A unique exhibition is going to be held in Moscow in December, 21st. It will be timed to 130-years anniversary of the leader. The displays are the reproductions of famous Russian artists personally completed by the father of the nation.
It sounds weird, Stalin could not draw, and he wrote in a bad hand, you know. The Marat Gelman Gallery was offered to display the pictures of outstanding Russian artists of the XIX-XX centuries on which Stalin left his comments, filled in some details or crossed something out. Usually in such a way negligent schoolchildren entertain themselves – filling moustache or something in the pictures of historical characters printed in the books…
The owner of the collection requested anonymity but in July 2009 the pictures were subjected to a graphologic examination that confirmed – yes, it’s the hand of Stalin.
The leader “completed” 19 pictures of such artists as Repin, Ivanov, Surikov, Rubinstein, Serov and others with some notes and drawings made in a red, blue and grey pencil. Thus, on one of them, the generalissimo crossed out the genitals of a nude personage with a red pencil that he usually used to write the names of those who should have been shot. On another one, with a female nude, he wrote something obscene in the Georgian language. On the third – the male nude was “dressed” by Stalin in underpants. On the fourth – next to a nude ancient hero he inscribed: “One thoughtful idiot is worse than 10 enemies. I. Stalin”… On the fifth – in a blue pencil – he wrote: “Is he afraid of the sun? Coward!!! I. Stalin” and the nude itself was crossed out in bold. There is also a picture where Stalin drew underpants on each nude person and inscribed: “Do not sit on the stones with your bare ass! Enter Komsomol and the workers’ faculty! Give out trunks to the fellow! I. Stalin.”
The employees of the Gallery tell the reproductions to be stamped by the Imperial Academy of Arts and even dated. They could be early works of future celebrities. The originals themselves are kept in the Tretyakov Gallery and in the Russian Museum. But nobody can explain how the reproductions found the pencil of Stalin.
Maybe it is a kind of story for psychiatrists. It seems that all the notes were made in the time of “late Stalin”, a year or two before his death. Thus, in some of his notes he addresses Kalinin, Bukharin, Plekhanov… There’s a feeling that the aged leader was talking to shades…
Some rude expressions that Stalin used in his notes even gave western journalists ground to suppose that they can be the sign of … Stalin’s homosexuality. But they sooner can say about the growing dotage of their author, however Stalin was not weak-minded at all till his dying day, that’s why many specialists doubt in authenticity of the notes and drawings.
