1960s–70s

The art of the 1960s – 70s is inseparables from those processes which began during the period known as the ‘Khrushchev Thaw’, associated with De-Stalinization and political changes that resulted from it, as well as the renovation of the cultural situation in the country. The intellectuals of the 1960s formulated new principles underlying the system of spiritual values, interpretation of the relationship of the individual and the society, and the artist’s choice of style and content in the art. Ideology ceased to dominate humanitarian and lyrical aspects of life, which became a theme in its own right. Therefore typical of the art of the period under review are sketches from nature, genre scenes and landscapes. We see different interpretations of these motifs in the works by Maria Gorokhova, Ruvim Frumak, Yuri Vasnetsov, Nikolay Kostrov, Oleg Tatarnikov, Alexander Skalozubov, Yuri Trizna, Boris Vlasov, Ebgenia Magaril and Boris Nikolayev created in the 1960s.

New names appeared in the 1970s. Those were young artists, e.g. Pavel Kondratyev, Galina Molchanova, Vera Matyukh, Boris kalaushin, Nikolay Kovalenko, Iosif Zisman and Alexander Vedernikov. They proclaimed new aesthetics presupposing a much wider range of the means of expression in their art, which contributed to an overall change of the country’s moral atmosphere.