Jürgen Wittdorf (German 1932-2018) Under the Shower, and Coach training briefing, 1964, Studio-Galerie, Berlin.
Jürgen Wittdorf’s 1963-1964 linocut prints, from a series titled Youth and Sport was commissioned by the East German state, that does perfectly emulate and echo that highly artistic style known as Soviet Realism, which was conceptualized by Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) to brand his administration’s propaganda. During the 1920s artists of the Russian avant-garde began feeling more and more pressure from the Soviet ideologues forcing them to completely change their artistic style. Fine artists began searching for subject matter to represent the demands of Soviet censorship. Drawing on Russia’s history of icon art, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin (1878-1939) was one of the first Russian artists to win fame for his painting, Bathing the Horse in the 1920s. This genre painting of boys bathing their country horses in a river became a revolutionary icon during the early Soviet years. Soviet ideologues saw the painting as a call for spiritual cleansing. Many of the post-revolutionary wave of artists initially attempted to retain some form of freedom in their work. An artistic style called Soviet Modernism emerged during the avant-garde years before Soviet Realism. The subject of sports became popular in the 1930s due to the fact that Russia was preparing for war and the citizens needed to unite for a common cause. That thematic and style was to not only resonate in the early post-war era, but with leading artists such as Alexander Deineka (1899-1969) and Alexander Samokhvalov (1894 – 1971) turned to the subject of sports for their paintings. In Goalkeeper (1934) Deineka defies gravity and gives the viewer the feeling of endless space, where Alexander Samokhvalov celebrated dreat scenic art to memorialise. Soviet victories such as with 'Sergey Kirov Greeting Parad of Athletes, 1935. This emulated into post-war Eastern Germany, before escalating with the Spatial effort and arm races during the Cold War.
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