"Kamchatka Hills" oil painting (1980) Schilderij door Mikhail Kokin

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People's Artist of Ukraine, Honored Artist of the USSR - KOKIN Mikhail masterfully showed himself as a landscape painter. Uniquely wide geography of his paintings is the Dnieper, Crimea, Chukotka and Kamchatka. Having visited Chukotka and Kamchatka in the 1970s, the painter accurately caught the peculiarity of plastic forms of local nature, which are quite different in their strict color tonality. And logical precision of the plan, structural verification of the composition give the landscapes pictoriality.

The artist spent two months in Kamchatka in 1970. Being a southerner used to the wildness of the Dnieper nature, he was at first struck by the coldness of the landscape, the limited colors - gray and blue. Nevertheless, he picked up a picturesque "key" to the Kamchatka landscape. Subsequently, the series of works created during the trip was a great success.

In 1973-1978, a series of works made in another harsh region - Chukotka was added. They, too, received wide acclaim.

The presented work is just from this series of journeys through the majestic nature of mountains and landscape - a cycle "Across Kamchatka" and "Across Chukotka". Painting work in oil on canvas.

KOKIN Mikhail Alexandrovich was born on July 16, 1921 in Ekaterinoslav (Dnepropetrovsk, now - Dnepr), in the family of a worker. Since childhood, he showed an interest in drawing. This interest led the young man to the fine arts studio at the Palace of Pioneers (opened in the city in 1934).

Kokin did not manage to finish school - the Second World War began. He had to change his brush for a machine gun. The young painter went to the front. In 1941, he became a cadet at the Stalingrad Tank School. Passed the Caucasus, Stalingrad, the Kursk Bulge. Received a heavy wound.

After the war, the artist not only returned to the creative life, but decided to improve his education. In 1947, he entered the painting department of the Kiev Art Institute. His teachers were famous painters G.S. Melikhov, S.A. Grigoriev, V.N. Kostetsky.

In 1960, in the art museum held his first solo exhibition. A quarter of the century, in 1964-1987 Mikhail Kokin worked as chief artist of the Dnepropetrovsk art-production plant.

Mikhail Kokin is one of the few who was able to maintain a delicate balance between the requirements of "socialist realism" and lyricism in painting. He was equally successful with portraits of the heroes of developed socialism, and landscapes of his native Dnieper region, and even views of distant Chukotka and Kamchatka.

As art historian Lyudmila Bogdanova noted:

"Kokin's easel never stood without canvas for a single day, his palette and brushes never dried out, they inspiredly lived and worked together, creating more than two thousand canvases. The vast majority of them today dispersed to cities and towns distant (France, Spain, Canada, America, etc.) and neighboring countries, presenting the people an encounter with the unknown, but such a beautiful land, as our Ukraine, with such a beautiful people, as our hardworking man.

In 2001 he was awarded the honorary title "People's Artist of Ukraine". His last lifetime solo exhibition was held in 2007 at the Dnepropetrovsk Art Museum.

Mikhail Kokin's works are kept in many museums of the Dnieper region, Ukraine and abroad. These are Dnepropetrovsk art museum, Pavlograd local history museum, museum in Petrikivka, Donetsk, Nikolaev, Zhitomir, Korsun-Shevchenko, Kherson, Kakhovka local history museums, as well as private collections around the world.

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