Satirical drawing of the Kukryniksy. Kukryniksy - Victory Artists

Creative team of Soviet graphic artists and painters, which included full members of the USSR Academy of Arts, People's Artists of the USSR (1958), Heroes of Socialist Labor Mikhail Kupriyanov (1903–1991), Porfiry Krylov (1902–1990) and Nikolai Sokolov (1903–2000) .

The pseudonym "Kukryniksy" is composed of the first syllables of the names of Kupriyanov and Krylov, as well as the first three letters of the name and the first letter of the name of Nikolai Sokolov. Artists have always worked together, and this was the phenomenon of their collective creativity. The most famous "Kukryniksy" brought numerous masterfully executed caricatures, cartoons, posters and book illustrations, created in a characteristic satirical style.

The joint work of the Kukryniksy began in their student years at the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops. Artists from different parts of the USSR came to Moscow VKHUTEMAS. Kupriyanov from Kazan, Krylov from Tula, Sokolov from Rybinsk. In 1922, Kupriyanov and Krylov met and began working together in the VKHUTEMAS wall newspaper as Kukry and Krykup. At this time, Sokolov, while still living in Rybinsk, signed Nix on his drawings. In 1924, he joined Kupriyanov and Krylov, and since then the three of them have worked as the Kukryniksy.

At the beginning of the creative path in the group there was a search for a new uniform style using the skill of each of the authors. Heroes were the first to fall under the pen of cartoonists literary works. Later, when the Kukryniksy became permanent contributors to the Pravda newspaper and the Krokodil magazine, they took up predominantly political caricature.

An important role in the patriotic education of Soviet people was played by caricatures, posters and “TASS Windows” created by the Kukryniksy during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945, combining evil satire and heroism in symbolically generalized images (“We will mercilessly defeat and destroy the enemy!”, 1941) . The post-war works of the Kukryniksy, which denounce warmongers, imperialists, enemies of peace and socialism, also have significant political power. For political cartoons and posters, the Kukryniksy were awarded the State Prize of the USSR (1942) and the Lenin Prize (1965).

The works of the Kukryniksy are in almost all major museum collections in Russia; State Tretyakov Gallery, Russian state library, Rybinsk and Yaroslavl State Historical and Architectural Art Museum-Reserves, Tula Museum of Fine Arts, private collections in Russia and abroad.

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PUBLISHING HOUSE SOVIET ARTIST

