The painting of Pyotr Ossovsky, one of the prominent representatives and founders of the Severe Style is in the collection of the Kurgan Regional Art Museum. The painter was born in 1925 and studied under the significant painter of the time Sergey Gerasimov. He played an important role in lives of the young painters and taught them to depict the real life in all its fullness, without the excessive decorativeness. Many of the future painters of the Severe Style came from the Gerasimov’s workshop.
Severe Style is a remarkable phenomenon in the Soviet art born by the Snowbreak of the 1960s. On the one hand, the plots of social realism still preserved their influence, but approach to the depiction changed significantly. The all-encompassing feeling of joyful Soviet reality and labor feats left, it was the time of craving for candidness without reference to ideological principles in art. The artists set a mission to show the usual people and their everyday life. This is why the very character of painting changed. Without any doubt, war time and its consequences made adjustments, and often the images bore the imprint of the tragic historical events.
Coming back to the painting “Rome. The Lonely One”, it’s impossible not to notice the main feature typical for the style of the epoch, when a wider, generalizing manner replaced the detailed image. The objects are united by the palette with its shades of white, black, and brown. The Russian theme took a special place in the artist’s legacy, however, many of his works were dedicated to the foreign countries. The motif depicted in the work was directed by nature and the painter’s live impressions from one of his trips. In spite of the fact that the painted had drawn the second figure as well, he gave the painting the title speaking for itself, which gives it a certain melancholic vibe. We see the reserved manner of the Severe Style, the strict composition. The mood is intensified with the dim, almost monochrome palette of the painting, and strict and weighted outlines. There’s some symbolism in the fact that the artist depicted a contemplating man under a statue of a saint.
Severe Style is a remarkable phenomenon in the Soviet art born by the Snowbreak of the 1960s. On the one hand, the plots of social realism still preserved their influence, but approach to the depiction changed significantly. The all-encompassing feeling of joyful Soviet reality and labor feats left, it was the time of craving for candidness without reference to ideological principles in art. The artists set a mission to show the usual people and their everyday life. This is why the very character of painting changed. Without any doubt, war time and its consequences made adjustments, and often the images bore the imprint of the tragic historical events.
Coming back to the painting “Rome. The Lonely One”, it’s impossible not to notice the main feature typical for the style of the epoch, when a wider, generalizing manner replaced the detailed image. The objects are united by the palette with its shades of white, black, and brown. The Russian theme took a special place in the artist’s legacy, however, many of his works were dedicated to the foreign countries. The motif depicted in the work was directed by nature and the painter’s live impressions from one of his trips. In spite of the fact that the painted had drawn the second figure as well, he gave the painting the title speaking for itself, which gives it a certain melancholic vibe. We see the reserved manner of the Severe Style, the strict composition. The mood is intensified with the dim, almost monochrome palette of the painting, and strict and weighted outlines. There’s some symbolism in the fact that the artist depicted a contemplating man under a statue of a saint.
