Vladimir Vasilievich Lebedev

In 1922, following his highly successful stint for the Petrograd branch of the ROSTA Windows during the Civil War, Lebedev created a series of twenty-three ink and pencil drawings known as 'The Sidewalks of the Revolution'. These works were inspired by the daily scenes the artist observed in the streets of Petrograd during the first post-revolutionary years. Lebedev’s sidewalks are filled with sailors in their distinct flared trousers, street traders, deserters and hooligans, the latter strolling the streets either in groups or in the company of women. Full of wit and life, these images count among the most iconic visual records of that turbulent period, giving it, in Nikolai Punin’s words, ‘a timeless graphic expression’ (N.Punin, Vladimir Vladimirovich Lebedev, Leningrad, 1928, p.14).

Only a few works from this series were published in the pages of Krasnaya niva (Red Field) periodical as well as in Punin's monograph on the artist, making it difficult to state with certainty whether the present work was created as part of this particular series or executed by Lebedev at a later stage in the spirit of the original compositions. Nevertheless, Lebedev’s unique skill as a draughtsman, stemming from his experience in poster design and pre-empting his pioneering work as a children’s book illustrator, manifests itself here with full force. The couple is pictured in the middle of a dance, the sailor’s coat unbuttoned and the tallies on his cap waving in the air as he leads his partner into a turn. Even though Dancing Sailor is relatively realist in its rendering of the protagonists’ figures, its powerful tonal contrasts, expressive lines and simplified shapes evoke Lebedev’s earlier Cubist compositions, such as, for instance, the Laundry Maids of the early 1920s.