KUKRYNIKS

MIKHAIL VASILIEVICH KUPRIANOV
PORFIRY NIKITICH KRYLOV
NIKOLAY ALEKSANDROVICH SOKOLOV

It happens like this: the sources of a large river do not give an idea of ​​its wide overflow in the future. At its sources are bright, icy springs, cheerful streams, rivulets, then forming a powerful stream, which overcomes rapids along the way, enriches itself with lakes, and, finally, a river paves its way, striving its waters to the expanses of the seas.
This image involuntarily arises when you remember the beginning of the creative path of the artists M. V. Kupriyanov, P. N. Krylov, N. A. Sokolov. creative path they originate in workers' studios, in wall newspapers, in amateur circles in provincial cities.
Almost the same age (Kupriyanov and Sokolov were born in 1903, Krylov in 1902), they all studied at school before the revolution, Kupriyanov in Tetyushi, near Kazan, Krylov in Tula, Sokolov in Moscow, and then in Rybinsk. Living in different places, all three cherished the dream of studying "as an artist."
The Great October Socialist Revolution opened the doors of educational institutions to the children of working people, and they were able to develop their natural talents. Young men Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov acquired the rudiments of artistic knowledge in local studios. They participated in the design of festive demonstrations, amateur performances, drew posters, eagerly studied nature, sketching their impressions. In the early 1920s they met within the walls of the art institute, having some training and complete conviction that a deep study of nature, the artist's fidelity to life are the basic principles of art.
In a brief essay, it is not possible to cover in sufficient detail the academic years and the early work of the artists who entered the great life art in the late 1920s - early 1930s. However, it must be borne in mind that in the life of the Kukryniksy, the early period of their creative formation was especially important, in many ways even decisive.
While still on the student bench, Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov united in a team, which predetermined their fate in the future.
The team made history Soviet art under the "collective" surname Kukryniksy. In the 1920s, artists began signing their collective caricatures with this pseudonym.
Kupriyanov gave "KU", Krylov added "KRY", and Nikolai Sokolov concluded "NIKS". The letter "Y" was added to them by the editors. So, with their characteristic humor, the artists tell about the origin of their surname, which at first intrigued the reader.
Opening a fresh issue of a newspaper or magazine, readers of the 1920s and 1930s, with greater and greater interest, looked for satirical drawings and cartoons of the Kukryniksy, always witty, sometimes angry and sharp, sometimes warmed by humor and sly mockery, but always aptly hitting the target. . Expanding their horizons and the arena of action, improving their skills, the Kukryniksy are now in the battle ranks of the largest masters of political satire.
By the 1920s, the beginning of the illustrative activity of the Kukryniksy team dates back, a little later they took up painting. Three types of fine arts - political caricature, illustration, painting - currently determine the role, significance and large proportion of popular artists Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov and their "fourth brother" - Kukryniksy, to whom all three give their best achievements.
Nationality, party spirit - the fundamental qualities of the Kukryniksy team - were formed during the period of a full-scale offensive of socialism along the entire front, when the people carried out the first five-year plan, and the country, led by the great Communist Party, was on the eve of transformation from an agrarian country into an industrial country. Having carried out the urgent political task of defending the socialist fatherland, the Party launched the colossal work of building a socialist society and socialist culture.
The Great October Socialist Revolution, the victories on the fronts of the civil war, the labor feats of the people showed in full growth the selfless heroism of the working class, the Soviet man, the inexhaustible creative energy of the masses of the people, led by the Communist Party.
Art solved problems of unprecedented scope and significance, reflecting the heroic struggle of the people, the spiritual beauty of a man of free labor. Art, saturated with life-giving Soviet patriotism, played a huge role in the struggle against the external and internal enemies of the young Soviet Republic. A new creative method was born in the process of studying, comprehending the new reality by artists, in the process of their direct participation in the construction of Soviet society. Young artists could and did rely on the advanced phenomena of Soviet culture, which by that time had considerable achievements.
The Higher Art School during the academic years of the Kukryniksy experienced an acute crisis, growing pains, there was a continuous struggle between advanced art and art understanding with the heavy legacy of the pre-revolutionary crisis of bourgeois culture, which was expressed in the dominance of formalistic attitudes in teaching methods.
Creative friendship Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov was born in Art Institute, which was abbreviated as Vkhutemas (Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops). The young artists became friends and worked together, drawing sharp caricatures for the famous for the whole Vkhutemas "Arapotdel" wall institute newspaper. This department of humor "pulled", regardless of the faces, the formalists and cosmopolitans who stood at the helm of the board of the institute, burned out the backward moods among the students with the fire of ridicule. And the amateur theater "Petrushka", performing at student evenings with the most active participation of the Kukryniksy, like the "Arapotdel", refreshed the atmosphere, beat on formalism and naturalism, on the most harmful scholastic curricula, theoretical gibberish, implanted by the reactionary part of the professors and students.
All these and similar satirical amateur performances, organized by advanced students, helped the Kukryniksy to hone the pen of caricaturists, caricaturists of a pronounced socio-political nature. Young satirists were noticed by the Komsomol and party press. A collectively executed caricature, placed in 1925 in the magazine "Komsomolia", dates from the "official" birth of the Kukryniksy triumvirate, so to speak, its "legitimization" by the general public.
Together with their comrades at the institute, the Kukryniksy were indispensable designers of student columns at demonstrations in honor of the October Revolution and May Day, drew posters for the Red Army clubs, made sketches at workers' meetings, and breathed the heroic atmosphere of Soviet reality in the second half of the 1920s.
Soon, the Kukryniksy began to illustrate mass books, the authors of which were often their peers - young writers. Under these, sometimes rather weak in skill, but still expressive illustrations (mostly satirical), the reader recognized the “ruffy” signature of Kukryniksy, already familiar to him.
The poet A. A. Zharov tells about the early work of the Kukryniksy in an interesting way: “Our acquaintance,” he says, “began in 1925. I was the executive editor of the Moscow literary magazine "Komsomolia"
Three poorly dressed young men once entered my editorial room (on Neglinnaya Street) and declared:
- We are artists That is, we are students of Vkhutemas. Is there any work in the magazine?
- Our literary magazine, without pictures, - I said, - therefore, there will be no work for you, besides, there are a lot of three of you
- And we draw together and we seem to be one.
- But you sign with three names?
- No, one last name: Kukryniksy!
- What do you know how to do?
- We know how to draw cartoons.
- Well, try to draw a cartoon on these comrades, - I pointed to the poets who were sitting next to me.
Without saying a word, the guys set to work. At first I drew one. Then another silently took the drawing and added his strokes to it, then, the third one acted And so the drawing went around in a circle before our eyes.
A fair number of spectators gathered at the door of the room. We all looked with curiosity at this unprecedented process of collective creativity. And together, enthusiastically applauded the result of this process: the caricature was magnificent. We published it in the Komsomoliya magazine, where we had to start a section called “Friendly Caricatures” especially for young artists, about whom Bezymensky and I are proud to say: our discovery! - (From the unpublished memoirs of A. A. Zharov.)
The connection of the Kukryniksy with literature and writers deepened and took on various forms. A very peculiar and characteristic for the Kukryniksy was the artistic life pictorial criticism of the works of contemporary writers (as well as artists). Caricatures and cartoons on literary themes involved young artists in writers' circles, in literary magazines and for a long time consolidated the connection between the “many-headed Kukryniksy” and writers.
Having linked their fate with the Komsomol and party press, with the workers' press (the Kukryniksy actively worked in those years in the journal Workers' and Peasants' Correspondent), with Soviet literature, the artists answered their spiritual need for publicists in a wide public platform and predetermined some essential features of their work. further.
Kupriyanov and Sokolov graduated from the graphic department, Krylov graduated from the painting department. As it turned out in the course of their collective activity, this circumstance not only did not prevent unity, but, on the contrary, cemented it. All three complemented one another, and then each of the three artists mastered the specialties needed by the team. On the principle of creative equality, this triple alliance of friends and craftsmen was strengthened, each of whom began to give all his talent, all his skill “into a common cauldron”.
The creative community of the Kukryniksy with writers is one of most interesting phenomena Soviet art. In itself, it testifies to the synthetic nature of our artistic culture. Speaking on the public arena in the difficult fighting years of the formation of socialist society, when the role of agitation and propaganda acquired exceptional importance, literature and fine arts, united, reinforced each other in the battle formation.
Already at the end of the 1920s, the drawings of the Kukryniksy can be found in almost all illustrated magazines in Moscow, the artists became regulars in literary magazines in the department of humor. Speaking in collaboration with the masters of literary parodies - Arkhangelsky, Bezymensky, Shvetsov and a number of others, the Kukryniksy not only illustrated the text, they created their own "isoparodies", in which they eloquently and sharply criticized, parodied writers, artists and their work, achieving such similarity, such fidelity of the image that even now their best caricatures, "isoparodies" retain all their significance.
The Kukryniksy exposed the biases of individual writers towards philistinism, the abstruse poetry and painting of the formalists, the aestheticism and cosmopolitanism of other critics, the naturalistic elements of the work of artists, etc. The confusion and enemies of proletarian literature were hit hard. The satire and caricature of the Kukryniksy acquired the features of a truly military weapon, was part of a large and serious political struggle to strengthen literature and art of a new type, vitally connected with socialist construction.
We must do justice to the young artists, they chose the targets of their critical arrows almost unmistakably, in general, correctly orienting themselves in the difficult situation of the literary struggle at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. They also had breakdowns, when they involuntarily succumbed to the groupism that was planted in the editorial offices. So, for example, working together with a number of writers in the same ranks, in their satirical drawings addressed to them, they often overstepped the boundaries of a friendly caricature. But basically the cleansing work of the satirists and parodists Kukryniksy was highly appreciated by the public.
In the very nature of the talent, the creative nature of the members of the Kukryniksy team, there were features that were strengthened in social work, in a student hostel, which allowed them to easily create "in public", to unite in creative communities with satirical poets. Mutual attraction of artists and writers is also not accidental. People united for creative work who shared certain creative attitudes, similar in the type of weapons and in the goals of the struggle they waged on the front of art.
There is no doubt that V.V. creative youth. For the first time, the Kukryniksy saw and heard Mayakovsky, being students of the Vkhutemas, where the poet often visited and spoke. Young artists loved the poet-tribune, the innovator in Mayakovsky, they saw in him the living embodiment of their thoughts and dreams of a new type of art, addressed to millions.
Mayakovsky's work in "Windows of Satire Growth" was a school for the whole galaxy of cartoonists, distinguished by political determination, nationality, Bolshevik passion. Mayakovsky attracted the Kukryniksy with the journalistic pathos of creativity, the deep vitality and partisanship of his art.
Mayakovsky himself noticed young cartoonists who more and more resolutely entered into battle with the enemies of the Soviet Republic, with the bourgeoisie, stood up for a new socialist art. In 1928, Mayakovsky invited the Kukryniksy to take part in the stage design of his "enchanting comedy" The Bedbug. The comedy attacked the philistines, degenerates, NEPmen, exposed the cruelty and inertness of a property-owning way of life, hostile to socialist society.
In 1929, the year Kupriyanov and Sokolov graduated from a higher educational institution (Krylov graduated earlier), the Kukryniksy completed an extremely sharp series of satirical watercolor sketches for The Bedbug. It was far from the only, but their brightest work for the stage. In contrast to the meager formalistic scenery of Rodchenko (who designed part of the performance), the Kukryniksy created a “type” and costumes in which they vividly and realistically embodied both the theme of Mayakovsky and the features of his dramaturgy. Mayakovsky's dramaturgy demanded satire at the top of his voice, without semitones, without compromises, she boldly operated with hyperbole as a method of typification.
"Weighty and visible" the artists recreated the images of the comedy. The method of sharply sharpening the features of the characters, adopted by the Kukryniksy, was based on a lively, realistic perception of reality, the characteristic features of everyday life. Types and costumes were mainly looked out for at the then-existing Sukharevka, a crowded market, where the capitalist rabble was still swarming, merchants, speculators labored, and where, for this reason, comedy designers made sketches.
Feeling the nature of the Mayakovsky theater perfectly, the Kukryniksy willingly used bright, open color, expressive lapidary pattern. The fishmonger in the sketch of the Kukryniksy (as it was embodied on the stage) has the purple nose of a bitter drunkard, a fiery red mustache, a red scarf; the red-cheeked apple vendor is dressed in a plaid red skirt. The costumes of Prisypkin, Rosalia Pavlovna and other characters are allowed by the Kukryniksy as the brightest satirical characteristics of the characters.
Portrait make-up served the same purpose of revealing the essence of all this frenzied philistinism. The most characteristic was the make-up for the artist Igor Ilyinsky, who played the main role of Prisypkin. The make-up was supposed to turn the sweet, good-natured physiognomy of a young talented comedy artist, a favorite of the public, into the rude muzzle of a former party member, a former worker, and now a “reborn” and fiance of Elsevira Renaissance.
Turning to theatrical painting, the Kukryniksy were based on the same principles that they developed in graphics. The satirical genre in all its forms had by that time become their main specialty. The satirical genre corresponded to the essence of the talent of each member of the team.
Not at all intending to become professionals in the field of theatrical painting, the Kukryniksy repeatedly turned to the stage. In the early 30s. they designed the play by A. Zharov "The First Candidate", "The Alarm" by F. Knorre and the performance of the Satire Theater "The City of Fools" based on Saltykov-Shchedrin.
So in theatrical activity, which, unfortunately, remained an episode in the creative biography of the Kukryniksy, the fundamental properties of the team manifested themselves: the fighting temperament of Soviet publicists, a bright talent in the field of satire.
In the future, the artists did not return to the theater, although the nature of their talents contains features of theatricality. These features are reflected in their director's ability to build a mise-en-scene (in a painting, in an illustration), to put an acute dramatic conflict at the basis of the picture, in the "sense of the audience" characteristic of the Kukryniksy.
In 1931, an event took place in the life of the Kukryniksy, which played a crucial role in their art, had a fruitful impact on their creative growth. The Kukryniksy met with Alexei Maksimovich Gorky. The great writer became interested in a team of talented satirists, whose art was distinguished by political purposefulness, focused on the broad masses of the people and concealed the richest opportunities for development.
Conversations with Gorky helped the artists expand the range of topics, enter the arena of international politics as caricaturists, and develop their talents to the full extent. The meeting with Gorky had another important consequence for the Kukryniksy: the artists also found themselves as illustrators of the classics, creating, with the blessing of the writer, drawings for his novel. Subsequently, they entered the ranks of the largest Soviet illustrators and strengthened the front of realist book masters with their art.
In 1932, at the initiative of Gorky, the first exhibition of the works of the Kukryniksy was organized in the writers' club. This exhibition - a major milestone in the life of young artists - summed up the "prehistory" of their work.
Already then, at the exhibition of 1932, the political orientation of creativity characteristic of the collective, the versatility of interests and activities, manifested itself. Along with works of graphics made in various genres (a large series of everyday cartoons "Old Moscow", etc.), the Kukryniksy showed their first paintings on the themes of the Civil War and sketches of theatrical productions.
In his article for the exhibition catalogue, Gorky praised the collective's creative activity as a bright and purely modern phenomenon of Soviet artistic culture. As for their first collective experiments in easel painting, Gorky did not hide their failures from the artists. He said, as the Kukryniksy recall: “It didn’t work out for you, this is not yet your area.” (I emphasized - N. S.).
And indeed, the first collective paintings of the Kukryniksy: "The Entry of the Whites", "Messengers of the Interventionists", "Nationalization of the Factory", "The Funeral of the Commissar" and others, shown in 1932 at the exhibition, were only an application for a full-fledged easel painting. Artists in those years did without sketches from nature, the color and composition of their early works were distinguished by conventional features. However, in damp sketches, very weak in drawing, then outstanding painters were already guessed.
Having received a baptism of fire in the Soviet and party press, the Kukryniksy set themselves politically significant tasks in painting. They sought to capture the struggle Soviet people with the interventionists, the White Guard. They branded the enemies of the young Soviet Republic, resorting to the methods of satire.
That is why the Kukryniksy became innovators, paved new paths in art, because they boldly invade life, fighting for the new, the advanced, not in words, but in deeds. They have become innovators because they place their art at all stages of the life of the country at the service of the socialist Motherland, the Communist Party.
The exhibition of the Kukryniksy was subjected, without exaggeration, to a passionate discussion of the public in the light of the historic decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of April 23, 1932. This discussion, in which writers, poets, artists took part, supported by many reviews of popular criticism (the exhibition was then postponed V central park culture and recreation. Gorky), helped the Kukryniksy to see their fundamental shortcomings.
A group of Ural workers wrote in a guest book about the solo exhibition of young artists: “Of course, one cannot but point out that there are still significant gaps in the works of the Kukryniksy, haste, too incomplete processing, and so on. But we remember that they are their own, artists born of the revolution. By learning and improving, they will achieve mastery, high artistry, which we wish them from the bottom of our hearts.”
Criticism noted the well-known narrowness of the Kukryniksy themes, “incomplete processing”, that is, the amorphousness, the intricacy of some of their drawings of that time, the deliberate sketchiness of the form. The instructions received by the artists from Gorky (who quite rightly believed that they should expand their political horizons and the scope of subjects), from subsequent comradely criticism, from the mass audience helped the Kukryniksy in their further work.
The period from 1931 to 1934 is rich in decisive events in the history of the Soviet state, in the history of Soviet artistic culture. In the summer of 1930 at the XVI Congress. Party I. V. Stalin said: “We are on the eve of transformation from an agrarian country into an industrial country,” and three and a half years later, the congress of winners stated that “the USSR has changed radically during this period, throwing off the guise of backwardness and the Middle Ages. From an agrarian country it became an industrial country. The capitalist encirclement, seeking to weaken the might of the fatherland of the working people, intensifies its subversive activities. But all the warmongers, the enemies of the working class, are now confronted by the mighty fortress of the country of victorious socialism.
In January 1930, Gorky received a letter from I. V. Stalin, which clearly illuminated the party point of view on criticism and self-criticism - an effective, powerful weapon in the movement of our Soviet society forward. In his subsequent speeches, in particular, in his conversations with the Kukryniksy, Gorky was guided by these party guidelines.
The main conclusion that the Kukryniksy could draw for themselves from a conversation with Gorky was that satire, properly pointed against the enemies of the people, against everything that hinders the development of society forward along the path to communism, is a lofty and necessary genre, that it is a powerful weapon must be directed both against the backward people who are hindering the growth of the country, and against the forces of world reaction.
From the beginning of the 1930s Gorky's books have become reference books for many artists. The Kukryniksy are pioneers in illustrating Gorky's works. Following their first experience (drawings for Gorky's novel The Life of Klim Samgin), illustrations by D. Shmarinov for The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin, S. Gerasimov for The Artamonov Case, then the works of B. Ioganson, B. Dekhterev and others.
The more mature the Kukryniksy became, the more deeply they mastered the lessons of Gorky. It was necessary to develop a simple and strong realistic pictorial language to express the richest material and ideological content of life, which were contained in the immortal creations of the writer.
The illustrations for "The Life of Klim Samgin" vividly and clearly reflected both the advantages and disadvantages of the Kukryniksy's skill, which they had in the early 1930s. The image of Klim Samgin himself - characteristic, expressive - and to this day influences subsequent illustrators of Gorky, who, however, rarely turn to this novel, which is extremely difficult for plastic embodiment.
Pointing out many serious shortcomings in the illustrations of the Kukryniksy, Gorky emphasized the inappropriateness of caricature methods in illustrating a non-satirical novel.

