1945-1959 Postwar works


After the war, Nurenberg distanced himself from public activity partly due to age — he was already 60, partly due to the political course against cosmopolitanism and formalism in art. However Nurenberg mobilized himself to work hard and to find positive inspirations.

In particular, he turned to the themes of folk festivities and carnivals. The pictures depicted well-dressed young people, women in bright spring dresses, with flowing hair, with bouquets of flowers or balloons in their hands. Among Nurenberg’s models was the artist’s daughter, soloist singer of the Bolshoi Theater Nina Nelina, and also in a festive atmosphere («On the day of the first debut», Museum of the Bolshoi Theater, Moscow).

In the 1950s Nurenberg for the first time got interested in the winter landscape. He created a series of paintings, having showed the region of the Upper Maslovka in Moscow (where he lived in the House of Artists for nearly 40 years), in the volatile winter lighting — vague, sunny, cloudy. One of the pictures with a skating-rink and skating figures resembled winter motives in the Dutch painting.

Some 20 paintings of this period are in the Tretyakov Gallery and in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts.