Cotton picking

Mediums: oil, canvas.
Location: the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (Russia).

The new requirements presented by the system were hardly accepted by Volkov, but he perfectly solved the problem without losing the saturation of tones and expressive brilliance. His impressive colour energy was preserved when he worked on the scenes of collective farm labour. Women of all ages, carrying cotton from the field, are depicted with the preservation of the conventionality of the picture, its clear rhythm. Working people have not turned into enthusiastic heroes – they seem to be immersed in a trance from their hard work and keep calm; their calmness cannot be understood by Europeans. Thus, the so-called canvas of Socialist Realism created by Volkov acquire a semblance of epic frescoes.