George Petrusov. Airplane “Maxim Gorki”. 1934
George Petrusov. Armenian Cultural Delegation in Red Square. 1936/37
George Petrusov. Caricature Portrait of Alexander Rodchenko. 1933/34
Unknown author. Portrait of Georgi Petrusov
George Petrusov. “Fly Aeroflot Planes!”. 1960s. Artist’s color print
George Petrusov. Lunch in a Field. 1934
George Petrusov. A Collective Farm Worker. 1934
George Petrusov. Bolshoi Theatre. 1950s
George Petrusov. The Dnieper Hydroelectric Power Station. 1935
George Petrusov. Armenian delegation in Red Square. 1936-1937
George Petrusov. Oil. 1930
George Petrusov. Kremlin at Night (Victory Day Fireworks). Mid-1940s
exhibition is over
Alex Lachmann and Moscow House of photography collection
A photogapher of the first five-year plan and a colleague of Alexander Rodchenko and Sergei Eisenstein, George Petrusov recorded a world that was just beginning to emerge. Chasing around the country to capture the dynamics of the socialist construction site or clearing the grand Soviet ballet, he created a myth of a happy life in which he himself firmly believed.
«He’s like a sponge that absorbs everything about photography», Rodchenko said of Petrusov. Raised on the movement of constructivism, Petrusov was always willing to use the entire arsenal of techniques of the era, borrowing pictorialism, expressionism, and monumental realism. Unafraid of change, he went from the role of a demiurge, directly creating the latest historical record, to an observer, reflecting the external magnificence of public monuments. From the grand picture stories for the magazine USSR in Construction, to surreal images of the war, to his final «ballet period», he was always willing to reconsider his own position in the search of a better image.