Back in the USSR

When: Sept. 10–Jan. 5  
Where: 6500 Stevens Ave. S., Mpls., 612-821-9045

When Museum of Russian Art patrons Susan and Raymond Johnson began collecting Russian art, they asked prominent Russian art historians for a list of the most important Soviet-era artists. Geli Korzhev was one of about three artists working in the second half of the twentieth century whose name always appeared on the list, no matter who they asked, says Brad Shinkle, the museum’s former director and current director of scholarships. That recognition laid the ground for Raising the Banner: The Art of Geli Korzhev, the first major solo exhibition of Korzhev’s work ever shown in the United States.

“Many art historians refer to [Korzhev] as the most important artist of the twentieth century to come out of Russia, and potentially one of the most important twentieth-century artists in the world,” says Judi Dutcher, director of the museum. 

Not so long ago, however, Cold War politics would have made a Korzhev show in this country almost unthinkable. But, says Shinkle, the twists and turns of history and ideology have uncovered a rich, untapped vein of artistic achievement and credibility among socialist realist artists of the Soviet era.

“The pendulum in art seems to be moving in the direction of reevaluating realist art as having a technical brilliance that was every bit as important as the creative spontaneity associated with modernist art or abstract art. It was simply different,” says Shinkle. “It had a different reason for being.”

Korzhev’s work is described as uncompromisingly honest, terrifying, moving, even heretical. Sitting in Dutcher’s office as she leafs through reproductions of the monumental oil paintings soon to fill the museum, she draws special attention to a composition of a young female soldier looking forlornly into a mirror, a windowpane in the background evoking a crucifix. “She’s saying goodbye to herself,” says Dutcher, summing up the powerful sense of empathy and humanity that sets Korzhev apart from his contemporaries.

Through what Shinkle describes as “waves of different creative executions—from hard-edged, almost photographic realism of figurative paintings to surreal and landscape paintings,” his humanism brings his political ideology to life on vivid canvases. A beautiful nude in red kerchief and black boots. A boy crumpled on the ground under a broken flying apparatus echoing the failed flight of Icarus. A man surrounded by a gritty gray reality, his face set in a determined expression, gripping a bright red flag. A mother draped in black, mourning a child lost to war. Looking at such images, politics is quickly displaced by the shock of recognition that we are all in this together, human beings in a sometimes cruel and unforgiving world.