The Ironic Curtain: Art from the Soviet Underground

“The Ironic Curtain” features artists who worked under political repression in the decades just before the fall of the Soviet Union, often making “official” art by day and their own experimental art in secret. The results are wild and darkly witty, with symbols of the Soviet government used to parody its power rather than to celebrate it.

Having been officially repressed or relatively contained to émigré centers such as New York City, many of these works are little known, and some works in the exhibition are being shown in the United States for the first time.

[Image: Francisco Infante-Arana, Russian, born 1943. “Artefact,” from the series “The Play of Gestures,” 1977. Cibachrome print, edition 2/5. Collection of Neil K. Rector]