The 1930s were a period of high growth in Soviet fine arts, drawing themes and inspiration from the depths of socialist reality. Suffice it to recall the paintings of Grekov, the painting "Interrogation of the Communists" by Ioganson, the largest exhibitions of the era.
The “deep raid” of the Kukryniksy in life, which was of great importance for the development of their work, was their trips around the country on the instructions of the editors of Pravda. These trips were made by the team during 1933-1934. The main object where the Kukryniksy were sent along with a large brigade of railway workers was transport. Transport in those years was a bottleneck in the national economic life of the country. Its reconstruction was such an urgent matter that a special paragraph was devoted to this issue in the political report of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks to the 16th Party Congress. The Moscow-Donbass highway, where the Kukryniksy were sent by the editors, became the first object in a large program for the radical reconstruction of railway transport, outlined by the XVII Party Conference.
The activities of the Kukryniksy in transport are one of many in those years and still outstanding examples of the participation of fine arts in a heated battle between the new and the old, the advanced with the lagging behind in production, in everyday life, in the minds of people. The artists, called to participate in a major party task of great national importance, had to lead everyday satire along the high road of art.
Laughter is “a very powerful weapon, for nothing so discourages vice as the consciousness that it has been guessed and that laughter has already been heard about it,” said Saltykov-Shchedrin. The cartoons of the Kukryniksy, exposing swindlers, slobs, and even direct enemies of the Soviet regime, who made their way onto transport for sabotage purposes, can serve as an excellent illustration of this position of the great satirist.
In a series of correspondence from worker correspondents and caricatures of the Kukryniksy, the state of transport was reflected, the perpetrators of evil were ridiculed - negligent stationmasters and heads of large railway junctions, reckless machinists who violated charters, egregious cases of careless storage of goods, poor treatment of locomotives and wagons in the depot, and many other deficiencies that required immediate eradication.
The first caricature of the Kukryniksy on a transport theme appeared in Pravda on September 22, 1933, on the fourth day after the start of the raid. She featured prominently in the center of the second strip. With a sharp, very expressive drawing, with the observance of portrait resemblance, the perpetrators of the violation of discipline at one of the stations of the Kharkov railway junction were exposed.
The cartoons were of a genre nature, based on personal, carefully verified observations, and always had an exact address. Witty, funny, but rather sharp cartoons had the widest response among the masses, were discussed by collectives of workers and employees, made it possible for party organizations and the railway service to take decisive measures to improve the entire railway economy. Placed in Pravda, the cartoons acquired a nationwide sound.
The successful raid on transport was followed by business trips by the Kukryniksy to waterways, to lagging factories, to small towns, to an agricultural commune, etc.
The principles of portraiture and narrative plot were pursued by the artists quite consciously and consistently. At the heart of their caricatures, sketches from nature are always felt, the artists tried not to sin against the truth in anything.
In caricatures on transport topics, the Kukryniksy willingly used their favorite genre - caricature. Perfectly capturing the similarities, the artists were able to sharpen the features of nature with great humor and so boldly generalize the typical shortcomings that caricatures and caricatures acquired an effective social significance.
The Kukryniksy cartoons were released in an album under the eloquent title "Hot Wash". Demyan Bedny met with poems a series of caricatures of the Kukryniksy on transport topics. For their part, the Kukryniksy illustrated the satirical works of the proletarian poet, thereby securing a new creative community of fine arts and literature.
The names of Gorky, Mayakovsky, D. Bedny, and in terms of fine art - a galaxy of the best Soviet caricaturists, masters of the satirical poster determined a new stage in the development of Russian democratic satire. The features of this stage are due to the fact that Soviet satire is directly related to the struggle of the people, the party for the construction of a communist society. This determined the content of Soviet satire and its democratic form, designed for the perception of the broadest masses and the exceptionally important place that it was given in the system of artistic culture and social life of the country.
From their business trips on the instructions of Pravda, the Kukryniksy returned enriched with life and artistic experience, brought many sketches, sketches, and observations. Being born newspapermen, possessing by that time the necessary skill and “sense of efficiency”, the Kukryniksy did not leave thoughts about large forms either.
art, about pictures in which they could achieve broader and deeper generalizations of their life experience. The dream of a painting, of large impressive forms of art, of recreating a positive image in painting and graphics, satirists and "small-formists" Kukryniksy cherished from the first steps of their independent artistic activity. This is one of the most important features of the Kukryniksy team, which is by no means obligatory for caricaturists, however, it is characteristic of Soviet satirists who are well aware of the goal, that positive ideal, in the name of which they are fighting with their thunderous weapon of satire.
In 1933, Soviet artists were preparing for a large all-Union exhibition: "XV Years of the Red Army and the Navy." It was supposed to reflect the rapid growth of the USSR, which under the leadership of the Communist Party turned from an agrarian country into an industrial country, the victory of socialism in all areas of the national economy and culture, the power of the Red Army, which defeated the interventionists and White Guards. The exhibition summed up the intense struggle for realistic art.
Having begun their creative life in easel painting with works on the themes of the civil war, which everyone still remembered, the Kukryniksy again turned to this harsh era, which decided the fate of the young Soviet republic. For this large, politically important exhibition, the artists created a series of satirical portraits of White Guard generals beaten by the Red Army.
Depicting Wrangel, Denikin, Kolchak, Yudenich and other White Guard "leaders" in a satirically pointed and catchy artistic manner, the artists reflected the thoughts and feelings of the people, who in a hard and right battle destroyed the worst enemies of the Republic, the Communist Party.
A dark, gloomy silhouette looms Kolchak against the backdrop of a snowy field and the corpses of the people he executed. In the foreground, as if paving the way for the admiral, bayonets stick out, the bayonets of the invaders. Also using the expressiveness of the silhouette, they depict Kukryniksy and Wrangel. In his eyes, anger and doom. A pitiful renegade, a stranger on Russian soil, the baron is like a rat in a trap. He sits, staring blankly at one point. Ridiculous and terrible Yudenich, disgusting Makhno.
These satirical portraits are not conditional masks, but realistic satire, using the individual features of well-known characters.
The appearance of these works by the Kukryniksy marked the birth of a new variety portrait genre- a compositional satirical portrait that attracted the attention of a wide audience with its political sharpness, folk art speech, bright, witty, biting and expressive.
Having achieved individual expressiveness of faces, the artists also exposed the typical properties of the White Guard - the furious anger of the fierce enemies of the people, their connection with foreign bayonets - and showed their doom. The pathos of the series is in the public ridicule of evil, in angry scourging laughter.
Amateur theatrical groups that performed in workers' clubs and squares on holidays picked up this scourging laughter of the Kukryniksy, and the satirical images created by artists for exhibition halls went for a walk around the country, recreated by actors and cartoonists, causing hatred and annihilating, contemptuous laughter from a wide audience. . The White Guard generals, beaten by the Red Army on all fronts of the civil war, put on display, were again and again subjected to ridicule.
The works of young painters, which immediately gained popularity, evoked a poetic response from Demyan Bedny. The poet accompanied the satirical portraits of the “Kukryniksov’s” generals with sharp ditty verses, which further strengthened the intelligibility of these peculiar creatures of the Kukryniksy’s brush: “Borka Annenkov, a bandit, looks twisted like a dog,” or “General Yudenich, brave, was also a bloody executioner, broke through to Leningrad so that make a parade there"
“In your face, poetry,” M. I. Kalinin wrote to Demyan Bedny, “perhaps for the first time in history so vividly connected its destinies with the destinies of humanity fighting for its liberation, and from creativity for the few chosen ones it became creativity for the masses.” In these words, addressed to the popular Soviet satirist, the most important features, features and meaning of the existence of Soviet satire in the broad sense of the word are formulated. At the 19th Party Congress, we again heard a reminder of the great role of satire, with the help of which everything negative, rotten, everything that hinders progress is burned out of life.
The First Congress of Soviet Writers, which opened in Moscow in August 1934, played a huge role in the development of Soviet artistic culture. The Congress of Writers with renewed vigor drew the attention of literary and artistic figures to the problems of craftsmanship and highlighted the most important questions of socialist realism. As one of the urgent tasks, the party set before the writers and artists the task of critical development of the heritage.
The teachings of V. I. Lenin about the need to master the best achievements in the field of culture penetrated deeper and deeper into the consciousness of the artistic intelligentsia. The sharp criticism of formalism and naturalism, deployed on the pages of the party press of the 1930s and 1940s, illuminated the path for artists to the heights of socialist art.
In the 1930s the most important source of skill and inspiration opened before the Kukryniksy in all its beauty and grandeur: young artists became regulars at the Tretyakov Gallery and collectors of works of Russian classics, drawing from this treasury valuable lessons skill. If in their student years and at the first time of their independent work, the Kukryniksy limited their study of the heritage mainly to the art of Daumier, Goya, then from the beginning of the 1930s, that is, from the moment of systematic work on painting, they study Russian masters of the 19th century in depth and thoughtfully .
A series of satirical portraits by the Kukryniksy “The Face of the Enemy” occupies an intermediate position between poster and easel painting. Artists painted with oil on canvas, trying to convey plastic volume and depth of space. And, at the same time, they used the method of posters and caricatures in the interpretation of form, conventionality in the combination of planar and volumetric elements. Of course, the lack of preliminary work on nature also made itself felt - a necessary prerequisite for full-fledged realistic painting.
The very goal that the artists were striving for became clearer gradually, as the Kukryniksy team, like all progressive painters, realized that in solving the enormous tasks that the country, the party had set for them, the compositional picture with well-defined characters and a plot twist.
easel painting, literally words, Kukryniksy mastered, working on the triptych "Old Masters" and the painting "Morning of an Officer of the Tsarist Army". Three paintings that make up the "Old Masters" series appeared before the viewer for the first time at the "Industry of Socialism" exhibition,
opened in the historic days of the XVIII Congress of the Communist Party.
The exhibition has been in preparation for a long time. Soviet artists collected material for their works where work was in full swing, new buildings were erected, where a new man, a new socialist attitude to work, was forged in the battles for the socialist industry.
The spectators, who poured into the spacious halls of the exhibition "Industry of Socialism" in a living stream, perceived it with good reason as a celebration of Soviet culture. The triptych of the Kukryniksy "Old Masters" was a very noticeable phenomenon of the exhibition. It was exhibited in the "Pages of the Past" department, where one of the most remarkable works of socialist realism, "At the Old Ural Plant" by B. Ioganson, attracted attention.
The Kukryniksy simply and expressively told in their new work about the enemies of the working class, about forced labor in tsarist Russia, which ruined the working man, plundered his energy, threatened life itself. The ability to find a topic that would touch the deep interests of the people, to simply and expressively reveal an acute social conflict, to notice the maturation of the new in the burning reality - these are the characteristic features of the Kukryniksy.
The main characters of all three films are manufacturers, contractors, police officers and other old "masters". However, characteristic artistic thinking Kukryniksov lies in the fact that, depicting the "masters", the artists let the viewer feel the historical force that was preparing retribution against capitalist society.
At the heart of the triptych is an acute social conflict. The first picture - "Prayer at the laying of the factory" - is, as it were, the beginning of a future drama. Excellent by nature, the pop is written in a lilac-golden riza. The hosts are depicted with excessive exaggeration, behind these puffed up arrogance "images", somewhat conditional, one does not feel the conversations of artists with nature.
The second picture - "Catastrophe at the mine" is much sharper, more effective in composition. A primitive mine is depicted. In the foreground - the director, apparently a foreigner, bailiff, official. They draw up a protocol on the death of the workers, whose corpses are spread out on the ground. The first-plan figures are painted by nature. For a long time the artists struggled to paint the landscape and the sky as expressively as possible, to make them consonant with the dramatic idea of ​​the picture in terms of color and character of the image.
The conflict is resolved in the third picture "The Flight of the Manufacturer". This is the third act of the drama. There, behind the broken window, the workers are worried. The manufacturer is preparing to escape There are no images of workers in the picture, but everything that is done before the eyes of the viewer is due precisely to what is happening outside the picture and what the broken glass hints at, the frightened clerk at the window. The successfully found type, well-painted interior with a suite of rooms attracts attention.
The triptych "Old Masters" (1936 - 1937) - the beginning of a new period in the painting of the Kukryniksy. There has been a fundamental change in the way they work. Now they could not imagine working on a painting without nature, creating a composition without a long “prehistory”. Only a part of the sketches and sketches have survived to this day, but even they give an idea of ​​the artists' creative searches, of their deep internal restructuring.
The whole process of working on the "Old Masters" series - from the first sketches to the end - was carried out collectively. There were no differences in the worldview, in understanding the tasks of art, in the methodology of work between the artists. As for the private issues of skill, each of the three artists was ready to submit to a two-vote majority.
Each of the three artists independently thought over and made a preliminary sketch of the composition. Then all three discussed these sketches, taking one of the three options as a basis, they strengthened it with the best that they generally recognized contained in each of the other two.
All three were looking for sitters. While working on the triptych, the artists fully experienced both the joy of discoveries, when they managed to find a characteristic type, and the difficulties when the nature “stumbled”, not wanting to portray a priest or a policeman. However, the artists themselves often replaced the sitters; working together, they learned to pose for each other, while discovering the theatrical vein inherent in all km.
Nature was written together, arranged in such a way as to cover it comprehensively; then the most successful solutions were chosen from the entire material.
All parts of the triptych - "Prayer at the laying of the factory", "Catastrophe at the mine", "Flight of the manufacturer" - represent three links in the development of the theme, although the characters change. All three paintings are successive stages in mastering the realistic method in painting by artists.
If at the beginning of the work the artists still timidly used nature, then the last, best part is entirely painted from nature. Since then, artists have never painted a picture "on their own", without nature. In the original sketch for The Factory Owner's Flight, the back wall of the room is blank; in subsequent sketches and in the picture itself, a suite of rooms is deployed, beautifully, densely painted. The picture won significantly: the flatness disappeared, the feeling of vitality intensified.
AND professional criticism, and the working audience highly appreciated the pictures of "The Old Masters", especially the last two parts. “Very interesting,” wrote B. Ioganson, “the artists Kukryniksy acted as painters. In three films (the "Old Masters" series) dedicated to the pre-revolutionary life of workers, the Kukryniksy remained true to their satirical vocation, but avoided the hyperbolism characteristic of caricaturists. They achieved great expressiveness of the social type, reached a high
picturesque quality.
At present, when Soviet painting has come a long way in development and the demands placed on artists have increased incomparably, the shortcomings of these paintings by the Kukryniksy of 1936-1937 are much more obvious. Artists at one time saw them themselves, but so far they could not overcome them. Serious gaps in their education, they made up for hard study "on the go." They worked tirelessly, studied nature, drew, wrote sketches.
Only one year separates the next picture of the Kukryniksy “Morning of an Officer of the Tsarist Army” from the triptych “Old Masters”. During this year, the skill of artists has noticeably strengthened, they have achieved much greater clarity in understanding the tasks and features of the easel painting.
The composition "Morning of an Officer" entirely grows out of an ideological plan - to reveal a social conflict by a dramatic opposition of two hostile forces. They are embodied in concrete images of a batman and officers of the tsarist army. This time both parties are present on stage.
In the foreground, the artists showed a young lad, a batman, picking up pieces of broken dishes after a night of drinking of officers. He frowns at his master, yawning, sleepless after a sleepless night, depicted in the right corner of the picture. At the back of the room, the viewer sees another officer who fell asleep at the table.
However, attention is drawn not to the life of the officers of the tsarist army with its established, stable features, but to those elements of the new, progressive, which is maturing in the public life of pre-revolutionary Russia and will inevitably triumph. In the facial expression of the blond boy - hatred for the gentlemen, whose idle and dissolute life he sees and condemns.
The batman from "The Officer's Morning" is the first brightly and distinctly depicted positive character in the painting of the Kukryniksy. He is one of those simple people who are still half-consciously weighed down by the slavish conditions of their lives. But a feeling of hatred for their oppressors is already awakening in them.
Moral rightness is on his side. The artists leave no doubt about this. In the officer, on the contrary, the primitiveness of his nature is emphasized. He is depicted satirically, in fact, his entire characterization is exhausted by the fact that he is depicted yawning. Eloquent details of the situation complete his portrait.
Theatrical experience Kukryniksov helped them successfully build and develop the mise-en-scene. The batman and the officer are brought to the fore. The owner's drinking buddy, who fell asleep at the table, settled in the background, convincingly and unobtrusively completing the story about the main thing.
The gray-blue morning light from the large window argues with the faint golden glow of an unextinguished lamp. This color "roll call", based on additional yellow-blue tones, enriches the color of the picture and contributes to an in-depth interpretation of its meaning.
This time the artists showed great attention to the details of the furnishings, painted masterfully and with love. In those years when the canvas “Morning of an Officer of the Tsarist Army” was painted, love for detail was a very rare property of our artists. Of the paintings of that time, very few can be pointed out, where the details would have been written in the same loving, generalized and artistic way. There is no doubt that the exhibitions of Russian classics that opened at the Tretyakov Gallery in the mid-1930s played the greatest role in enriching the painting skills of the Kukryniksy, in asserting them on the positions of realism in painting.
Looking at the picture "Morning", the viewer recalled Fedotov by association. About the great master of everyday painting, they were forced to recall a plot from the life of an officer, the sharpness of the psychological development of the plot, the satirical coloring of the images. The Kukryniksy learned from Fedotov the skillful selection of details, the beauty of the picturesque solution of the interior, where each element deepens the main theme. So they came up with a lamp that was not extinguished in the morning, a glass of wine forgotten on the piano keys - evidence of the officers' nightly entertainment.
Having painted the details of the situation with that beauty of color that involuntarily attracts the eye, the artists managed to rive the viewer's attention to the psychological grain of the plot, arouse sympathy for the common man, and ridicule the vulgar, empty life of officers-"existents".
In the development of this narrative-psychological side of Fedotov's painting, there was something especially important that the Kukryniksy drew from the richest source of Fedotov's work. They also learned from him to achieve beauty and materiality of color.
At the exhibition "XX Years of the Red Army and the Navy" there were many paintings on everyday topics. The peculiarity of the picture of the Kukryniksy was that it was based on a social conflict. It was built on a sharp contrast between the old and the new and, above all, on the satirical coloring of one of the central characters. This brought her closer to the best, most effective paintings of her time.
Turning to painting, the Kukryniksy, as we have seen, did not change the nature of their subject matter. And in painting, with the same frankness as in graphics, they passed a harsh sentence on the old system, exposed the harsh conditions of life and forced labor in capitalist society, branded the enemies and traitors of the Soviet people.
With the deepest interest of the Soviet people in the victory of the new, the artists depicted the awakening of revolutionary consciousness among the masses, the moral formation of man in the high, Gorky sense of the word.

