Anatoly Morozov is one of the prominent representatives of Kurgan painters of the mid-to-late 20th century. The painter was born in 1938 and was one of the students at V. F. Ilyushin’s studio. He got a professional education at the Sverdlovsk Art College.
He is famous as a landscape painter, a portraitist, a professional in genre painting, and a muralist. Morozov became an author of mural paintings, mosaics and stained-glass panels created on the edge of the 1960s and the 1970s, which still decorate the public buildings of Kurgan.
As a painter Morozov was attracted to the portrait genre, especially the children’s portrait. He created distinctive and memorable portraits of his contemporaries. The period in Soviet art when the author started his creative activity was influenced by the Severe Style. The painter’s works also reflected the principles of this style, such as generalized character’s features, minimalist composition, monumental figure, laconism of palette.
The painting with a laconic title Fathers is one of such works. According to the painter’s memoirs the subject was taken from the real life. One day, when he was hurrying to his lectures at the Sverdlovsk Art College in the morning, he met two men taking their children to the kindergarten. Sanguine faces, town covered in snow, lively men’s conversation stuck in the young artist’s memory with the feeling of vivacity, cheerfulness, and simple everyday happiness. This moment was remembered by the artist so well that he laid it in the basis of his graduation project.
The painting is unusual with its combination of monumentalism present in the Severe Style and the lyrical content nonrelevant to it. The artist painted with wide paint brush without detailed elaboration of characters and landscape. The frontal figures of men are painted sweepingly, extensively, occupying the whole general space of the canvas.
Minimalistic palette of the painting based on a few colours nonetheless completed the painter’s task to show the colours and mood of the freezing morning. The only coloured accent standing out of the palette is a bright boy’s scarf.
He is famous as a landscape painter, a portraitist, a professional in genre painting, and a muralist. Morozov became an author of mural paintings, mosaics and stained-glass panels created on the edge of the 1960s and the 1970s, which still decorate the public buildings of Kurgan.
As a painter Morozov was attracted to the portrait genre, especially the children’s portrait. He created distinctive and memorable portraits of his contemporaries. The period in Soviet art when the author started his creative activity was influenced by the Severe Style. The painter’s works also reflected the principles of this style, such as generalized character’s features, minimalist composition, monumental figure, laconism of palette.
The painting with a laconic title Fathers is one of such works. According to the painter’s memoirs the subject was taken from the real life. One day, when he was hurrying to his lectures at the Sverdlovsk Art College in the morning, he met two men taking their children to the kindergarten. Sanguine faces, town covered in snow, lively men’s conversation stuck in the young artist’s memory with the feeling of vivacity, cheerfulness, and simple everyday happiness. This moment was remembered by the artist so well that he laid it in the basis of his graduation project.
The painting is unusual with its combination of monumentalism present in the Severe Style and the lyrical content nonrelevant to it. The artist painted with wide paint brush without detailed elaboration of characters and landscape. The frontal figures of men are painted sweepingly, extensively, occupying the whole general space of the canvas.
Minimalistic palette of the painting based on a few colours nonetheless completed the painter’s task to show the colours and mood of the freezing morning. The only coloured accent standing out of the palette is a bright boy’s scarf.
