Soviet Modernism

Gustav Klucis Moscow Spartakiada, Swimmer 1928 design for a poster

This morning’s NYTimes includes a review by Alan Riding of the Victoria and Albert Museum show, “Modernism: Designing a New World 1914-1939”. When Barry showed me this image he mused sadly on how quickly even the aesthetic promise of the early Soviet era was confounded.
Not to mention the comrades’ early rejection of the prudish restraint of the past. Great loins.

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If we can accept the Wikipedia account, Klucis’s fate itself embodies the tragedy of a destroyed ideal.

Klutsis taught, wrote, and produced political art for the Soviet state for the rest of his life. As the political background degraded through the 1920s and 1930s, Klutsis and Kulagina came under increasing pressure to limit their subject matter and techniques. Once joyful, revolutionary and utopian, by 1935 their art was devoted to furthering Stalin’s cult of personality.
Despite his active and loyal service to the party, Klutsis was arrested in Moscow on January 17, 1938, as he prepared to leave for the New York World’s Fair. [Valentina Kulagina, his longtime collaborator and his wife] agonized for months, then years, over his disappearance. In 1989 it was found that he had been executed three weeks after his arrest.

[image from The Guardian]