LEONID SOKOV | STALIN AND MARILYN

Acquired directly from the artist

Sokov’s images of Stalin and Marilyn, combining two apparently incompatible figures from ideologically opposed mass visual cultures, are some of the most recognisable images of Sots-art. As Vitaly Komar, one of the founding members of the movement which emerged in the 1970s has defined Sots-art: ‘If Pop art was resulted from the overproduction of goods and advertising, Sots-art emerged from the overproduction of Soviet ideology and its visual propaganda…. I see western advertising as ‘consumerist propaganda’ and Soviet propaganda as ‘ideological advertising’.’