Images of Mongolia in Soviet painting of the second half of the 20th century (based on the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Ulaanbaatar)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the research of artworks by Soviet artists dedicated to Mongolia and now kept in a separate fund of the National Art Gallery of Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar (in total, more than one hundred pieces). The artists who worked on these pieces included both lesser-known figures and prominent members of the Soviet school of painting, such as F.S. Torkhov, A.V. Kazansky, Y.A. Pokhodaev, and D.-N.D. Dugarov. The artistic material considered in this article has not yet been known to specialists and is being for the first time introduced into scientific discourse. This article employs an art historical analysis of works belonging to the genres of portraiture, landscape, and domestic scenes to identify general patterns of artistic creativity that influenced the formation of the image of Mongolia in Soviet painting during the latter third of the 20th century. Special attention is given to the question of how acquaintance with works of different Mongolian artists influenced the perception of everyday life and ways of the pictorial representation of visual experience.