Drawing By Igor Stakhanov, Ukrainian Artist

This drawing by an official Ukrainian artist during the Soviet period is dated 1959 and annotated on the back (in Russian) "a boat under repair." A fine piece, undoubtedly sketched from life, in oil pastel (what we would call Conté crayon) on paper, signed and dated in the lower right corner. Igor Stakhanov was born in Kharkiv in 1925 and spent his entire career in that city. He participated in the war (World War II, called the Great Patriotic War in the USSR) and studied art from 1946 to 1950. From the 1950s, he taught at the Kharkiv Institute of Art and Industry, where he was appointed deputy senior professor in 1976. He was a member of the Union of Artists of Ukraine from 1962 and participated in exhibitions throughout the Soviet Union. He also had a career as a graphic designer. So here we have a fairly classic drawing, a testament to an era, by an "official" artist who would spend his entire career within the Soviet system, a work in good condition, considering the quality of the paper in use at that time.