Isaak brodsky lenin addressing troops coming

Socialist realism took many forms: music, literature, sculptures, and film.

Here we will analyze the paintings of this era and their unique visual forms. Not to be confused with social realism such as Grant Wood’s famous American Gothic (1930), socialist realism is often similarly naturalistic but it is unique in its political motives.

Isaak brodsky lenin addressing troops coming

As Boris Iagonson said on socialist realism, it is the “staging of the picture” as it portrays the idealism of socialism as if it was reality.

1. Increase the Productivity of Labour (1927): Yuri Pimenov’s Socialist Realism 

One of the earliest paintings of this style is a work by Yuri Pimenov.

The five men depicted are without doubt the subject. They are stoical and unwavering in the face of the blistering flames, even bare-chested as they work. This is a typical idealization of the worker within socialist realism with Stakhanovite-type characters fuelling the e