Vera Mukhina (1889-1953), the most famous female Soviet sculptor, was born into a wealthy merchant family in Riga. The loss of her parents at a young age – her mother when Mukhina was almost two, and her father when Mukhina was almost fifteen – influenced her decision to move first to Kursk, and then to Moscow, where her professional and personal life began.
In 1912, further personal calamity struck. In a sledging accident Mukhina severely damaged her face and had to undergo serious plastic surgery. Wishing to brighten Vera’s plight, her guardians decided to fulfil her dream and send her to Paris to study sculpture at Antoine Bourdelle’s studio.
1917 marked a turning point in Mukhina’s life. After the Bolsheviks came to power the fortune she had inherited from her father was expropriated. Ironically, it was under the Bolsheviks that Mukhina’s fate would be sealed as a world famous sculptor. After all, she created perhaps the most striking symbol of the Soviet epoch: Worker and Kolkhoz Woman (1937). While representing the proletariat and the peasantry as the true masters of the Soviet land, this 24-metre stainless-steel monument was inspired by two antique statues, namely, Nike of Samothrace and the Tyrannicides.
Mukhina’s interest in antiquity as a source of imitation and inspiration was evident in other works also. In 1918, for example, the novice sculptor, inspired by her love of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, was captured by the idea of sculpturing Icarus (which was realised only 20 years afterwards). The neo-classical orientation of Mukhina’s oeuvre was also reflected in her Peasant Woman (1927), [1] which the sculptor herself called ‘Russian Pomona’ due to its corpulence and physical strength.
In later years, however, Mukhina’s enthusiasm for referencing Greco-Roman artistic models was not always understood and appreciated. For example, creating a statue of Apollo for the production of Sophocles’ Electra in 1944, Mukhina was asked by one of the officials to dress the statue because it was considered indecent to even represent a naked man on stage. Outraged by such nonsense, Mukhina retorted: “It’s not a man. It’s a god. He has perfect divine proportions … and he is not naked, he is nude. And if I throw something on him… then the whole production will get a tinge of vulgarity!” [2]
Despite the criticism, Mukhina remained true to her love of the classical tradition in sculpture; even in her last months, suffering from angina, she sculptured Eros – the symbol of the indestructibility of life.
This profile was written by Natalia Polikarpova
[1] For more information see, for example: B. Jungen, “Vera Mukhina: Art Between Modernism and Socialist Realism”, Third Text 23, no. 1 (2009): 35-43.
[2] O.P. Voronova, Vera Mukhina, Moskva: Iskusstvo, 1976, 110.
