Veniamin Biryukov moved to Kaliningrad in 1946 and for sixty years he painted portraits, landscapes and genre paintings dedicated to the life of the city and its people. He strove to fill his works with the spirit of the time, the very sensation of life. Many of Biryukov’s pictures can now be used to study the atmosphere of the post-war Kaliningrad. In total, he created more than 200 artworks; most of them are now kept in museums and private collections.

Biryukov’s warm and bright, dynamic paintings were liked even by inexperienced viewers. The artist sought to lyrically interpret the topics on which he worked, whether it be images of Kaliningrad residents or views of the Baltic nature. His technique was close to impressionism, with its light, barely noticeable smears, lack of clear contours and dark colors. Biryukov preferred to work on the plots he saw in everyday life. He carefully studied the topic and paid attention to every smallest detail of the artwork.

The artist was especially interested in the image of a Soviet man, a man of labor who left his native land in order to create new history in Kaliningrad. These works of his were optimistic, like the works of another Soviet realistic impressionist Yuri Pimenov.

The painting exhibited at the Kaliningrad Museum depicts Frunze Street which got its new name in the 1960’s. Renaming of the old German streets in the Kaliningrad region started in 1946, shortly after the region’s being taken over by the USSR after the Second World War. During the same period, the city received a tram line, which Biryukov depicted in his canvas. He was fascinated by the urban culture of the postwar years, preserving the features characteristic of both the East Prussian and Soviet cities. The city depicted by him is replete with bright details.

Here, the artist has shown how modern, recently built high-rise buildings coexist with old German houses. At the same time, he was not interested in the post-war devastation, so the picture is light and cheerful, it is filled with sun and warmth, like most of his works of the 1970’s. Biryukov considered the process of rebuilding the city as the birth of a new history, hence his constant optimism.