Alexander Deineka "HYMN TO LIFE" – Exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

Alexander Deineka "HYMN TO LIFE" is a large-scale project by the Tretyakov Gallery and the Kursk State Art Gallery named after A.A. Deineka. The exhibition brings together more than 200 works of painting, graphics, and sculpture by this outstanding master of 20th-century Russian art. Many of the displayed works are being shown in Moscow for the first time, as they were brought from the artist’s hometown of Kursk. According to Russian Minister of Culture Olga Lyubimova, Alexander Deineka’s work "became a symbol of an era of creation and faith in the 'new man,' a hymn to life in all its manifestations: from the heroic pathos of labor and sports to the monumental beauty of nature in the young Soviet country. His works are a chronicle of time, filled with optimism and faith in the future," emphasized Olga Lyubimova.

Deineka’s talent was incredibly versatile. He gained wide recognition as a painter, graphic artist, sculptor, and muralist, as well as a book illustrator and educator. Far fewer people know that the artist also designed furniture and clothing and created commissioned works for the interiors of the Moscow Metro and public buildings. Opening the exhibition, Tretyakov Gallery Director General Elena Pronicheva shared: "Personally, what I found most important and valuable in this exhibition is that Deineka is presented here not only as the founder of socialist realism, not only as an 'ambitious, brilliant, uncompromising' exponent of 'mass consciousness' (as his contemporaries wrote), but also as an intelligent, profound, detail-oriented, honest, and courageous man."

The "Hymn to Life" exhibition includes the artist’s own words, revealing his creative ideals: "Young people debate the fate of tomorrow’s art. They accept the most mind-blowing '-isms' on faith, only to quickly become disillusioned with them. In classrooms, they sprinkle sawdust and sand onto colored canvases, paint squares and circles, bend rail steel into all sorts of shapes that express nothing and serve no purpose."

Alexander Deineka expressed his creative credo, his hymn to life, better than anyone else could in these words: "I sought to find a visual language for the new, the beautiful, the grand. There is something immutable in the rhythm of youth and courage. Courage has its own dynamics. The new has its own life plans. That is why I love painting people, understanding their inner world through visible, observable rhythm; painting landscapes in their natural harmony; which is why, in my work, a person does not dissolve into a painterly mush but is constructed as a colorful, voluminous, clear image…"