SOLOMON BORISOVICH NIKRITIN | STUDY FOR THE OLD AND THE NEW

Family of the artist

The present work is a study for the monumental canvas The Old and the New from 1935 now in the collection of the Nukus Museum of Art in Uzbekistan. The Old and the New, which Nikritin also identified as 'an historical portrait', contains references to the class struggle, imbedded in the four icons of the past and the present - the Venus statue on the left and the legless war invalid on the right representing the past, the komsomolets with a ball and the female metro worker in the centre representing the new Socialist order.

Judging by the numerous preparatory sketches, studies and designs, the idea for this composition germinated as early as 1930. Many of these are now preserved in the George Costakis Collection at the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki.