Leonid Petrovich Sokov (1941-2018) died 6 April 2018 in the United States, where he lived and worked for almost 40 years, since 1979.

In the seventies in the Soviet Union before him, a promising young sculptor, a graduate of art school and a member of Mosh, lying clear-trodden path and secured life. A generous grain orders, art works, creative cottages, workshop, exhibition. What else is needed? Even busts of Lenin to sculpt not necessarily (though it is strange, because for them it is a triple rate). Not like Lenin — make myself hares, ungulates and other animals, where you also have a talent for this. Play yourself — do not twitch. But Juices "twitched". He was under 40 when he decided to emigrate. For self-realization, for glory and not to remain a faceless "one of". Juices later recalled that in his 1970-е in the Mosh was almost five hundred active artists. And the majority with no chance to stay in the history of art. Very few talented people took a chance and it turned into "extras" — artisans in the service of Soviet ideology. And so it was. SOC-арт already in the textbooks, and the nameless concrete rabbits where-то mow the grass.

Metaphors Sokov — is the ideology of the "contrary to" the seriousness to absurd. Trunk things in his "folk pop-арта" on the clash of myths and heroes mass consciousness. Stalin with bear's leg, Marilyn Monroe, preferring mustachioed politicians, Hitler with the globe, Lenin and stain Gorbachev, Tolstoy and Malevich, of a collective monumental Lenin in dialogue with the walking man by Giacometti — all these characters and specialty tools Sokov. As well as his other inventions — table for determining the nationality of the shape of the nose, the bear on the tank, shaggy dollar, supple hammer.

After 33 years in exile, without the Russian audience, the Juice returned to the legal successor of the USSR's winner: with a retrospective at the MMSI (2012), the exhibition in the Tretyakov gallery (2016), excitable media and friendly publications. But if the MMSI desacralization of the Soviet myths looked like a lost page of history, in the Tretyakov gallery for almost Fronde. "Russian American" Juices with surprise (probably) managed to catch the moment when the story started to go to the second round. Policy again went over the heads of his heavy clumsy gait, and we eye not had time to blink, as irony Sokov again became clear and bitter.

V. B., AI

What else to read on the topic:

Ratings AI: Unofficial post-warart. Artists-шестидесятники;
Leonid Sokov: "we Need to shake up the culture";
Star social-арта Leonid Sokov;
leonidsokov.org;
AI: artist of the week: Leonid Sokov;
AI: "Leonid Sokov. Unforgettable meetings" in the Tretyakov gallery;
AI: Leonid Sokov: "Angle of view".