This is the astounding story of how Vladimir Yakovlev, a retoucher for a publishing house, began to draw under the impression of exhibitions of foreign artists as part of the 1957 Youth Festival. And he quickly revealed himself as a phenomenal intuitive painter. In the 1970s, his gouaches became symbols of unofficial art. They were bought by representatives of the Soviet creative and scientific intelligentsia. Against the background of the dominance of propaganda art, the purchase of Yakovlev's works was certainly a form of intellectual resistance.

Before us is not a picture, but the whole object of the master of melancholic realism, Yuri Kuper. The work is a virtuoso embodiment of the technique of sfumato, developed, as is believed, by Leonardo da Vinci. Sfumato is an Italian word for blurriness, nebula. The idea of the technique is to blur the outlines of nature in order to convey the air surrounding it.