Cafe Gurzuf () is a painting by Alexander Nikolayevich Samokhvalov (; 1894–1971), Russian artist, regarded as one of the founders and brightest representative of the Socialist Realism style. The painting depicts a view of a summer cafe in Gurzuf, Crimea, in the middle of the 1950s. History Samokhvalov is known in Soviet art for his portraits of typical young Soviet people of the 1930s ("Girl in a T-shirt", 1932, "Metrostroevka with a drill", 1937) as well as a monumental compositions ("Militarized Komsomol", 1933; "Sergei Kirov takes parade athletes", 1935; the monumental panel "Soviet Sport", 1936). They embodied the typical image of contemporary youth. The picture Cafe Gurzuf continues this theme. Samokhvalov painted the present work in the mid-1950s at the zenith of his career. Not long beforehand, he had married his young wife Maria Alekseevna Kleschar (1915–2000), who became his muse and faithful assistant. Captivated by her beauty and youthfulness, Samokhvalov found her to be a source of true inspiration. The present work conveys the artist’s fascination with beauty and youth, as depicted by the central seated figure, for which Samokhvalov’s wife served as a model for the central female figure (a young woman at a table in a pink blouse, studying a menu). The graceful inclination of her head and the curve of her shoulders evince her delicate beauty. In addition to artistic value, the picture has memorial and documentary value. This picture was painted by the artist in one of his visits to Gurzuf, where from 1950 to 1960 he repeatedly rested with his wife on the creative base of Russian artists at the former summer residence of Konstantin Korovin. A model for another female figure of the first plan from the left in a yellow dress with a red bag over his arm going up the steps became Lydia Timoshenko (1903–1976), artist and a wife of Yevgeny Kibrik (1906–1978), People's artist of the USSR. Portrayed on the left in a blue suit and straw hat is Samokhvalov’s friend, the artist Evgeny Kibrik, who in 1920s was a student of Pavel Filonov, as well as Samkhvalov himself, also in a straw hat and just visible over Kibrik’s shoulder. Samokhvalov since the 1920s was familiar with Lydia Tymoshenko and Yevgeny Kibrik and maintained friendship with them. In the 1920s, together with Tymoshenko, he was a member of the Leningrad association "Circle of Artists" (Krug Khudozhnikov) (1926–1932). The first husband