Draft:Spring, Arkady Plastov's painting

Spring
Artist	Arkady Plastov
Year	1954
Type	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	210 cm × 123 cm (83 in × 48 in)
Location	Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Spring (Russian: Весна) is a painting by the Russian Soviet artist Arkady Plastov. He was assisted in the painting by his son Nikolai, who had graduated from the Moscow Surikov State Academic Institute of Fine Arts a year earlier. The painting was created in the summer and fall of 1954, first in the village of Prislonikha in the Ulyanovsk region, where Arkady Plastov was born, and then in the artist's studio in Moscow. Art historians date the creation of the idea of the picture differently. Some say that Spring was conceived by the artist in 1944, others attribute its conception to the 1930s, when a sketch depicting a family in a village bathhouse was created.

The painting depicts a naked young woman dressing a little girl in the open hall of a village bathhouse under the rare spring snow. The painting was shown at the very beginning of the Khrushchev Thaw and made a strong impression on experts and the general public. The female nudity had long been poorly represented in Soviet painting. The unusual subject provoked contradictory opinions. In particular, the artist was accused of wanting to depict the naked female body in order to show the audience the poverty of peasant life in his contemporary kolkhoz village. Some art critics demanded that the painting be renamed. Currently, the canvas is in the collection and permanent exhibition of the New Tretyakov Gallery, a branch of the State Tretyakov Gallery. The painting was repeatedly presented at exhibitions in museums of the USSR, modern Russia, as well as abroad.

Spring is considered to be one of the best works of Arkady Plastov, and at various times it attracted the attention of important local art historians, cultural researchers, historians and writers. According to Inga Filippova, a candidate of art history, within the genre painting the artist created an image of "divine beauty". Art historian Ariadna Zhukova called the painting Spring "one of the most poetic and pure representations of a woman in our painting".

The painting's plot and its peculiarities according to its author

Plastov chose a subject where nudity seems natural to the viewer: a young woman in the open anteroom of a village bathhouse dressing a little girl. The artist juxtaposes the naked body of a young woman of "pink — nacre tones" with russet hair with the gray wooden walls darkened by time, the soot — blackened door of the bathhouse and the warm shade of golden straw on the floor of the anteroom. The heroine's face breathes animation, the movements of her body and hands are harmonious. Snowflakes, white stars, are woven into the golden hair of the woman dressing the girl, melting on her heated "pearly pink" naked body. The main character of the painting is the embodiment of all that is beautiful in youth, combining inner richness and outer charm. Using a simple everyday motif, the artist created, in the words of a Soviet art historian, the image of youth, full of femininity and purity.

According to the artist and art historian Igor Dolgopolov, the snub — nosed girl with red bangs peeking out from under a woman's shawl was biting her lip. According to the artist's biographer Alexander Avdonin-Biryuchevsky, the girl "pressed her lips together and turned up her nose in pleasure". Some researchers, including Alexander Avdonin—Biryuchevsky, who knew the artist intimately, referred to the figures in the painting as mother and daughter. Evelina Polishchuk, a researcher at the State Tretyakov Gallery, perceived them as sisters. The same opinion was expressed by Arkady Plastov's contemporary art historian Alexander Kamensky.

The action in the painting is a means of expressing thought, not an end in itself. The young woman in the painting becomes the personification of the Russian spring. The literal "text" of the painting (a naked girl dressing the girl after the bath) is overlaid with the "subtext" (the beauty of youth, its energy, life — affirming pathos). The allegorical character is given to the picture by the Russian nature. The landscape in the painting is poetic: a gray shroud of clouds covers the sky, large snowflakes are falling, the earth is being cleared of snow. The household objects depicted in the painting are emphatically material: cold "heavy" water in a bucket, a brightly polished copper basin. Transferring the scene to the interior would turn the canvas into a purely genre painting, which does not lend itself to broad generalizations and associations.

The painting’s history

Spring in the context of Arkady Plastov's work

Édouard Manet. Olympia, 1863, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Valentin Serov. Ida Rubinstein, 1910, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

According to his sister-in-law, the artist Elena Kholodilina, Arkady Plastov treated spring with joy. During the winter he lived in Moscow, and in the spring he would come to his small home —the village of Prislonikha, Ulyanovsk region— and of necessity he himself would take out the second frames in the house and open the windows. This action was like a ritual.

In the early 1950s, Plastov reached artistic maturity. The style of his works changed — he moved away from social themes. After the expressiveness and frenzy of the paintings characteristic of the 1930s, saturated with "passion and fury", after the dramatic Haymaking and Harvest, created in the 1940s, Plastov moved to painting creation imbued with harmony between man and the world. His paintings of the 1950s and 1960s represented, in the words of one art critic, "an intimate, passionate whisper of the artist's soul". The artist's genre paintings of everyday life, while retaining their narrative and everyday basis, took on a new quality and moved to another level associated with metaphorical poetic embodiment.

