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Fine Art from an East Coast Educational Institution

Wed, Jul 16, 2025 09:00AM EDT

2025-07-16 09:00:00 2025-07-16 09:00:00 America/New_York Pook & Pook Pook & Pook : Fine Art from an East Coast Educational Institution https://live.pookandpook.com/auctions/pook/fine-art-from-an-east-coast-educational-institution-19302 Join us for hundreds of lots of posters, paintings, prints, sculpture, and more from an East Coast Educational Institution. Pook & Pook Inc conditions@pookandpook.com

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Lot 235

Leonid Sokov oil on canvas Skywriting Stalin

Estimate: $600 - $800

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Starting Bid

$300

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Leonid Sokov (Soviet Russian/American 1941-2018), oil on canvas Skywriting Stalin, 1992, signed and dated on side of stretcher lower right, 72" x 30". Provenance: Dr. Roman Tabakman.

Leonid Sokov is recognized as a founding member of Sots Art, a group of nonconforming artists in the 1970s who did not adhere to Soviet Social Realism. The movement risked State censorship to express universal ideas. In what became known as the 1974 Bulldozer Exhibit, his work, along with that of other Sots’ artists, was destroyed by authorities. The exhibit was the first major challenge to the Soviet regime’s attempt to prevent free expression and modern influences in art from disseminating. Alex Rosenberg wrote, “The Soviets failed to understand that these artists were not negating or rejecting Russian values or socialism, but were attempting to express them in a more open and worldly manner incorporating the universal precepts of modernism.”

Sots Art satirized the volume of ideology produced by the Soviet regime, much as Pop Art commented on the flood of consumer products under capitalism. Sokov’s approach was to parody Soviet iconography with traditional and folkloric Russian icons. Russian culture was his inspiration. As he put it, “Russian culture for me serves the same function as the landscape did to the landscape painters of the 19th century.” Sokov explored the roots of Russian and Soviet mythologies, as well as the interaction of Russian culture with the ideas of modernism. After emigrating to the United States in 1980, Sokov continued his folkloric storytelling, highlighting the sharp contrast between the value systems of his two nationalities, and, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the sudden immersion of Russian culture in that of the West. Often prescient, Sokov’s work is as relevant today as it was during the Cold War.

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Good condition. Unframed, on stretcher.

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