Soviet Union art comes to Midwest
PEORIA, Ill. -- Call it a glimpse of a lost world, a world that never was but remains still, preserved in oil and canvas -- a world of workers united and equal, struggling to build a new society of justice and peace. Such was the Soviet Union's official view of itself in state-sanctioned artwork created between 1917 and 1991, a selection of which goes on display in "Behind the Iron Curtain: Russian Impressionism," which opened recently at Lakeview Museum of Arts and Sciences. The exhibit is testimony to the power of art -- and the eagerness of revolutionary leaders to use that power to help build a new kind of society. It is also testimony to the resilience of the artists themselves, who managed to create notable work even within the rigid strictures of a totalitarian state that banned abstraction and other forms of nonrepresentational 20th century art.
