Tatiana Yablonskaya. 1949. The artist's "true heart"
THERE ARE 35 PAINTINGS BY THE RENOWNED UKRAINIAN ARTIST TATIANA YABLONSKAYA (1917-2005)1 AT THE TRETYAKOV GALLERY. THE ONE THAT HAS BEEN ON PERMANENT DISPLAY SINCE ITS ACQUISITION AND HAS RIGHTFULLY BECOME ONE OF THE GALLERY'S ICONIC IMAGES IS "GRAIN" (1949). THIS PAINTING HAS LONG AGO TRANSCENDED ITS ERA AND BECOME A FAVOURITE FOR SEVERAL GENERATIONS OF RUSSIAN ART-LOVERS. "GRAIN" WAS CREATED IN 1949, A YEAR THAT BEARS SYMBOLIC MEANING BOTH FOR YABLONSKAYA'S WORK AND THE HISTORY OF POST-WAR SOVIET ART AS A WHOLE.
The Tretyakov Gallery Manuscripts Department has several letters written by Yablonskaya from that time. Three of them, dated March 1950, are addressed to the artist Yakov Romas2; four others (the first three written at the beginning of 1950, and one in March 19553) are addressed to Marina Gritsenko, administrator at the USSR Union of Artists. The third of Yablonskaya's addressees is Anna Galushkina, head of the Tretyakov Gallery Department of Soviet Painting and Drawing (two letters of 1963.)4 These letters, written soon after Yablonskaya finished painting "Grain" (along with other documents, first and foremost Yablonskaya's own writings), allow us to reconstruct the cultural and biographical background of this famous work of art, and give some vital substance to "the artist's portrait in the context of her time".
Yablonskaya was born into a family of intellectuals. Her father, Nil Yablonsky, was a graduate of the Moscow University Department of History and Philology, spent some time studying at VHUTEMAS (the Russian acronym for the Higher Art and Technical Studios), and in the 1920s and 1930s worked as an educator, taught art and was engaged in museum management. Home-schooling in the Yablonsky family did not allow the children any freedom to choose their future profession - according to their father's wishes, they were all to become artists.5
Therefore, having finished seven years of grammar school in Kamianets-Podilskyi, the Yablonsky sisters (Tatiana, the older, and Elena, the younger, were very close in age) were admitted to the Kiev Art School as second-year students. Two months later, the school was closed due to the beginning of art education reforms in Ukraine, part of a wide campaign of combatting formalism6. It was only a year later, in 1935, that the sisters became students of the completely transformed Kiev Art Institute. During her first two academic years Yablonskaya received instruction from Konstantin Yeleva (1897-1950) and Abram Cherkassky (1886-1967); in her third year at the institute, she began her studies at the studio of the renowned master Fyodor Krichevsky (1879-1947).
Yablonskaya was a very hard-working student - her workload could have been that of three students combined. Her industrious-ness and tenacity earned her immediate recognition: Igor Grabar offered high praise for the nude studies she showed at the students' exhibition organized at the Institute in 1937; Yablonskaya's "Nude" (1937) became the first work to be exhibited in the Institute's Curriculum and Teaching Materials Office; she showed her study "Woman with a Yoke" (1938) at the 1939 All-Union Exhibition of Young Artists "20 Years of the Young Communist League"7; and, last but not least, at the beginning of 1941 the Institute organized its "Exhibition of Tatiana Yablonskaya's Works".
The young artist's extraordinarily successful career was interrupted by the outbreak of war and her evacuation to a collective farm near Kamyshin, a small town in the Saratov region where Yablonskaya's daughter Yelena was born. It became impossible for Yablonskaya to paint under such circumstances. For these three long years of war, a "city girl" by birth and upbringing, she, in her own words, turned into "Tan'ka the peasant" and a collective farm worker, according to the passport she received while evacuated8; just like everybody else at the collective farm, she pulled weeds, mowed, stacked hay, threshed, and pulled a cart with water for the vegetable gardens.
