Biography
Ilya Alekseevich Sokolov is a master of prints recognized in Russian art. He is known as the author of engravings on domestic and industrial topics, as well as a series of memorial works dedicated to the figures of the October Revolution of 1917.
Since childhood, I.A. Sokolov attended drawing classes. He studied at the Moscow icon-painting workshop for six years with G.D. Honorary, then in a private studio of drawing and painting at A.P. Bolshakova. Already at that time, the young artist was interested in Dutch etchings of the 17th century. Since 1919 he studied in the painting workshop of S.M. Kolesnikov in Moscow Proletkult, and in the same year moved to the graphic studio actively working in the technique of colour engraving V.D. Falileev, a student of the famous Russian engraver V.V. Mate. Under the leadership of Falileev, the young artist completed his first engraving. The works of the 1920s marked a noticeable influence of the teacher. In 1921, I. A. Sokolov headed the graphic workshop, but a year later he left Proletkult.
The artist tried himself in various graphic genres and techniques. If at an early stage I.A. Since Sokolov was of a chamber character, the series he created in his mature years, devoted to workers and the lives of major revolutionaries, are large sheets, written in detail with a stroke.
Gorky theme in the work of I.A. Sokolov opens with a chest portrait of A.M. Gorky, engraved in 1939. The writer’s face almost confidently appears against the backdrop of a formidable sky cut through by flashes of lightning and a stormy sea with a petrel flying above the waves. A.M. Gorky is represented here in the form of a messenger of the revolution. In the lower right corner of the sheet is the signature of the artist. In the postwar years, Sokolov devoted much time to trips to places related to the life of A.M. Gorky. The fruit of these trips was a large series of gouache and coloured linocuts, executed very carefully and representing a kind of artistic document.