For a long time, the naked female body was hardly represented in Soviet painting. Full of coarse sensuality or subtle eroticism, nude paintings presented in pre-revolutionary salons did not meet the goal set for the art of the new era — to be a carrier of advanced ideas of modernity. Plastov was one of the first to return the image of the naked female body to Soviet painting. His early experiments in this genre are the paintings Saturday and Tractor Drivers. They were created during the Second World War, in 1942—1943. One of the tasks of the nude genre is the search for the ideal of physical and spiritual beauty. In the realization of this task Plastov followed the anti—academic tradition. It is represented by such paintings as Olympia by Edouard Manet and Ida Rubinstein by Valentin Serov. Evgenia Yarkova, a researcher at the Tretyakov Gallery, noted that Arkady Plastov's own understanding of beauty contradicted the generally accepted idea of beauty. The artist refused to follow the ideal of antiquity or the Renaissance, he portrayed a real person — his contemporary. The object of admiration is not the heroine's appearance, but the harmony in the relationship between a woman and a child, the joy of their existence and communication.

The main idea and working process

There is an opinion that the main idea of the painting Spring refers to 1944, and the beginning of the artist's work on it — in January 1945 (most of the war Plastov lived in his native Prislonikha). On January 5, Arkady Alexandrovich wrote to his wife from Moscow: "4 days ago I made a watercolor sketch of the painting for which I've been making sketches of you for a whole year — it's a naked woman dressing a child in the anteroom, in the summer it will be necessary to do it". The author managed to finish the painting only in 1954. According to some sources, his son Nikolai Arkadyevich helped the artist with the painting.

Antoine Watteau. The Lesson of Love, 1716—1717

Tatyana Plastova, a student of philology, traced the origins of the idea for the painting Spring back to an earlier time — to the so—called bath plot in the artist's work of the 1930s. It is documented in Arkady Plastov's sketches in a variety, but everywhere at that time was conceptualized by the artist as a domestic sketch. Among these works is Sketch No. 1 (according to Plastova's classification; paper, watercolor, whitewash, pencil, 23,5×17 cm, is in the private collection of the artist's family), which the researcher correlates with the future painting Spring. It depicts a naked female figure dressing a child in the presence of a fully dressed man (he wears a coat, hat and boots). The scene is set in a bathhouse. After the sketch, which probably seemed to the artist to be successful, there were several sketches and watercolors from life with similar themes, for which Plastov's wife and son Kolya posed. According to the researcher, the "bath scene" itself, which has a purely domestic character, was postponed for a long time, but the figure of a woman dressing a child from this composition attracted his attention and remained in his creative plans.

In 1943, Arkady Plastov painted Saturday (canvas, oil, 113×160.5 cm, Plastov family collection). The "pastoral" background of a rural winter landscape depicts the figure of a girl running out of the bathhouse. She is naked, only her head is covered by a jacket. She has a shy smile on her face. Tatiana Plastova correlated this canvas with the works of French artists of the Rococo period, in particular with the paintings of Antoine Watteau and Nicolas Lancret. The art historian believes that in the process of simultaneous work on this painting and the painting Tractor Drivers (1943—1944, canvas, oil, 129.5×175.5 cm, the Plastov family collection, the canvas near the stream depicts two undressing women and a teenager watching them from a distance against the background of the field disappearing in the distance with a tractor stopped at a short distance) in the artist matured the idea of returning to the idea of the 1930s.

Sketch No. 2 (paper, watercolor, pencil, whitewash, 19×22 cm, Plastov family collection) for the painting Spring dates from 1945. The action does not take place in the bathhouse, but near it, the artist only hints at a spring landscape with snow still on the ground, but the female figure is dressed not as a girl, but as a boy of 5—6 years. Tatiana Plastova suggests that the girl appeared in the painting later under the influence of Titian's painting The Three Ages of Man (c. 1512—1514, oil on canvas, 90×150.7 cm, Scottish National Gallery). The introduction of this figure, according to the art historian, led to a doubling of femininity. The researcher noted that in comparison with other paintings on the canvas Spring the artist did not do much preparatory work. The main work on the canvas itself took place in the summer of 1954 in Prislonikha (there the picture was "solved and thoroughly described") and in the fall in Moscow ("Kolya stretched my Bath Hall, and here it is now on the easel, and all Prislonikha, as alive, again before my eyes", — the artist reported to his wife on November 21, 1954). Sketches in the album № 21 belong to this period (sketch of a female figure, watercolors of her hands and head, watercolors of a girl's head and hands, as well as a pencil sketch of a female figure in the interior). Sketch No. 5 (paper, watercolor, gouache, whitewash, 30.5×19 cm, Plastov family collection) for the painting Spring is dated August 1954. It is intended for transfer to canvas, so it is divided into squares. This sketch has serious differences from the previous preparatory works: an additional space is added at the top, on the right; on the contrary, the space is removed, the household objects depicted on the canvas are arranged differently. The painting has acquired a vertical character, and the figures have become the semantic center of the composition. The head of the figure, for example, appears at the intersection of the diagonals of the canvas. In this version, however, there is no landscape behind the heroes' backs. The role of background for them is played by the boarded wall of the vestibule, above which there is only space for the sky.

