Socialist Realism

While staying in Erfurt, Thuringia, Germany in an ex-DDR tower block I got the opportunity to see at first hand some real live Socialist art. I don't know who painted this (and if anyone knows I would very much like to know) and how big it is, I forgot my measuring tape. It is probably (at a pretty bad estimate) 10 metres long (as I measure a metre with my arms and remember the size of the painting.. accurate) and at floor to celing it is maybe 4-5 metres high.

Being a fan of this sort of painting I liked that it still survived in-situ, not thrown in the bin after reunification. Having said that it did look a little sad in places up close and needed a repairs. It was a time warp where we were living, with lots of 60/70s furniture and wallpaper. It made where we were staying like a sort of museum which added to the paintings resonance. The painting was meant to live in a working building and affect people on a daily basis. I have seen this type of art shown in large commercial galleries amusingly and be-musingly being sold for large sums of money, or occasionally stripped entirely of their original meaning and instead some sort of kitsch joke for rich folk.

The painting follows the fairly strict rules of Socialist Realism - it represents the worker and deifies him and the Socialist struggle. The figures are painted realistically, it could not be called abstract, however it does have elements of abstraction within it. This section shows a miner.

The painting also uses mechanical objects and modern inventions as a way of selling Socialism, and the progress of humanity with figures like this pilot as heroic figures of the revolution.

The painting shows influences from futurism as can be seen in particular above and below the figures with the geometric lines which intersect and come from the figures. This is a way of portraying a feeling of motion linked to the modern machinery in the painting, and perhaps as the painter intended as portraying socialism as a modern forward moving idea.