VERA MUKHINA Not all sculptors of this period pursued
abstraction, however.The Worker and the Collective Farm Worker
(FIG. 35-60) by Russian artist Vera Mukhina(1889–1963) pre-
sents a vivid contrast to the work of Brancusi, Hepworth, and
Moore. Produced in 1937 for the International Exposition in Paris—
the same venue in which Picasso displayed Guernica(FIG. 35-41)—
Mukhina’s monumental stainless-steel sculpture glorifies the com-
munal labor of the Soviet people. Whereas Picasso employed Cubist
abstraction to convey the horror of wartime bombing, Mukhina re-
lied on realism to represent exemplars of the Soviet citizenry. Her
sculpture, which stood atop the Soviet Pavilion at the exposition, de-
picts a male factory worker holding aloft the tool of his trade, the
hammer. Alongside him is a female farm worker raising her sickle to
the sky. The juxtaposed hammer and sickle, appearing as they do at
the apex of the sculpture, replicate their appearance on the Soviet
flag, thereby celebrating the Soviet system. The artist augmented the
heroic tenor of this sculpture by emphasizing the solidity of the fig-
ures, who stride forward with their clothes billowing dramatically
behind them. Mukhina had studied in Paris and was familiar with
abstraction, especially Cubism, but felt that a commitment to real-ism produced the most powerful sculpture. The Soviet government
officially approved this realist style, and Mukhina earned high praise
for her sculpture. Indeed, Russian citizens celebrated the work as a
national symbol for decades.AMERICA, 1930 TO 1945
The Armory Show of 1913 (see “The Armory Show,” page 934) was
an important vehicle for exposing American artists to modernist Eu-
ropean art. Equally significant was the emigration of European
artists across the Atlantic Ocean. The havoc Hitler and the National
Socialists wreaked in the early 1930s (see “Degenerate Art,” page
945) forced artists to flee. The United States, among other countries,
offered both survival and a more hospitable environment for pro-
ducing their art. Léger, Lipchitz, Beckmann, Grosz, Ernst, and Dalí,
among many others, all made their way to American cities.
Museums in the United States, wanting to demonstrate their fa-
miliarity and connection with the most progressive European art,
mounted exhibitions centered on the latest European artistic devel-
opments. In 1938, for example, the City Art Museum of Saint Louis
presented an exhibition of Beckmann’s work, and the Art Institute of
Chicago organized George Grosz: A Survey of His Art from 1918–1938.
This interest in exhibiting the work of persecuted artists driven from
their homelands also had political overtones. In the highly charged
atmosphere of the late 1930s leading to the onset of World War II,
people often perceived support for these artists and their work as
support for freedom and democracy. In 1942, Alfred H. Barr Jr.
(1902–1981), director of the Museum of Modern Art, stated:
Among the freedoms which the Nazis have destroyed, none has been
more cynically perverted, more brutally stamped upon, than the
Freedom of Art. For not only must the artist of Nazi Germany bow
to political tyranny, he must also conform to the personal taste of
that great art connoisseur, Adolf Hitler....But German artists of
spirit and integrity have refused to conform. They have gone into
exile or slipped into anxious obscurity....Their paintings and
sculptures, too, have been hidden or exiled....But in free countries
they can still be seen, can still bear witness to the survival of a free
German culture.^50
Despite this moral support for exiled artists, once the United
States formally entered the war, Germany officially became the enemy.
Then it was much more difficult for the American art world to pro-
mote German artists, however persecuted. Many émigré artists, in-
cluding Léger, Grosz, Ernst, and Dalí, returned to Europe after the war
ended. Their collective presence in the United States until then, how-
ever, was critical for the development of American art and contributed
to the burgeoning interest in the avant-garde among American artists.Painting and Sculpture since
ALEXANDER CALDER One American artist who rose to
international prominence at this time was Alexander Calder
(1898–1976). Both the artist’s father and grandfather were sculptors,
but Calder initially studied mechanical engineering. Fascinated all his
life by motion, he explored that phenomenon and its relationship to
three-dimensional form in much of his sculpture. As a young artist in
Paris in the late 1920s, Calder invented a circus filled with wire-based
miniature performers that he activated into realistic analogues of
their real-life counterparts’ motion. After a visit to Mondrian’s studio
in the early 1930s, Calder set out to put the Dutch painter’s brightly
colored rectangular shapes (FIG. 35-56) into motion. (Marcel
Duchamp, intrigued by Calder’s early motorized and hand-cranked
examples of moving abstract pieces, named them mobiles.) Calder’sAmerica, 1930 to 1945 95335-60Vera Mukhina,The Worker and the Collective Farm Worker,
Soviet Pavilion, Paris Exposition, 1937. Stainless steel, 78high. Art ©
Estate of Vera Mukhina/RAO, Moscow/VAGA, New York.
In contrast to contemporaneous abstract sculpture, Mukhina’s realistic
representation of a male factory worker and a female farm worker
glorifies the communal labor of the Soviet people.10 ft.