Artist Yuri Khukhrov created the The Conquered Samotlor painting in 1980, after a trip to Western Siberia where he had done a series of sketches. He later created genre paintings dedicated to the life of oil workers on their basis.

Samotlor is Russia’s largest oil field, located near the lake of the same name in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous District. The name Samotlor means dead lake or bad water in the Khanty language. The Khanty believed that evil spirits lived in those places, so they tried to keep away from the lake

The Samotlor field was discovered in 1965. It was surrounded by impassable marshes, so it was necessary to create artificial islands for rig drilling. The cities of Megion and Nizhnevartovsk were constructed for oilmen near Samotlor with buildings erected on piles or sand fills.

The artist depicted oilmen during a respite in the Conquered Samotlor painting. Three shirtless men sit with their backs to the viewer, talking about something. Another one is sitting off on the side. There is a helmet for underground work next to him. We can see the lake surrounded by the oil wells in the background. The artist painted a better illuminated foreground and a full moon glowing in the twilight sky.

Yuri Khukhrov was born in 1932 in Leningrad (Now, St. Petersburg). His father was a serviceman. When the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45 broke out, the family was evacuated to Kyrgyzstan. Khukhrov returned to his native city only three years later, when the Soviet troops lifted the siege of Leningrad. The would-be painter started, in 1945, to study at the art studio of the Young Pioneers Centre, then he entered the Middle School of Art, and continued at the Repin Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. His teachers were famous Soviet artists: Boris Ioganson, Valery Pimenov, Vasily Sokolov and Leonid Khudyakov.

After graduation, the artist left for Bryansk, where his first one-man exhibition was held. Yuri Khukhrov returned to his native city in 1960, where he worked first as the chief artist with the Central Naval Museum, then as a painting teacher in various educational institutions of the city.