Stanitsa Zhukovskaya Moves to a New Place

Technique: Canvas, oil.
Size: 70 × 37 cm.

This thematic genre composition depicts the relocation of the Don Cossack village (stanitsa) of Zhukovskaya, which lay within the flooding zone formed by the Tsimlyansk Reservoir; in the early 1950s the settlement was rebuilt anew, higher up the slope, on the shore of a bay. Such engagement with the history of the Don is characteristic of Vladimir Mikhailovich Klenov (1932–2024), an Honored Artist of Russia born in Rostov-on-Don and known for thematic and genre canvases devoted to the region's past. Rendered in oil, the scene of resettlement joins an everyday motif with the documentary memory of the region's transformation during the construction of the Volga-Don Canal.