Shurpin’s "Morning of our Fatherland"

Sonia-Belle has posted an interesting elaboration and expansion  of my recent entry on “The Stalinization of Post-Revolutionary Art and Architecture.”  She noted how, despite the limitations imposed on them by the tenets of Socialist realism, some artists were still able to achieve interesting artistic and painterly effects.  Despite its repugnant subject-matter, with Stalin in one of his characteristic poses gazing out onto his Soviet Fatherland with dignity and resolve, Shurpin’s use of yellow-on-yellow is extremely striking.  The white of Stalin’s uniform is only barely suggested beneath its absorption of the sun’s soft rays.