Evdokia Fedotova, Chairwoman of the Second Congress of Collective Farm Shock Workers
1935–1938
- Period Early 20th century
- CategoryPortrait
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After a short period of bold experimentation during the late 1910s and early 1920s, Sofya Dymshits-Tolstaya’s creative work entered a period of working with realist painting. From 1925 to 1935, Dymshits-Tolstaya managed the art section for the magazines Woman Worker and Peasant Woman, and as a result found herself at one of the epicentres of formation of the concept of the new Soviet woman. She made a whole series of portraits of “new women”: agitators, shock workers, and social activists on collective farms. In her memoirs, the artist wrote: “Evdokia Sergeyevna Fedotova had a severe face, with a touch of iconlike rapture in it, and she was intelligent and strong-willed. [...] When I began working I asked her what she would like to have in the painting. She replied that she should definitely be pictured with the minutes of the kolkhoz shock workers’ congress [...]”.