This article is about an unjustly forgotten artist, one of those who during Stalinist times found themselves ousted out of the country’s artistic life and were compelled to paint without publication prospects. Today it may seem strange – Olga Zhekulina’s fine impressionist paintings that carried on the traditions of the Union of Russian Artists were unquestionably “harmless”. Their subjects were quite “acceptable”, too: village sights, forests or still lives, nothing “extreme”. However, in the early 1930s, when socialist realism was announced to be the compulsory trend for the entire creative community, impressionism was placed “into the same cell” as other modernist trends, such as cubism, primitivism, fauvism and abstractionism. The author presents works of Zhekulina executed at different times of her life and reveals to the reader her inimitable creative individuality and, at the same time, explores her philosophical position that she shared with other masters of unofficial Soviet art.
Key words: Olga Zhekulina, Konstantin Korovin, Russian impressionism, escapism.