pattern on the fabric, the transparency of the glass.
The artist himself spoke about the themes of his artworks and the creative method very simply:
Since the mid-1930s, the government required all Soviet artists to create paintings following special rules: the masters had to glorify the ideals of the ruling party, and the subject matter of their paintings had to be devoted to the achievements of the Soviet Union and the idealized prosperity of the workers and peasants. Additionally, focusing too much on the external qualities of a painting was considered shameful: artists were expected to depict people and surrounding objects with convincing realism and clarity.
Dmitry Nalbandyan shared these values and became one of the top-ranked masters of Socialist Realism. He was called the ‘first brush of the Politburo’, as at various times he painted portraits of Voroshilov and Budyonny, Khrushchev and Brezhnev, and became one of the few masters for whom Stalin posed in person. Even during his life, politicians, military leaders, famous writers, and actors visited the artist’s studio. Today, this studio in Moscow was turned into a museum, more than 1.500 works of the master are housed there.
Apart from Socialist Realism paintings, Nalbandyan enjoyed creating still lifes and landscapes. He created them in a free painting manner: visible brush strokes, bright color combinations. These works fully reflected the energetic personality of the artist.
For the “Still Life with Horn”, he also chose a bright cheerful color scheme. The master created a typical Georgian still life: juicy fruits, a glass full of thick wine, a clay jar, and a drinking-horn inlaid with silver. All these items lie on a colorful scarf. It is important that the artist did not smooth out every brush stroke to a perfectly flat surface, but remained faithful to the realistic method: he carefully conveyed the patterns on the silver trim of the horn, the pattern on the fabric, the transparency of the glass.
The artist himself spoke about the themes of his artworks and the creative method very simply:
