The artist is Shegal
The picture was first exhibited at the grandiose exhibition “Industry of Socialism”, dedicated to the XVIII Congress of the CPSU (b). The second congress of the collective farmers-attendants, to whom it is dedicated, took place in February 1935. The congress adopted the charter of the agricultural artel and marked the “complete victory of socialism in the village”. The artist depicted the real episode of the congress selected on newspaper publications. As the first among equals, Stalin communicates with the simple collective farmer Evdokia Fedotova, the head of the machine-tractor station of the Renaissance collective farm, the Leningrad Region, the portrait of which was also made by Sofia Dymshitz-Tolstoy. On this day, she chaired the meeting. On the rostrum – a drummer of cotton fields of Uzbekistan Tashlanov. Her figure in colorful national clothing, as well as the composition of the image of a young Turkmenka in a white scarf and Uzbek Aga-Yusup-Ali, is a tribute to the artist with a favorite topic.
Shegal worked a lot and enthusiastically on creative business trips in the Asian republics of the Soviet Union. Thus, the content of the canvas is enriched with the topic of friendship of peoples. It is no coincidence that female images are so emphasized in the picture. Among the delegates of the II congress, a record percentage of women-attendants of collective farm labor was noted. So the artist states the success of the country in strengthening female equality.
Criticism noted some uniformity in the solution of the upper part of the composition, which is the plane of the wall. However, it is there that the sculptural image of Lenin is placed, which overshadows what is happening in the lower tier of the picture. Features of the decoration of the hall allowed the artist realistic means to identify the invisible presence of the founder of the Soviet state at the congress. The significance of the place that the figure of Lenin occupies in this large -scale picture gave contemporaries the grounds for discussing about the distribution of roles in the trinich formula “Leaders, Teacher, Friend”.
For the happiness of the people. Catalog of the exhibition of the Russian Museum in Malaga. 2018. WITH. 82.
