Youth
1932
The composition of this work relates it to the cycle of double portraits painted by Fyodor Bogorodsky in 1932, directly recreating or indirectly hinting at the subject of photography. The artist carries on indirect polemics with the increasingly popular genre of photography, demonstrating the unique possibilities of painting in the creation of an artistic image. This series of portraits opened a new stage in Fyodor Bogorodsky’s oeuvre, following a major one-man show in 1931. Sailors became the new heroes of his works. As Bogorodsky later recalled: “After the exhibition, I travelled to the Black Sea and spent six months on warships, infected by the cheerfulness and sparkling courage of the young sailors.” Youth can be regarded as the artist’s painterly tribute to his new friends.