Vickery Art has recently rediscovered at auction in London an important work from Komar and Melamid’s legendary Nostalgic Socialist Realism Series, ‘Judith on Red Square’. Conceived and painted between 1983 and 1993, it is the first and only version for a large-scale painting which was never realized. Leading authority and author of a forthcoming monograph on Komar and Melamid, Dr Alla Rosenfeld writes about the painting, the story behind it and why it is relevant today.
Text by Alla Rosenfeld, Ph.D.
This significant work Judith on the Red Square (1993) was created by the influential Russian- American duo Vitaly Komar (b. 1943) and Alexander Melamid (b.1945), who collaborated from 1972 to 2003. Their oeuvre serves as a vital cross-cultural bridge in today’s international art market. Notably, they were the first Russian artists to receive a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (1982) and the first Russian artists to be invited to Documenta 8 in Kassel, Germany (1987).
Komar and Melamid’s work is held in prestigious permanent museum collections worldwide, including the Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art; San Francisco Museum of Art; Victoria and Albert Museum (London); Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam); Albertina (Vienna), and Museum Ludwig (Cologne).
After emigrating first to Israel in 1977 and then to New York in 1978, Komar and Melamid continued to refine the themes and strategies they had first explored in the Soviet Union. In the early 1980s, the duo began Nostalgic Socialist Realism, a series of 30 paintings designed to re-examine the Soviet experience. This series was vital in defining the New York phase of Sots Art. A part of this significant series is Judith on the Red Square, which offers the artists' personal interpretation of the tale of Judith beheading Holofernes.
In Nostalgic Socialist Realism the artists reflected their nostalgia for the lost fictional model of the world created by the Soviet system. As Komar and Melamid explained, in this series “three types of nostalgias merged: nostalgia for academic realistic painting, on which we were raised during the Stalin era; nostalgia for childhood and for what we saw in our childhood—and our childhood was spent under Stalin; and finally, nostalgia for Russian imperial grandeur, which for us was once embodied in the image of Stalin.”. Once characterized by a sharp irony toward Soviet life, Komar and Melamid’s Sots Art has evolved into an exploration of nostalgia and the nuances of historical memory.
In their painting Judith on the Red Square, Komar and Melamid employ an ironic deconstruction to subvert both an art historical icon of Judith and the heroic iconography central to Soviet official culture. The composition features a young girl (Judith), her face obscured, brandishing the severed head of Joseph Stalin. By transposing the biblical narrative of Judith and Holofernes into a Soviet context, the Russian-American duo reconfigures the Jewish heroine and the oppressive general into a contemporary political allegory representing the triumph of the citizenry over totalitarianism.
The work’s title and its central geometric motif of a square serve as a polysemic reference to Moscow’s Red Square, the historic and symbolic heart of the Russian capital. Flanked by the Kremlin walls, the square has historically functioned as a stage for the projection of state power, hosting events ranging from imperial coronations and public executions to the massive military parades intended to demonstrate Soviet hegemony. The artists further layer this reference by invoking the archaic Russian meaning of krasnyi, which originally signified "beautiful" rather than merely "red," thereby commenting on the square’s architectural and cultural prestige.
Beyond its geographical associations, the presence of the red square within the painting functions as a sophisticated art-historical dialectic. The geometric form directly evokes the non-objective aesthetic of Suprematism and the Russian avant-garde, placing these revolutionary art movements in direct visual tension with the figure of Stalin. This juxtaposition highlights the irreconcilable conflict between the radical abstraction of the early 20th century and the dogmatic, state-mandated aesthetic of Socialist Realism that eventually suppressed it.
From 1929 until his death in 1953, the image of Joseph Stalin served as the paramount symbolic nexus of Soviet propaganda, permeating every facet of artistic and cultural production. Representations of an omniscient Stalin were ubiquitous, manifesting in Socialist Realist painting, monumental architecture, banners, and ubiquitous posters. The symbolic construct of Stalin was intricate and multi-layered. He was deliberately engineered to embody the sacred and archetypal attributes of the Father of the nation, the wise Teacher, and the Savior of the land. Among these, the Father archetype emerged as one of the most robust and widely propagated images associated with his persona, establishing Stalin as the patriarch of all Soviet peoples.
This paternal image was reinforced by depicting the ideal Soviet child, from the mid-1930s onward, as unfailingly obedient and grateful. Socialist Realist paintings and propaganda posters frequently portrayed children in states of exultant joy, expressing profound appreciation for Stalin's fatherly benevolence. The ubiquitous slogan, “Thank you dear comrade Stalin for our happy childhood!” adorned entrances to nurseries, school walls, and the covers of magazines and books. The visual trope of the Leader paired with devoted children became one of the most significant and pervasive genres across the various media sustaining the cult of personality.
In their Nostalgic Socialist Realism series, Komar and Melamid turned to nostalgic motifs associated with their former model of the world, which was implanted in the minds of Soviet schoolchildren from a young age. Komar and Melamid, like all Soviet children, were taught that they “ live in the best country of the world, that Stalin is the greatest genius of humanity, a Father, a Teacher…”
Although several of Komar’s relatives fell victim to the Stalinist purges, his upbringing was nonetheless steeped in the state-mandated deification of the leader. Recalling his childhood, the artist noted: “After the divorce, my mother replaced my father’s portrait above my bed with one of Stalin. I was bedridden with the flu and a high fever at the time; looking up at that familiar face, the boundaries between reality and propaganda began to blur. All I could think of was the phrase we were always taught: "Stalin is our father!"
The artists reframed Stalinism through the lens of their own childhoods. As Vitaly Komar observed, “We created our own, individual Socialist Realism. In our consciousness and memory, May Day postcards and Ogonyok magazine illustrations merged with the somber masterpieces found in Soviet museums—works by Rembrandt, Caravaggio, and the Dutch, Spanish, and Italian masters.” This influence is evident in the Nostalgic Socialist Realism series; specifically, the harsh lighting in Judith on the Red Square evokes the dramatic chiaroscuro of Caravaggio or the intimate candlelight of French Baroque painter Georges de La Tour (1593-1652).
Following Stalin’s death in 1953, and especially subsequent to Nikita Khrushchev's landmark “Secret Speech” at the 20th Communist Party Congress in 1956, which officially denounced Stalin’s cult of personality and his criminal actions against the Soviet populace, a systematic process of de-Stalinization was initiated in Soviet Russia. Monuments dedicated to Stalin were demolished, portraits were relegated to specialized storage facilities, and his figure was even painstakingly excised from numerous popular group portraits, marking a decisive rupture with the pervasive iconographic tradition.
While adopting a pompous style reminiscent of Socialist Realist painting, Komar and Melamid’s Judith on the Red Square deconstructs the myth of the Soviet child as a figure of unwavering loyalty to Stalin. The work serves as a potent political commentary, reinterpreting a classic art-historical trope to critique the realities of Soviet life. By replacing Holofernes with Stalin, the artists transform Judith from a biblical heroine into a symbol of liberation from oppressive state power. Furthermore, her obscured face shifts the focus from an individual protagonist to the collective power of the anonymous masses, establishing Judith as a universal icon of resistance.
By addressing historical and political issues, the artistic duo shed light on topics that recently have become extraordinarily relevant again. These include the functioning of personal freedoms in a totalitarian state. A return of Stalin’s cult of personality is actively occurring in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, driven by a state-sponsored rehabilitation campaign and a desire to foster imperial nationalism and a strongman image.
