Soviet monumental propaganda

Soviet monumental propaganda played an important role in the ideological and aesthetic education of the people. For the sculpture “First Swallows” Soviet Lithuanian sculptor Youzas Mikenas (1901 – 1964) was People’s Artist of the USSR (1961), winner of the Stalin Prize of the second degree (1947), Order of Lenin (1954), member of the Communist party of the Soviet Union since 1952. “First Swallows” became the last sculpture of the artist, for which he was awarded the State Prize of the Lithuanian SSR in 1966, posthumously. The sculpture was exhibited at the Expo 67 World’s Fair in Montreal (Canada). Enhanced version of the sculpture is cast in bronze and in 1987 set near the National Gallery in Vilnius.

These sculptural compositions, busts and portraits of the heroes of war and labor, the Soviet intelligentsia, the first space explorers were created by an excited hand of the artist and, as a rule, marked by deep penetration into the inner world of the model, the unique imaginative interpretation. The portraits disclosed different characters, taken in various psychological states, but recreated with the passionate belief in man which can not but cause aspirations to become a better, more perfect.

Sculptors have become one of the active participants and performers of the great Lenin’s plan of monumental propaganda. Love of man, his wonderful deeds, enthusiastic acceptance and approval of the art of our wonderful Soviet reality – characteristic of many works of Soviet artists.

Soviet monumental propaganda