Under the leadership of the Communist Party, our country, having defeated the Nazi army, healed the wounds of the war and entered a period of gradual transition from socialism to communism.
Soviet art of the post-war period developed under the sign of the historical decisions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on ideological issues.
The resolutions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks emphasized the enormous role that literature and art are called upon to play in the education of people, especially young people. A number of important tasks were set before the workers of the ideological front. Having exposed manifestations of apoliticalism, lack of ideas, and the most harmful cosmopolitanism, the party called on artists to create works of high ideological content and skill, to educate the masses in the spirit of communism, in the spirit of selfless devotion to the Soviet Motherland.
The post-war period in the creative life of the Kukryniksy is a series of great achievements in the art of political caricature, illustration, and painting.
On May 8, 1945, representatives of the German High Command, in the presence of the Supreme High Command of the Soviet and Allied Forces, signed an act of surrender in Berlin.
Shortly after this historic event, which marked the complete victory of the Soviet country, the Kukryniksy were sent to Berlin. “Since May 21,” the artists say, “we have been working in the capital of Germany for a month. For several days in a row, from 11 pm to 3 am, they went to write sketches, the interior of the hall where the signing of the surrender took place, for one hour they wrote and drew from nature Marshal G.K. Zhukov.
The surviving sketches by the Kukryniksy give an idea of ​​the ruined streets of Berlin, of Hitler's Reich Chancellery inside and out, and of Hitler's office. Artists descended into the Nazi bomb shelter, walked along its gray corridors, visited the district commandant's offices in Berlin, listened to the commandants' conversations with the Germans. They did sketches. Subsequently, during the trial of war criminals, the Kukryniksy went to Nuremberg.
The painting "The Surrender of Germany" - a large multi-figure canvas - was created by the Kukryniksy on the basis of many portraits painted from life. They worked out every detail of the interior, from the brown wall paneling, bright colorful Allied banners, to the "same" inkwell and "same" decanter that stood on the table when the German surrender was signed.
Separate portraits, especially expressive, "juicy" portrait sketches, painted from life, are truthful, temperamental. Very accurate details. But in general, the picture is cold, monotonous in color. Retaining the value of an art document, she doesn't care. Apparently, the genre of a documentary official portrait is not in the nature of the Kukryniksy, who are incomparably more successful in thematic paintings full of drama. Moreover, it is precisely this kind of themes, which give artists the opportunity to expressively show social conflict, to develop a plot with a pronounced dramatic plot, that are characteristic of the Kukryniksy's work.
A vivid evidence of this situation is the painting "The End" - the pinnacle in the painting of the Kukryniksy, one of those outstanding works of art with which Soviet artists summed up their colossal life and creative experience during the Great Patriotic War. Painting “The End. The last days of Hitler's headquarters in the dungeon of the Reich Chancellery" dates back to 1948.
Work from nature in Berlin and Nuremberg made it possible for the Kukryniksy to strongly, vividly, and correctly characterize typical representatives"Reich", the moral-political and military defeat of the fascist regime.
Of course, working from nature in Berlin, the observations accumulated during the trial of the main war criminals in Nuremberg, when they were brought to trial, allowed the Kukryniksy to write with such persuasive power and expressiveness both the types of characters and the atmosphere of the basement, which became the last refuge of Hitler and his associates.
But after all, the picture is not the sum of sketches, but a new creative formation. Studies as such "die" in the process of creating a picture. From their birth to "death" they obey the artist's intention, creative work his general thought.
Many times Kukryniksy painted Hitler. The appearance of this evil buffoon with a tuft of hair on a balding skull, with round bulging eyes, firmly entered into the consciousness of people. Hitler is depicted at the moment of his fall, covered
drawn by artists, it is "beaten" in a completely new way and unusually expressive. The head is turned up, the wandering gaze is riveted to the ceiling, which is about to collapse under the blows of Soviet aviation and artillery. You can't get away from responsibility With one hand, Hitler grabbed the collar of his uniform, the uniform was strangling him, the other hand rested against the wall. It seems that pitching is taking place, and the “Fuhrer” who has crashed is barely able to stay on his feet.
Hitler's bomb shelter in the interpretation of the Kukryniksy resembles a dying ship. Pictures in gold frames squinted, the chair was overturned, papers, orders were scattered on the floor, the handset of the telephone, already inactive, dangled helplessly on the cord. Everything is in a state of unstable balance, everything has shifted, everything is falling apart
The seasoned fascist, sitting in the foreground, convulsively grabbed both hands on the table and the back of the chair, as if afraid to fall. He stared wildly into space, anticipating doom; he no longer needs the suitcase standing next to him, it's late, there's nowhere to run.
The third fascist - Hitler's young pet - got drunk and fell asleep. Like everyone else, he is not able to face death and deserved punishment courageously: the decay of the "Reich" has gone too far. The figure of the young fascist is very expressive. He is completely exhausted, his uniform is unbuttoned, his head thrown back.
The fourth fascist is a sinister person. He is the only one in full uniform, his military cap pulled low, obscuring his gaze. The Herr Oberst crouched down, as if preparing for a final lethal leap. He, like everyone else, did not even look at the "Fuhrer" when he appeared at the door. The "Reich" collapsed, each left to himself.
during the war years, Soviet artists created many paintings that exposed the Nazis in different periods of their criminal activity. These works, of course, played a big role in the fight against fascism. Most of them dealt with essential, but separate aspects of anti-people inhuman "Hitlerism".
The painting "The End" entered the history of Soviet art as a broad and deep artistic generalization. In a convincing expressive form, she exposed the very essence of the bloody fascist regime, which collapsed under the blows of the Soviet Liberating Army.
The ideological, political and creative maturity of the team, the culture of design developed by the Kukryniksy over the years, affected, first of all, how accurately these experienced artists found a point of view on historical events. From the totality of phenomena, they chose the moment of "climax", when a just punishment fell on the heads of the Nazis, the retribution passionately expected by the peoples.
Reflecting this nationwide dream of victory, Soviet humanist artists showed extremely vividly, with great psychological depth, the corrupting effect of fascism on man. Having imprisoned Hitler and his associates in a stone bag, the artists showed typical representatives of the Hitler regime in their complete and hopeless isolation from all the living forces of the country, while demonstrating historicism of thinking, understanding of events in the perspective of their progressive development.
In the film “The End”, the strongest aspects of the talent and skill of the Kukryniksy, the passionate publicism of the anti-fascists, psychological expressiveness, the ability to dramatically reveal an acute social conflict, show the essence of this social force, its typical features with the help of a successfully found plot, merged together. The artists showed brilliant skill in constructing the mise-en-scene, psychologically motivated every look, gesture, posture, and movement of the characters.
Having shown the agony of a handful of fascists with exceptional relief, the artists compose the picture as a whole and in separate parts in such a way that they give the viewer a full opportunity to feel the opposing historical force beyond the depicted. One crazy glance of Hitler, directed upwards, is enough to emphasize the meaning of what is happening. It is quite clear to the spectator that the fates of the persons hiding in the air-raid shelter are being decided up there.
Horrified by the imminent catastrophe, Hitler flees to a bomb shelter and freezes in the doorway. An ominous shadow from his figure fell on the metal-bound door. The face and hands of the "Fuhrer" are illuminated by a cold, dead light.
Hitler - the focus of the composition - is placed not in the center (as it was supposed in the first draft sketch) and not in the foreground, but in the depth, diagonally, to the left. This is a very important compositional technique, due to the idea, which enhances the dynamism of the picture. The action develops and grows from the first plan to the next. An uneven, spasmodic rhythm also grows. Bright, hard artificial light from an invisible source fights against sharply defined oblique shadows cast by objects in the room.
The energy, the dynamics of the composition, the struggle of chiaroscuro enhance the tension of the moment. The artists managed to depict not a frozen being, but the rapid development of action.
Each character is a necessary link in the development of a dramatic conflict. All actors and objects introduced into the composition are involved in the action. With the whole set of artistic means, the authors of the picture lead the viewer to an independent conclusion about the imminent shameful catastrophe, the well-deserved punishment that fell on war criminals.
The denouement is near, the matter is coming to an end - this feeling is conveyed with great force.
The color scheme, built on the predominance of dark and cold tones, the materiality of painting - all this helps to reveal the essence of the phenomenon, the main idea of ​​the picture. In this work, the artists have achieved genuine realism in the interpretation of a complex historical theme, in the depiction of enemies. They described the situation in which the "Führer" and his associates fell into, with tragicomic features. The presence of a sharp grotesque gave the whole work the unique character of "Kukryniksovskaya" satire.
In the painting “The End”, the artists, as it were, summed up their richest experience as international caricaturists, caricaturists and painters. As painters, the Kukryniksy mastered by that time the mastery of plastic form and the expressiveness of color, that is, the necessary qualities of easel painting masters.
In this original work, innovative and profound, the lessons of the masters of the past are creatively translated.
Before us is the creative assimilation and implementation of the great Repin tradition of storytelling on the fundamental themes of modernity, where the historicism of the artists' thinking is permeated with the lively and passionate progressive worldview of the era. There is no doubt that one can recall the names of other advanced artists, the same Daumier, from whom the young Kukryniksy studied the art of satirical exposure of the gloomy sides of reality, the sharpness of the characteristics.
There is also no doubt about the great role that the art of the Soviet masters of the older generation played in the development of the Kukryniksy painting, in particular, the painting of B.V. Ioganson, imbued with the pathos of the struggle for the liberation of man, built on the most acute class conflicts. The art of socialist realism, cementing the masses of artists with common ideals, common tasks creation of a truly folk art, unified creative method, creates a favorable atmosphere for growth, mutual exchange of experience between artists of all generations. The Marxist-Leninist worldview, the historical experience of the people building communism, provides the Soviet people with a correct understanding of events - a reliable foundation for historical painting.
The painting “The End” gives us the key to clarifying the main features, style, creative “handwriting” of the Kukryniksy, since in this work the most stable features of their team, which were encountered in various combinations throughout their creative life, merged into an indissoluble unity.
Based on fundamental principles common to all Soviet realists, masters of easel painting, the Kukryniksy developed a sharply individual style. In the creation of this style, their temperament as publicists, their giftedness as satirists, their organic, deep understanding of the dramatic, social conflict - the soul of the thematic picture, their keen interest in human psychology played a significant role in the creation of this style.
Combining personal talents, in which there is much in common and much different, the artists achieved an individual "Kukryniksov" handwriting in painting to the same extent as in graphics. Their "handwriting" is distinguished, first of all, by an organic alloy of "weighty", material painting, usually built on color contrasts and chiaroscuro, and a characteristic, sharp drawing. Their creativity is characterized by a pronounced strong-willed character, a mature outlook on life.
The painting "The End" is the fruit of modern painting, bearing the stamp of the trials that befell the lot of the people in their unprecedented struggle against fascism, the stamp of the wisdom of the victorious people.
The painting took a prominent place in Soviet painting. With its accusatory pathos, it meets the interests, expresses the aspirations of the broad democratic masses of the whole world, emphasizing once again the global significance of Soviet art. For the painting "The End" Kukryniksy were awarded the Stalin Prize of the first degree. At all foreign exhibitions, and in particular, in democratic Germany, where this painting was exhibited, it attracted attention, caused very high marks as an outstanding piece of art modernity.

