A few words about truth and sincerity in Art: creative experience of Tatyana Nazarenko and Alena Dergileva

The paper analyzes works of two distinguished contemporary Russian artists: Tatyana Nazarenko and Alena Dergileva, who began their artistic career in Moscow in the 1970s. They are among the most prominent representatives of realistic art, the formation of which had nothing to do with the “epic” praising of shock-workers of “Communist labor” in compliance with “socialist realism”, and was based on their own search for the truth in life and art, whatever it was. This truth was not always convenient for Soviet officialdom, both in terms of content and unceasing search for a new art form adequate to the content and the means of its expression. The study defines and explores the stages of development of artists from compositions with intimate images of family and friends of artists to paintings and graphic sheets dedicated to turning points of Russian history and modern life of the Fatherland. The author analyzes the features of compositional and artistic techniques found by artists and which are a contribution to the development of modern realistic art. In the text, the artists' creativity is presented in the context of the General development of Russian art in the second half of the twentieth century-the first decades of the twenty-first century, expressed both through the interest in Russian history and search for artistic truth and sincerity in art. Analysis of the correlation between the two best representatives of realistic art and the time of creation of their works allows us to understand better the features of changes in the domestic art of the 1970s – 2010s, to identify the creative aspirations of the period and their transformation. The paper focuses on the artists` experience to highlight features of the artistic experience of T. Nazarenko and A. Dergileva within the realistic direction in art and to determine the forms of further development of figurative creativity.