Viktor Grigorievich Tsyplakov (1915–1986) was born in the village of Burminka, now the Alexander Nevsky district of the Ryazan Oblast. He graduated from the Surikov Moscow State Art Institute. His teachers were Vasily Vasilyevich Pochitalov, Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar, Sergey Vasilyevich Gerasimov and Boris Vladimirovich Ioganson.
Later, Viktor Tsyplakov became a leading teacher and professor at this institute. He brought up several generations of painters, including Vyacheslav Nikolaevich Zabelin, Andrey Nikolaevich Makarov, Alexey Pavlovich Belykh, and Eduard Georgievich Bragovsky. Their works are also displayed at the Zavolzhsk Art Gallery.
Viktor Tsyplakov advised his students, “Surely, each of you should go and find your own themes, individual techniques, forms of expression, but remember: only that artist will find their worthy place in life who will be able to keep up with the times.”
The artist created several artistically and historically significant works: “Chapaev”, “Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya”, and “Sergey Yesenin”. Tsyplakov’s works are kept in the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, and the State Historical Museum.
He entered the history of Soviet art as a master of large thematic paintings, for instance, “A.M. Gorky on the Volga” (1945) and “V.I. Lenin with the Peasants” (1959). The canvas “V.I. Lenin in Smolny” (1947) became a textbook Stalin-era example of a ceremonial portrait of a historical figure and revolutionary. He was one of the few painters who was allowed to make sketches at the funeral of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin in 1953.
The latter period of Tsyplakov’s work is represented mainly by landscapes and portraits, a significant part of which are self-portraits. The landscape “Autumn” was painted at that time, in 1980.
In this work, lyrical
intonations are combined with integrity and breadth of perception. The artist’s
love of life is evident in the picture. It depicts autumn when it is especially
beautiful. There is a plethora of joyful, bright yellow colors all over the
canvas. Viktor Tsyplakov wrote,