By April 1944, before the war was over, Yablonskaya was back in Kiev, which by then had been liberated by the Soviet Army. Returning to her profession proved to be a difficult undertaking, filled with self-doubt, attempts to make up for time lost (at the suggestion of the Government Committee on the Arts, Yablonskaya tried to replace her graduation work, an unfinished painting that had been lost during evacuation), and searching for her own theme in art under difficult political and social circumstances. (In 1947, the year of "the Great Famine", Yablonskaya's infirm and shunned mentor Fyodor Krichevsky died in Irpen, a township close to Kiev.) Nevertheless, she worked hard, and her new paintings were shown at annual exhibitions, both in Ukraine and around the Soviet Union; "Before the Start" (1947, National Art Museum of Ukraine) became her most noteworthy work. This stage in the young artist's career reached its highest point when she painted "Grain", the work that became her first and - for many years - only major success.
In summer 1948 Yablonskaya - at the time, she was teaching art at the Kiev Art Institute - and her students were sent to a "training workshop" at a collective farm; the collective farm, named after Vladimir Lenin, was located in Letava, a village in the Chemerovets region of the Kamianets-Podilskyi province, and had become famous throughout the Soviet Union for its remarkable harvests of grain and beets. Yablonskaya's students, already in Letava, sent her a letter describing the place as "awfully dreary, with nothing beautiful, interesting or picturesque; the landscape is unvaried, and the people are working all the time, and refuse to pose. Why don't we go to the collective farm next door - it is located on a picturesque river bank..."9 Yablonskaya answered them firmly: "It is impossible for a place where so many good people work to be boring."10
It was there that the future painting was conceived; Yablonskaya would go on to finish it a year later and show it first at the 10th Ukrainian Art exhibition, and later at the All-Union Exhibition in Moscow, in November 1949.
Literally the day before the exhibition opened on October 31, the central "Kultura i Zhizn" (Culture and Life) newspaper published an article by A. Kiselev called "For Socialist Realism in Painting". The author mentioned Yablonskaya among those artists whose work ("Before the Start" was cited as an example) revealed the harmful influence of Impressionism, and where "realism was sacrificed to the so-called 'painterliness'."11 In short, Yablonskaya was listed with those "sloppy workers" who "clung to formalism".
However, only three months later, on January 31 1950, the same critic, writing a review of current exhibitions (including the All-Union Exhibition where "Grain" was being shown) for the same paper, "exonerated" the artist: "The artist succeeded in showing the fortitude of labour, the joy of a plentiful harvest. This painting by the artist T. Yablonskaya is a clear success, a step forward, compared to her earlier work."12
Yablonskaya, who was good with words, published an article on February 11 to admit that criticism of her art was fair, and to tell the public about her work on the painting "Grain": "The 'Kultura i Zhizn' article 'For Social Realism in Painting', published in issue 30, 1949, among others mentioned me as an artist who had not quiet overcome Impressionism in her painting 'Before the Start'. Here is how I was definitively convinced that the impressionist method was erroneous."
Yablonskaya goes on to tell the story of her summer workshop in Letava. "The vast scope of work performed by the united, happy workers at the collective farm astonished me. Being there made me clearly realize what a big debt our art still owed to our great people, how little it had done to reveal all the greatness and dignity of the Soviet people, and the vastness of the Socialist reconstruction that our country was going through... The way I saw art changed entirely after my visit to the collective farm. Formalism and naturalism both find foundation in the artist's estrangement from our Socialist reality.
"I am absolutely convinced that a long, caring, meaningful interaction with the best Soviet people, visiting the best industrial sites and collective farms will give our art great momentum...
