Oct 10 at 12:00 PM - Sale 2681 -

Sale 2681 - Lot 74

Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,000

VIKTOR KLIMASCHIN (1912-1960)

USSR AGRICULTURAL EXHIBITION 1939. 1939.


40x26¼ inches, 101½x66¾ cm. [Intourist, Moscow].
Condition B+: repaired tears at edges, one at bottom edge into text; creases, abrasions and minor overpainting at edges and in image.

The All-Union Agricultural Exhibition, which opened in northern Moscow on August 1, 1939, was the 2nd of its kind - the first was a much smaller event in 1923. In addition to a monumental statue of Stalin, the exhibition featured a statue of a "Worker and Kolkhoz [farm collective] Woman" that Vera Mukhina designed for the 1937 Paris Exposition. When the statue was returned to the USSR, the Communist Party placed it at the entrance to the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition. The famous statue depicts the man and woman holding a hammer and sickle, but Klimaschin's re-interpretation of the pair replaces the Communist symbols with a bushel of wheat. Another poster from 1940 shows the Stalin statue in the foreground and the worker and farmer on a pedestal in the background. Rare.