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Keywords
Soviet fine arts, art of the twentieth century, Yakut graphics, art of Yakutia, Afanasy Munkhalov, Great Patriotic War, image of war in art, national symbols
Categories
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
Borisova, A.A. (2025) ‘The theme of the Great Patriotic War in the work of Yakut graphic artist Afanasy Munkhalov’, The Art of Eurasia, (2), pp. 74–87. doi:10.46748/ARTEURAS.2025.02.005.
Индексация статей
Abstract
The article is devoted to the study of artistic representation of the Great Patriotic War theme in the works of the Yakut graphic artist Afanasy Munkhalov (1935–2014), who made a significant contribution to the development of the national fine arts. With the 90th anniversary of the master's birth in 2025 and the 80th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, it is important to examine his creative legacy. The scientific significance of this work lies in the need to understand how the war theme has evolved in national art, given the distance between the events of the Great Patriotic War and today's reality. The research is based on Munkhalov's graphic works, as well as scientific and journalistic sources on his life and work. Building on previous studies, this work focuses on analysing the development of the war theme in his works, which is a new direction in the study of his heritage. Using a historical and cultural approach and the comparative method, as well as historical-biographical and iconographic analysis, the following results are obtained. The study provides an overview of the development of the war theme in Yakutian fine arts, summarizes the artist's biography and creative formation, and examines the interaction between official Soviet aesthetics and Munkhalov's individual understanding of the war theme. This is demonstrated through a number of works created by the artist between 1966 and 2008. The article also reveals the artist's characteristic visual language, which combines Yakut national symbols with universal artistic imagery. Special attention is given to the graphic series “The Saga of the Churapcha Resettlement”, which represents a new stage in comprehending the tragic events of the Great Patriotic War in Yakut visual art. It is not a documentary chronicle, but rather the artist's creative reflection on the war, filtered through his childhood world-view.
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