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Soviet Socialist Realism
Art - Pelham House
I went to an exhibition about Russian painting in the Guggenheim
in Bilbao about six weeks ago, and discovered another world.
Kandinsky apart, so little of it had filtered through to me:
the Iron Curtain had stopped more than just people from moving
East to West. The most interesting thing was the exciting
proliferation of avant-garde art that was being created at
the beginning of the revolution: artists and politicians worked
hand in hand to create a fresh new world. Then Stalin came
to power and the honeymoon ended. He decreed that all art
and literature must be approved by the state before being
exhibited or published. From then on, modern art was considered
'degenerate’: artists who bent reality could end up
in the gulag. A new style was born: socialist realism. Vast
tableaux, showing the might of the state and the heroism of
the Soviet worker. Inevitably the rules were relaxed somewhat
as time went on, but not too much.
The paintings on show in Pelham House, largely from the 50’s
and 60’s, are being lent by a private collector who
wishes to sell them. Many are by the colourful landscape painter
Yuri Matushevski, who travelled all over the Soviet Union
at the height of the Cold War. My favourites are two paintings
by T Roiman, ‘Worker’ and ‘Portrait of a
Woman’. Both show simple people in simple settings;
what they have in common is a quiet dignity. They don’t
look fired up with revolutionary fervour, however. They look
resigned to their lot. AL |
