1925
oil on canvas
83 õ 114
Grekov was a founder of the genre of battle scenes in Soviet art. After enrolling as volunteer in the Red Army, he later became an artist and chronicler of the military campaigns of the 1st Cavalry of S.M. Budenny.
The Gun Cart (“Tachanka” – Ukrainian cart) was one of the artist’s most popular paintings and was understood by a Soviet critic as follows: “The machine-gun cart was celebrated in songs and was put forward in conditions of the Civil War as a weapon that was a highly mobile firepower for the cavalry. It is depicted in headlong movement on the field amidst explosions of shrapnel, drawn by a team of four horses excited by the battle. In the work we see everything – movement and blast…conveyed by quick brush strokes, but with the necessary measure of definition that shows the tense state of the gunners. The complex rhythm of the racing horses, the position of shadows, the main lines of the landscape together with the line of the movement of the gun cart, and the figures of individual riders, all of this has been strictly thought out, put in order and merges to form an integral image that is true to life and also artistically expressive.”
