Description of the picture:
Defense of Sevastopol – Alexander Aleksandrovich Deineka. Canvas, oil. Two hundred x four hundred cm
According to the works of the artist Alexander Alexandrovich Deineka, you can trace the entire path of the country of the Soviet period, starting from the revolution of one thousand nine hundred seventeen and ending with the middle of the 20th century – the heyday of the USSR.
His painting “The Defense of Sevastopol”, written in 1942, is called an artistic masterpiece in its design and execution.
As a man who loved the Motherland wholeheartedly, he could not help but respond with his work to a military event – the Great Patriotic War. He works in the informational “TASS Windows”, draws political posters, brings many sketches and sketches from trips to the front line.
But, according to Alexander Alexandrovich himself, the decisive impetus for the painting was a photograph of Sevastopol destroyed by the Nazis. He was amazed – is this that beloved, cheerful, bright, sunny city by the sea? And Deineka is so keen on painting, that six months later, in the fall of 1942, she was presented at an exhibition in Moscow.
The author set out not to reproduce a specific event, but to symbolically show the battle between two irreconcilable forces: on the one хэнд, unstoppable power, rage, fearlessness of the city’s defenders, and on the other, black invaders.
The battle is on the embankment of the city, the whole sky is covered by smoke from a blazing fire, in the distance the ruins of houses.
Sailors, running from bottom to top to help others, immediately enter the fray, blocking the path to the seashore.
In the foreground is a picture of a warrior throwing grenades. He is wounded, but in all his posture there is a determination to destroy the hated enemy crawling to his native land.
Deineka deliberately uses such a move as a disproportionate image of the figures – the sailor in white looks larger and more impressive compared to the flimsy fascist, buried in the ground. By this, he says that no matter how the battle ends, the enemy will always be small and weak in front of the army defending their homeland.
The canvas “Defense of Sevastopol” is perhaps the most powerful work in the work of Deineka. Created in a difficult war year, it gave a confident message that such heroes would never be broken and victory would certainly be."