[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]

GUSEV, Yuri [1928–2012]

Kremlin / Кремль

oil on board / 13 inches by 17 inches

1961

Art from behind the former Iron Curtain is troublesome to document, as is the case with this study for a painting of the Kremlin at the heart of Moscow, a place which represents Mediæval Russia as St Petersburg does the rule of the Romanovs. In the Stalinist era, art was called into the service of the State. But following his death in 1953, a somewhat more romantic, even nostalgic, means of expression was increasingly tolerated. Gusev was born into the repressive regime and grew to artistic maturity in its aftermath.

This study was used in exactly that way, as a teaching tool, in the Art Department at Northwest Iowa Normal College and comes to us from that source. Compare this work with that of Anatoly Sedov.

A lower-case kremlin in Russian means a citadel; capitalized, it refers specifically to Moscow.