Volleyball Player

This nude is obviously inspired by the works of the Russian painter Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Deyneka. It is a homage to a powerful painter, to the artist who represented at best Soviet Russia all along Stalin domination, still keeping in his way the absolute avant-garde of his VKhUTEMAS days in the post-revolutionary Moscow. Pavel Alexandrovich Florenskij taught amazingly in this same institution. Vitality, the culture of the body, a nonsexual representation of the female: sport was a major theme in Deyneka’s production. A joy de vivre, though overtly idealized and emphatic in its ideology underlies this painting. Its model being actually in her private life one of the most sensual women at all.