The canvas is cut in half. You can see the heads of a well-dressed man and woman, elegant, but horrendous. With a smile, especially hers, which produces unpleasantness. Behind, numerous miniature workers with their picks and shovels. Its author is Mikhail Kurzin, painter of the Russian avant-garde who created it in 1931 and titled it the capital like a big criticism of the capitalist bourgeoisie. Stalin’s regime, however, did not like it at all. Too satirical for the canons of socialist realism that the dictator had imposed, who only wanted communist values and heroes in Soviet art. Years later, in 1936, Kurzin was sentenced to five years in prison for his hostile attitude towards the regime, his “ugly Soviet” paintings, and sent to Siberia. He would die in 1957 in Tashkent (Uzbekistan). The canvas was luckier. Although divided -apparently to eliminate the evidence against the painter- it was saved by the collector Igor Savitsky and today it is exhibited in the Savistky Museum, in Nukus, a city in the middle of the Uzbek steppe. Almost in the middle of nowhere.
The history of this museum built in 1966 (with quite a Soviet style) and its impeller is fascinating. Because of who he was, because of the paintings he houses -like this the capital– and for its meaning still today. Getting there is not easy. From Tashkent the best is a direct flight to Nukus. If not, patience and hours through roads in not very good condition through the Uzbek steppe. is the karakalpakstan regionearthy, gray, agricultural and with a very extreme climate: icy winters and summers that break the mercury (above).
But it was this region that Igor Savitsky fell in love with in the 1950s, after going to study the sites and ruins of the Khorezm civilizations, the oldest in Uzbekistan, dating back to the 5th century BC Born in Kiev in 1915, he had studied Art in Moscow, however, his visit to Karakalpakstan completely changed his plans. He decided to stay and start collecting art from the area (everything that appeared in the archaeological excavations). Almost without realizing it, he gradually became a great collector, since later came the works of Central Asian artists and later those of the Russian vanguard who had been retaliated by Stalinism in the 1930s for straying from the artistic lines set by the regime. In total, he came to gather more than 80,000 objects that gave rise to the Nukus Art Museum, which in 1984, after the death of the painter and collector, began to bear his name. It’s a huge three-story art center, but it displays less than 5% of what Savitsky collected. His work was impressive.
Lysenko’s bull
How did Savitsky manage to save the paintings of the retaliated painters? We must go back to the beginning of the century when Russia was experiencing a cultural effervescence influenced by everything that came from France with the avant-garde. This is how Rodchenko’s constructivism, Chagall’s fauvism and surrealism or Malevich’s suprematism appeared. However, in 1932 the Central Committee of the Communist Party dissolved all artists’ associations and stated that there would only be official unions and only one art: that which reflected the workers. All kinds of avant-garde are over. And if you tried you could end up in the gulag. Many of these creators ran out of the USSR, like Chagall himself, who had furiously embraced the Russian Revolution of 1917 -Lenin never condemned these artistic movements, since the Bolsheviks had embraced the avant-garde as an anti-bourgeois art-, but in 1923 , before everything got worse, he left for Paris forever.
One of those who did not leave was Vladimir Lysenko, author of The bull (1929), a painting that immediately became politicized. The Russian authorities classified him as anti-Soviet and there are those who saw in the eyes of the bull the Stalinist repression that would mark the thirties. The painting ended up acquiring the title of “advance of fascism”. In 1935, Lysenko would be arrested and admitted to a psychiatric hospital (although years later he would be rehabilitated and living in Uzbekistan).
Of course, this painting, like so many others of the avant-garde, was not at public auction. What’s more, it could not have been saved. What Savistky did to get hold of this type of canvas was go to the houses of painters, to those of their families and friends to ask about the paintings, in case any of them were hidden, as was the case with many of them. And that was how he managed to take them to Nukus. Today all of Lysenko’s works are in this museum and The bull It has become his reference image.
Other authors retaliated against by anti-Sovietists and who found their place in Nukus were Alexander Volkov, that he was born in Uzbekistan, and lev galperin, who was from Odessa. The former was not allowed to exhibit in Moscow museums, and because of the style of his geometric paintings, he was considered a “reactionary bourgeois.” the second directly was shot after being arrested and sentenced to five years in prison. His paintings were seen as “counterrevolutionary”. His canvas can be seen today in the Savitsky Museum On knees.
These are just a few examples of the 15,000 works that this collector came to save from Stalinism and that today, curiously, are sheltered in an art gallery that already has the nickname of the Louvre de la Estepa.
The canvas is cut in half. You can see the heads of a well-dressed man and woman, elegant, but horrendous. With a smile, especially hers, which produces unpleasantness. Behind, numerous miniature workers with their picks and shovels. Its author is Mikhail Kurzin, painter of the Russian avant-garde who created it in 1931 and titled it the capital like a big criticism of the capitalist bourgeoisie. Stalin’s regime, however, did not like it at all. Too satirical for the canons of socialist realism that the dictator had imposed, who only wanted communist values and heroes in Soviet art. Years later, in 1936, Kurzin was sentenced to five years in prison for his hostile attitude towards the regime, his “ugly Soviet” paintings, and sent to Siberia. He would die in 1957 in Tashkent (Uzbekistan). The canvas was luckier. Although divided -apparently to eliminate the evidence against the painter- it was saved by the collector Igor Savitsky and today it is exhibited in the Savistky Museum, in Nukus, a city in the middle of the Uzbek steppe. Almost in the middle of nowhere.
