Russian field. Hard times.

The large-scale picture depicts a woman harnessed to a plough with children against the vast Central Russian upland background. A middle-aged farmer is probably a soldier who has just returned from war. The cap on the boy’s head and the raw soil overgrown with yellowed grass are obvious evidences of that. A barefoot woman, reminiscent of allegorical woman images of Alexey Venetsianov is supported by the two faceless girls, a teenage son and a mother. With a tragic expression she is pulling this heavy plough.

The allegorical nature of the subject matter is again emphasized by the recognizable composition borrowed from Repin's “Barge Haulers on the Volga” and Perov's “Troika”. These schemes seem to have become part of the collective memory. In this case, however, we do not observe the conflict between the slave labour and the technical progress, and neither do we engage with the children’s labor concern. Rather, “Russian field” represents the history of an anonymous family in the context of the world tragedies - war, famine and human victims.

The usage of pasty brushstrokes; gloomy, gray coloring on the painting together with the military subject represent the trademark of the post-war Soviet painting. Probably, alike the other monumental series of Tkachev brothers (i.e. “They Fought for Their Country”), “Hard times” serves as a certain reproach to the society of the last years of the Soviets. Likewise, this artwork represents a hortative and a very personal souvenir of the past.

The second version of this composition, dating back to 1990-1995, is exhibited in the Tkachev Museum in Bryansk city (Russia).

Medea Margoshvili