Collective Farm Holiday
1937
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Location in museum
The Benois Wing
Open the panorama of the hall in the virtual tour
Зал 86 - Period Early 20th century
- CategoryGenre Painting
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Arkady Plastov’s Collective Farm Holiday depicts the harvest celebrations at a Soviet collective farm. The festivities are not among those introduced by the Communist authorities; this is one of the traditional Russian folk holidays marking the most important events in the annual cycle of life. The villagers have brought in the harvest; now it is time to reap the fruits of their labours. Nature has been kind and lavishly rewarded their efforts. The banner crowned by the portrait of Joseph Stalin claims that «life has become better, life has become fun.» This is a token of the Soviet period and Communist propaganda, transferring the traditional folk festival beyond the bounds of a concrete village into a national celebration.
Arkady Plastov painted this picture after making a series of studies of fellow villagers. He was born and spent most of his life in the village of Prislonikha near the town of Ulyanovsk. The artist devoted his entire oeuvre to the rural theme. The heroes of his paintings are real people of the 1930s, recorded for posterity in the master’s poetic and sincere images. The idealised image of abundance and festivities was an official requirement of Soviet art in the 1930s. Russian Museum: From Icons to the Modern Times. Palace Editions, St Petersburg, 2015. P. 350.