Art and Revolution: Ernst Neizvestny, Endurance, and the Role of the Artist in the USSR.

New York: Pantheon Books, 1969.. 8vo. 191 pp. Good. First American Edition. Soft Cover. Illustrated paper wraps. Minor shelf wear and toning to wraps. Edges frayed. Well worn to spine with some pages detached. All pages present. B&W plates and illustrations throughout. ISBN: 0679737278 9780679737278.From the Collection of the Art Historian Peter Selz. In this prescient and beautifully written book, John Berger examines the life and work of Ernst Neizvestny, a Russian sculptor whose exclusion from the ranks of officially approved Soviet artists left him laboring in enforced obscurity to realize his monumental and very public vision of art. But Berger's impassioned account goes well beyond the specific dilemma of the pre-glasnot Russian artist to illuminate the very meaning of revolutionary art. In his struggle against official orthodoxy--which involved a face-to-face confrontation with Khruschev himself--Neizvestny was fighting not for a merely personal or aesthetic vision, but for a recognition of the true social role of art. His sculptures earn a place in the world by reflecting the courage of a whole people, by commemorating, in an age of mass suffering, the resistance and endurance of millions.