Women Working in Fields

Date1961

MediumLithograph

DimensionsObject/Work: 450 x 610 mm
Mount Size: 640 x 760 mm (25 3/16 x 29 15/16 in.)

ClassificationsArtworks/Commemorations/Photographs

Terms

Object numberPT0199

DescriptionBoris Ermolaev was a relatively successful Russian painter whose work is strongly inspired by Russian tradition and folk art. Such traditional art forms include religious imagery and icons. In this scene we can identify a group of women working in a field and is a typical subject of Ermolaev's print work during the early 1960s. For Soviet Russia women were an important symbolic device within the Socialist Realism movement, especially labouring women. Such figures were viewed as an honest, idealised workforce and were crucial to the Soviet ideology. The roles of women, and mothers, were positioned centrally within communal, family and domestic life.

Ermolaev has rendered the image using bold, vibrant colours, flattening spatial devices, and strong linear shapes. Sunflowers are recurring motifs Ermolaev's rural, agricultural scenes.

A similarly themed work by the artist is called 'Mothers' (1961).

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