IN post-war years Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov work a lot both collectively and separately in the field of painting. And in painting, as well as in graphics, the humanism of artists, their penetrating love for nature, their peacefulness is manifested. In the painting of the late 1940s and early 1950s, artists strive to embody positive images.
In 1949, the Kukryniksy painted the painting "Lenin at Razliv". There are many virtues in this picture. The expression of a thoughtful face, a look directed into the distance, as if seeing something important in this distance, characterize the essential features of Lenin the thinker. There is a lot of sincere lyrics in this picture, but it does not have the proper significance, richness, necessary for solving such a topic.
The beautiful landscape in this picture is new evidence of the deep feeling of Russian nature, which Kupriyanov, Krylov and Sokolov are gifted to a high degree. And, perhaps, this feeling of nature has never manifested itself in them with such force as in the post-war years. The trials of the war, the invasion of invaders, the heroic defense of the socialist Fatherland - all this evoked a lively response in the souls of the artists. A heightened sense of the Motherland gave impetus to the development of landscape art. Deep ideological and creative processes, which are obvious in the Soviet landscape of the post-war years, found their vivid disclosure in the work of the Kukryniksy. It is in the landscape, which requires a purely personal experience of nature, a purely personal understanding of the world, that the lyricism characteristic of Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov manifests itself in relief.
Each of the three members of the team has their favorite landscape motifs. So, Kupriyanov is primarily a singer of the city and nature, inhabited by man. His landscapes are among the best urban landscapes in Soviet painting. Krylov is also not alien to these motives, but he is most attracted by the free nature of the Moscow region, Polenovo with water meadows and blue distances. Sokolov's favorite landscape motifs are very diverse, but most of all he paints with inspiration the banks of the Volga, where his youth passed, the Volga, finding more and more beauty in its expanses.
An exhibition of works by academicians, organized by the Academy of Arts of the USSR in 1952, demonstrated the work of the Kukryniksy in full and in many ways. Along with the graphics performed by the team, Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov showed their personal works in painting. Kupriyanov - exclusively landscapes (1947 - 1952), Krylov - landscapes, portrait, still life, Sokolov - landscapes and self-portrait (1950 - 1952).
All these works testify to the unceasing quest of artists, their deep study of national traditions in the field of landscape, the maturity of skill acquired through in-depth observations of nature, fixing it in numerous sketches and further processing of sketches.
High level craftsmanship, a variety of motifs, carefully selected in richest world nature, they say that three popular, richly gifted artists work tirelessly day after day. Talent requires relentless polishing of its every facet. Without this, even the most talented artist will slide into vulgar amateurism.
Often the Kukryniksy bring their works to the judgment of the landscape master N. P. Krymov. M. V. Kupriyanov, P. N. Krylov, N. A. Sokolov attach great importance to criticism and advice that they hear from the lips of this artist. These tips, as the Kukryniksy say, help them to set certain tasks in their work on a landscape-picture, to achieve the integrity of color.
All three artists are characterized by lyricism in the transfer of nature, the ability to choose a characteristic motif that evokes many associations, various moods. None of the three artists will sit down to write a sketch, so to speak, where they have to. All three take a long look at the surroundings, "shoot", sketch, choose, and then write what most captured their imagination.
To write such spiritual landscapes as Kupriyanov, Krylov and Sokolov showed on academic exhibition, are needed, of course, and high technology, which is enriched by daily training, and a huge culture, and the ability to see the world through the eyes of a poet, and a passionate desire to evoke a deep spiritual response in the viewer.
The concept of the general culture of the artist, of course, includes the study of great traditions. Mastering the experience of classical realists does not mean simply “quoting” Savrasov or Levitan, endlessly varying long-discovered motives and states of nature. To master the experience of the classics creatively means, having accumulated great technical skills, to reveal with their help new aspects of reality, a modern view of the world with the same content of thought, with the same stock of unspent feelings, life observations, as the great masters of the past did.
national school of the Russian landscape of the second half of the 19th century, sated the art of landscape with a deep ideological content, gave it a scope characteristic of the artistic culture of a great people. She raised the importance of this genre highly; the landscape painter was able to defend democratic ideals with his artistic means - the life-giving source of the realistic art of the era.
Savrasov, Shishkin, Vasiliev, Levitan, Nesterov, Vasnetsov, Serov and other major masters of the Russian national landscape were able to reveal people's thoughts about the Motherland through the image of nature, to nurture love for their native expanses, for the incomparable charm of the Russian northern spring, for the white birches along which the Russian a person longs for a foreign land, for blue forest expanses, for villages on a slope, for everything that was associated with the appearance of the Motherland.
Setting common goals, landscape painters reflect their personal, cherished, long-term attitude to the world in the pictures of nature.
By the nature of the motives, Kupriyanov's landscapes consist of three cycles: landscapes of Leningrad with a massive dome of St. Isaac and the Neva, with subtly felt silhouettes of architecture and green massifs of foliage, the coast of the Caspian Sea with longboats, landscapes of the Moscow region. For the most part, these paintings are full of light and sun, nature is animated by human figures. Having chosen the motive that interested him, Kupriyanov tries to write it right away, trying to convey this state of nature and his feeling from it. But in order to master the possibility of terribly intense speed of writing, so to speak "in hot pursuit", the artist, like a pianist, must first train the eye and hand, having mastered the perfect technique. Having paid tribute in the past to the passion for fluency, sketchiness of writing, Kupriyanov has been especially stubbornly striving in recent years for strict completeness of form, compositional integrity.
In contrast to Kupriyanov, Krylov and Sokolov paint the landscape for a long time. Artists believe that it is possible to achieve clarity of expression of a given motif, the concreteness of an image, only by returning to it repeatedly. For example, the landscape "Mallow" Krylov wrote seven long sessions in those early mornings when nature kept approximately the same state. The artist painted “Zaoksky Dali” based on sketches in the studio, retaining a completely lively direct feeling of a piece of nature that captivated him. Sokolov devoted five sessions to "Evening on the Volga". In the landscapes, the Kukryniksy are captivated by the humanity that permeates them, the concentration of feelings, the organic combination of closeness to nature with spacious, captivating distances.
Sokolov often begins a landscape with small preliminary pencil sketches, in which he finds a compositional solution in general terms. The artist's method is unique. He begins work with what he considers the most interesting in this landscape, the brightest. "Evening on the Volga", "Volga at the Plyos" and other landscapes by Sokolov 1950 - 1952 - landscape paintings, in which the accuracy, "portrait" of the image is combined with subtle lyricism, imposing on his paintings the stamp of a great personal feeling.
The desire to generalize their impressions into a picture, to achieve completeness of form, clarity and integrity of the composition, is manifested in modern landscapes by Kupriyanov, Krylov, and Sokolov. However, each of them finds an individual expression.
Of the three artists, Krylov more than two others and longer works on a portrait in painting. The portraits-paintings of Krylov have long won the viewer's sympathy, including the delicately felt children's portrait "Natalka Kupriyanov", female portraits in the open air, etc. And in the portrait, the artist achieves picturesqueness, completeness, plasticity. The portrait of the Korean dancer Ahn Sung-hee is distinguished by a delicate characterization of a person. This portrait would have benefited, however, if the artist had paid more attention to the dancer's hands, would have found their individual "expression", because the hands in the portrait in general, and in the portrait of the dancer in particular, play a very significant role.
At the academic art exhibition in 1952, P. Krylov's Rosehip Bouquet attracted everyone's attention. A modest bouquet of white flowers seemed to be fragrant - each flower is written with such expressiveness, fidelity, and care.
The path that the Kukryniksy landscape painters traveled together with the largest Soviet landscape painters is the path from sketch to painting, to a generalized, felt image of nature.
Modern Soviet man is an innovator, the owner of his land, the builder and creator of communist society. These features of the high spiritual culture of the new man should and are reflected in the landscapes of Kupriyanov, Krylov and Sokolov. We feel them in a major, in the breadth of constructions, in their natural connection with life. The Kukryniksy continue and develop the democratic traditions of the Russian national landscape. M. V. Nesterov, who highly appreciated the art of the three artists, used to say: “The Kukryniksy are talented cartoonists, and Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov are the most talented painters.” And indeed, cartoonists by vocation and main occupation, in their individual work, Kukryniksy are most of all and above all painters.
Landscapes, portraits, still lifes painted by Kupriyanov, Krylov and Sokolov are often used by them subsequently in the collective work of the Kukryniksy.
Twenty years ago, criticism pointed out that the individual development of each of the three artists is inseparable from the growth of their team as a whole, because it relies on the support and experience of colleagues. We can talk about this with even greater reason now, when the Kukryniksy have three decades of fraternal creative friendship behind them. Collective work did not erase the individual characteristics of Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov, but, on the contrary, strengthened and sharpened them with mutual support.
It is enough to compare two recent portraits by Krylov and Sokolov to reveal the peculiarities of the creative manner of each master. Thus, the portrait of the Korean dancer An Sung-hee was painted with that richness of color, with that love for open sonorous color, which betrays the “purebred” painter P. N. Krylov. Sokolov's "Self-portrait" characterizes the author, first of all, as an artist-psychologist who is more willing to sacrifice the color of the portrait than to deviate from the psychological drawing of the image.
In this regard, it is necessary to emphasize the special predilection and successes of N. A. Sokolov in the field of psychological portrait-drawing, which was greatly facilitated by his deep understanding portrait drawings Serov. There is, of course, no impenetrable boundary between the work of an artist in graphics and painting, moreover, there is constant mutual enrichment between them. A great culture of drawing is also felt in the basis of Sokolov's paintings.
In the collective work of the Kukryniksy, a complex process of interaction, mutual reinforcement of talents takes place, when homogeneous features seem to add up, and different ones set off each other in contrast. The amount of effort, growing, reinforcing one another, forms a new quality. The artists themselves claim that something created by their team could not be mastered (not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively) by each of them individually. In the process of honest and selfless dedication to the team of all the best achievements, a certain “fourth” artist appeared, who, in fact, is Kukryniksy. Taking care of their personal growth, the artists are constantly improving the skills of the team.
From the very beginning of the collective activity of the Kukryniksy and to this day, both the audience and comrades-in-arms are interested in: “So how, after all, does the creative process proceed in the Kukryniksy team? How is an artistic image born in conditions of collective labor - usually the fruit of individual work? On what principles has the creative community of talented craftsmen been formed and has been based for three decades now, what exactly cements it?
There is no doubt that the possibility of such strong friendship, indestructible brotherhood, complete disinterested self-giving of each member of the collective to the common cause is rooted in the nature of socialist society. all aspects of the multifaceted personality of each artist were revealed, and where the personal and the public merged together, in the name of a conscious high goal.
Socialist society, which developed a new attitude towards work, created fertile ground on which new labor relations could flourish, based on free competition, on deep mutual trust in each other, on the socialist understanding of the work of the artist as a matter of honor, as the first human need.
The Marxist-Leninist worldview, a clear party orientation of creativity are the necessary prerequisites for the moral stamina of the Kukryniksy team, its strength. The party press introduced the Kukryniksy to the urgent tasks of building communism, helping them to correctly and deeply comprehend the current reality.
There is also no doubt that the mutual attraction of the three artists, determined in early youth on the basis of common interests and strengthened in creative work, also implies character traits, the presence of high moral principles in each member of the team, a deep and indestructible sense of duty, which has become into a fundamental character trait of all three artists.
“The basis of the team is, first of all, strong friendship,” the Kukryniksy say. - It is hardly possible to create a good team without having interest in each other. Interest breeds respect, and respect breeds trust. Trust helps to correct mistakes and appreciate the achievements of a comrade as if they were your own.”
Long-term collaboration allows the Kukryniksy team to do without a permanent director. The three of them have both directors and performers, but they change these roles.
“The director,” they say, “who at this moment, by touching his work, has improved at least some part of it. Further it was developed by another, then the role of the director passes to him. We do not and cannot have a permanent director.
There was a short period during the war when, living in different cities, all three artists drew and painted separately, and each coped with the work enough to sign his work with the name of the Kukryniksy collective. However, each of them dreamed of uniting again with the other two.
“In our collective work on a picture,” the artists say, “it often happens like this: one person stands by the picture and writes some place. Two of them moved away and told the writer from a distance how much the color should change in one direction or another. The writer asks: “Even colder? So good?".
Which of the three in this case - the writer or the speaker - is the director? Almost all three work. There are paintings about which the authors themselves do not remember which of them wrote which part.
Giving the best achievements to the "fourth" artist, who is, in fact, "Kukryniksy", Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov with young years and all their lives they also work separately, constantly improving their skills in drawing and painting. This zealous all-consuming love for the artist's work is the most important character trait of each of the three members of the Kukryniksy creative community, the "secret" of their indestructible, lifelong friendship. No matter how highly we evaluate the individual creativity of Kupriyanov, Krylov, Sokolov, it is quite obvious that their joint work is more significant, more diverse, more original. It is she, this collective work, that has those features for which the people so highly appreciate their work, and by which the unique Kukryniks style is recognized.
I would like to end this brief essay on the art of academicians M. V. Kupriyanov, P. N. Krylov, N. A. Sokolov with words that reveal the meaning and purpose of the birth of the team and in which the voice of the artists themselves is felt.
“Only that collective will become viable,” the Kukryniksy say, “which will set as its goal the service to the people, the service to the Motherland, that is, it will become a living particle of the country's huge collective. We always feel the tremendous concern shown to our collective by the Communist Party, the Soviet government and the people. We feel this help at every step. We are aware of the great responsibility this imposes on us. Our team is happy that it is a native of the Soviet Union.”
The popularity of the Kukryniksy is great, their works are known and appreciated by both the widest audience and art connoisseurs. The popularity of the Kukryniksy extends far beyond the borders of our country, they are well known and authoritative among our friends abroad, they are hated by warmongers, fascists of all formations and generations. Undoubtedly, the large and fruitful role of the Kukryniksy in the development of not only Soviet, but also foreign progressive caricature. Undoubtedly, the significance of their painting "The End" for creating works based on an acute and effective social conflict, on a broad and deep typification of the phenomena of life.
The Soviet government highly and repeatedly noted the merits of the creative team of Kukryniksy to the Motherland. Kukryniksy
awarded the title of People's Artists of the RSFSR, Honored Artists. The artists were awarded the title of laureates of the Stalin Prize five times: for political posters and caricatures, for illustrations to the works of Chekhov and Gorky, for the painting "The End".

