Got a few old Soviet art books

These were free, published 40-50 years ago in the Soviet Union, very nice images of different art works in the SU, for example French paintings in the Soviet museums … here are just three paintings …

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I like Soviet men a lot.

even though I forgot the history lessons in school

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The first one is really good! It reminds me of Diego Rivera’s murals at the DIA.

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@mjseu The man on the left side of the first painting is wearing your ear-flap hat. :smile:

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Thanks for sharing, but in my opinion soviet art is depressing and negative.

Wow that’s neat @mjseu, and free too!

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Not depressive as pop art

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In 1966 (a year before I was born) the Soviets created the art book of different seasons, very nice paintings (Russian from the 19th century and some Soviets), here are three examples:

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I was just thinking, they pay a lot for Andy Warhole’s paintings, but I must say that some of this Soviet art is much more beautiful …

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I know that some people may not like when I talked about the Soviet Union because it does not exist any longer, but these art books are some examples that they did something right there too. Good books, good materials … I have never been in Saint Petersburg, maybe one day I go there, would be fun to ride my bicycle there.

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Your first example looks a lot like a so called socrealism art…it portrayed workers, partisans and you know everything along with the communism ideology.
That last example is really nice, does it have any info about author?

Soviet Union as well as former Yugoslavia are phenomenons…they belong to history but that specific history is still partly present in those places. I hope you gonna visit it someday.

Yep, these paintings have the name of painters and the title (name) of each painting, you are right about specific histories being present. The world has changed and many f.ex. on this forum were not yet born when f.ex. the Soviet Union stopped existing (26 years ago), or they were just very young, but what comes to these books, these paintings still exist in this world, some in private collections, some in museums in Russia and elsewhere.

The last one is Devitan. Ocennie den 1879.

Nice paintings. All three don’t look like they are Soviet painting because they have churches drawn on them, soviets wouldn’t draw them in my opinion. They would draw something like a factory or a worker like the ones you showed before.

if you based your opinion on a countries art based on their propaganda you would miss out on 99% of art…the soviet union had a lot of artist and musicians… would be like assuming all Japanese art involves samurais and rising suns… or American art is all soup cans and handguns…

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That first painting almost looks like a photograph.

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Art is to enjoy looking at. Don’t penalise the artist for their countries beliefs should you happen to disagree with them.
It takes all kinds to make the world go around.

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I am saying that artists would not draw churches because their paintings would not be put in galleries and there would not be demand for their work, they would draw something else.

Art is of course an act of solitary person but the specific person is always placed into certain historical, social, cultural conditions and defined by its gender, class, political view and so on. No art work comes isolated from its specific context. Of course those relations are not simple and automatic but they do exist ( whether it confronts you idea of romantic genuine act or not. ). :slight_smile:

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Soviet architecture is pretty cool. Not sure I care for the art though. Looks a little too communistic for me.

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