Pakhomov, Alexei Fyodorovich (1900-1973)

AF Pakhomov was born into a peasant family. Sooner find cravings for art, it is the money gathered philanthropists, came in 1915 in Petrograd. Because of the events of the Revolution and the Civil War, scientists dragged on, and he finished it only in 1925, during Vhuteine, but quickly gained a reputation as a mature artist.

Having to go through all the series tempt the contemporary art trends, including the most extreme, he sought to combine widely understood pictorial tradition of the gains of the art of the XX century.

In beautiful in color, with tonchennyh on skill, by building a monumental canvases consistently embodied lofty ideas about the person of the artist ("worker", 1926, "Bathing Girl", 1927, "Farm Boy" and "Reaper," both 1929, "Girlfriends" , 1930). The continuation of these paintings was the beginning of a series of paintings of the 1930s. "In the sun" ("Sisters", "bather", "At the Peter and Paul Fortress", etc.), in which a chaste poetry interpreted topic naked body, some of these stories, he repeated, and lithographic prints.

Along with the painting and easel graphics Pakhomov involved illustrating books for children and youth department of the State Literature Publishing House. Artist's favorite subjects were the lives of children and the life of the Russian village ("Master" Marshak, 1927; "bucket" E. Schwartz, "Kos" GA Krutova, both of 1929 "As a hotbed led Sanka" LA Budogoskoy and the "ball" Marshak, 1933). Already in the late 1920s. He was among the best illustrators of children's books.

His main achievement was to overcome common standards conditional - doll-like sugary or comical - images of children. His charming characters invariably different psychological certainty and social specificity.

In the first half of 1930. Complicate the ideological environment, particularly the campaign against "formalism" Pakhomov put in a difficult situation: his paintings are increasingly becoming the target of attacks. Not wanting to compromise the principles of creativity, he decided to leave the painting in general, and even refused to color in his book and easel, focusing exclusively on the figure.

Excellent craftsmanship and original painter had served him faithfully and illustrations for books ("Bezhin meadow" Ivan Turgenev, 1936, "Frost, Red Nose" Nekrasov, 1937), and lithographic prints (series "Palace of Pioneers ", 1939-40). Pakhomov spent the war in the besieged city, without interrupting the work, the result of which was the famous series of lithographs "Leningrad during the siege" (1942-44). However, in his later works - a series of "Our Town" (1945-48), book illustrations - began to reveal a frightening dryness and verbosity - the result of force being introduced in the postwar years, dogmatic ideas.

Reached by the time of high degrees of official recognition, Pakhomov nevertheless remained sober attitude to his art and with the start of the "thaw", some liberalization of public life in the 1960s., Was to attempt to upgrade it - back to the color chart and some techniques his early works, but a serious turn in the work was not able to do.