A large-scale inter-museum exhibition project dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the founding of the USSR is taking place at the Central Manege.

The exhibition’s thirteen thematic sections represent eight art forms of the Soviet period: architecture, painting, sculpture, graphics, cinema, theater, music, and photography. The project was implemented with the support of the Russian Ministry of Culture and the participation of leading museum institutions.

The USSR Palace of Culture exhibition follows the logic of the Soviet Palace of Culture and is divided into independent halls – "exhibitions within an exhibition". Each section is self-contained, serving as a space for dialogue with the viewer, immersing them in a distinct cultural movement of the Soviet period.

The exhibition, comprising over 700 objects, showcases Soviet art and explores the concept of Palace of Culture, which emerged in the USSR.

The idea of a people’s house from the late 19th century took shape at the very beginning of the Soviet period, in the 1920s, in a completely new form – the Palace of Culture, which became a symbol of the new era. Conceptually, the Palaces of Culture were conceived as laboratories of Soviet culture, where everyone had the opportunity to interact with art and engage in self-education and self-improvement.

The exhibition is based on two key concepts of Palaces of Culture: the idea of a synthesis of the arts, bringing together exhibition halls, a theater, a cinema, a concert hall, a library/reading room, and art workshops in a single space; and the idea of each person’s active participation in the country’s cultural life.

The sections were curated by invited experts and heads of contemporary cultural institutions. Among them are Zelfira Tregulova (Tretyakov Gallery), Evgenia Petrova (Russian Museum), Alexandra Selivanova (Museum of Moscow), Ksenia Kokorina (Museum of Architecture), Natalia Mokritskaya, Alla Esipovich-Roginskaya, Irina Gorlova (Tretyakov Gallery), Natalia Kozyreva (Russian Museum), composer Alexei Retinsky, Olga Galaktionova (ROSIZO), Dina Ivashchenko (ROSIZO), Andrei Raikin (ROSIZO).

Monumental sculpture is one of the most representative phenomena of Soviet culture. Nikolai Punin, who pioneered Lenin’s plan for monumental propaganda, wrote as early as 1921: "A monument must live the socio-political life of the city, and the city must live within it." Indeed, even in the small selection of works included in the exhibition, life, in all its ups and downs, is palpable.

The exhibition sought to showcase non-canonical works, untested in numerous exhibitions, such as Alexei Babichev’s sketch for a monument to the revolution. Interest in him as a sculptor and theorist, including in the field of design, has emerged quite recently. The dynamic, expressive form of the monument Call to Revolution (1922−1923) corresponds to the new revolutionary symbolism.

In Vera Mukhina’s wooden Female Torso, the symbolism of overcoming, struggle, and resistance, characteristic of this outstanding Soviet-era sculptor, is present in the energetic compositional turn of the figure, in the powerful plasticity, and in the material itself, which preserves its natural organic nature.

The Members of the Government frescoes are virtually unknown to the general public. They contain a hidden motif, understandable in the context of Soviet history of the 1930s: the iconography of Soviet leaders still contains personal elements, nuanced attitudes toward specific individuals. This personal element is still palpable, despite the already-emerging expansion of the obligatory and directive.

The definitively established canon is presented in the work Pavlik Morozov, created by Iosif Rabinovich in 1947.

The dominant feature of the entire USSR Palace of Culture exhibition is the sculpted ear of Vladimir Lenin’s statue. This enormous figure of the revolutionary leader was intended to crown the Palace of Soviets – a building never built, destined to become a symbol of the greatness of socialism. The creator of the future statue, Sergey Merkurov, reported step by step to Kliment Voroshilov: "By August 4, 1940, the work was in the following state: an experimental head of red copper, 10 meters in height, was completed. The ear frame for the 100-meter statue (5 meters in height) was constructed." This frame is the volumetric and spatial accent of the exhibition. The five-meter ear is an extraordinarily powerful image. It evokes a multitude of associations: music, speeches, hidden whispers – in short, the sounds of time…

Matvey Manizer was one of the founders of the Soviet canon of monumental sculpture. A highly accomplished professional and academician of the USSR Academy of Arts, he carried out numerous official commissions. Manizer was fascinated by the theme of "Soviet corporality". Among his works on the theme of sports, the 1947 Female Athlete is one of the best in this series. The 1950 composition Struggle for Peace (created jointly with a team of sculptors: Dmitry Epifanov, Gavriil Glikman, Vadim Sokolov, and Vladimir Ritter), which includes Youth of the World, American Shells in the Water, Raymonda Dien, and other sculptures, was rarely exhibited. On the one hand, the composition is verbose and didactic, like a newspaper article. On the other hand, Matvey Manizer managed to transform these vulnerable moments into advantages. The staged nature of the work is obvious, but it’s not professional theater – more like scenes performed by amateur factory groups, "kids from our neighbourhood". Instead of formal, pedestal-like sculpture, the result is a contact-oriented plastic form that directly appeals to the viewer.

By the second half of the 1950s, Soviet art, especially that devoted to the then-traditional "worker-oriented" themes, had accumulated the burden of inertia: works were characterized by an almost obligatory typology of images and situations. But times were rapidly changing. The country entered the "Thaw", which was associated not only with hopes for democratization but also with real economic reforms, scientific progress, and a changing social climate.

Artists of the "Thaw" period attempted to move from "reports on achievements" to the dramaturgy of real life. The tone of art changed, a fact captured in the very term "severe style". The sculptures of Ernst Neizvestny, Boris Plenkin, and Yuri Chernov are close to this trend. This departure from the canon of restraint and statuary towards compositional freedom is an attempt to liberate artistic consciousness.

In the 1960s, mosaic became one of the symbols of the search for a new artistic language. The Palace of Pioneers on Vorobyovy Gory, the National Research Nuclear University (MEPhI), the building of the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the House of Optics – these objects remain striking attempts to embody images of the future as envisioned by the "physicists and lyricists" of the Thaw generation. Mosaic took on a different tone: compositional dynamics, sparse color masses, and a jagged texture that produced varied refractions of light.

The spirit of the times is also palpable in Nadia Léger's large mosaic panels dedicated to outstanding poets, writers, and composers: Vladimir Mayakovsky, Maxim Gorky, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Dmitry Shostakovich, and other figures who embodied Russian culture.

Belarusian-born artist Nadia Khodasevich-Léger, a student and wife of the legendary Fernand Léger, visited the Soviet Union repeatedly beginning in 1959. Her relationship with the creative community, and most importantly, her own art, became a fact of Soviet cultural history during the "thaw". She donated sixty of her mosaics to the country. The journey of this gift in Russia was lengthy, and for a time it was "without a home". Ultimately, the mosaics were installed in Dubna. This made sense: the city of atomic physicists attracted many artists – Mikhail Romm, Andrei Voznesensky, Vladimir Vysotsky, Yuri Lyubimov… Some of the mosaics were installed right along the alley in front of the city’s main cultural center.

In the 1920s, critics used the term "artist raised on Soviet air". Today, this has lost its evaluative meaning, but it still often compels viewers to search for traces of Soviet identity in each sculpture or painting. The exhibition features sculpture and monumental paintings, but while they are few in number, they are unseen, often being shown for the first time. This selection offers the opportunity to see the works of art with fresh eyes, free from the myths of the past.

Text and photos: ROSIZO, Alla Esipovich-Roginskaya