Ars Brevis for a Soviet Painter

The one-man art exhibition was backed by the weightiest cultural authorities in the Soviet Union. Diplomats, journalists, art experts and lovers of Soviet culture were all panting to attend. Yet when 200 invited guests turned up last week at Moscow's House of the Artist near the Kremlin, they found a 6-in. brass padlock on the door. Uniformed Soviet police turned back the crowd, while loudspeakers broadcast commands to clear the street.

A showcase exhibition for one of Moscow's best-known painters had turned into an embarrassing clash between the artist and the state. Ilya Glazunov, 47, caused the cancellation of his own 300-canvas show by insisting that authorities include a work that violated the art censors' cherished canons of "socialist realism"--i.e., political propriety.

The painting in question, Mystery of the 20th Century, is the one that Glazunov calls his masterwork. In Western eyes, the huge (10-ft. by 20-ft.) canvas seems to be little more than a pastiche, cast in gloomy black, blue and red tones. Mystery is made up of many of the century's famous figures--including Czar Nicholas II, Louis Armstrong, Albert Einstein, Leon Trotsky, Ernest Hemingway, Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, Pablo Picasso, Franklin Roosevelt, Mao and Stalin, who is apparently dead, floating in a sea of blood. Says Glazunov: "It is a work of philosophical realism that reflects the ideas of humanity."

No Show. Not to the Soviet censors. They called it an "anti-Soviet caricature--irrelevant, immature and politically illiterate," and said it could not be displayed. Very well, said Glazunov, cancel the show. Unblushing, the head of the Soviet Artists Union wrote the next day in Pravda that "for us, there are no forbidden themes and genres."

Glazunov's gesture was both in character and surprising to many Russians, for the Leningrad-born painter's career has whipsawed several times over the past two decades. In 1957 the artist outraged conservative Muscovites by exhibiting a nude portrait--a form of art long frowned on by the puritanical Soviet commissars. The figure was readily identifiable as his wife Nina. Another Glazunov show was closed in 1964 because of his unsparing depiction of ordinary Soviet life. After two years in deep disfavor, Glazunov began a comeback when then Danish Prime Minister Jens Otto Krag asked that the artist do his portrait. In 1968 Glazunov finished a portrait of India's Indira Gandhi that the lady greatly admired. Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev reportedly felt much the same way about a portrait of himself that Glazunov, unbidden, executed for Brezhnev's 70th birthday last year.

Glazunov is no Soviet Velasquez, but he has certainly prospered. He moved from the garret he had long occupied into a lavish downtown Moscow apartment, and was given an immense studio. So why did he cause such a fuss? Many suspect that Glazunov's legendary ego may have been involved. Not so, says Glazunov. The affair was a matter of principle. Says he: "This is my artistic declaration, and I can't open the exhibition without it."

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