Art out of struggle — Soviet paintings, graphics and sculpture on display in Springville

SPRINGVILLE — Stalin euphemistically referred to them as "engineers of the human soul." They considered themselves artists.

Coerced into using their talent to depict and glorify the working-class struggle for socialist progress, these artists — from 1934 through 1985 — had to conform to the dictates and ideology of the communist state, renounce international styles of modern art, and abstain from personal artistic endeavors. Artists who strayed from this party line ran the risk of being severely punished, or worse, winding up in a Gulag labor camp.

It's a testament to the human spirit that most of them survived and even thrived during this bleak period of Russian history. Lee Siegel of New Republic magazine said of these artists, "In an unbearably sad position in an unbearably sad place, they made some of the most accomplished and affecting art of our time."

Through Feb. 1, the Springville Museum of Art will exhibit an assortment of Soviet Socialist Realism art created during this 50-year period in "Soviet Art in Conflict: The Artist as an Agent of Social Change."

In contrast with the eclectic variety of 20th-century Western art, Socialist Realism has often been accused of being bland and predictable. Some Western critics have even described the style as simply "girl meets tractor."

Painters depicted happy, muscular peasants and workers in factories and collective farms; artists were also compelled to paint portraits of Stalin to promote the dictator's near deification.

Industrial and agricultural landscapes were also popular subjects, glorifying the achievements of the Soviet economy.

In a sense, the effort to depict the worker mirrored the "Social Realism" of American and Western art in the 1930s, where the everyday human being became the subject of the novel, the play, poetry and art.

However, in the Soviet Union, "the artist wasn't an agent unto himself," said Vern Swanson, director of the Springville Museum of Art and a noted author and historian. "He was an agent of the state to promote the socialist consciousness."

He was obliged to create a purposeful portrayal of Soviet life that would instruct and inspire the masses to support the Red Army, accept collectivization, industrialization, the Communist party, and, above all, obey Marxist-Leninist principles.

"They painted in lots of styles," Swanson said. "They painted the individual; they would go into the masses and pick an individual, paint them and even name them in the piece. They were trying to tell us that the future utopia was about 'you."'