Piotr Ossovski

Peter Ossovsky (1925-2015) is considered as one of the founders of the ‘austere style’ in Soviet art. His departure from the canons of official socialist realism, portrayal of life without embellishment, focus on the human being and search of the highest truth were all quite new in the USSR of the 1960s.

While deeply national, Ossovsky’s art is accessible and understandable to all. Throughout his life, the artist wrote one sincere tale – a tale of the Russian people and their homeland. He was one of the first in his generation to turn to the life of a provincial Russian city and its inhabitants. With its pristine beauty and austere epic grandeur, beautiful nature and courageous people, the Pskov region, where Ossovsky would live for over 40 years, became a major source of inspiration.

The theme of the Orthodox Faith became important in Ossovsky’s later works. Church is a work dwelling on the return to Orthodoxy after many years of oblivion and profanation; on acquisition of the spiritual core that has underlain the faith of many generations of Russians. ‘Just raise your eyes to the blue homeland sky, and it will lean towards you with God’s love, because even in the most deplorable times, the temple road never got completely overgrown, and the prayer of the Russian man never trailed away.’