History of Russia: Exhibition dedicated to the work of the front-line brigades of the Museum of Military Medicine presented in St. Petersburg

The exhibition We Became Adults at the Front is presented at the Museum of Military Medicine (St. Petersburg).

The exhibition is dedicated to the work of the museum’s front-line brigades during the Great Patriotic War and shows rare works by Soviet artists and photographers from the museum’s collection. Special front-line brigades consisted of painters, a photographer and a pathologist.

For the first time, they went to the battlefields in the autumn of 1943 and continued their work until the end of the war. Photographers and artists of the brigades visited all fronts of the Great Patriotic War. They worked in extremely difficult conditions, creating pieces of art in the shortest time possible.

The section Establishment of the Museum. Organization of the Work of Front-line Brigades introduces visitors to the first years of the museum’s operation: here are presented photographs of directors, staff meetings, museum expositions, as wells as Report on the work of the visiting brigade of the Museum of Military Medicine at the 1st Ukrainian Front in 1945 and Travel certificates of workers of the Museum of Military Medicine (1943-1945).

The section Evacuation of the Wounded and Sick consists of artistic sketches. They include works by graphic artist and painter N. G. Kozlov, artist Y. A. Lvov, graphic artist N. G. Yakovlev. The section Medical Care is represented by layouts and models based on front-line samples, devices made in hospitals from improvised means – cans, pieces of wood, etc., which served for the rehabilitation of the wounded, the development of muscles and joints after injuries. Many of them were made by the wounded themselves.

The section Return to Service. Hospital and Front-line Life tells about the work of artists on illuminating the front-line life of medical evacuation institutions.

Thanks to the work of the front-line brigades of the museum, the living memory of the feat of Soviet soldiers and military doctors, their selfless work on the treatment and return to full life of tens of millions of wounded and sick participants of the Great Patriotic War is preserved today. Visitors will have a chance to learn about the work on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War of both military doctors and representatives of such peaceful professions as an artist and photographer.