Artist Haris Yakupov is a major figure in the art of painting of Tatarstan of the post-war period. Having returned from the front, he started uniting veteran-artists and in 1951 he was elected Chairman of the Artists’ Union of the Republic. He headed the creative art studio at the Kazan Academy of Arts from 1976. 

The picture Beauties of Chelny was made when the construction of the KAMAZ plant was in full swing. There were many young girls and women among the construction workers and the artist decided to portray them. The girls in the picture are painted against the background of the construction panorama. Their pathetic kerchiefs are in striking contrast with the iron chains and bulky and cumbersome construction equipment. The athletic build of the “beauties” is far from traditional images of women in art. Svetlana Kollina, an art expert, was once on a visit at Yakupov’s and saw his other works, some lyrical portraits among them with tender faces of girls drawn in a mild manner. She asked Yakupov why his Beauties of Chelny were painted in a different way. ‘Do you believe that hard labor suitable for men can make women graceful? Their beauty is of another type. It’s kind of heroic’, was the artist’s answer.

Haris Yakupov worked on the picture in 1975 in the Academy country house, the oldest out-of-town studio of the Artists’ Union, and he also found fitting models there. For the Beauties of Chelny, Yakupov was awarded the I.Y.Repin State Prize of the Russian Federation and the First Prize for painting given at the exhibition Soviet Russia.