Vera Mukhina: Art Between Modernism and Socialist Realism

摘要

The sculptor Vera Mukhina created Peasant Woman in 1927 for the exhibition celebrating the tenth anniversary of the October revolution. The artist explained that with her heavy-limbed figure she wanted to create a Russian Pomona. Responses to and treatment of this sculpture demonstrate the ambivalent role of art in the Soviet Union in general and Peasant Woman in particular, however. On the one hand it was read as support for the official political line, on the other hand its formal construction is evidence of a self-confident modernist artistic spirit. In fact, Mukhina never adhered to official art policies, which brought her difficulties in the following decades. Hence, rather than being an early manifestation of Socialist Realism, the sculpture joins European neo-classical tendencies of the early twentieth century and is a late echo of Mukhina's experience in Paris, 1912-1914. In the article the sculpture's various interpretations are critically discussed and the artwork is placed within Modernism.