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Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College
87 North Main Street, Oberlin, OH 44074
440.775.8665

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The Legacy of Socialist Realism

February 6 - July 20, 2014
In West Ambulatory

The Legacy of Socialist Realism

February 6 - July 20, 2014
In West Ambulatory

This exhibition reveals the influence of Socialist Realism, the only officially condoned style for artists in the Soviet Union and many of its satellite states, on two contemporary artists: Bulgarian-born Christo and East Germany-born Gerhard Richter. In their twenties, both fled their home countries behind the Iron Curtain in search of artistic freedom in the West. Both artists also rose to world fame, in part due to their rigorous training in Socialist Realist methods.

Other artists, such as Yugoslavian Marko Spalatin, Albanian Anri Sala, and American Tom Zetterstrom, view Socialist reality from without, as outsiders looking in. Their works comment on the restrictive artistic and social conditions imposed by totalitarian control, or the bleak post-Socialist world, divested of the idealized semblance that the official visual rhetoric projected round the clock.

Based on a snapshot Richter took on the Canary Islands in 1969, Seelandschaft iterates a key Socialist Realist trope—the prominent inclusion of the horizon line in official paintings and photographs—that symbolizes the utopian future to which all Socialist societies had aspired. The golden, almost apocalyptic glow of the sky, however, forecasts an impending cataclysm, not an earthly paradise.

This exhibition was organized by Curator of Academic Programs Liliana Milkova.

Organized by

Liliana Milkova

Curator of Academic Programs

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