"Before my visit to the collective farm, being reproached for formalism hurt me a little bit. Now, I agree with that criticism... My worldview was turned around. I approached my latest painting, 'Grain', differently. I did my best to express the feeling that overwhelmed me when I was at the collective farm. I strove to express the joyous communal labour of our beautiful people, the wealth and power of our collective farms, and the triumph of Lenin's and Stalin's ideas in the socialist reconstruction of the village."13
After this newspaper publication, Yablonskaya wrote her first letter to Yakov Romas. The letter leaves the reader with a mixed impression: at times, it repeats the rhetoric of the article; however, on the whole it is written with honest feeling, "from the heart". The letter, written in pencil on several sheets of drawing paper, is filled with numerous corrections, strike-throughs and insertions, which betray the author's genuine concern.
"You know, many misunderstood the meaning of my essay in 'Kultura i Zhizn'," she wrote. "They thought I was concerned with my career, that I was a conformist, that I was 'in retreat', etc. This is very difficult for me. I know that you believe me, you know that I was sincere, that my only motivation was to share what I have learned from our life. From our amazing Soviet reality. I do not think that everyone understands why we are fighting formalism - some only see its external expression. So, I wanted to share my thoughts. Also, my article was very long, and it was abridged [for publication]. So it makes me feel bad if the impression is that the little girl was scolded, got frightened and 'reformed'.
"As for my views, I have become conclusively and irrevocably convinced that I am right. I see clearly now [underlined by Yablonskaya - O.P.] that our art can only be pushed forward through meaningful and close connections with the best features of our life___In order to create truly valuable works of art, the artist has to live with the people and learn about every aspect of their lives. To observe life in its entirety. Only then one may be able to sum it up. This is why I am convinced that I was absolutely right to make so many sketches during my stay at the collective farm.
"I did not come to the collective farm with a set composition in mind. It came to me as a synthesis of my impressions from the visit... I do not think it is right to go somewhere with a preconceived idea, or rather a preconceived subject matter. It has to emerge from life, from studying it thoroughly and completely. I believe that an artist should not only prepare studies for a painting, but also before [underlined by Yablonskaya - O.P.] a painting, for a future painting, for it to be born. To study those aspects of life that we do not know well enough... To find 'the typical' in life, an artist has to sift through a lot of material, and with a brush and pencil ready. It would be impossible to deny that preparing studies is essential here, even though they may or may not come in handy for a particular painting. Otherwise, the result may be a work that is accidental, atypical and unnecessary, or trite and farfetched. Am I right?"14
That was what Yablonskaya did - during the four months (June through September) that she spent in Letava before painting "Grain", she produced more than 300 drawings and studies. "Never before Letava was I so into drawing; I drew incessantly,"15 she wrote.
"I did not paint individual people or details of the landscape, I tried to capture whole groups, along with trucks, sacks, and structures, naturally forming a unique composition that one can only find in real life."16 Yablonskaya "wanted to show the communal energy of work, the joy of collective labour... Happy, always accompanied by song, shared work. Its vigorous pace and joyous cadence left a strong impression on me, and I tried to express it in all my studies, and especially in my sketches and drawings."17 The "happy girlfriends" in Ivan Pyryev's pre-war film "The Country Bride" (1937) also sang about "cheerful, joyous work", hoping that their names would "ring like a song among the names of heroes". Perfectly in line with the post-war directive to immortalize heroes of war and socialist labour, Yablonskaya wrote: "I wanted my painting to resonate like a good song people sing about their work, to be a monument to those people."18
"I wanted to create an epic image... to make the painting real, full of movement, sound and sunlight. At the same time, I wanted it to be very balanced, powerful and substantial, to express the significance of the image. Compositionally, I was striving to make it inimitably authentic as well as seemingly accidental and fresh, clear, simple and consistent with the message."19
When Yablonskaya began working on the painting, she did not build it around any of the studies or drawings she had made while staying at the collective farm. There is not a single portrait in the painting; incidentally, there are few faces - a 1950s critic lamented that too many figures were painted with their backs to the viewer.20 In place of the collective farm's chairman David Boyko, a man definitely worthy of being in the painting, we see his bag with a newspaper sticking out of it on the left-hand side. The horizon and the sky, contrary to the tradition of painting the farmland in the background, are obstructed with an enormous, carelessly painted haystack, which looks more like a shaggy curtain. Only the top right-hand corner is left empty, to give a glimpse of moving trucks; one of them has a red banner attached to its side, and we can barely make out the slogan, "Grain is the power and wealth of our state", behind the figures of two farm workers.
