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Portrait of Lenin
Isaak Brodsky (1884-1939) was one of the young artists attracted to the neo-realist group that called itself the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia. The primary goal of the group was to depict revolutionary Russia by painting realistic canvases devoted to such topics as Russian workers, soldiers, and political figures. In their return to tendentiousness, they consciously attempted to revive the traditions of the Wanderers. Brodsky made something of a specialty for himself in paintings of the greatest revolutionary leader of them all, Vladimir Ilich Lenin. Brodsky clearly strove to humanize rather than monumentalize the leader, as this "homey" picture of Lenin at work illustrates.