Not so long ago, a collective self-portrait of the Kukryniksy appeared in Ogonyok: the “consubstantial and inseparable trinity,” as Gorky once called Kukryniksov, appeared this time in the form of an old man with a bushy beard. And in fact, M. V. Kupriyanov, P. N. Krylov, N. A. Sokolov - all three of them turned 150 years old together!
But despite such a respectable age, the "jubilee" is in the prime of his creative powers and talent. “He” is working tirelessly on new works of book graphics and painting. And again, as of old, political cartoons signed by Kukryniksy are constantly printed in Pravda and Krokodil.
The works of recent years testify that the Kukryniksy are still always ready to defend the world with their art, to smash the warmongers’ satires with weapons, to glorify their great motherland- the standard-bearer of peace throughout the world!

_____________________

Recognition, efication and formatting - BK-MTGC.

Kupriyanov Mikhail Vasilievich

Krylov Porfiry Nikitich

Sokolov Nikolai Alexandrovich

(born in 1903) Soviet artists

In the history of world journalism and caricature, there was perhaps no more amazing association of artists. Three masters of painting and graphics worked fruitfully together for more than sixty years. They own many dozens of graphic sheets, drawings, paintings. The most famous were their cartoons. And it all started in the twenties within the walls of VKHUTEMAS. It was there, by chance, that three young people, obsessed with a passion for creativity, met. They met, so that they would not part for many decades.

Kukryniksy started in different ways. True, each of them before VKHUTEMAS already had art education: Krylov finished art school G. Shegal in Tula, Kupriyanov - a similar school in Tashkent, and Sokolov - the art studio of Proletkult in Rybinsk.

At VKHUTEMAS they studied with such famous artists as A. Osmerkin, P. Mitulich and A. Shevchenko, and later in graduate school with P. Konchalovsky.

Their creative community did not develop immediately. Kupriyanov and Krylov were the first to work together. They signed their drawings with anagrams of Kukry or Krykup. Only two years later, Nikolai Sokolov, who had previously worked as an artist in the newspaper On Watch, joined them.

For the first time, a cartoon signed by Kukryniksy appeared in 1923 in the Komsomoliya magazine. The magazine was headed by the songwriter A. Zharov, popular in those years, and the poet I. Utkin, a friend of the artists, was a member of the editorial board.

Initially, the Kukryniksy worked in the genre of caricatures, but gradually moved from illustrating feuilletons to independent satirical drawings. They all worked together, each drawing on their own sheet and then passing it on to the other. So successively, correcting each other, they brought the work to the end.

Together with B. Efimov, the Kukryniksy were the founders of journalistic graphics. Their drawings gradually began to appear not only in newspapers, but also in various magazines. They often performed commissioned work. So, on the instructions of the management of the Moscow Art Theater, they drew cartoons for all the actors who worked there.

In 1928, the Kukryniksy made the design for V. Mayakovsky's play "The Bedbug", staged by V. Meyerhold. Thus, they tried themselves in a new capacity - theater artists.

The turning point in the fate of the artists was 1932, when they began to collaborate in the newspaper Pravda. Since that time, they have become something like official satirists. Caricatures of the Kukryniksy were published in all central publications, they began to be reproduced in the form of posters and leaflets. But artists have always sought to go beyond the satirical genre. They painted easel compositions, as well as landscapes or made book illustrations.

Their first joint great job became a watercolor cycle based on the novel by I. Ilf and E. Petrov "The Twelve Chairs". The drawings turned out to be so successful that they decorated several editions of the novel, and later, at the end of the sixties, the Kukryniksy repeated them, but in color, in accordance with the increased possibilities of printing. It is noteworthy that the well-known Russian artist F. Bogorodsky posed for the image of O. Bender.

Book illustration occupies a special place in the work of the team. Artists were engaged in it with some special pleasure, often using the technique of the pen. Their illustrations for A. Chekhov's story "The Lady with the Dog" were also very successful.

It is also known that M. Gorky advised artists to expand the artistic scope of their work. He sent them books from abroad and for the first time raised the issue of publishing an album of artists. However, nothing came of this initiative in the 1930s. Also, nothing happened with Gorky's attempt to invite the Kukryniksy to Capri. The fact that Gorky was fussing about this, they learned only after fifty years. It turned out that the part of the letter in which he informed them about this was simply cut out and hidden in the archive.

In the thirties, like many other artists, the Kukryniksy were forced to work on portraits of Stalin and paintings on historical and revolutionary themes. One of their paintings - "Lenin in Razliv" - was shown at the exhibition "Stalin and the people of the Soviet country."

Despite the fact that the artists worked for many years in the main party publication, the Pravda newspaper, none of the Kukryniksy became a member of the party. According to N. Sokolov, they were afraid that after that they could be separated and sent to different publications.

During the war, the Kukryniksy, along with other Soviet artists, began to work on anti-fascist graphics. They created a whole series of expressive portraits-caricatures of fascist leaders, which attracted the attention of I. Stalin. On his instructions, in 1945, the Kukryniksy were sent to Berlin, where they were supposed to collect material for a large painting “The Signing of the German Surrender Act”.

They walked the streets of the city, made numerous sketches, portraits of soldiers, military leaders, and then moved to Nuremberg, where they worked on the trial of Nazi criminals for several months. As a result, a series of graphic sheets appeared under the general title "Prosecution".

In this regard, a very interesting fact attracts attention. The drawings of the Kukryniksy made at the trial were so expressive that in 1946, immediately after finishing work on them, they were shelved, and they were published only at the end of the sixties.

Based on the materials of the trip to Germany, the Kukryniksy also painted several large paintings, the most famous of which was the painting "The End" - a collective portrait of the leaders of Nazi Germany.

During the war years, bright, striking drawings of the masters were distributed not only in the USSR, but also in all countries of the anti-Hitler coalition. Often they became the most visible evidence of the victories of the Red Army. In fact, the Kukryniksy revived folk genre Lubok, accompanying each of his caricature with a well-marked poetic phrase, usually owned by S. Marshak or one of the artists themselves.

In 1942, the Kukryniksy created a large painting "Tanya", dedicated to the feat of Z. Kosmodemyanskaya. This fearless girl became the personification of the people's struggle against the invaders also because, according to the official version, she died with the name of Stalin on her lips.

For most of their lives, the Kukryniksy not only worked, but also lived together in a huge communal apartment. Only after the war they were able to get comfortable apartments and workshops.

