This contemporary artwork is made of Lenin's found soviet-era portrait and inspired by spot paintings of Damien Hirst. The canvas is a little damaged. The artwork is framed with a hand painted old soviet-era wooden frame. The unframed painting is 70 x 90 cm.
Decades after the collapse of the USSR, on the territory of the former Soviet republics, it is still possible to find many artifacts imbued with that era's propaganda. All forms of art were forcibly subordinated to the advancement of the ideology of Marxism-Leninism. Everything that did not fit into this paradigm was eradicated.
Portraits of Lenin occupy a special place among those artifacts. Moreover, the number of the leader’s image created over the seven decades amazes. Many art production workshops were organized, where artists from year to year were painting copies of the leader's portraits, which were then placed in public institutions, educational institutions, offices of officials, and ordinary people's homes.
All this was done to the detriment of the free evolution of art and has stopped its development for more than half a century.
We will never know what the USSR's peoples' art could look like if it was not oppressed. We can only look at what artists in the free world were doing at this time.
Namely to this goal, Oleksandr's series of works is subordinated, who refines the found oil portraits of Lenin of Soviet times, combining them with famous works of Western artists.
