Sofia Dymshits-Tolstaya actively worked with Vladimir Tatlin in the early 1920s. Between 1925 and 1935, Sofia Dymshits-Tolstaya was the artistic editor of the magazines Woman Worker and Peasant Woman. She was therefore at the forefront of the formation of the new image of a Soviet woman. The artist created a whole series of portraits of “new women” — agitators, shock workers and collective farmwomen. Among them is a portrait of Daria Prokhorova, the chairwoman of the village council. In this painting, the social element was far more important than the external likeness. This female image is extremely typical of the Soviet painting of the 1930s.

Dymshits-Tolstaya Sofia

DYMSHITS-TOLSTAYA (Pesatti), Sofia Isaakovna
1889, St Petersburg - 1963, Leningrad
Painter, graphic artist. Studied under Sergei Egorov in St Petersburg (1906–1907), under Léon Bakst and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky at the Elizaveta Zvantseva School of Drawing and Painting (1909–1910) and under Charles Guérin at the Académie de la Palette in Paris (1910–1911). Contributed to exhibitions (from 1912). Contributed to the exhibitions of the World of Art (1912, 1913, 1915–1917), Knave of Diamonds (1913), Store (1916), Art. Revolution (1917, founder), To the Revolution (1917, founder). Member of the Union of Artists (1932). Member of IZO Narkompros and its All-Russian Exhibition bureau (1918), head of the publishing department for art of IZO Narkompros and the painting section of the Union of Art Workers (1920s). Edited the art sections of Woman Worker and Peasant Woman (1925–1935).