Daily LIFT #1609

The Birds Are Singing, painting, Nikolai Zhukov, USSR 1963 -- Daily LIFT #1609

"'The Birds Are Singing' - that is the title I've given to my new work from the 'Leniniana." series, so dear to my heart. Our great leader has come out for a stroll In Gorki near Moscow. It is a sunny, slightly frosty day. The earth Is still covered with snow, but the breath of approaching spring is already felt everywhere. The birds are singing. Vladimir Ilych Lenin has stopped to listen to the melody of the birds. Lenin, the great helmsman who is just as great in his love of life." N. ZHUKOV, Corresponding Member of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Arts - from the Soviet press, 1963

From the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979:

Nikolai Zhukov:

Born Nov. 19 (Dec. 2), 1908, in Moscow; died there Sept. 24, 1973. Soviet graphic artist, People’s Artist of the USSR (1963), corresponding member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1949). Member of the CPSU since 1945.

Zhukov studied at the industrial arts technicums in Nizhny Novgorod (1926–28) and Saratov (1928–30). From 1943 he was the art director of the M. B. Grekov Studio of Military Artists. He worked on a front-line newspaper (1941–45) and on the newspaper Pravda (1942–43). He created a series of thematic easel drawings (including the V. I. Lenin series, done in watercolor, pencil, india ink, and autographic lithography, from 1940; About Children, done in pencil and watercolor, 1943–68; The Nuremberg Trial, Italian crayon, 1946; all in the Tret’iakov Gallery and other museums and in the artist’s possession). He also did illustrations (for the book The Story of a Real Man by Polevoi, published in 1952; Memories of Marx and Engels, published in 1956) and posters. He received the State Prize of the USSR (1943, 1951) and was awarded the Order of Lenin, two other orders, and medals.