Titian. The Three Ages of Man, ca. 1512—1514

A number of preparatory works for the painting have not survived, but they were captured on photographs: Drawing in charcoal on canvas (August 1954, Plastov family collection), Beginning of work in oil (September 1954, Plastov family collection). There are also variants of the canvas that remained only in the plans. For example, in one of them (Sketch No. 4, paper, watercolor, whitewash, 27×19 cm, Plastov family collection) the action takes place not in early spring, but in summer. Tatyana Plastov noted its decorativeness. Arkady Plastov was not satisfied with the result and invited a sitter. Tatyana Plastova believes that there were two sitters. Working with them, the artist solved two problems: the position of the woman's body in the picture and the perspective. With one of them —Zoya Burdenko— the artist made photographs and sketches. With the second model Plastov made a watercolor, and from the watercolor he made sketches. All this removed his doubts about the pose of the female figure on the canvas and allowed him to approach the ideal image of this character. After working with the models, the artist returned to the painting Spring. At that time, according to the art historian, Plastov finally abandoned stereotypes, both his own and those inherent in the painting of his time, and changed the stylistics and "plastic language" of the image of a woman — from a genre painting canvas turned into a metaphor. According to Plastova, the image of the woman turned out to be devoid of individual and portrait characteristics.

Tatiana Plastova quoted in her article a letter from the artist dated January 1, 1955, from which she concluded that the artist gave the title to the canvas after the work on it had been completed, and that Plastov continued to make some changes to the almost finished canvas: "In the studio happy from my Holiday, as I called my fair [the author refers to the painting Holiday (1953—1967, canvas, oil, Ulyanovsk Regional Art Museum)], and Spring, as outlined to call my naked. Slowly and in it a lot of improvements and very important, and it now looks incomparably better than at home [in Prislonikha or, perhaps, in the Moscow apartment of the artist]".

Modeling for the painting Spring

Titian. Sacred and Profane Love, 1514

Tintoretto. Susanna and the Elders, 1555—1556

The contemporary researcher Tatiana Plastova, in her article on Arkady Plastov's painting Spring, pointed out that the plasticity of the figure goes back to the type of sculptural composition Crouching Aphrodite (2nd century BC, Doidalsas), examples of which are Lely Venus (British Museum). Sculptural versions were popular in the 16th and 17th centuries; pictorial versions are less common, although they were copied by Rubens and Cézanne. Plastov made changes to the pose: he straightened the figure, changed the position of the arms, which gave her pride, and covered part of the body with hair. He combined two models of perspective — for the landscape and for the scene in the anteroom, making the landscape of Prislonikha a key part of the canvas and a metaphor. According to Tatiana Plastova, the artist tried to create an ideal image of the Venus of Heaven without sensuality in the spirit of Titian. The painting is also comparable to Tintoretto's Susanna, where purity and righteousness are expressed through the perfection of nudity. Tatiana Plastova proposed another version in her book Arkady Plastov's Country and World (2018). In it, she argues that the heroines of most of the artist's lyrical paintings — the list of which, quoted by the researcher in the book, includes Spring — reflect a special type of Russian woman, "the plastic prototype of which was the image of Natalia Alekseevna, his wife". In an article in 2020, Tatiana Plastova has already written that in the painting Spring the artist tried to create a "formula of the ideal body". Therefore, the question of the prototype of the protagonist is difficult. If the girl had a prototype in the person of Nina Sharymova, the woman can be recognized as the painter's wife in her youth, and his fellow villager Anna Kondratyeva, who posed for one of the preparatory sketches. In both cases, the similarity of the portraits is reduced.

• Possible prototypes of the female figure
• 
  Crouching Aphrodite from the Louvre
• 
  Lely Venus from the British Museum

Painting in the Tretyakov Gallery expositions and at other exhibitions

The painting Spring was completed in 1954. Its size is 210×123 cm. It is made in the technique of oil painting on canvas. It was first presented to the public at an exhibition at the Academy of Arts of the USSR. The State Tretyakov Gallery acquired the canvas in the 1960s. The inventory number of the painting in the collection of the gallery is ZhS-763. During the Soviet era, the painting was exhibited in many countries of the world. At the beginning of the 21st century the painting was still exhibited. In particular, it was presented at the exhibition in the Marble Palace of the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg on the occasion of the G7 summit in 2006.

