Alexander Grigorievich Tyshler, 1898-1980

Ex.cat. Alexander Tyshler. 1898-1980. Paintings, Graphic Art, Sculpture, Theatre, 1983, p.64 
Ex.cat. Alexander Tyshler and his Fantasy World. On the Centenary of the Artist's Birthday, 1998, p.88

 

 

 

The canvas has been lined. There is a layer of light surface dirt and discoloured varnish and fine lines of craquelure are visible in places. Examination under uv reveals older retouching to the edges which has been covered by an opaque varnish and some further smaller flecks in places elsewwhere (predominantly to the right hand side of the work). Held in a modern gold painted wooden frame. Unexamimined out of frame.
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Alexander Tyshler's Agit Spectacle of 1932 marks the start of a series of works inspired by improvised theatre, the artist's personal reminder of the Civil War. Tyshler interrupted work on this cycle that same year, however, and only returned to it in the 1950s, developing the earlier motifs, and fully completing them in the 1970s.

In 1919-20 Tyshler served as an artist with the Red Army, designing posters and agitprop performances. More often than not, these were simple affairs involving the agitprop detachment: an independent group which dramatised current political events. Tyshler's scene is far removed from daily reality and the tenets of official Soviet art. It contains no spectactors, only uniformed players performing in a bare landscape. In the distance a ghostly city is visible, its fantastical industrial features reminiscent of Constructivist architectural models. The stage is devoid of clear limits, and it is only the huge tree, to which the curtain is fixed, that divides the broad panorama.

1932 was the year the Artists' Union was founded, and in this historical context, Agit Spectacle is an explicit call to the Socialist Realist artistic outlook, and tacit reproach of the artistic community whose sole aim was serving Socialist society. Socialist Realists are portrayed as worn-out players compelled to turn cartwheels before an invisible power - their matchless and omnipotent audience.

In its composition Agit Spectacle recalls Makhno in a hammock (1932) which is in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts: both scenes are centred on an isolated tree, which supports the theatrical scenery of the Red Army troops and the anarchists' hammocks. The 'Tree of Life' became a principal leitmotif in Tyshler's personal mythology of the early Thirties.