From the end of the 1950s, Russian painters opposed, sometimes risking their lives, the formal straitjacket of Soviet official art, socialist realism. Regarded with contempt as “painters for the poor” by the communist nomenklatura, flouted, forced into exile like Alexandre Gleser, these dissidents nevertheless attracted the attention of informed collectors. Russian collectors were usually friends to whom the paintings were offered. However, foreign collectors began to collect paintings of “dissident artists” from the mid-1950s. So the first of them, Norton Dodge, then a student in the United States, to whom we attribute the rescue and expatriation of nearly 10,000 non-conformist works.

Centered around the collection of Victor Scherrer, this book makes us discover original and talented painters, around the leader Rabine. It also illustrates, through numerous documents, the resistance of these artists to the Soviet authorities, until the “presentation of paintings” in the park of Izmaïlovo in September 1974 which ended with arrests and the destruction of the paintings.
An exciting book that highlights a little-known part of European painting.

Victor Scherrer, Non-conformist Russian Painters, Terra Mare Editions, 2017.