Still Life with Pussy-Willows

Still Life with Pussy-Willows is a painting by Taisia Afonina (Таисия Кирилловна Афонина), a Russian artist who lived and worked in Leningrad. She was a member of the Leningrad branch of Union of Artists of Russian Federation and representative of the Leningrad School of Painting. The painting shows a typical table laid for tea drinking on a spring day in a Leningrad apartment in the mid-1960s.

History
The canvas was painted in April 1964 in Leningrad on Zverinskaya Street, 2/5, in the apartment 21, where Afonina lived from 1952 to 1994. It depicts the daily life of a bygone era. Composition of the painting is devoid of stage effects, and the arrangement of objects is organic and natural. Almost nothing is unnatural in artist's composition, so this gives the created image special force of impact on the viewer.

Still Life with Pussy-Willows was first exhibited in 1965 at the Spring Exhibition of Leningrad artists in the Leningrad Union of Artists. In 1994, the painting was displayed in Saint Petersburg at the exhibition The Paintings of 1950-1980s by Artists of the Leningrad School. It was shown in the Saint Petersburg Nikolai Nekrasov Memorial Museum in the exhibitions Lyrical motives in the works of artists of the war generation (1995), Painting of 1940-1990s: The Leningrad School (1996), and Still life in painting of 1950-1990s: The Leningrad School (1997).

In 2007 the painting was reproduced and described among 350 art works by Leningrad artists in the book Unknown Socialist Realism: The Leningrad School, published in Russian and English. In 2011 the painting was described in an article by Sergei Ivanov, "Still life at the Leningrad Table", published in St. Petersburg Art History Notebooks. In 2012 it was exhibited at the Art Show devoted to the 80th Anniversary of the Saint Petersburg Union of Artists.