Town beauties
1984, 34"x26", tempera on heavy paper
$4900.00
This 1984 painting by V. Feoktistov, titled "Town Beauties," is a 34"x26" tempera work on heavy paper. Created in the signature style of Soviet grotesque realism, the piece delivers a highly stylized, satirical, and crowded depiction of social vanity and interaction in a provincial town.
The framing of "Town Beauties" as "provincial tramps" cuts straight to the heart of what makes V. Feoktistov's 1984 painting so biting. By stripping away the sanitized, heroic imagery of traditional Socialist Realism, the artist delivers a raw, unapologetic look at late-Soviet provincial glamour—which, in reality, is weathered, survivalist, and aggressively human.
Here is how the painting visually translates that gritty, unvarnished hustle:
The women in the foreground are not idealized muses; they are survivalists performing "glamour" with whatever tools they have at hand: