Exhibition "The Great Experiment:
Soviet Avant-Garde and Socialist Realism"

On November 16, the Kaluga Museum of Fine Arts (104 Lenin St., exhibition hall) will host the opening of the exhibition The Great Experiment: Soviet Avant-Garde and Socialist Realism. Painting, graphics, sculpture from the funds of the Kaluga Museum of Fine Arts. To the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution

The seizure by the Bolsheviks and Left Social Revolutionaries of state power in Russia is undoubtedly a tragic event. But its spiritual significance is enormous.

Art has become one of the tools of a grand restructuring of the state system and social consciousness. And thanks to this, it acquired a number of specific properties. A completely new phenomenon arose: revolutionary Soviet art. A great artistic experiment began, which lasted throughout the history of the Soviet state.

The purpose of the Great Experiment exhibition is to demonstrate the essential features of this revolutionary art and outline the dashed line of its development.

Of course, socialist realism is not realism at all, but a wonderful variety of artistic myth-making. Leading masters of socialist realism create idealized images of the leaders of the Soviet state - Lenin, Stalin, Molotov. They are building an idealized image of the entire Soviet Union. But it is not the appearance of certain characters that is idealized, but the most substantial structure of characteristics. Behind the artistic incarnations of the cult of one or another personality, one must be able to see the realization of the cult of the heroic personality, the cult of the “new man”, the cult of the bright future of mankind.

A thematic picture is being formed, which is called upon to affirm the fundamental principles of new life: collectivism, class solidarity, the cult of labor and the worker. Naturally, analogues of this genre arise in graphics and sculpture. The development of art itself becomes purposeful and acquires the character of an artistic “common cause”.

We can talk about the emergence of a completely unique mass culture, oriented to all segments of the population, but at the same time retaining the status of a truly artistic phenomenon.

Of course, numerous works of art of socialist realism are unequal. But it is obvious that among them there are many works of strong artistic decoration. The great master of portraiture, “Soviet Repin,” was the painter V.P. Efanov, author of the portrait of Molotov. V.G. Tsyplakov, the author of the painting "Lenin in Smolny", is a brilliant colorist. P.P. Ossovsky, represented at the exposition with the polyptych “Frontiers of Our Homeland”, is one of the leaders of the “severe style” that arose already at the time of “socialist realism without coasts”.

The picture of the brothers A.P. and S.P. Tkachev’s “Ilyich’s Bulb”, which completes the exhibition series, is one of the most significant works of mature socialist realism. Bearing a clearly expressed ideological message (the picture embodies the Leninist formula: “Socialism is the Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country”), the image created by renowned village painters contains a rich artistic content. This is a psychologically reliable story about a long-standing peasant life, about the psychology and fate of the Russian people.

The exhibition runs until December 17th.