Exhibition of works of socialist realism from the Zagorsk repository in "ROSIZO"

MOSCOW. Until March 23, at the ROSIZO Museum and Exhibition Center, an exhibition entitled Socialist Realism: Inventory of the Archive is available for viewing, exhibits for which are provided from a special archive storing works of art. Most of them were once written by state order for grandiose exhibitions.

During the years of development of the planned economy, a new form of organization of the artistic process appeared, based on state orders. Government orders have become the main way artists earn money, as the private market has virtually ceased to function.

At the same time, a huge number of nationalized works of art required the organization of storage facilities, where their future fate was decided. The same repositories received works written by state orders. There were a considerable number of such storages.

One of these repositories, created in 1940 under the name “Directorate of Exhibitions and Panoramas”, was intended to preserve the works of art left after the end of the large-scale exhibition “Socialism Industry”. Gradually, they added the work of artists from the annual all-Union exhibitions, the army, held every five years.

Some of these works were transferred to museums, some of them could not be exhibited for public viewing, as the persons depicted on the canvases ordered, for various reasons, left the political horizon. During the life of Stalin, an incredible number of his portraits were painted, but most of them are now preserved only in archives, becoming unique monuments of the past.

The Zagorsky Archive was established in 1950, inheriting a collection compiled by the Exhibition Directorate.

Ludmila Trautmane © Gallerix.ru