Works of Palekh miniaturists of the Soviet period in the field of design of art postcards (Palekh and postcard)

Lavrov Dmitrii Evgen'evich ORCID: 0000-0002-2607-7220 PhD in Art History Senior Educator, the department of Museology, Saint Petersburg State University 199034, Russia, g. Saint Petersburg, nab. Universitetskaya, 7-9, aud. 91 agitlak@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The art of the Palekh lacquer miniature, which arose in the early years of the Soviet period, throughout the twentieth century. evoked the most admiring reviews from the audience. But the more the Soviet era moves away from us, the more we forget that in the 1960s - 1980s, talented art postcards that were sold in numerous bookstores and printing kiosks of the Soviet Union were no less famous for the Palekh craft. The Palekh postcard, which was used as a postal letter until the mid-1960s, and subsequently as a souvenir, is the most popular (the circulation of such a postcard could reach a million or more copies), the most popular, the cheapest (but not in its artistic quality!), and therefore the most popular art form in which when- or paleshane worked. Without any exaggeration, it can be argued that it was the Palekh postcard, which cost from 3-4 kopecks, that was the only type of handicraft that was in almost every Soviet dwelling, regardless of the level of prosperity of its owner (this statement, unfortunately, is also true for our time). Not every lover of beauty can afford to buy a Palekh casket or a lacquer panel, not everyone can even see the products of the Palekh craft at exhibitions and museums, but everyone has seen and held a Palekh postcard (although, perhaps, not always remembering this) at least once in his life.

Russian Russian master V. P. Fokeyev also worked in other crafts of Soviet lacquer miniatures, who were engaged in the design of art postcards; the most active in this field (from artists outside Palekh) was the Moscow master V. P. Fokeyev, who created talented works on the themes of Russian epics throughout his work ^[3] (his series of postcards "Russian Fortresses" is especially original ^[23]). Nevertheless, it was only in Palekh that the creation of art postcards was a well-established industry for the production of printed souvenirs, in demand and loved by customers for several decades, and had a completely independent economic significance, along with other types of fine art crafts.     

For the design of a number of sets of postcards by artists of the Palekh craft, the so-called "brigade" method was characteristic, which was also used by paleshans in the design of theatrical productions and monumental painting. So, in 1961, a set of postcards in the design of paleshan "Ural Tales of P. P. Bazhov" was published in the Moscow publishing house "IZOGIZ" ^[28] (in 1969 ^[29], as well as in 1972 ^[30] the set was republished under the same name and in the same composition). The set, consisting of 8 postcards, was created by six Palekh miniaturists (N. M. Malinkin, A.V. Kovalev, B. N. Kukuliyev and others). The postcards, each of which illustrated a tale by P. P. Bazhov, were created in a recognizable and original Palekh style, representing a synthesis of iconographic features (Yu. P. Kozlov's postcard "Zhabreev Walker", B. N. Kukuliyev's postcard "Ermakov's Swans") and the features of the Palekh "school" of the postwar period (N. M. postcard Malinkina "Silver hoof", postcard by V. V. Elkhovikova "Tayutkino mirror").

Another example of a set of postcards designed by the "brigade" method is the "Golden Ring" set of 1972 ^[8], 32 postcards of which were made by three Palekh artists: Yu. A. Brovkin, A.V. Gordeev and B. N. Kukuliyev. The unusual nature of this order was that if usually Palekh artists who designed postcards had to illustrate artistic texts (tales of A. S. Pushkin, tales of P. P. Bazhov, revolutionary songs, Russian folk tales and epics), now the task was different: it was necessary on each of the 32 postcards dedicated to a particular locality to the point of the Russian Golden Ring, to give its symbolic, generalized, easily recognizable image to the viewer; in other words, instead of illustrating the artistic text, it was necessary to give a symbolic image close to the poster. On the other hand, the Palekh miniaturists, due to the iconographic origins of their craft (as well as the masters' good acquaintance with the Soviet poster), were well aware of such work, and they brilliantly coped with the symbolization of the image in a lacquer miniature ^{[14, pp. 114, 160]}. The experience of such symbolization in the Palekh art postcard was also very successful. So, for a symbolic transfer on a postcard of the city of Vladimir, the artist Yu. A. Brovkin, resorting to poster stylistics, used combined silhouettes of the Golden Gate, the Assumption Cathedral and the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl, and the image of Moscow was transferred (by the Palekh master B. N. Kukuliyev) as a contour of the Moscow Kremlin, combined with the silhouette of the Moscow State University and the "book house" on Novy Arbat ^{[15, p. 99]}.

