Lot 52: MAI DANTSIG

MAI DANTSIG B.1930 THE BULLDOZER DRIVER N.B. DOLMATOVICH signed in Cyrillic l.r.; signed, titled, and inscribed in Cyrillic and dated 1960 on the reverse oil on canvas 191 by 99 cm, 75 1/4 by 39 in.

Dantsig's monumental and vigourous canvases are a classic example of the new direction that working class, muscular Impressionism was taking in the 1960s, adopting the simplification of form typical of the Severe Style of the period and reproducing it on a large scale. As Alexander Sidorov notes, in the 1960s, 'even the subjects of his lyrical canvases, such as the girl hanging out her washing in a Sunny Day (1965, Private Collection) acquired an outsize portentousness' (quoted in Soviet Socialist Realist Painting, 1930s-1960s, Oxford, 1992). Dantsig's partisan subjects from the 1960s are his best known works, and the subject of The Bulldozer Driver is a superb representation of the 'man of purpose' that typified the era, or as the writer Leonid Leonov called this figure, the 'peak of humanity from whose height the future can be seen'. If the figure of the present work is an emblem of the total Soviet man, accessible to the masses yet emphatic, the subject is testament to the power of construction and socio-economic change and an interesting counterpart to Pimenov's construction-site canvases.

The Bulldozer Driver also reflects the new freedoms that had resulted from the Thaw of the 1950s, both in terms of subject matter and style. Not only did Working Class Impressionism from the period softly reject the message of the more overtly political propaganda and military manifestations of Soviet art, but we also see corresponding experimentation in plein-air painting. 'Here we find a new vigour in paint handling, thick creamy pigmentation, with twilight as well as sunlight... the 'broad mark' of gesture, rather than carefully applied minutiae exemplified their large canvases' (V.Swanson, Soviet Impressionist Painting, 2001).