As she continued painting, Yablonskaya removed some genre elements from the foreground, such as a barrel with water, and moved most of the female figures away from the centre of the canvas. The original studies for the painting did not have sacks in the foreground - it was only later that they became a sort of visual pedestal for the main figures in the painting.
In her attempt to "create the impression of a typical Ukrainian collective farm"21, Yablonskaya "dressed" the women in traditional, flowing Ukrainian skirts, instead of those that real collective farm workers wore. However, the idea to put a traditional Ukrainian embroidered peasant shirt on the"main character" in the painting seemed"too one-dimensional, too poster-like a solution".22 It was the female worker on the right who was depicted in the embroidered shirt.
Working on the main figure in the centre of the painting, the one that she conceived of as "the composite image of the Ukrainian collective farm worker of today23, Yablonskaya used her own poster that she had created on commission from a publishing house. In the painting, she did put the woman's figure further into the background and restrained the forward motion of her body by showing her, head thrown back, with a sea of sunlit grain at her feet, looking at the viewer over her shoulder as she rolls up her sleeve. This composition allowed the artist to translate the enthusiasm and moralizing required in a theme painting into an inherently youthful fervour.
An interesting and seemingly specific detail is that the grain sacks are marked in Ukrainian with the name of the collective farm and the village ("The V. Lenin collective farm, the village of Letava") and the date, 1949. Not 1947, when the collective farm was celebrated for its extraordinary harvest, not 1948, when Yablonskaya and her students worked there, but 1949, the year the painting was finished, which could have been 1950, 1951, or later. It can be supposed that this was the artist's way of separating the image from any actual time, and making it "timeless" - everything that is going on in the captured moment had always existed, and always would do so.
Thus, Yablonskaya effectively avoided being one-dimensional or trivially descriptive, pompous or grandiloquent; she transferred the ideological message from the painting to what was written about the painting - first and foremost, her own texts and the cliches she created to discuss her painting, cliches that later on were replicated in almost all descriptions of her "Grain".
By freeing the painting from the burden of propaganda and narrative, which moved almost entirely into its story, she injected the visual image with a great deal of personal feeling and hope, and sharpened it to achieve a simple and universally clear formula - "happiness and joy of work": "I remember that happy moment of some prophetic clarity when I decided to make the enormous heap of grain even larger, to pour it over the entire canvas. I wanted this theme of harvest, grain and bread to resonate stronger, to sound even happier. It was the same day that the painting's name came to me - I called it 'Grain'."24
It was indeed a happy moment. The word Yablonskaya found, so simple but all-encompassing, transformed the image. By titling the painting "Grain", the artist unlocked those innumerable memories, feelings and connotations that almost everyone has with grain and bread; it was especially true during those post-war years. Many remember the "chunk of rye bread, with the sweet smell of life" that the character in Alexei Tolstoy's novel "Bread"25 "carefully placed in the pocket of his long coat"; Astafiev's almost visionary words, "I bow in front of the ancient field as it inhales the flames of summer lightning. I believe that I can hear the grains whispering to the soil. It feels like I can hear them ripen, and the sky, anxious and aching, is raving about peace and bread"26; and the memories of the participants in Lyudmila Ulitskaya's project "Childhood 45-53: Tomorrow Will Bring Happiness"27.