Spring" was presented at some of the first exhibitions under other names — Old Village, In the Old Village, Spring in the Old Village, In the Bathhouse, Spring. In the Bath, but they are no longer in use. Critics demanded the replacement of the author's title of the painting, claiming that in the Soviet village of their time there were no smoken —filled huts, smoky walls and straw— lined floors. As a result, Arkady Plastov began to consider changing the title himself, fearing that the painting would be closed to the viewer, but settled on his addition, which is also not used today: Spring. Old Village. A different version was presented in his book by Igor Dolgopolov, an honored artist of the RSFSR. He claimed, based on the words of the artist's son, Nikolai Plastov, that this name was given by the staff of the Tretyakov Gallery without the author's knowledge. During his visit to the gallery, Arkady Plastov saw a sign Spring. Old Village. Outraged, he tore off the second part of the inscription Old Village, leaving only Spring.

In response to a request from a certain art critic, S., to explain the title of the painting, the artist replied in a letter (author's punctuation): "What can I tell you about why I gave the name "Spring" to one of my works? If you take the "questions of the public", so well with their questions. It is difficult for me to answer these questions... I would be interested to know how you answered them. But if you want to ask me this question, it is much worse and sadder, because it means that even the most sensitive hearts are closed to the most ordinary voices of art... "

Irina Yemeliyanova, a student of pedagogy, and Evelina Polishchuk, a student of art history, noted that visitors to the Tretyakov Gallery call the painting Northern Venus. Currently, the painting opens a section of the art of the second half of the 20th century in Hall 28 of the permanent exhibition of the New Tretyakov Gallery, a branch of the Tretyakov Gallery.

Critics and reviews

Painting in Soviet art history

The painting Spring immediately attracted the attention of art critics and the general public. However, it could not be accepted unconditionally from various points of view: in relation to the traditions of the Soviet domestic genre, to the author's contemporary real situation in the Soviet village, because of the division of society itself in relation to the process of its renewal.

Vladimir Kostin noted in his 1956 book that Spring caused controversy and contradictory assessments. Critics pointed to the “unreasonableness” of the painting, seeing in it only a desire to show the effect of the nude body. Defenders emphasized that the theme of the naked female body, although secondary for Soviet art, should be reflected with regard to ethical and aesthetic norms. Kostin believed that the motif of the bathhouse makes the painting justified, and its heroine is an ordinary woman in a natural pose, charming in her youth, simplicity and health. He also noted that Plastov showed the resilience of the Russian man: the heroine easily endures the cold while caring for her sister. Boris Ioganson, director of the Tretyakov Gallery, criticized the painting for depicting outdated details such as the smoke bath and the open anteroom. He allowed their appropriateness only as a means of revealing coloristic solutions — the contrast between the whiteness of the body and the landscape. Alexander Kamensky, on the contrary, believed that the canvas celebrates youth and beauty, reflecting the spirit of the Khrushchev thaw. He emphasized the modernity of the scene: the girl helps her sister dress on a cold day, conveying the triumph of youth and strength.

The film director Sergei Gerasimov believed that the painting Spring was undeservedly negatively evaluated. Objecting to the critics, he said:

The popular character implies a deep meaningful idea, vividness and imagery of its embodiment, folk temperament and, what is very important, cordiality as a result of the artist's love for his material, for life itself... Plastov loves his characters and subtly understands their nature. What did he see in this woman? Is it only the beautiful nakedness of her healthy, strong body? This is the accompanying beauty of the work. The real beauty of it is in the whole intonation of the thing, in the intonation of fresh, young motherhood, in that beautiful rustic and such national diligence with which the image of a young mother is filled...

In the book Among Artists (1986), which was published much later, Vladimir Kostin noted that the painting Spring quickly became very popular and that the canvas immediately took a place in the permanent exhibition of the Tretyakov Gallery. He called the painting bold and unexpected in its theme. From the art historian's point of view, the master was able to express the "chaste purity of the naked female body, with its healthy sensuality, devoid of eroticism", as few artists had succeeded in doing. According to Kostin, the painting evokes in the viewer an associative image of early spring, freshness and health.

Art historian and graphic artist Galina Shubina noted that nudity in Soviet art was interpreted as a "form of dress" of athletes and workers, but in Plastov's painting it is justified only by a reference to the special status of the heroine, who allegorically represents early spring. The poverty of peasant life in the painting (the bathhouse is black, no electricity, minimal amenities) was of secondary importance to the author, but its depiction in the 1950s was also met with disapproval.

