Provenance
Livet Reichard Company, Inc., New York
Exhibited
New York, Phyllis Kind Gallery, 1989
Literature
M.Tupitsyn, Margins of Soviet Art, Milan, 1989, p. 84; E.Gorokhovsky, The Limits of the Rectangle: My Unlimited Space, St Petersburg, 2004, p.26
Catalogue Essay
This piece is one of Gorokhovsky's most famous and significant works, and one that he has varied in other paintings (such as ‘Power of the People (Troika)', 1994, published in: Eduard Gorokhovski. Bilder 1992¬96. Schlossmuseum Ellwangen (Jagst). 1996). It is based on an anonymous Soviet photo from the 1930s, which Gorokhovsky reads as an image of a so-called ‘troika' in conference (though there is little to suggest that this is actually the case). This assumption allows Gorokhovsky to make a programmatic aesthetic, moral, and political statement: in a sense, this painting can be read as a manifest.
The system of the ‘troika', was introduced to the USSR by special decree on December 1st 1934 as a measure for dealing with especially dangerous political crimes. A troika consisted of an informal body of three individuals, whose decisions had the same juridical force as that of a court of law. The decree establishing this practice was issued immediately after the assassination of the prominent Leningrad politician S.M. Kirov. Kirov was killed right in the corridor of the Smolny by a young communist, who, in turn, was executed soon afterwards. According to some historians, Stalin was behind this crime, and, even if he was not, he used it to set the mechanism of repression into motion. The troika¬decree established a procedure for ‘simplified investigations' for cases concerning matters of state, in the course of which death sentences could be handed out with no chance of appeal on the basis of sparse information. In other words, the ‘troikas' could send people to the firing squad immediately. The word itself is terrifying, and connotes the death of millions of people under Stalin's rule.
Gorokhovsky does not hide his horror at the people in the picture; they have been placed onto a red background that shines through their bodies and faces, anticipating their own impending, tortuous deaths at the hands of a machine of repression they themselves helped to create (active members of the repressive apparatus were subject to more intensive purges than any other category of the population). The source of this red colour is the Stalin-portrait that Gorokhovsky has placed on the wall, which seems to emanate blood just as an icon emanates its sacral aura.
Gorokhovsky gives his Stalin¬portrait a very simple frame, avoiding the baroque forms that usually gilded the ceremonial portraits of the era. One could say that this frame is more modernist, as is the portrait itself, ‘Stalin painted Liechtenstein¬style'. The geometrical division of the composition into two fields, red and grey, could also be associated with the art of modernism. Gorokhovsky's canvas addresses the immeasurable price the USSR paid in the course of modernization. In his view, a certain portion of guilt for this price can be ascribed to Soviet modernism, so that it becomes the duty of the post-modern artist of the 1970s-1980s to uncover the terrible truth as to art's collaboration with power. The figures in the painting are reading and writing, and are more reminiscent of leftist intellectuals than judges or executioners. But this is exactly why Gorokhovsky is putting them on trial.
Dr Ekaterina Degot

3

Eduard Gorokhovsky

Untitled (Stalin)

1987
Silkscreen and oil on canvas.
124 x 149 cm. (48 3/4 x 58 5/8 in).
Signed and dated ‘E.Gorokhovsky 87 [in Cyrillic]’ lower right.

Estimate
£30,000 - 40,000 ‡

Sold for £29,300

Important Contemporary Russian Art–Property from a Foundation

28 Feb 2008, 6pm
London

1
Igor Makarevich
Liberty
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Igor Makarevich
Freedom
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3
Eduard Gorokhovsky
Untitled (Stalin)
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4
Eduard Gorokhovsky
Bitsa
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5
Eduard Gorokhovsky
Dukat
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Eduard Gorokhovsky
Manezh
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7
Eduard Gorokhovsky
Untitled
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8
Simon Faibisovich
Indoor Family Portrait
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9
Simon Faibisovich
Line up for the Wine/At Last
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10
Simon Faibisovich
One More Glance at the Black Sea
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11
Yuri Albert
Dispute III
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12
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14
Ilya Kabakov
Beetle
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15
Ilya Kabakov
The Little Water Sprite
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16
Erik Bulatov
Glory to the CPSU
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Erik Bulatov
Street at Night
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18
Erik Bulatov
Urban Painting
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19
Oleg Vassiliev
Variations on the theme of the Ogonyok magazine cover
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20
Oleg Vassiliev
Broken Tree (Tarusa)
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21
Oleg Vassiliev
Figure in a Circle
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22
Oleg Vassiliev
Where are you?
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23
Oleg Vassiliev
Necessary Meadow
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24
Ivan Chuikov
Fragment No. 6
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25
Ivan Chuikov
Fragment No. 4
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26
Ivan Chuikov
Road Accident
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27
Yuri Dyshlenko
Return to Landscape
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28
Yuri Dyshlenko
Where and How to Look for Gold
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29
Pyotr Belenok
Big Moon
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30
Pyotr Belenok
Interplanetary Station
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31
Natalya Nesterova
Griffin
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32
Natalya Nesterova
Endless Beach
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33
Natalya Nesterova
Coin
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34
Anatoly Slepyshev
Morning
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35
Anatoly Slepyshev
Solovinaya Night
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36
Sergey Volkov
C¬4 Matroshka
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37
Sergey Volkov
A-10
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38
Dmitry Plavinsky
Cosmic Leaf
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39
Dmitry Plavinsky
Shell
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Important Contemporary Russian Art–Property...

28 Feb 2008, 6pm London

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Provenance

Exhibited

Literature

Catalogue Essay

3

Eduard Gorokhovsky

Untitled (Stalin)

Important Contemporary Russian Art–Property from a Foundation

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28 Feb 2008, 6pm
London