Petrusov photographed the construction of Magnitogorsk and the Dnieper hydroelectric power station (DneproGES), collective farmers, military and naval exercises, a sports parade on Red Square and the Moscow metro.
"Georgy Petrusov quickly grew into a prominent master," Alexander Rodchenko wrote in the Soviet Photo journal in 1936.
Petrusov's work captured the bursting energy of life. He used all the photographic devices and methods, known at that time - pictorialism with its subtle treatment of light and shade and flickering texture; expressionism with stiff turns, elaborate perspectives and splitting diagonals; monumental realism with close views, genuine optimism and sincere pathos.
Georgy Petrusov cannot be regarded as a socialist realist. The living feeling did not turn into an elaborate device in his works. He created his myth about happy life and believed in it himself.
In 1930-1941 Petrusov was a staff photographer of the legendary magazine SSSR Na Stroike (The USSR in Construction), which created the most powerful and influential myth about the Soviet land.
The photographer turned to the Bolshoi Theater's ballet in the 1940s when he was ordered to make an album dedicated to the theater's 175th anniversary. This period of time saw the growth of the Bolshoi Theater's status.
On the one hand, Georgy Petrusov's Bolshoi Ballet is a titanic and fundamental work covering the theater's repertoire in the 1940s-1950s. His photos may help recreate many of the forgotten performances. On the other hand, his photographs contain the aesthetics and romantic pathos of modernism, which were forbidden in the post-war years when socialist realism dominated the art.