According to Galina Leontieva, a candidate of art history, there is a "roll call of moods" between Arkady Plastov's paintings the First Snow (1946, Tver Regional Art Gallery, canvas, oil, 146×113 cm, inventory number Zh-1304) and Spring: "...in the stream of bright sunny spring days, one will see such a day — quiet, illuminated by a faint even light, full of autumnal thoughtfulness. It is as if spring is remembering fall. The First Snow depicts the arrival of winter. The painting Spring captures the day when winter is already leaving. In one painting, the first snow falls from the sky; in another, large fluffy flakes of the last snow fall to the ground.

The Soviet art historian Ariadna Zhukova considered the painting to be one of the most interesting works of the artist (including the First Snow, Tractor Drivers' Dinner, When Peace is on Earth). All these paintings depict children. Zhukova concluded that in them the artist was attracted by youth, freshness, "the emergence of the new". According to Zhukova, Arkady Plastov depicts nature "not only in his own name, but also in the name of his little heroes, through their direct, pure perception of the world". In her opinion, the artist perceives the world around him with the eyes of an explorer. The result is "the joyful, lyrical tone of his paintings". Speaking about the painting Spring, Zhukova noted that anyone who has washed in a Russian bathhouse knows that a woman does not feel cold in the snow after a hot bath, which is why she is not in a hurry to get out from under the falling snowflakes. According to the art historian, the heroine of the canvas "unconsciously rejoices in the feeling of her youth, health, strength". Zhukova called Spring one of the most poetic and pure images of women in Soviet painting.

Painting in contemporary Russian art history

People's Artists of the USSR, full members of the Academy of Arts of the USSR Sergey and Alexei Tkachev in their article Word about A.A. Plastov (on the 90th anniversary of the artist's birth) called the picture Spring one of the masterpieces of Arkady Plastov. They wrote: "By purity and chastity, spiritual health and poetic beauty of the image of a young mother in this canvas is among the best female images of world art". Analyzing Spring, Tkachevy wrote that its author "thinks in colors, and therefore colors largely determine the emotional content of his paintings". However, his success in creativity is facilitated by his love for nature and the ability to work selflessly. This is what allowed Arkady Plastov to achieve such a "captivating magic that literally hypnotizes the viewer" in the paintin Spring. To prove his point, Tkachevy quoted the author of the painting: "Always go to Mother Nature for advice, to the truth of the environment, listen patiently a hundred times to what she, this nature, will reveal and tell you, and you will never get into trouble, and then you will surely convey to the viewer what you want to convey".

Aristide Maillol. The River, 1938—1943.

The group of authors of the book Russian Artists from A to Z (2010) noted in the picture the artist's admiration for a strong and healthy village woman, who cares for her daughter and forgets the snow and cold because of her motherly feelings. Art critics considered that the subject of the painting is not the awakening nature, but the "spring of life" — the naked figure of a woman symbolizes beauty, love and joy. They saw the unusualness of Plastov's painting in the rarity of the "nude" genre, to which they attributed "spring", in Russian fine art, as well as in the artist's return to the traditions of the "old masters" and "eternal" subjects of art in the era of the dominance of socialist realism.

According to Tatiana Plastova, in her book Plastov (2011) the artist managed to reflect the ideal of physical and spiritual beauty, which is unattainable in real life. The coldly detached, touching image of a child and the simplicity of the plot place the painting on a pedestal of pure joy and chaste love, and the title Spring emphasizes its metaphorical nature. Later, in a 2018 book, Plastova called Spring the embodiment of Titian's Heavenly Love, contrasting it with the earthly beginnings personified by Aristide Maillol's sculptures and Plastov's earlier works, such as Tractor Woman (1943—1944).

She attributed the painting's background to the influence of Dmitri Arkhangelsky, noting that it represented an archetype of Russian landscape without contingency. Plastova emphasized the "poetry" of the 1950s, including Spring, and contrasted it with the tragic and triumphant paintings of other periods, such as Haymaking. The artist used two perspectives, one for the landscape and one for the lower part of the canvas, which avoided naturalistic deformation of the body. Photographic studies helped to choose the optimal horizon and point of view, transforming a domestic subject into a metaphorical work close to the "eventless genre".

