On June 25, a souvenir sheet dedicated to the 125th Birth Anniversary of Alexander Deineka, a People's Artist of the USSR, a Hero of Socialist Labor, was put into postal circulation

Alexander Deineka (1899–1969) was a Soviet painter, a muralist, a graphic artist, a sculptor, and a tutor. A. Deineka was an Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1945), a People's Artist of the RSFSR (1959) and a People's Artist of the USSR (1963).

Alexander Deineka was born on May 8 (20) of 1899 in Kursk and received initial education at the Kharkov Art School of the Gubnadobraz. In 1919-1920, he headed the art studio under the Kursk Political Department and of ROSTA Windows in Kursk. He was sent to Moscow to study at VKhUTEMAS (1920-1925). The creative formation of the artist was strongly affected by his personal interaction with V. Favorsky and V. Mayakovsky. During those years, he created the first Soviet monumental historical-revolutionary painting The Defense of Petrograd (1928). In 1930, he painted posters Mechanizing Donbass, A Sportswoman; in 1931, he painted artworks different in their mood and themes On the Balcony, A Girl by the Window, The Interventionists’ Mercenary.

A new stage in the creative work of the artist began in 1932. The most significant work of that period was his painting The Mother (1932). In the same years, he painted lyrical canvasses Night Landscape with Horses and Dry Grasses (1933), Bathing Girls (1933), Noon (1932); and social and political pictures – Jobless People in Berlin (1933), drawings for novel Fire by A. Barbusse and others. Since the early 1930s, Deineka addressed the subject of aviation. During the Great Patriotic War, he lived in Moscow and made political posters for the TASS Windows military-defense poster workshop. At that time, he created paintings The Outskirts of Moscow. November 1941 (1941), A Burnt Village (1942), and Defense of Sevastopol (1942). The significant works of the post-war time are his canvases The Relay Race on the Ring B (1947), Near the Sea. Fisherwomen (1956), In Sevastopol (1959), as well as mosaics for the pre-function of the assembly hall of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, a mosaic for the lounge of the Palace of Congresses in the Moscow Kremlin (1961). His mosaics decorate the Mayakovskaya (1938) and Novokuznetskaya metro stations (1943).

Alexander Deineka used to give classes at many Moscow universities. He was a Professor (1940), an Academician of the USSR Academy of Arts (1947), a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR.

The postage stamp provides an image of painting by A. Deineka Future Pilots (1938, Sakhalin Regional Art Museum); the margins of the souvenir sheet feature a portrait of the painter against the background of his studio.

In addition to the issue of the souvenir sheet, JSC Marka produced First Day Covers and special cancels for Moscow, St. Petersburg, Volgograd, Kursk and Sevastopol, as well as illustrated covers for the souvenir sheet with a label and a First Day Cover with a cancel for Moscow inside and for the second emission type of the souvenir sheet: an imperforated souvenir sheet made on canvas-type design paper.


Design Artist: O. Savina.
Face value: 250 rubles.
Souvenir sheet size: 105×80 mm, stamp size in the souvenir sheet: 39.5×39.5 mm.
Quantity: 17 thousand souvenir sheets (the first emission type); 3.6 thousand souvenir sheets (the second emission type*).
* To be on sale as part of an illustrated cover.

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