Female image 1975

Hryhorii Havrylenko made this simple line drawing of a woman, probably in the mid-twentieth century. The image is visually striking because of its austerity. The lines are simple, but the image has a clear emotional content. Havrylenko was born in Ukraine in 1927, ten years after the Russian Revolution. He lived through collectivization and the great terror. In his time, the institutions of art, like all social institutions, were organized around the demands of the communist party. Images were controlled to promote ideals of revolutionary strength. Against that background, the intimate quality of this image speaks volumes. It's an exercise in pure observation, a portrait that isn't about the grand sweep of history but about the humanity of one anonymous individual. To understand this image more deeply, we might research the changing place of women in Soviet iconography, the way artists tried to push the boundaries of what was permissible, and how artistic institutions helped or hindered them.