Giorgione. Rural Concert, 1509

Édouard Manet. Breakfast on the Grass, 1863

Plastova called Spring a symbol of the Khrushchev Thaw, comparing it to Boris Pasternak's cycle of poems from Doctor Zhivago, and saw its creation not as a gift to the authorities but as a victory of spiritual asceticism. However, the researcher noted that the painting is still insufficiently studied: the history of its creation, sketches and public perception have not yet been analyzed. Evgenia Yarkova, a researcher at the State Tretyakov Gallery, notes that the modesty of the heroes' everyday life is "interrupted" by a stream of golden light. It emphasizes the naked figure of a woman on the canvas. The source of the light is unknown to the viewer. According to the art historian, this detail correlates Spring with the myth of Danae, which is classic for the "nude" genre. In paintings depicting this scene, light is sometimes represented in the form of rain from coins. Light in Plastov's paintings is not a plot element, as in the paintings depicting Danae (Zeus enters his beloved under the guise of golden rain), but a compositional device. The interaction of light and air in the space of the painting creates an effect of immediacy. The color of the falling snow changes from dull to bright as it approaches the woman's body, which Yarkova perceives as an allegory of spring. The artist contrasts the woman's blonde hair, golden ears and pink skin with the bathhouse door, the water in the bucket and the landscape. The feeling of warmth is created by the steam coming out of the bathhouse and the coldness by the snow—covered ground. An important detail that complements the effect of randomness in the composition is the green mitten on the straw, which stands out in color and plays the role of a hot tuning fork in the overall tonal structure of the work.

Artemisia Gentileschi. Danae, ca. 1612

Inga Filippova, a student of art history, in her thesis devoted to the late period of the artist's work, notes that unlike other works by Plastov, where the characters exist independently of each other and are at the mercy of their own thoughts, in the painting Spring the drama is based on the interaction of the characters — mother and child. In similar paintings, where the characters are in direct communication with each other, the artist rarely managed to achieve authenticity and choose the appropriate intonation. In Spring, however, "the figurative and semantic line is built on subtle emotional directions, which unite the action into a single whole that cannot be dissected or interrupted. In a genre scene, in a domestic situation, the artist presents such a wealth of feelings and experiences that is rarely claimed by works of this genre".

Filippova believes that among the paintings of the 1950s, the paintin Spring is a "special achievement" and "one of the peaks of creativity" of Arkady Plastov. It is exceptional in filling the genre plot with poetic content, within the genre scene the artist created an image possessing "divine beauty". Its composition has more details and action than in the other two paintings of the master of this period: Spring (1952, canvas, oil, 221×121 cm, National Picture Gallery of Armenia) and Youth (another title — Rest, 1954, canvas, oil, 170×204 cm, State Russian Museum, Zh-7012). The artist is fascinated not only by his own feelings in conveying the attitude to the fact he depicts, but also "concentrates" on the experience of his heroine, conveys her maternal care and love.

Doctor of Art Vladimir Lenyashin considered Spring as one of the most poetic paintings of Arkady Plastov. The art historian noted the "captivating contrast" of the winter air, the unpretentious village bath and the "dazzling radiance of the body" of the heroine of the painting, the tenderness of the child's face, which illuminates the "precious sunlight" lying on the straw. The woman and the child were very dear to Plastov. According to Lenyashin, in this painting the artist explained the morality ("moral folk values") developed over centuries. The researcher unconditionally attributed this picture to socialist realism and considered it, as well as a number of other paintings by the artist, the pride of this direction in painting. Vladimir Lenyashin noted the ease with which the artist was able to solve in the painting "the still Impressionist problem of plein air" in unusually difficult conditions — to convey a nude figure surrounded by snow. The art historian also pointed out that Plastov protested against the desire to give his paintings more specific names.

In culture

Marina Glazova, member of the International Union of Teaching Artists, and Vladimir Denisov, Director of the Obninsk School of Fine Arts, analyze Arkady Plastov's Spring in the textbook Fine Arts. Algorithm of Composition (2012). They reveal the compositional structure of the painting — four squares correlated with each other, as well as the specificity of the artist's coloristic solution of the plot — "in the painting Spring the white color is dissolved in the form of grace and love, its practice is not noticed, but it is present and penetrates into the chamber space". Stanislav Lomov and Sergey Ignatiev, Doctors of Education, and the teacher Marina Karmazina in their textbook for the general secondary school Art: Fine Arts. Grade 8 (2019) use the painting Spring to illustrate the concept of "static composition". They note that in such a composition, in the process of arranging the main elements, artists use compositional schemes in the form of simple geometric figures. The peculiarity of static compositions is a stable compositional scheme. In particular, in Arkady Plastov's painting Spring it is a rectangle.

Zinaida Serebryakova, Bath house, 1913

Boris Kustodiev, Russian Venus, 1925—1926

Dr. Isabella Shangina, Doctor of History, in her book Russian Traditional Life: An Encyclopedic Dictionary (2003), illustrates her description of the vestibule of a Russian bathhouse with the painting Spring. The most primitive, according to Shangina, is a wooden enclosure without a roof or door. In this case, as the author says, at any time of the year people actually undressed and dressed outside the bathhouse, and for the time they stayed in it they left clean and dirty linen right outside.

