USSR at 56, Soviet Folk Art, 1973 -- Daily LIFT #666
A marvelous piece of Soviet folk art celebrating 56 years of Soviet power. It was an award winner at the Moscow Amateur Art Show in 1976.
From the Soviet press about the award: "Alexandra Tyapkina's carpets, compositions of flowers and trees , and her still lifes put one in mind of village rugs and the riotous colors of peasant patchwork quilts. Tyapkina comes of peasant stock herself. She was born in 1918 to a large peasant family in the Far East and worked as scrub woman, film operator's assistant and dress maker. It was not until 1966 that she began to draw. She heard an announcement over the radio that the people's university correspondence division was looking for students, and she applied . For two years she corresponded with a teacher, learned the different types and genres of pictorial art, and sent in her work for criticism . Her instructor tried to preserve Tyapkina's natural gifts and clearly succeeded, as her work demonstrates."