Pyotr Ossovsky. 100th Anniversary of the Artist’s Birth

The exhibition is held in Room 82 on the second floor in the Benois Wing.

The exhibition marks the centennial anniversary of Pyotr Ossovsky (1925–2015), a painter, graphic artist, People’s Artist of the USSR (1989), winner of the USSR State Prize (1985) and full member of the Russian Academy of Arts (1995).

The art of Russian and Soviet artist Pyotr Ossovsky takes pride of place in national culture. From 1940 to 1944, he studied at an art school for gifted children, which was evacuated to Bashkortostan during World War II. Later, the artist graduated from the Vasily Surikov State Art Institute in Moscow (1944–1950) and began participating in exhibitions in 1954. In 1956, Ossovsky became a member of the Union of Artists.

Pyotr Ossovsky’s generation made a significant and visible impact on the post-war Russian art, embodying the aesthetics of the Severe Style in ideologically charged works. Describing Ossovsky’s painting Three Generations, the critic Alexander Kamensky first used this term in one of his articles in 1960. The Severe Style united artists whose work was marked by ambitious themes and a strong personal touch, including Pyotr Ossovsky, Viktor Ivanov, Igor Popov, Vladimir Stozharov, Alexei and Sergei Tkachev, and others. Following in the footsteps of his teacher, the renowned painter Sergei Gerasimov, Pyotr Ossovsky could echo his mentor’s words: “My subject is the life of Russian people and the Russian character.” The artist’s paintings are deeply confessional and imbued with an inexhaustible love for his homeland and a profound concern for the fate of his country and its people.

Ossovsky’s paintings are distinguished by the plastic clarity of his pictorial language, the grandeur of vision, and the ability to combine the monumental and the intimate. The artist’s personal intonations are diverse and multifaceted in both genre paintings and landscapes – be it sleepy Bukhara frozen in a sunlit haze or a winter night railway crossing with the green eye of a semaphore. Every object in his works carries a unique imagery, sometimes becoming the main “character” of the canvas.

Ossovsky created numerous series and epic cycles. In the mid-1970s, he completed the series Lake Pihkva Fishermen. One of the paintings from this series, also entitled Lake Pihkva Fishermen, is housed in the Russian Museum. The heroic and dramatic images from the series History of the Red State, painted in the 2000s, are perceived as a symbolic reflection of the struggle of the Soviet people. Assessing the complex and dramatic turns of history, Ossovsky remained true to the ideals of his wartime childhood, his turbulent youth and the teachings of his mentors. One cannot help but respect the artist’s reverent attitude toward the “white square of canvas”, which symbolizes the ineffable excitement of the creative act, promising both victories and defeats, searches and discoveries. Ossovsky’s Self-Portrait (2002) is a message to future generations about the responsibility of creative work and the great mission of the artist.