A four-volume collection of works by artists was published only at the end of the eighties. And the point, probably, was that they always tried to break out of the framework of the positive satire imposed on them.

In the post-war years, the Kukryniksy finally managed to fulfill their old dream - to go to Italy and France. They brought back many paintings and drawings from the trip. It is noteworthy that in subsequent years, exhibitions of their works were held in Italy with great success.

Gradually, a specific style of each of the three artists emerged. So, Krylov was much more successful in landscapes, and Sokolov and Kupriyanov - in portraits.

In their works they were able to preserve the traditions of the realistic school of the 19th century - a clear drawing, elaboration of details, well-defined background and portrait images. They seemed to survive in the experimental forms of the Russian avant-garde and postmodernism in order to subsequently create an unusually dynamic and at the same time (primarily in landscapes and portraits) lyrical painting.

In the post-war years, the Kukryniksy gradually focus on caricature, dealing with other genres, with the exception of illustration, separately. And yet they creative collaboration did not fall apart and continued to exist until 1990, when one of the artists died.

Kukryniksy (a pseudonym after the first syllables of surnames), a creative team of Soviet graphic artists and painters: Kupriyanov Mikhail Vasilievich (b. 8 (21) .10.1903, Tetyushi, now the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), Krylov Porfiry Nikitich (b. 9 (22) .8.1902, village Shchelkunovo, now Tula region), Sokolov Nikolay Alexandrovich (b. 8 (21) 7.1903, Moscow). Studied at the Moscow Vkhutemas-Vkhutein (between 1921 and 1929). Active members of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1947), People's Artists of the USSR (1958).

In the first weeks of the war against the Soviet Union, it seemed to the Nazi leaders, fascinated by the successes on the Eastern Front, that the victory in the campaign that had just begun was in fact already won.

The caricature was accompanied by verses by S. Marshak: "The fascist gloomy caliph, smoking a fragrant Hookah, He ordered His Scheherazades to come in with a report. And then Scheherazade came in And read him a report: "One German machine gun Destroyed a hundred thousand pillboxes And three hundred thousand nine hundred Seventeen planes! Two "Messerschmitts" on the fly Captured Alma-Ata with an air barrier, With the moon and blackout ... ". Caliph interrupted his report, Closing the door more tightly: "And what, Scheherazade, German losses?" Caliph, you asked me a question Very intricate, I attributed German losses to the Soviet account!

As satirical artists, the Kukryniksy took a leading place in Soviet art and gained worldwide fame. Working together since 1924, the Kukryniksy initially performed mostly caricatures on topics from literary life. The enormous potential of the satirical talent of the Kukryniksy was appreciated by M. Gorky, who, when meeting with them (1931), advised him to cover life more widely, to draw on topics both within the country and abroad. Speaking since 1925 in newspapers and magazines (Pravda, Krokodil, etc.), the Kukryniksy developed in close cooperation with journalists new type caricatures, marked by acute topicality, a devastatingly sarcastic solution to the topic, caricatured by the specificity of types (series: "Transport", ink, 1933-34; "On Rubbish", ink, gouache, etc., 1959-60).

An important role in the patriotic education of Soviet people was played by caricatures, posters and "TASS Windows" created by the Kukryniksy during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, combining murderous sarcasm and heroism in symbolically generalized images ("We will mercilessly defeat and destroy the enemy!", 1941) . The post-war satire of the Kukryniksy, which castigates warmongers, enemies of peace and socialism, also has significant political power ("Waiting for War", ink, 1953-57). For political cartoons and posters, Kukryniksy was awarded the State Prize of the USSR (1942) and the Lenin Prize (1965). Since the beginning of the community, the Kukryniksy have also been working hard on the cartoon.

From the 20s. The Kukryniksy also act as illustrators, referring to works of literature with a deep understanding of the features of the depicted era and the language of the writer. The range of their creativity in this area is very wide - from sharp graphic grotesque to lyrical picturesque images. Among the works illustrated by them: "12 Chairs" (ink, 1933 and 1967) and "The Golden Calf" (ink, colored watercolor, 1971) by Ilf and Petrov, "Lord Golovlyov" and other works by Saltykov-Shchedrin (ink, 1939), "Lady with a Dog" and other works by Chekhov (1940-46; State Prize USSR, 1947), "The Life of Klim Samgin" (1933), "Foma Gordeev" (1948-49; State Prize of the USSR, 1950) and "Mother" (1950; State Prize of the USSR, 1951) M. Gorky, "Don Quixote" Cervantes (1949-52) - all black watercolor.

In easel painting, the Kukryniksy also set themselves tasks of great political significance, creatively developing the traditions of Russian realistic art and sometimes using individual techniques of their satirical graphics. They turn to historical subjects (the "Old Masters" series, 1936-37, the Tretyakov Gallery), denounce fascism ["The Flight of the Fascists from Novgorod", 1944-46, the Russian Museum, Leningrad; "The End", 1947-48, State Prize of the USSR, 1949; "Prosecution (War criminals and their defenders at the Nuremberg Trials)", 1967; both are in the Tretyakov Gallery], giving a significant place to the theme of the heroism of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War ("Tanya", 1942-47, Tretyakov Gallery). The working method of the Kukryniks is unique: the masters achieve a single, "Kukryniks" style, combining personal talents in a collective creative process. They work individually as portrait and landscape painters. They were awarded the Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree and medals. In 1972 P.N. Krylov, and in 1973 N.A. Sokolov was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.

Everyone lies calendars

The caricature was accompanied by verses by S. Marshak: He promised a lightning war in June, And for an hour he threw saliva, Raging on the podium. He said: - I will decide the outcome of the war in two weeks! - And the fools of his country In response, he clamored. When this period expired, the Unscrupulous oracle Two-month-old appointed a period, And Goebbels "hoh!" croaked. Now by November, then by Christmas, Then on the first of April The Fuhrer threatened to take Moscow, And the months flew by ... "Don't think about the end of the war!" - This is the final order. "Immediately hand over your pants to the treasury!" - Says the order next door. Already there are no leaves of the calendar, except for the forty-eighth of March On the wall in the yellow house ...

Hitler, seeking to shift the responsibility for the defeat near Moscow to individual top military leaders, dismissed the commander of the ground forces, Field Marshal W. von Brauchitsch and a number of other generals, and, being the supreme commander, also assumed command of the ground forces of the German army.

Sorrowful help

After the defeat of the Nazi troops near Moscow, Hitler began to remove the generals and field marshals from their posts, there were cases of putting on trial and demoting.

Dirty laundry

The caricature was accompanied by verses by S. Marshak: Two laundresses, gloomy Laval, press and rub: They twisted the Vichy government into a tourniquet. Although Laval has little conscience and honor, But he can hardly withstand such pressure. And the laundresses squeeze, and rub, and twist, like linen, dirty Laval, Darlan, Doriot.

Names mentioned in the poems: Doriot is the leader of one of the most pro-Hitler fascist organizations in France.

Golden hands (after the executions in Lyon)

In April 1942, at the insistence of Berlin, Laval became Prime Minister of the collaborationist government in France (Vichy), having established himself as an active supporter of broad, including military, cooperation with Nazi Germany. On his orders, massacres were carried out against French patriots.

"By order of the German headquarters, an agricultural team under the command of Lieutenant Weber is assigned to the occupied area. The team includes 5 non-commissioned officers of the field gendarmerie, a non-commissioned officer and 11 soldiers of the artillery regiment, a suitable sanitary rank, a cook, an accountant, a motorcyclist ... Signed: Guntzel. That's right: Hauptmann." (Extract from a German document).

The caricature was accompanied by poems by S. Marshak: Agricultural cannons, Gendarmes, together with an artillery regiment, Besiege a village Where it smells of goat's milk. The sky is hot from the cannonade. Guns rumble like thunder. Surrounded by one milkmaid. One goat was besieged. As you can see, goat's milk is not easy for the Germans!

Well done among the sheep, against the well done - the sheep himself

The caricature was accompanied by verses by S. Marshak: Von-Drappe, a German officer. He was an exemplary attack aircraft. He could valiantly Pierce a child with a sharpened blade. Our daring guards Subdued the insolent rampage And discovered for the first time That he is not Drappe, but a sheep. Losing human form. The Colonel asked for patches And suddenly bleated like a sheep. Hiding in nearby bushes.

"During the period from January 9 to 22 on the North-Western and Kalinin fronts, the Germans lost over 17,000 people killed. During the period from January 16 to 25 on the Western Front, the Germans lost over 12,000 soldiers and officers killed."

(From the reports of the Soviet Information Bureau) During the Battle of Moscow (September 30, 1941 - April 20, 1942) in January-April, the troops of the Western, Kalinin, Bryansk, and other fronts defeated the enemy and pushed him back 100-250 km.

Winter Fritz (experience exchange)

Fritz last year to today: "Last winter, Hitler also promised us new uniforms."

New puppet comedy staged by the Vichy Theater

"According to the German Information Bureau, Laval is appointed head of the Vichy government. Pétain remains "head of state", and Darlan - head of the army, navy and aviation." (From newspapers). The caricature was accompanied by poems by S. Marshak.

No wonder the whole of Russia remembers the day of Borodin

In the initial period of the Moscow battle, decisive resistance was offered to the enemy on the Mozhaisk line of defense. Successful battles also took place near Borodino at the site of the famous battle of 1812.

In the early spring of 1942, the Soviet-German front temporarily stabilized. The heroic labor of the Soviet people ensured a rapid increase in military production. Great success was achieved by the foreign policy of the USSR. By the summer of 1942, there were already 28 countries in the anti-fascist coalition.

However, the fascist army continued to remain formidable force. The unsuccessful outcome of operations for the Soviet troops in the Kharkov region and on the Kerch Peninsula in May 1942 extremely complicated the situation on the southern wing of the Soviet-German front. In July, a broad offensive of the Nazi troops began. The enemy broke through the front of the Soviet troops, went into a large bend of the Don, creating a threat of a breakthrough to the Volga and the Caucasus. On July 17, a defensive battle near Stalingrad unfolded, which lasted until mid-November 1942. It marked the beginning of the great Battle of Stalingrad. In the south, in heavy defensive battles between the Don and the foothills of the Main Caucasian Range, in the Caucasus Mountains and on the Black Sea coast, Soviet troops exhausted the fascist German troops and stopped their advance in early November.

On November 19, Soviet troops launched a powerful counteroffensive near Stalingrad, during which it was surrounded, and in early February 1943, more than three hundred thousandth enemy grouping was liquidated. The defeat of the Nazi troops near Stalingrad was the most important military and political event of the Second World War, marking the beginning of a radical turning point both in the course of the Great Patriotic War and the entire Second World War.

About how last year's Hitler saw Hitler today

In contrast to the Barbarossa plan, which provided for a strategic offensive by the Nazi troops in 1941 in all main directions, the plan for the summer offensive campaign of 1942, developed after the defeat near Moscow, was more limited in scope. The southern direction of the Soviet-German front became the main and, in fact, the only one where the Wehrmacht intended to carry out its major offensive operations.

"... In the western regions of Ukraine, 570 large landlord estates have already been created ... The ordinary honest working peasant does not receive land from the Germans and will not receive ... They do not need Ukrainian peasants, but they need slaves who would feed the German pans with their labor" . (From newspapers).

The cartoon was accompanied by verses by S. Marshak: The Nazis are bringing seedlings from Germany to the sowing campaign. In rows on a bloody patch Under the shadow of cannons and bayonets Hundreds and dozens of feudal landowners are imprisoned. The German pan will not plow the fields, the Baron will not harrow... Our feudal lords will not capture our free Ukraine!

Vile creature - to the lantern!

In September 1942, the Vichy government led by Laval introduced compulsory labor service to supply German industry labor force: all French people between the ages of 19 and 50 could be sent to work in Germany. During Laval's tenure in power (until August 1944), 750,000 Frenchmen were sent to Germany for forced labor.

ink defense

The caricature was accompanied by verses by S. Marshak: Berlin liars Fire ink anti-aircraft guns In Berlin day and night - They "shoot down" Our combat air fleet. But let the helpful feathers Crack day and night in a row. Inkwells are not artillery, And an inkblot is not a projectile! We give a firm word to the shameless liars from Berlin, That we will send the cars "downed" by them to Prussia again!

