Kirill Chunikhin

• During the first two decades of the Cold War, Soviet institutions hosted dozens of exhibitions of American art. These exhibitions introduced works of a variety of styles, from figurative to abstract, to millions of Soviet citizens. Based on unique original materials from American and Russian archives, my thesis examines this extensive showcasing of American art. In my thesis, I argue that American visual art in the Soviet Union was subject to two distinct approaches to representation. The first approach was epitomized by Soviet-organized exhibitions of American leftist figurative artists such as Rockwell Kent. When promoting Kent, hardly a leading artist in the postwar United States, Soviet propaganda maintained that Kent’s art was underappreciated in America because of the artist’s sympathies for socialism and adherence to figurativeness. Soviet propaganda further argued that American bourgeois society preferred abstract art and was unable to appreciate genuine realist art. Ultimately, by representing Kent as a marginalized artist suffering under capitalism, the Soviet Union accused America's capitalist society of suppressing Kent—a genuine and genius artist from the Soviet point of view. As a result, Soviet discussions of Kent became intertwined with criticism of the United States and served as anti-American propaganda. The intersection of the Soviet discourse on American art with Soviet anti-Americanism was not limited to the case of Kent but was also relevant to other figurative and abstract artists, among them Anton Refregier, Emmy Lou Packard, Jackson Pollock and many others, whom I examine in my thesis. The second approach was that of American institutions such as the United States Information Agency (USIA) which organized exhibitions showcasing contemporary American art, from figurative painting such as those by William Glackens to abstract expressionist painting such as by Willem de Kooning. (For the complete abstract, please see the thesis.)