Visual Arts Library
Self-Portrait (Birth of An Image installation)
Artist: Leonid Lamm
Date:
1976
Medium: Watercolor
Dimensions: 26.35 x 23.81 cm
Event: Soviet Repression
In 1973, while applying for a visa to emigrate to Israel, Lamm was arrested and sentenced to three years of imprisonment, two in Moscow's Butyrka Prison and one in a labor camp. This work is one of a series of sketches and watercolors produced during that time. In the labor camp, Lamm was given the job of camp artist and, in addition to his hundreds of sketches of camp life, was ordered by his jailers to design propaganda posters. The Birth of an Image series presents the artist's experience of the Soviet prison system, itself a metaphor for the prison camp that was the Soviet Union. These images were later recreated as paintings following Lamm's emigration to the United States in 1982
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