Severe Style (Soviet fine art style)

  1. Home
  2. top of the aat hierarchies
  3. Styles and Periods Facet
  4. Styles and Periods (hierarchy name)
  5. [styles, periods, and cultures by region]
  6. [international post-1945 styles and movements]
  7. [post-1945 fine arts styles and movements]
  8. Severe Style
Scope note
An aesthetic trend in the post-Stalinist Soviet Union (late 1950s – 1970s) often referred to as ‘the official art of the Khrushchev thaw’. The term was coined by the art critic Alexander Kamenski in 1969. Developed as a reaction to the Stalin era ‘colorful’ Socialist Realism, Severe Style emphasized simplified expressive outline and utilized a simple palette of muddied greys browns and earth tones. The style’s aesthetics was influenced by the early Soviet realism of the 1920s-1930s and medieval Russian icon and church fresco painting. On the conceptual level the artists of the ‘severe style’ strived to reveal the ‘unvarnished truthfulness’ of the rigorous reality. The most common subject matter of their paintings was people of labor (workers, builders, geologists, cultural workers). In Central Asia artists turned to the aesthetics of the Severe Style in late 1960s – 1970s.
Severe Style
Accepted term: 03-Feb-2025