soviet art in exile
The first analytical monograph about the “off-modern” work of the Soviet/post- Soviet era sculptor Georgy Frangulyan (1945, Tbilisi – lives Moscow) has a unique position in postwar European and Russian sculpture. Trained across all media at Moscow’s famed Stroganov Academy, Frangulyan is a consummate polystylistic who has completed major public monuments and private memorials, as well as scaled sculptures, in Russia and abroad. Leveraging the insights of the late Svetlana Boym, a cultural theorist, Press considers Frangulyan as an “off-modern” artist, whose aesthetics and works defy conventional thinking about post-Socialist Realism in the USSR. Press reveals how Frangulyan’s influences absorbed classicism, the avant-garde, modernism, cubism, and futurism into a diverse artistic practice. Georgy Frangulyan, Off-Modern not only clarifies how the artist’s awareness of Western modernism expanded after seeing several international exhibitions in the 1950s and 1960s, but also broad art historical influences he encountered at the Stroganov Academy. The core of the book is a detailed consideration of Frangulyan’s monumental works and sculptures, considering the content and contexts in which they were made. It identifies how Frangulyan looked beyond the Soviet canon to artists as diverse at Giotto, Delacroix, Malevich, and Manzu. Via several vignettes, Press also clarifies the Soviet academic structure, the importance of monumentalism in postwar culture, the place of bronze in modern art, and how artists like Frangulyan succeeded in a dual, state/private market milieu outside of the broader global art market. Frangulyan’s monuments and sculptures are well-known in Russia, and are in the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Pushkin Fine Arts Museum, State Russian Museum, as well as public and private collections in Western Europe, including The Albertina Museum (Vienna), The Bodleian Library (Oxford), and Museo Dante (Ravenna). Today, he works from his studio and foundry, which are co-located in a historic log house (an izba) in central Moscow. The book includes prefaces by two curators associated with the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow), Ruth Addison, and Valentin Diaconov.