The Russian-speaking Dutch writer of Jewish origin Marina Paley mentions Arkady Plastov's painting in her novel Tribute to the Salamander: A St. Petersburg Romance (2012). The heroine of the novel compares herself on a bright winter day to the heroine of the painting Spring — "a girl who, with varying degrees of brightness (and regardless of the season), resides in Plastov's splendor". When she leaves the house, she applies makeup "to match the beauty of the surroundings". Soviet and Russian art historian, member of the Union of Artists of Russia, director of the State Literary and Memorial Museum — Reserve of Anton Chekhov Melikhovo Yuri Bychkov in the book of memoirs "In life, what does not happen" (2013) one of the chapters called Bathing grace. In it he writes about the "value" of his "bathhouse observations" in early childhood, when he went to the bathhouse with his mother on women's days. The art historian confirmed the importance of his impressions later, he says, when he became acquainted with the masterpieces of the classics of the genre: Galina Serebryakova [the author's mistake: it should be Zinaida Serebryakova], Alexander Gerasimov, Arkady Plastov, Boris Kustodiev. Bychkov concluded: "The bath subjects eloquently say: this is beauty absolute, unconditional, perfect, complete". In the first edition of 2013, this text is accompanied by a reproduction of the painting Spring.

Writer and producer Alexandra Piskunova talked about her impressions of the picture:

...I came in to the hall and, not yet fully aware of what was in front of me, rushed to the canvas. It was hanging by the windows. The gray winter light from the street fell on the painting, on the pink body of a naked young woman crouching in a roofless vestibule to dress her washed daughter. It was snowing above her, and the time of day in the painting was the same, before dusk, and it all came together, life and art, and I felt wonderfully light and bright.

