Bathing Soldiers 1959
Dmitry Zhilinsky (1927-2015) is rightly considered a key figure in the history of Russian art. His unique artistic method emerged as a truly extraordinary reflection of its time and provided a new direction for the Soviet school of painting for decades to come. When, soon after he painted them in the mid-1960s, Zhilinsky first showed his "Group Portrait of Student Sculptors" and particularly "Gymnasts of the USSR", he was acclaimed as one of the principal innovators among Soviet artists of his time.