This word alludes to everything that has to do with grain and bread - in everyday life, in literature, in art. Bread holds an enduring place in Russian culture; bread is one of the most important life-sustaining resources, and it shapes human moral norms. Bread and grain were a constant theme in post-war art, literature and film - thus, Ivan Pyriev's film "Cossacks of the Kuban" was released on February 29 1950, while theatres presented Nikolai Virta's play "Our Daily Bread", which was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1948. The All-Union Exhibition showed paintings by such artists as Alexander Bubnov, Sergei Gerasimov, Vasily Nechitaylo, Arkady Plastov and Fyodor Shurpin that (like Yablonskaya's work) were dedicated to the themes of harvest, grain, and bread.28
Throughout29 the 1950s Yablonskaya was not able to match the success of "Grain". According to one renowned expert: "Soviet Art (another name for Socialist Realism) was based on a system that included two approaches. The first, more important one, took art to the level of 'the iconic', and the other one was meant to show contemporary everyday life. The first one demanded the kind of method where details lost their meaning. The second one required a multitude of details to be brought together into a whole picture."30 Yablonskaya's next major work after "Grain" presented an unusual combination of both methods.
"I've got this new idea," she wrote in her letter to Romas of March 1950, already quoted, "but I have not even painted a study yet, so I am afraid to tell you about it - what if I jinx it! - well, what can you do, I will tell you.
"Here it is: a park in spring, bright sun, and throngs of little children. Lots and lots of them, just 'spilled' outside. They are so hungry for life, like spring grasses that come out of every crack in the ground. Babies, toddlers, all different and so adorable. [They are] playing in the sand. Shadows on the ground. Birds signing. Life is everywhere, everyone wants to live. I think this is a very important theme, life-affirming and relevant. You see? I do not think this will end up like a little genre scene. The energy of life, irrepressible, and its happiness. Everything has to be filled with happiness. Resilience. Not long ago I saw a hillside, with little shrubs climbing on it. Everything is climbing and growing, and everyone wants to live.
"I think the colours need to be very happy. What do you think about this idea? I like it."31
Yablonskaya titled the painting she described in this letter "Spring" (1950, Russian Museum); though she received her second Stalin Prize for it in the same year, "Spring" was not a success. Yablonskaya's first biographer Valentina Kuriltseva wrote in her 1959 monograph: "... the painting deserves a long, good look... Great artistry is revealed in the way [Yablonskaya] painted the faces of the mothers and nannies. and especially the children. However. the composition lacks a shared principle... It is clear that the artist was trying to express the feeling of spring through the image of the happy, excited crowd of little children on a boulevard; she did not, however, entirely succeed in communicating her purpose." As a result, "a well-conceived concept of 'Spring' did not result in comprehensive artistic implementation."32
Yablonskaya's attempt to paint the "miners" of Krivorozhye did not match the success of "Grain" (she wrote to Romas about it: "I am planning to go to Krivorozhye in the summer. I would like to paint something large and powerful about the miners.")33 Neither did her portrayal of athletes in "On the Dnieper" (1952, Lviv Museum of Ukrainian Art) or that of the builders of Kiev, something Yablonskaya mentioned in her letter to Marina Gritsenko of March 1 1955: "I am still struggling with my old painting of builders, but I have not yet been able to find a good solution for it. I am moving on to the fourth canvas."34
Yablonskaya only matched that earlier success in her painting "Morning" (1954, Tretyakov Gallery); however, it seems she was not entirely satisfied with the result. In her letter to Anna Galushkina, written in August 1963, in regard to the possible acquisition of her new painting "Wedding" from "The Transcarpathia Series" by the Tretyakov Gallery, Yablonskaya wrote: "Naturally, I would be very happy to have another of my works on the sacred walls of the gallery. I believe that this painting would be better received than my other work, 'Morning'."35
Yablonskaya painted her most important works later, in the 1960s-1970s: "Getting Ready to Harvest Hay" (1960), "Summer" (1967), "Unknown Heights" (1969), "Evening. Old Florence" (1973), and finally, "Flax Harvest" (1977, all in the Tretyakov Gallery), Yablonskaya's last large-scale, and in the artist's own words, "most hard-won and loved"36 painting.
