Gillian Mciver

after the revolution

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[ Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Fantasy, 1925, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg]

Looking forward to seeing this show at the Royal Academy tomorrow. I’ve been to the great Russian art museums many times and am familiar with much of this work so it will be like seeing old friends, without the vodka. I’m a particular fan of the symbolist painter Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin.

I had a friend in St Petersburg who used to have to paint Lenins for a living, back in the Soviet Union. He had to do it, he got a salary from the government to paint Lenin all day. Every building in the land had to have at least one Lenin pinitng. Obviously he gave that up after the end of the cold war, when nobody wanted Lenins anymore. Later his work was quite a bit more like Petrov-Vodkin’s, highly symbolic.

Published by Gillian Mciver

Hi I'm The Art traveller. I'm a filmmaker, writer and art historian. The Art Traveller is my blog, where I write about travelling the world and looking at art. I'm interested in how the environment and history of a place affect how we see art. My work includes documentary film-making, short films and artists' video, often exploring historical events or places. My interest in art history and film led me, in 2016 to write "Art History for Filmmakers" published by Bloomsbury Press, a book exploring how filmmakers can and do use paintings from the past to inspire and create visual story telling.