Arkadi Alexandrovitch Plastov, peintre officiel de la paysannerie russe, et la notion de narodnost

After attending a religious school and a seminary in the Volga region, Plastov studied at the Stroganov and the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. He became a renowned painter in the 1930s and received several distinctions for his work including the Stalin Prize in 1 946 and two Orders of Lenin in 1963 and 1968. Soviet publications and teaching materials often included some of his most famous compositions as illustrations, such as A Feast in the Kolkhoz, A Fascist flew past, Spring, and The Traktorist's Supper. While devoting most of his work to rural scenes in the Soviet era, Plastov seldom referred to political symbols in his paintings. The human figure is at the centre of his art. It is however far from the homo sovieticus we might expect : a peasant or a factory worker longing for progress and modernity. The characters are here painted in their traditional rural environment, toiling with ancestral tools, visually rooted in the nineteenth century Russian painting tradition and with elements of Christian iconography.