Iconography of Stalin. Representation of power in Soviet art of the 1930-1950s

For a quarter of a century, the creation of the image of Stalin remained the main theme of Soviet art. Thousands of works, millions of reproductions, hundreds of exhibitions and expositions provided the daily and widespread "presence" of the leader in the life of every Soviet man. In the monograph by I.I. Rutsinskaya, for the first time on the basis of more than a thousand works of painting and graphics, the main iconographic schemes were bred, within the framework of which the visualization of the image of Stalin took place, from childhood to the death of the leader. Repeating visual samples are not considered as single examples, but as a total principle of visual representation of power in Soviet art, transformations related to the birth of new mythologies in the structure of the Stalinist myth are traced. Visual material is not studied in isolation, but in a wide sociocultural context of the era. The publication is addressed not only to art critics, culturalists and historians, but also to a wide circle of readers, which is due to an unhappy interest in Soviet everyday life, the Stalinist era and the controversial personality of Stalin himself