Lot 96: SEROV, VLADIMIR

VLADIMIR ALEKSANDROVICH SEROV (RUSSIAN 1910-1968), "V.I. Lenin Proclaims Soviet Power", 1954, Artist's copy of his own original painting from 1947 , oil on canvas, 100 x 77 cm (39 3/8 x 30 3/8 in.), the verso with a faded government stamp and a handwritten inscription, Serov V. / Kopiya Avtorskaya / 15 Yuna 1954. Vladimir Serov painted the original version of V.I. Lenin Proclaims Soviet Power in 1947. The present lot is one of the few copies that the artist made himself of his own composition in the years that followed. It is especially interesting to note that there were several versions of this painting. The original painting depicted Stalin, Dzerzhinsky, and Sverdlov standing on the tribune behind Lenin. The painting itself was considered so important that it was presented to Mao Tse Tung. In versions of the painting after 1956, Serov was ordered, due to the collapse of the personality cult after the XXth Congress of the Communist Party in the same year, to not show Stalin or the others, but replace them with workers. The present lot, painted in 1954, does show the full Bolshevik leadership as the artist originally painted it, including Lenin, Stalin, Dzerzhinsky, and Sverdlov, at the historic meeting of the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets at the Smolny Institute in October of 1917