Arkady Plastov
Arkady Alexandrovich Plastov (; – 12 May 1972) was a Russian socialist realist painter. Biography. Plastov was born into a family of icon painters in the village Prislonikha in the Russian Governorate of Simbirsk. He attended the sculpture department of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture beginning in 1914. In 1917, he returned to his native village, where he occupied himself with painting, drawing from nature. Starting in 1935, he steps introduces his category painting into the public. According to the strict political-artistic doctrine of the time at that time, which only permits the style of socialist  realism in all art kinds, Plastov pictures the life in the Soviet Union, the pervasive building up of socialism. His work is characterized by his knowledge of the life in the villages of the Soviet Union, his love for his native land, strong, live pictures and his skills of painting. As the reaction to the events, which moved the population of the Soviet Union at that time, Plastov showed in his pictures, how the village life had changed by the collectivization. As models of the Protagonists of his works Plastov chose characters of his homeland village. The outbreak of World  War II inspired new motives for the work of Plastov. He depictured suffering of the Soviet people, work of the women, old people and children on the kolkhoz fields during the war. After the war Plastov kept the motives of the village life. A characteristic for Plastov's works is the 1951 painting "Spring" (Весна). It shows a young naked woman dressing up a girl in front of a wood hut (a Banya, the Russian counterpart to the Finnish sauna). It snows, and in the background there are snow-covered pastures. "Spring" is considered as a turning point in the  Soviet history of art. For the first time since the introduction of socialist realism a work of art showed an unpolitical everyday life scene in Soviet Union, without bringing any political message, as could be found in Plastov's earlier works that glorified the collectivization. During his artistic career Plastov was awarded two Orders of Lenin, he was laureate of the Stalin Prize, (1946), Lenin prize (1966) and he also (in 1972, posthumously) was nominated for the State Prize of the RSFSR named Ilya Repin – for his painting "Balefire in a Field", "Out of the Past" and a series of  portraits of his contemporaries.