A separate postcard of the same set, designed by A.V. Gordeev, was dedicated to Palekh, whose symbolic image was embodied in the famous Palekh horse troika racing in the dark winter night. A similar technique of artistic transmission of a geographical place through a conditional symbolic, but quite recognizable image was repeated with the same success in the set "Palekh" published in 1974 by Yu. A. Brovkin and B. N. Kukuliyev ^[18], on 12 postcards of which many sights of the "village-academy" (House-the museum of the founder of the local craft I. I. Golikov, the State Museum of Palekh Art, Holy Cross Church, Elijah Church and other objects).

An important area of the design work of Palekh artists was the creation of propaganda postcards. The number of such propaganda postcards was extremely significant; it can be positively stated that this figure in the total number of printed products created by the paleshans was second only to postcards on epic and Pushkin themes. The explanation for this phenomenon lies in the fact that the customer of the Palekh postcards was often Soviet state bodies that concluded contracts with the organization of the Palekh fishery (often to dates ideologically significant for the Soviet state). So, in the spring of 1967 (on the 50th anniversary of October), according to such an order (which followed from the Art Fund of the RSFSR), Palekh art and production workshops produce, among other creative works, several dozen new items of mass souvenir products, most of which were postcards. It is interesting that at the exhibition of such souvenirs (selected from all over the republic) organized in April 1967 in the Moscow House of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, it was the Palekh postcards that were awarded special thanks by the Council of Ministers, after which the Palekh Art and Production workshops received additional orders for new postcards ^[17]. So, in 1967, on the 50th anniversary of Soviet power, the Soviet Artist publishing house published a set of postcards "Songs of the Civil War", created by a group of Palekh masters (A. S. Peskov, A. V. Gordeev, Yu. A. Vinogradov, A. D. Kochupalov, K. S. Semaykin, V. N. Smirnov) ^[20]. Another striking example was a gift set of postcards-illustrations to V. V. Mayakovsky's poem "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" ^[5], designed in 1970 by the artist A.V. Kovalev, a Palekh master, who most often of all craft artists turned to the image of the founder of the Soviet state ^[13]. Finally, one of the last "ideological" orders for such products made by the craft was a set of 18 large–format postcards "Songs of Russia" by the Palekh artist V. I. Mironov, which were published in 1987 (on the 70th anniversary of October), representing illustrations of Russian and Soviet songs. Along with the clearly sounding lyrical theme (postcards "Moscow evenings", "I do not regret, I do not call, I do not cry"), the Soviet propaganda theme is clearly traced in the set (sheets "The Bryansk forest was noisy severely", "The Song about the wheelbarrow", "We will go Boldly into battle") ^[21]. Except moreover, for ideologically significant dates, single Palekh postcards were also issued in large editions: such was, for example, the postcard "Ivanovo is the birthplace of the First Council" by artists B. N. Kukuliev and K. V. Kukulieva, created in 1971 (for the 100th anniversary of the formation of the city of Ivanov) and published by the publishing house "Soviet Russia" with a circulation of 100 thousands of copies ^[9].

In the 1960s - 1970s, one of the leading designers of art postcards was a major master of the Palekh craft, Alexander Mikhailovich Kurkin (1916-2004) ^[12]. A graduate of the Palekh Art College, A.M. Kurkin, along with the lacquer miniature, worked extremely actively as a graphic artist throughout his long and successful work: he created drawings for the newspapers "Call" and "Working Edge", designed albums, as well as numerous postcards. A.M. Kurkin, who worked a lot on propaganda topics in the lacquer miniature, paid tribute to them in an art postcard. This is the set "For the Power of the Soviets!" in 1967, published by the publishing house "Soviet Artist" ^[7]. The 14 postcards of the set dedicated to the songs of the Civil War show the outstanding talent of the master in creating lyrical images ("The order is given to him – to the west"; "Kakhovka, Kakhovka, native rifle"), as well as in the skillful use of the stylistics of the Soviet poster ("We are blacksmiths, and our spirit is young"; "International").

Nevertheless, despite this successful experience, A.M. Kurkin in the field of art postcard design more often turned to illustrating Pushkin and Russian folk tales. This is the set of postcards "The Tale of the Golden Cockerel", published in 1966 in the Moscow publishing house "Soviet Artist" ^[24] and reprinted in 1968 with a circulation of 1.5 million copies ^[25]. Artists of the Palekh craft repeatedly turned to illustrating this Pushkin's fairy tale back in the 1930s (I. P. Vakurov, I. M. Bakanov, I. I. Golikov), but A.M. Kurkin, who undoubtedly had an unusually original talent as a graphic artist, managed to say his new word in this work (which became widely known). On the 12 plates created for this postcard set, the artist gives creatively reworked decorative-planar compositions from the well-known Pushkin fairy tale. Some of them bear traces of the influence of the art of the Yaroslavl school of the XVII century (the sheet "And the young Tsar went home with the girl"), but most have an independent character, ideally reflecting in their dynamic and bright (the sheet "He now sends the smaller Son to the rescue of the big one"), then, on the contrary, static and gloomy compositions (sheets "Reign, lying on your side!", "Sovereign! wake up! trouble!") the whole sinister meaning of this most mysterious of Pushkin's fairy tales.