Bibliography

• Avdonin-Biryuchyovsky, А. М. (2006). Аркадий Александрович Пластов [Arkady Aleksandrovich Plastov] (in Russian). Ульяновск: Корпорация технологий продвижения. p. 55.
• Allenova Е. М.; Volodina Т. I.; Krasilin М. М.; Borisovskaya N. А.; Gordon Е. S. (2000). Аркадий Александрович Пластов // Русские художники от «А» до «Я» [Arkady Aleksandrovich Plastov // Russian artists from “A” to “Z"] (in Russian). М.: Слово. p. 216. ISBN 5-8505-0231-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Dedyukhin, V. А. (1970). Снежинки // Краски Прислонихи (О художнике А. Пластове) [Snowflakes // Colors of Prislonikha (About artist A. Plastov)] (in Russian). Саратов: Приволжское книжное издательство. p. 104.
• Dolgopolov, I. V. (1988). Аркадий Пластов // Мастера и шедевры [Arkady Plastov // Masters and Masterpieces] (in Russian). Vol. III. М.: Изобразительное искусство. pp. 283–314.
• Yemeliyanova, I. D. (1971). Аркадий Пластов [Arkady Plastov] (in Russian). М.: Изобразительное искусство. p. 56.
• Zhukova, А. S. (1969). Под русским солнцем // С веком наравне. Рассказы о картинах [Under the Russian sun // With the century on a par. Stories about paintings] (in Russian). Vol. 2. М.: Молодая гвардия. pp. 431–437.
• Ioganson, B. V. (1955). Всесоюзная художественная выставка 1954 года: всенародный смотр [The All-Union Art Exhibition of 1954: a nationwide review] (in Russian). Искусство: Журнал. pp. 6–10. ISSN 0130-2523.
• Kamensky, А. А. (1955). Тема и образ: (Заметки с выставки) [Theme and Image: (Notes from the exhibition)] (in Russian). Искусство: Журнал. pp. 11–19. ISSN 0130-2523.
• Kozlov Yu. V., Avdonin А. М. (2013). Жизнь и судьба Аркадия Пластова [Life and Fate of Arkady Plastov] (in Russian). Ульяновск: Корпорация технологий продвижения. ISBN 978-5-946-55237-0.
• Kostin, V. I. (1956). Аркадий Александрович Пластов [Arkady Aleksandrovich Plastov] (in Russian). М.: Советский художник.
• Kostin, V. I. (1986). Деревня Аркадия Пластова // Среди художников [Arkady Plastov's Village // Among Artists] (in Russian). М.: Советский художник. pp. 38–41.
• Lenyashin, V. A. (2018). «Словарный запас» пластовской эпопеи // Пластова Т. Ю. Аркадий Пластов. «От этюда к картине». Статьи, воспоминания, материалы [“Vocabulary” of Plastov's epic // Plastova T. Yu. Arkady Plastov. “From sketch to painting”. Articles, memoirs, materials] (in Russian). М.: Фонд «Связь эпох». pp. 6–17.
• Leontyeva, G. K. (1965). Аркадий Александрович Пластов [Arkady Aleksandrovich Plastov]. Народная библиотечка по искусству (in Russian). Л.: Художник РСФСР.
• Очерки истории водоснабжения и водоотведения (теоретический, практический и социокультурный аспекты) [Essays on the history of water supply and sanitation (theoretical, practical and socio-cultural aspects)] (in Russian). Томск: Томский государственный архитектурно-строительный университет. 2014. p. 164. ISBN 978-5-9305-7580-4.
• Plastova, T. Yu. (2011). Весна и лето // Пластов [Spring and summer // Plastov]. Великие художники (in Russian). М.: Директ-Медиа, Комсомольская правда. p. 48. ISBN 978-5-7475-0082-2.
• Plastova, T. Yu. (2018). Страна и мир Аркадия Пластова // Пластова Т. Ю. Аркадий Пластов. «От этюда к картине». Статьи, воспоминания, материалы [Country and the World of Arkady Plastov // Plastova T.Y. Arkady Plastov. “From sketch to painting”. Articles, memoirs, materials] (in Russian). М.: Фонд «Связь эпох». pp. 18–187.
• Plastova, T. Yu. (2020). Картина А. А. Пластова «Весна». К истории создания [Painting by A. A. Plastov's painting “Spring”. To the history of creation] (in Russian). Secreta Artis: Журнал. pp. 3–30.
• Sitnina, М. К. (1966). Времена года: русская пейзажная живопись [Seasons: Russian landscape painting] (in Russian). М.: Искусство. p. 35.
• Sysoyev, V. P. (2001). Аркадий Пластов [Arkady Plastov] (in Russian). М.: Белый город.
• Filippova, I. I. (2014). Дети и детство в живописи А. А. Пластова [Children and childhood in the painting of A. A. Plastov. A. Plastov] (in Russian). Русский мир: Журнал.
• Tkachyov A. P., Tkachyov S. P. (1999). Слово о А. А. Пластове (к 90-летию художника) // Наши раздумья [A word about A. A. Plastov (to the 90th anniversary of the artist) // Our thoughts]. Научное издание (in Russian). М.: Редакционно-издательский отдел НИИ Российской академии художеств. pp. 23–31.
• Filippova, I. I. (2018). Живопись Аркадия Пластова 1930—1960-х годов. Творческий метод и образно-смысловые структуры. Диссертация на соискание учёной степени кандидата искусствоведения [Arkady Plastov's painting of the 1930-1960s. Creative method and figurative and semantic structures. Dissertation for the degree of Candidate of Art History] (PDF) (in Russian). СПб.: Санкт-Петербургский государственный академический институт живописи, скульптуры и архитектуры имени И. Е. Репина при Российской академии художеств. p. 182. Archived from the original (PDF) on 31 October 2018.
• Shubina, G. (2014). Аркадий Пластов (1893—1972) [Arkady Plastov (1893—1972)] (in Russian). М.: Paulsen. pp. 166–167. ISBN 978-5-98797-080-5.

Textbooks

• Glazova M. V., Denisov V. S. (2012). Законы композиции // Изобразительное искусство. Алгоритм композиции [Composition laws // Fine Arts. Algorithm of composition] (in Russian). М.: Когито-центр. pp. 38–43. ISBN 978-5-8935-3362-0.
• Lomov S. P., Ignatiev S. E., Karamazina M. V. (2019). Статичные композиции // Искусство: Изобразительное искусство. 8 класс [Static compositions // Art: Fine Arts. Grade 8]. Российский учебник (in Russian). М.: Дрофа. pp. 86–94. ISBN 978-5-3582-1758-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Fiction and memories

• Bychkov, Yu. A. (2013). Банная благодать // В жизни чего только не бывает [Bathing grace // There are many things in life] (in Russian). М.: Пробел-2000. pp. 83–91. ISBN 978-5-9860-4372-2.
• Dyomochkin, G. A. (2018). Весна Пластова в рассказах его невестки, художницы Елены Холодилиной [Plastov's Spring in the stories of his daughter-in-law, artist Elena Kholodilina] (in Russian). Аргументы и факты: Газета. Archived from the original on 27 February 2021.
• Paley, M. А. (2012). "21. Commedia dell'Arte". Дань саламандре: петербургский роман [A Tribute to the Salamander: A St. Petersburg Novel]. Принцесса стиля (in Russian). М.: Эксмо. pp. 79–83.

Handbooks and encyclopedias

• Shanguina, I. I. (2003). Баня // Русский традиционный быт: Энциклопедический словарь [Bath // Russian traditional life: Encyclopedic dictionary] (in Russian). СПб.: Азбука-классика. pp. 27–35. ISBN 5-352-00337-X.