The Genre of Landscape in the Works of Artists of the Arctic Correctional Labor Camps in the 30s-60s of the 20th Century

One of the features of the internal policy of the USSR in the 1930s-1960s was the formation and growth of the correctional labour camps system throughout the country and the forced use of free labour of prisoners to boost the economy and industrial development. Representatives of the most diverse social strata of the population, including the intelligentsia, among whom there were many professional artists, were in prisons. The authors of the article turn to the question of the role of the repressed artists’ work of the chronological period under consideration in the process of forming polar art, based on the analysis of their landscapes. They have studied extensive material containing information about the activities of the polar correctional camps and the status of artists in them. In the field of view of the authors are the preserved works of prisoners: landscape sketches, sketches, and paintings created on the territory of the Soviet correctional camps located beyond the Arctic Circle (north of 66°33’ N). Using a socio-geographical approach and applying methods of iconological, comparative, and formal stylistic analysis to reference samples of graphics and painting from the creative heritage of prisoners, the authors have noted the disappearance of the traditional Soviet polar romanticism in their landscapes, the emergence of a new subgenre (‘barrack’ landscape), a change in the figurative component (images of dugouts, barracks, mines, bunkers, power lines, trains, trolleys, the absence of the image of the sea, auroras, white nights, etc.), the presence of a new motif in the works — the vulnerability and loneliness of the individual in the struggle for survival, the use of non-traditional pictorial techniques and stylistics, and deep psychologism and conceptuality. Based on the facts obtained, a conclusion is made about the importance of the work of repressed artists for the development of domestic polar art in general. At the same time, the article emphasizes the significant contribution of the artists of the Yamal and Taimyr Polar regions to the art.