Some of Yablonskaya's letters that are now housed in the Tretyakov Gallery archives are dedicated to Arkady Plastov (1893-1972), and would be a fruitful subject for further investigation. Plastov's large-scale canvas "Threshing-floor at a Collective Farm" (Kiev Museum of Russian Art) was shown at the 1949 All-Union Exhibition, and the above-referenced review referred to Yablonskaya's and Plastov's works as polar opposites, judging her painting positively, and his negatively. In her letter to Romas, Yablonskaya analyzed Plastov's "failures" and offered her "recipe" for success: "It is unfortunate that he is living at a backward, rundown collective farm. Had it been the other way round, Plastov would have been our best advocate of the Soviet collective farm. I believe this is his only problem and the source of his mistakes. I think he is still to feel the power of the collective farm, the power of the new people - hence the red peasant shirt. If someone would somehow convince him to spend the summer at the very best, most profitable collective farm, he'd amaze us all - he is immensely talented. He needs to fall in love with collective farm socialism. I sent him a very long letter; it will be interesting to see what he writes back. He absolutely needs to be pointed in the right direction, closer to socialism. I do not have much faith in S[ergei] Gerasimov - there is no passion in his heart. Plastov does have passion. His heart is true, but he does not have a good feeling for the collective farm. And really, how could he feel it in that Prislonikha [Plastov's native village in the Volga region] of his? I think this is the root of his troubles. He will not be able to truly feel the real life of the collective farm until he shares this genuinely new life with others. We ought to tell him that. As for his talent, it is enormous. Also, he has a warm heart, and he knows people (just not exactly the right kind of people).
"What is your opinion? We have to do everything possible to help him spread his wings. It would be such a great contribution to our art! Yakov Dorofeevich, what is the right way to do it? My heart bleeds for him. I love him so much. It would be wonderful if we could convince him to spend the summer here in Ukraine with us, at Posmitny or Dubkovetsky (these are famous collective farms), or in Kuban!"37 Only someone as passionate as Yablonskaya could have given such a vivid and unaffected description of the renowned master Arkady Plastov.
The Tretyakov Gallery archives contain two more letters that Yablonskaya wrote to Romas to discuss current developments at the Ukrainian Union or Artists. She was the head of the Painting Section; with characteristic fervour, she often expressed extreme opinions while working to create a friendly, collaborative working environment: "I would love for the Union to have the atmosphere of friendship, mutual assistance and trust. It would give a great impetus to the development of our art!"38 Alas, she did not have a great deal of success there either.
Tatiana Yablonskaya greeted old age with a smile. The artist described herself as "in love with life"39; her "true heart", as she wrote in her 1950 letter to Romas, remained true.
As she looked at the self-portrait that she painted in 1995, she would probably lament: "What an old lady I have become!"40 And right after that, she wrote: "The easel is still at the window -because one can see autumn right behind it! The colour of gold is everywhere."41 Restricted in her movements after a heart attack she suffered in 1989, she learned to love her shrinking world; she would impatiently wait for the sunny afternoons to "quickly pour the golden light onto the canvas."42 As if to continue the letter she wrote to Marina Gritsenko long ago, in 1955, ("Every time spring comes, I just have to paint it."43), she added, half a century later: "There is something magical about the colour green that emerges from the damp, numb earth when the snow melts."44 Excited, she watched "the great wonder of spring awakening ripen in the mist of an April rain"45.
A stroke in 1999 left Yablonskaya unable to use her right hand, so she learned to paint with her left one; with her wheelchair by the window, so as to see the sky that she painted so rarely, she worked on her pastels until the last day of her life. She passed away in 2005, after 88 years on this Earth, on the 17th day of the lavish month of Cbexveri...
- A People's Artist ofthe USSR, Full Member of the USSR Academy of Fine Arts, Yablonskaya was also a three-time winner of the USSR State Award.
- Tretyakov Gallery Manuscripts Department, Fund 134. Inv. items 218, 219, 220.
- Tretyakov Gallery Manuscripts Department, Fund. File 1. Inv. items 2899, 2900, 2901, 2902.