Milch cow

"Hitler's book 'My Struggle' is reprinted every year, which every German is forced to parade in his apartment. On this one deal, Hitler makes a million marks." (From newspapers)

The poster was accompanied by verses by S. Marshak: This sinewy milkmaid And day and night from under her hand Golden stamps are streaming Rain into open bags. This sonorous downpour filled pockets, safes, cellars ... And the nickname of the golden cow is "Mein Kampf", or "My struggle." "His struggle" milkmaid milks with might and main, worried and in a hurry. She knows that Her cow is not worth ipouia. Soon a harsh day will come, Long appointed by fate, When the people will drive the milkmaid and the cow to the slaughter.

The caricature was accompanied by verses by S. Marshak: Sparkling eyes, colonel-baron Commanded: "Hands at the seams!" But seeing that the whole battalion was itching - He commanded: "Hands on lice!"

At the broken trough

The defeat of the 8th Italian army near Stalingrad, and then the defeat of the Italian and German troops in North Africa, caused a sharp aggravation of Italy's internal political situation. An acute crisis was also growing in the leadership of the Fascist Party in Italy. The loss of colonial possessions in Africa significantly narrowed the social support of Mussolini's regime, making his alliance with the big bourgeoisie unpromising.

ONLY A FEW MONTHS HAVE PASSED (LOOKING AT THE FACES...). 1942

The huge losses of the fascist German troops on the Soviet-German front, especially increased as a result of the defeat near Moscow, created considerable difficulties even for such masters of false propaganda as Goebbels.

"No one knows how long the war will last," the propaganda minister lamented in one of his speeches. "The campaign against Russia," he said, "has been going on for eight months already. The stubborn and bitter nature of this war puts more and more difficult problems before the Germans. This was even reflected in the expression on the faces of the German soldiers." (From newspapers)

blood stains

“Frau Traudel, in a letter to her husband Leonardo on the Soviet-German front, asks to send her some things for her children. “Nothing,” she writes, “if they are stained with blood, they can be washed.” (From newspapers)

The caricature was accompanied by verses by S. Marshak: - My Fritz, my treasure, Write to us about your health. Send us warm underwear, At least covered in blood. I can wash it. It will come in handy for the little one... So writes a woman and mother, A worthy friend of Fritz. When the fascist, branded with a mortal sign, was organizing a pogrom, Invisibly with him burst into the house She - with a purse and a backpack.

Incoherent speeches, tired eyes

After the stunning defeat of the Nazi army near Moscow, unprecedented losses in manpower and equipment, a noticeable despondency reigned in the top military-political leadership of the Third Reich. In a number of public speeches in the winter of 1941 - in the spring of 1942. Hitler was rather pessimistic about the situation. On January 30, 1942, speaking at the Berlin Sports Palace, Hitler was forced to openly admit that he did not know how he would wage the war in 1942 and whether he would be able to win it.

Kukryniksy is a creative team of Soviet graphic artists and painters, which included full members of the USSR Academy of Arts (1947), People's Artists of the USSR (1958), Heroes of Socialist Labor Mikhail Kupriyanov (1903—1991), Porfiry Krylov (1902-1990) and Nikolai Sokolov (1903—2000).

Mikhail Kupriyanov Porfiry Krylov Nikolai Sokolov

The pseudonym "Kukryniksy" is made up of the first syllables of surnames Ku priyanov and Kry fishing, as well as the first three letters of the name and the first letter of the surname Nick olaya WITH around.

Three artists worked by the method of collective creativity (each also worked individually - on portraits and landscapes). They are best known for their numerous skillfully executed caricatures and cartoons, as well as book illustrations created in a characteristic caricature style.

The joint work of the Kukryniksy began in their student years at the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops. Artists from different parts of the Soviet Union came to Moscow VKHUTEMAS. Kupriyanov from Kazan, Krylov from Tula, Sokolov from Rybinsk. In 1922, Kupriyanov and Krylov met and began working together in the VKHUTEMAS wall newspaper as Kukry and Krykup. At this time, Sokolov, while still living in Rybinsk, signed Nix on his drawings. In 1924, he joined Kupriyanov and Krylov, and the three of them worked in the wall newspaper as the Kukryniksy.

The group was looking for a new unified style that used the skill of each of the authors. The heroes of literary works were the first to fall under the pen of cartoonists. Later, when the Kukryniksy became permanent contributors to the Pravda newspaper and the Krokodil magazine, they took up predominantly political caricature.

Landmark works for the Kukryniksy were grotesque topical cartoons on themes of domestic and international life (series "Transport", 1933-1934, "Warmongers", 1953-1957), propaganda, including anti-fascist, posters ("We will ruthlessly crush and destroy the enemy! ”, 1941), illustrations for the works of Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (1939), Anton Chekhov (1940-1946), Maxim Gorky (“The Life of Klim Samgin”, “Foma Gordeev”, “Mother”, 1933, 1948-1949 ), Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov ("The Golden Calf"), Miguel Cervantes ("Don Quixote").

A significant moment in the work was the military poster "We will mercilessly defeat and destroy the enemy!". He appeared on the June streets of Moscow as one of the first - immediately after the attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR. The Kukryniksy went through the whole war: their leaflets accompanied the Soviet soldiers all the way to Berlin. In addition, the cycle of posters "Windows of TASS" was very popular.

Kukryniksy at the front, 1942

They became the classics of Soviet political caricature, which they understood as a weapon in the fight against a political enemy, and did not at all recognize other trends in art and caricature, which manifested themselves fully in the first place in the new format of the Literaturnaya Gazeta (department of humor "12 Chairs Club" ). Their political cartoons, often published in the Pravda newspaper, belong to the best examples of this genre (“Ticks to Ticks”, “I Lost a Ring ...”, “Under the Eagle Backfired, Responded in Rome”, “Wall Haircut”, “Lion’s share”, a series of drawings “warmongers”, etc.). The team owns numerous political posters (“Transformation of the Fritz”, “Peoples warn”, etc.). The Kukryniksy are also known as painters and masters of easel drawing. They are the authors of the paintings "Morning", "Tanya", "The Flight of the Germans from Novgorod", "The End" (1947-1948), "The Old Masters" (1936-1937). They made pastel drawings - “I. V. Stalin and V. M. Molotov”, “I. V. Stalin in Kureika”, “Barricades on Presnya in 1905”, “Chkalov on Udd Island”, etc.

ABOUT THE CREATIVITY OF THE ARTISTS OF KUKRYNIKS

The famous Soviet poet Alexander Zharov recalls that in 1925, when he was the editor of a youth magazine, three art students somehow came into his office and offered their services. "What can you draw?" Zharov asked. Then the young people immediately set to work and, in the process of transferring the drawing to one another, quickly sketched several well-aimed cartoons on the writers who were present, which aroused general admiration. Since then, sharp and expressive drawings by young authors, signed with the compound name Kukryniksy, began to appear regularly in the magazine.

It was at the dawn of the joint creative activity of talented Soviet artists Mikhail Vasilyevich Kupriyanov, Porfiry Nikitich Krylov and Nikolai Aleksandrovich Sokolov.

The creativity of the Kukryniksy is striking in its diversity. Thoughtful artists work with inspiration and perseverance on large paintings, caricatures, posters, book illustrations, and even on sculptural portraits, achieving high results in each art form. The extraordinary relevance of the subject, the ideological orientation and clarity of the content, the originality and conciseness of the artistic language - these clearly visible to everyone advantages of the works of the Kukryniksy make them understandable to the widest circle of Soviet viewers and readers.

CARICATURES BY ARTISTS KUKRYNIKS

Being gifted painters, the Kukryniksy are, first of all and most of all, the most prominent mastersSoviet political graphics, artistic satire. It is difficult to name at least one significant event in international life from the 1930s to the present day, which would not evoke a corresponding response in their work.

At one time, the cartoons of the Kukryniksy mercilessly exposed the conspiracy of the imperialist powers against Republican Spain, the preparations for the Second World War (“The Scheme of Strict Control of the Spanish Borders”, “Continuation of the Last War” and others). In these, as in all other works, the artists act as spokesmen for the views and interests of our people, who tirelessly fight for peace throughout the world.

Kukryniksy perform with no less success in the region household satire. Their blows are directed against everything obsolete, inert and ugly, which hinders the movement of the Soviet people towards a beautiful future. From the extensive cycle of works by the Kukryniksy on everyday topics, one should highlight the series “Transport”, the drawings “Desperate Weekend”, “Memorandum”, “Toadstools” (about young people servile to foreigners).

The caricatures of the Kukryniksy are so peculiar in form that the viewer immediately recognizes their authors, without even looking at the signature. Inexhaustible in artistic invention and ingenuity, the Kukryniksy are able to recreate in front of us the appearance of this or that political degenerate (Stolypin, Kerensky, Wrangel) with a few bold and precise lines, to show the typical in the images of a bureaucrat, a fraudster, a grabber. The refinement of Kukryniksov's graphics is a vivid example of the great importance of collectivity in creativity: each of the artists offers his own solution to the topic, in the process of discussion all the best are selected from them, and then all the efforts of the team are directed to working out the final version.

WWII POSTERS IN THE CREATIVITY OF KUKRYNIKSOV

Still fresh in our memory are the numerous posters in the TASS Windows created by the Kukryniksy during the harsh years of the struggle against the fascist invaders: “We will ruthlessly crush and destroy the enemy!” harvest - a formidable blow to the enemy "and others. Responding to the most urgent tasks of the time, extremely expressive, they were a powerful ideological weapon, giving even more strength to Soviet soldiers at the front and the working population in the rear.

On the pages of Pravda, Krokodil, and other Soviet publications, sharp cartoons of the Kukryniksy invariably appeared, pillorying Cold War troubadours and their accomplices. In 1958-1959, the cartoons "The Berlin Question", "The Militant Parrot" and others were published. In No. 2 of "Crocodile" for 1960, dedicated to the memory of A.P. Chekhov, the witty cartoon "Intruder on an international scale" is remembered: the West German Chancellor Adenauer carefully unscrews the nuts from the rails, at which there is a sign "To peaceful coexistence".

PAINTINGS BY ARTISTS KUKRYNIKS

Veliky Novgorod in January 1944. Against the background of a gloomy sky, the majestic bulk of St. Sophia Cathedral rises. Fragments of the barbarically destroyed monument "Millennium of Russia" stick out from under the snow. Around the buildings, Hitlerite warriors fussily rush about with torches. Forced under the mighty blows of the Soviet Army to shamefully flee from the ancient city, they are in impotent rage trying to destroy the priceless treasures of Russian culture.

Such is the content of the widely known paintings by Kukryniksy The Flight of the Fascists from Novgorod. Despite the dramatic tension of the moment, well conveyed by the contrasts of dark and light spots, the picture is imbued with an optimistic mood. The artists were able to show in it the utter doom of the degenerates who intended to enslave our socialist Motherland.

Other pictorial works of the Kukryniksy, dedicated to the events of the Great Patriotic War, are also imbued with a patriotic feeling - “Tanya”, “Pravda”, “The End”.

"Tanya"

"End"

IN last picture in the images of great artistic power, the inglorious death of Hitlerism is shown, in the defeat of which the Soviet Union played a decisive role.

Illustrating the works of Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Chekhov and Gorky, the artists strive to reveal to the reader as fully as possible humanistic orientation great Russian literature. The most successful in this regard are the Kukryniksy drawings for Gogol's "Overcoat", Chekhov's stories "Tosca" and "I want to sleep."

"Yearning"

"Overcoat"

Fable "Fox and Beaver"

"Tsar Nicholas examines a flea"

It should be noted that each of the Kukryniksy had a bright creative personality and worked a lot independently. So, M. Kupriyanov was especially fascinated by the landscapes of the Moscow region and the Volga, P. Krylov made many portraits and perfectly conveyed the picturesque originality of Paris, Rome and Venice, and N. Sokolov lovingly depicted the life of his native Moscow and the touching beauty of Russian nature. Continuously enriching their knowledge and experience, the artists united them in one or another general idea, stubbornly achieving in each new work an ever greater completeness of the plot and its artistic embodiment.