Soviet Paintings

Soviet paintings are those created in the period between the October Revolution in 1917 and 1990s. These decades saw a lot of art movements, ideologies, and ways of artistic expression, co-existing, interweaving and opposing each other.

Soviet paintings vary from being means of propaganda of the Soviet regime (Socialist realist paintings) to those opposing official art and those far from any ideological messages and concentrating on purely pictorial subjects—portraits, landscapes, and still lifes.

Some of the brightest examples of Soviet paintings are by Russian painter, graphic artist and sculptor Alexander Deyneka. His works “The Defence of Petrograd” (1928), and “The Battle of Sevastopol” (1942) are some of the most iconic Soviet paintings of the period.

 On the other side of the spectrum are paintings created during Soviet times, but with a distinct revolutionary feel. Artists who preferred to experiment with abstractionism rather than yielding to the realms of Socialist Realism, were never able to exhibit or sell their work and are called “non-conformists”, and sometimes are referred to as representatives of unofficial art" or "underground art. Deformed faces and bodies belonging to aliens rather than human beings is the signature style of Oleg Tselkov.