Leonhard Lapin
(1947–2022)
Woman-Machine XXIV. 1978
High print. 40 x 38 cm (framed)
price 5 300
The daring of the 31-year-old artist, a citizen of the Soviet Union, to openly depict sexuality in his graphic series Naine-Masin (Woman-Machine) was unheard of. In general, this area as a whole was censored because it was the job of the state to control its citizens as much as possible, but the state had a problem – control did not extend to the citizens’ bedroom. Leonhard Lapin draws on American pop art and European geometric abstractionism, but one can imagine his specific laughter at Soviet censorship as an expression of joy. The series stands out as one of the brightest in the young Lapin’s oeuvre. Lapin continued to be programmatically outspoken about sexuality, deliberately challenging and irritating the Protestant culture here.