Spring Day (Pozdneev)

Spring Day (Russian: "Весенний день (картина Н. Позднеева)" is a painting by Russian artist Nikolai Matveevich Pozdneev (1930–1978). It attempts to convey the mood of Soviet society of the late 1950s to the early 1960s.
History.
"Spring Day" was one of the first original genre compositions by Nikolai Pozdneev. He developed the theme for the first time raised three years earlier in his graduate painting "From the School" (1956, now reside in collection of the Pskov Painting Gallery). The first version of painting shown in 1960 on the principal Art Show in Leningrad and in Moscow the author does not fully satisfied. Pozdneev repainted the picture, making it a more extended vertically. A group of children has shifted from the center to the upper left corner. The bold decision proved justified: composition of the painting acquired aspiration, which is consistent with the general concept of the work. Were reinforced color accents, the lighter has become the whole palette of the picture. As a result, in the work began to fully feel the air of spring and hope, in tune with the mood of the era turn of the decades.
From 1960 to 1980, "Spring Day" was kept in the artist's family. In 1994, after a long pause, it was featured at the "Painting of 1940-1990s. The Leningrad School" Art Show in the Exhibition Halls of the Saint Petersburg Union of Artists.
In 1995-1996 "Spring Day" was exhibited in Saint Petersburg in the "Nekrasov Memorial Museum" at the exhibitions "The Lyrical motive in painting of artists of the WWII generation", and "Painting of 1940-1990s. The Leningrad School".
The painting was reproduced on the official poster and cover of exhibition catalog.
In 2007 the "Spring Day" was reproduced and described among 350 art works by Leningrad artists in the book "«Unknown Socialist Realism. The Leningrad School»", published in Russian and English.
In 2019 painting "Spring Day" was reproduced in the book "The Leningrad School of Painting. Essays on the History". published in Russian and English.