That is how it appears in the State Museum of Arts named after A. Kasteev, in Almaty, Kazakhstan. A little bit about the author…
From 1929 to 1931, Kasteev studied the arts in the Almaty studio of Russian painter Nikolai Gavrilovich Khludov. Khludov was the founder of the first school of artistry in Kazakhstan, which opened in 1921. It was foundational to the development of arts in Kazakhstan and Kyrgizstan.
Kasteev continued his studies from 1934 to 1937 in Moscow, in the art studio named after Nadezhda Krupskaya, the Russian revolutionary and wife of Lenin.
He was proclaimed the People’s Artist of the Kazakh SSR in 1944, owing to him being the premier Kazakh artist and watercolorist. The Almaty state museum was renamed in his honour in 1984.
The painting “Kapchagai Hydroelectric Power Station”, from an online archive.
This landscape depicts the Kapchagai hydro power plant (built 1965-1970), which is cradled on the Ili river in Almaty.
Here are some photos of the HPP:
Kasteev was the Chairman of the Union of Artists of Kazakhstan for a period. He was also a deputy of the Supreme Council of the Kazakh SSR of the 4th–6th convocations.
His selfportrait was reproduced on the postage stamps of Kazakhstan in 2004. Many of his paintings also appear on postage stamps.
Maybe not as grandiose, but this piece called “At the construction site of a high-mountain hydroelectric power station” by Solovyev Nikolai evokes a similar feeling:
For me, it’s the interaction between Soviet machinery and nature, and how it is captured by these artists that is beautiful.