This monochromatic composition is immersed in cool light. The main motif of the still life, a plaster head of Vladimir Lenin, was placed on a newspaper and a book. The counterpoint to the sculpture is offered by a lightbulb casting an uneven light over the entire composition. This juxtaposition of objects may, on the one hand, be associated with the traditional academic method of teaching art by painting ‘studies from nature’, including plaster sculptures, which the artist certainly encountered during his painting studies at the Leningrad Academy of Fine Arts in the early 1950s. On the other hand, hidden symbolism can be found in the painting. Lenin, treated objectively, has closed, dead eyes, associated with blindness and thus lost wandering, in contact with the source of the strong light of the bulb (knowledge, truth, enlightenment).

Michał Jachuła

translated by Paulina Bożek