Other works of the Palekh master are also marked by a mystical attitude to fairy-tale narration: these are the gift sets designed by him "Illustrations to the works of N. V. Gogol" in 1976 ^[10] and "Vasilisa the Beautiful" in 1981. ^[4] The postcards of the last set of unusual for Palekh, elongated horizontally, have, as a rule, a clearly defined compositional center in the middle of each sheet, where the main action unfolds. However, in some pages illustrating the most emotional scenes of the fairy tale, A.M. Kurkin refuses to center the composition, preferring to give a stormy, dynamic scene ("Vasilisa meets the white horseman", "Vasilisa ran home in the light of the skull"). Interestingly, A.M. Kurkin, actively working in the field of postcard design, addressed the themes of Russian folk and Pushkin's fairy tales also in lacquer miniature products: these are the plate "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" from 1961 from the collection of the Tula Regional Art Museum ^{[22, p. 99]}, the box "Golden Cockerel" from 1964 from a private collection ^[11], the panel "Russian folk Tales" for the Arkhangelsk restaurant near Moscow in 1966 ^{[22, p. 119]} and many others the works of the master.   

Another prominent Soviet-era graphic artist who worked with an art postcard was the craft artist, Palekh local historian Konstantin Sergeevich Bokarev (1928-2007). K. S. Bokarev also created single postcards ^[26], but his numerous postcard sets decorated on the themes of Pushkin and Russian folk tales, as well as Soviet agitation, and in each In such a work, K. S. Bokarev managed to find his own original pictorial language that distinguishes his illustrations from other works on the same topic. Thus, in the postcard sheets of the set "By the Sea, Lukomorye" (created on the themes of Pushkin's fairy tales), a significant role is played by a floral ornament, which in some cases occupies up to half a sheet ^[27]. Another interesting and unusual feature of K. S. Bokarev for Palekh was his commitment to the white background of the postcard sheet – a technique that the graph uses in such famous postcard sets as "Leninskaya Pravda" in 1968 ^[16] and "Volga and Mikula Selyaninovich" in 1970 ^[6] This solution turned out to be especially successful for illustrating the Belarusian the tales "Leninskaya Pravda", whose plot and artistic features perfectly corresponded to the poster style chosen by K. S. Bokarev for some of the postcards of the set ("My brother returned to the factory and began to tell Lenin's truth to his comrades", "In October 17, Leninskaya Pravda appeared" and other sheets).

Finally, one of the most original designers of art postcards in the Palekh style in the 1960s - 1970s was the Leningrad artist Evgeny Ivanovich Pashkov (1920-2002) ^{[14, p. 92]}. E. I. Pashkov, being a student of the Leningrad Art School, in 1938 was repressed and exiled to Palekh, where he was in in the same year, he was admitted to the 4th year of a local educational institution ^[19]. After graduating from it and returning to Leningrad, E. I. Pashkov painted portraits throughout his long creative life, as well as engaged in the design of books and art postcards. The themes of the latter were in the general mainstream of the main Palekh products: E. I. Pashkov in his postcards turned to illustrating Pushkin and Russian folk tales. Such, for example, is a set of postcards from 16 sheets "A. S. Pushkin. Fairy Tales", published in 1964 (sketches made in 1963 are kept in the St. Petersburg Museum-apartment of A. S. Pushkin at 12 Moika) ^[1] and republished in 1968. ^[2] In this postcard set, something else strikes: E. I. Pashkov, being a carrier of the Leningrad graphic school, brilliantly synthesizes its achievements with Palekh stylistic traditions, and this is especially felt when comparing the dark, rich gold ornament of the cover with the unusual for Palekh, akin to the manner of K. S. Bokarev, the white background of the postcard sheets.

Thus, it can be argued that the Palekh postcard in the 1960s - 1980s was an important and extremely popular type of products of the local lacquer craft. Numerous Palekh artists B. N. Kukuliev and K. V. Kukulieva, A.M. Kurkin and A.V. Kovalev, E. I. Pashkov and K. S. Bokarev, Yu. A. Brovkin and A.V. Gordeev were widely known and recognized not only as lacquer miniaturists, but also talented masters of graphics. It is gratifying to see that even in our time of crisis, the Palekh Soviet postcard is still very popular, quickly finding buyers in Russian old book stores, as well as on the Internet. The revival of the Palekh craft, which, without exaggeration, all its fans are waiting for, will definitely take place, including as a revival of its glorious traditions in the field of art postcard design.