- Tretyakov Gallery Manuscripts Department, Fund 4. File 2. Inv. items 1331, 1332.
- Which was the way it turned out: Tatiana's sisterYelena (1918-2009) became an artist as well, and her brother Dmitry (1911-2001) was an architect.
- Rodionov, G. "Crushing'Boychukism' [a movement in art, followers of the Ukrainian artist Mikhail Boychuk] and Art Education. A Letter from Ukraine"//"Isskustvo" (Art), 1938, No. 5.
- All-Union Exhibition of Young Artists. Exhibition catalogue. Moscow, 1939. P. 129.
- Yablonskaya, T.N."How I worked on my painting'Grain'" // "An Artist's Experiences". Edition 3. Moscow, 1957. P. 58.
- Ibid. P. 49.
- Ibid. P. 51.
- Kiselev, A."For Socialist Realism in Painting" /"Kultura i Zhizn" (Culture and Life), No. 30, October 31 1949.
- Kiselev, A.; Kushelev, A. "New Works of Soviet Art" /"Kultura i Zhizn" (Culture and Life), No. 3, January 31 1950.
- Yablonskaya, T. "Socialist Realism in Painting" /"Kultura i Zhizn" (Culture and Life), February 11 1950.
- Letter to Y.D. Romas. Tretyakov Gallery Manuscripts Department, Fund 134. Inv. item 218.
- Yablonskaya, T.N."HowI Painted'Grain'". P. 55.
- Ibid. P. 56.
- Ibid. P. 57.
- Ibid. P. 61.
- Ibid. P. 62.
- Zatenatzky, Y."Ukrainian Soviet Painting", Kiev, 1958. Pp. 96-97.
- Yablonskaya, T.N."How I Painted'Grain'". P. 75.
- Ibid. P. 76.
- Ibid. P. 74.
- Ibid. P. 66.
- Tolstoy, A. Collected Works, volume 6. P. 430.
- "Imenem Khleba" (Bread). Poetry Collection. Moscow, 1984, p. 5.
- Ulitskaya, L. "Childhood 45-53: Tomorrow Will Bring Happiness". Moscow, 2013.
- All-Union Art Exhibition Catalogue. 1949. Painting. Sculpture. Drawing. Moscow, 1949.
- Turchin, V.S."The Image of the 20th Century... in the Past and the Present. Artists and Their Concepts. Works of Art and Theories". Moscow, 2003. P. 353.
- Letter to Y.D. Romas of March 1950. Tretyakov Gallery Manuscripts Department, Fund 4. Inv. item 218.
- Kuriltseva, V. "Tatiana Nilovna Yablonskaya". Moscow, 1959. P. 61.
- Letter to Y.D. Romas of March 1950. Tretyakov Gallery Manuscripts Department, Fund 134. Inv. item 218.
- Letter to M.N. Gritsenko of March 1 1955. Tretyakov Gallery Manuscripts Department, Fund 134. File 1. Inv. item 2902.
- Letter to A.S. Galushkina of July 1963. Tretyakov Gallery Manuscripts Department, Fund 4. File 2. Inv. items 1331.
- Tatiana Yablonskaya. Exhibition Catalogue. Kiiv. 1997. P. 26. (hereinafter: Tatiana Yablonskaya). In Ukrainian.
- Letter to Y.D. Romas of March 1950. Tretyakov Gallery Manuscripts Department, Fund 134. Inv. item 218.
- Letter to Y.D. Romas of March, 25 1950. Tretyakov Gallery Manuscripts Department, Fund 134. Inv. item 219.
- Yablonskaya, T.N. P. 68.
- Tatiana Yablonskaya. P. 35. In Ukrainian.
- Ibid. P. 43.
- Ibid. P. 63.
- Letter to M.N. Gritsenko of March 1 1955. Tretyakov Gallery Manuscripts Department, Fund 125. File 1. Inv. item 2902.
- Tatiana Yablonskaya. P. 60. In Ukrainian.
- Ibid. P. 85.
- June. In Ukrainian.