Frontline Drawings of Ukrainian Artists of the Second World War Period

Abstract

Purpose of the article. During World War II, hundreds of Ukrainian artists were at the front. The drawings they created were a powerful source of propaganda for the Soviet regime. At the same time, in the general unity of the full-scale front-line drawing the individual features of artists of great artistic skill are clearly traced. The aim of the article is to determine the circle of leading Ukrainian artists who during the Second World War were in the troops of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army (RSCA) and worked in the field of drawing; to study the genre, artistic and stylistic structure, as well as materials and techniques of frontal drawings; identify the features of the reproduction of space-time in the front-line drawing of Ukrainian artists. Methodology. The study is based on the principle of historicism, a combination of historical and cultural, contextual methods, art history image and stylistic and system-comparative analysis. Scientific novelty. Peculiarities of human psychology of perception were clearly manifested in the drawing of frontline artists. The compression of the time field in the drawings of frontline artists is due not only to the doctrine of socialist realism, which was based on spatial three-dimensionality, but also to the peculiarities of human perception of time and space in stressful conditions. This also explains the difference of time display in the drawings created by the artists in the conditions of the front and evacuation. Artists, whose period of study coincided with the years of the avant-garde, the introduction of formal foundations of art in educational institutions, have achieved a much deeper and broader interpretation in the drawing of temporal and spatial categories. Conclusions. Frontline sketches were pictorial diaries: notes, sketches that were intended to be triggers for memories, for further writing of pictorial "memoirs" - paintings on the theme of war. This theme of Soviet propaganda will become a pass for future decades in all artistic spheres, both artistic and literary, musical, film and theater, etc., ensuring the favor of party leaders and the respect of the average Soviet man. Drawings of Serhiy Hryhoriev, Zinovy ​​Tolkachov, Vasyl Ovchynnikov, Anatol Petrytsky, Georgy Melikhov, Anton Komashko and other prominent Ukrainian artists are distinguished by the ability to give the passage of events the meaning of epic generalization, elevation above the simplified goal of capturing the moment.

Keywords: drawing, Ukrainian drawing, frontline drawing, sketch, the Second World War, portrait, landscape.