Venice 1977: (counter)celebrations of the October Revolution

In Venice, the celebrations of the sixtieth anniversary of the October Revolution were anticipated almost a year earlier with the retrospective exhibition Soviet Graphics from 1920 to Today, which opened in mid-December 1976 in the so-called Napoleonic Wing overlooking St Mark’s square. The exhibition was promoted from the Italian side by the municipality of Venice, the Union of Venetian Engravers and the local Italy-USSR Association, and from Soviet side by the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. Although the show was not planned as an official contribution to the anniversary celebrations, it presented a wide selection of works on revolutionary subjects. The director of the Pushkin Museum, the legendary Irina Antonova, celebrated the tribute to the Great October in Soviet graphic works as an art medium ‘able to get in direct contact with revolutionary mass movements, and to address an audience of millions’