Yuri Ivanovich Pimenov was a landscape, genre and still life painter, theater and graphic artist, People’s Artist of the USSR. The painter was born in Moscow in 1903. He received his first drawing lessons from his father, an amateur artist and lawyer by profession. In 1920–1925, Pimenov studied at VKhUTEMAS with artists Vladimir Andreevich Favorsky and Sergey Vasilyevich Malyutin. Upon graduation, in 1925, Yuri Ivanovich became one of the founders and active participants of the Society of Easel Painters, which existed until 1928. In 1931, the artist joined the Izobrigada art group.

Pimenov worked in the theater, designed stage decorations for performances at the Theater of the Moscow Regional Council of Trade Unions, the Ermolova Studio Theater, the Theater of the Revolution, the Lenin’s Komsomol Theater, the Maly Theater, the Theater of the Soviet Army, the Moscow Pushkin Theater, and the Leningrad Pushkin Theater. As a production designer, he worked in films, for example on the film “Kuban Cossacks.” All in all, Yuri Pimenov had a lot to do with cinema: later he taught at VGIK.

In the early period of his work, the artist was influenced by German expressionism. At this time, Yuri Pimenov created realistic paintings using an innovative painting style that arose under the influence of the revolutionary atmosphere of those days. This was expressed in the special drama of his works such as “The War Invalids” (1926), “Heavy Industry Now!” (1927), “Soldiers Come Over to the Side of Revolution” (1932). In the 1950s and 1960s, Yuri Ivanovich began to create a series of works depicting a “renewed” country that did not know war. At that time, the artist often painted urban landscapes, the construction of new houses and happy young people.

The work “Journey” from the collection of the Voronezh Regional Art Museum perfectly reflects the spirit of the “Thaw.” The painting entered the museum’s collection in 1985 from the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR. The work belongs to the late period of the artist’s creative activity, which is characterized by a brighter, lighter style of painting, an updated form of impressionism and the desire to capture a beautiful moment.