Viktor Tsigal's Drawing "Lviv. The Shattered Station"

A front-line drawing by Viktor Tsigal: the railway station in Lviv, just liberated from German troops. In pencil and charcoal the artist sketched the building with its enormous dome and tall entrance arch, a lamp post and rubble in the foreground. In his memoirs Tsigal wrote that he learned of the city's capture over the radio and the next morning was already drawing "the ribs of the shattered station".

Viktor Tsigal (1916–2005) volunteered in 1943 for the 10th Guards Volunteer Tank Corps and became the artist of its political department. The corps had been formed from the Urals Volunteer Tank Corps; for the liberation of Lviv, completed on 27 July 1944, it received the honorary name "Lvovsky". Hence the catalogue's record of where the drawing was made: "Lviv. 10th TULDK", that is, the Urals-Lviv Volunteer Tank Corps.

After the war Tsigal graduated from the Moscow State Art Institute, worked as an illustrator for the Detgiz publishing house and became a People's Artist of Russia. The sheet measures 209 × 309 mm.