The theme of the Great Patriotic War in the graduation works of the I. E. Repin Institute of Fine Arts

In the pedagogical practice of the I. E. Repin Institute, the diploma work occupied a special place in the training of artists, the work created as a result of practical exercises should embody an understanding of the principles of visual interpretation of the theme, compositional structure and methods of using artistic expression. At the Faculty of Graphics, the assignment could relate to a group of easel works or book illustrations. Since 1943, graduates of the Faculty of Graphics of the I. E. Repin Institute of Fine Arts have embodied the theme of the Great Patriotic War. The easel works tell about the harsh years of the siege (V. V. Kortovich "Leningrad in the days of the siege", A. I. Kharshak "The Heroic Defense of Leningrad", Z. I. Barkovskaya "It was in Leningrad"), about the wartime (V. M. Zvontsov "On the roads of war", V. G. Starov "A series of prints. 1941–1945"). Since 1947, artists have been turning to book graphics based on writings about the war – the poetry of Alexander Tvardovsky, the prose of Emmanuel Kazakevich (V. B. Skvortsov, V. V. Petrova (Schultz), V. P. Sidorov, K. V. Vladimirov, V. R. Ippolitov, V. K. Osechkin, F. F. Makhonin, Yu. N. Lavrukhin). Creative reflection on personal experiences, the formation of a corpus of principles for depicting a certain type of scene, the development of techniques reflecting the realities of the era, the dominance of narrative principles, the effects of documenting phenomena and the influence of aesthetic principles of photography and documentary filmmaking are manifested in the graduation works of graphic artists of the first post-war decade.