Leonid Tkachenko (artist)

Leonid Anisimovich Tkachenko (Леони́д Ани́симович Ткаче́нко; 28 March 1927 – December 2020) was a Soviet and Russian painter. A member of the Saint Petersburg Union of Artists (before 1992 the Leningrad branch of Union of Artists of Russian Federation), he lived and worked in Saint Petersburg, regarded as one of the leading representatives of the "left" wing of the Leningrad school of painting.

Biography
Leonid Anisimovich Tkachenko was born 28 March 1927, in Pyatigorsk city, North Caucasus, USSR.

In 1950 Leonid Tkachenko graduated from Kharkov Art Institute. In 1950 he moved from Kharkov to Leningrad.

From 1950 Leonid Tkachenko participated in Art Exhibitions. He painted portraits, landscapes, genre and abstract compositions, still lifes. Leonid Tkachenko worked in oil painting and watercolour technique. His solo exhibitions were in Leningrad (1983) and Saint Petersburg (1996). In 1950 -1970 Leonid Tkachenko travelled by the virgin lands of Kazakhstan, building of Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam by ancient Russian towns Pskov, Veliky Novgorod, Vladimir, Suzdal and also in Siberia, Middle Asia and Zakarpatye. The expressions from this journeys reflected later in his creation.

In the 1960s in art of Leonid Tkachenko took place a gradual changes from academic style and plain air painting to the symbolic compositions and more plastic expression. There were a growing abstract role of colour and rhythm with subsequent release into the space of philosophical tasks of conceptual art in his work. He became the a delegate of the "left wing" of the Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists since that time.

Among his works there are "A Young Azerbaijanian", "An Old Azerbaijanian" (1948), "For the Great Projects" (1951). "1-st Line of Vasilievsky Island", "A Rays of Sunset", "Kostroma. Winter Evening", "The Airplane has Flew" (all 1955), "The Year 1917" (1957), "May-Day at Vasilievsky Island" (1958), "Call of Hiroshima" (1960), "Leningrad" (1961), "A Fine Day" (1962), "A Portrait of G. Egoshin, Z. Arshakuni, Y. Krestovsky" (1968), "Shah-i-Zinda. Samarkand", "Medrese of Abdulla-Khan. Bukhara", "A Vase" (1974), "Surgeon Amosov" (1975), "A Fantasy on the Reminiscence about Dante and Michelangelo", "Mayakovsky" (1976), "Golden Cactuses", "Apples in a Golden Vase" (both 1977), "A Concert for the Piano", "A Concert with the Ballerina" (both 1978), "L. Tolstoy" (1979), "Music for the World", "Wild Flowers" (both 1980), "Still life with Two Cactuses", "Still life with Snowdrops" (both 1981), "Alexander Block. A Fantasy" (1982), "To the Light" (1985), "A Composition with Two Candles" (1988), "Flying over Triumphal Arch" (1989), "Logos 1", "Destruction of Black Square" (both 1981) and many others.

In 1951 Leonid Tkachenko was admitted to the Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists (since 1992 known as the Saint Petersburg Union of Artists). A solo exhibition of Tkachenko was in Leningrad in 1983.

Between 1989 and 1992, his works were demonstrated at auctions and exhibitions of Russian paintings L' École de Leningrad in France.

Paintings by Leonid Anisimovich Tkachenko reside in State Russian Museum, State Tretyakov Gallery, in the lot of Art museums and private collections in Russia, USA, China, UK, Japan, and other countries.

Leonid Tkachenko was one of 11 Leningrad artists (called later as Exhibition of Eleven (Leningrad, 1972)), which was joined for the participation only at two exhibitions: in 1972 and 1976 to show the creation of the "left wing" of the Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists. There were Valery Vatenin, German Yegoshin, Zaven Arshakuny, Yaroslav Krestovsky, Boris Shamanov, husband and wife Victor Teterin and Evgenia Antipova, Valentina Rakhina, a wife of German Yegoshin, Vitaly Tulenev and sculptor Konstantin Simun. An art-critic Lev Mochalov was supported them.

Tkachenko died in December 2020, at the age of 93.