Eisenstein, Sergei. (1898–1948). "To console the widow" - Erotic Drawing . Original drawing on paper in red and black pencil and crayon, titled in Russian "To console the widow", numbered 33 and signed by the artist and dated 30.12.42. 324 x 217 mm. The work depicts a male figure with an enormous penis approximately the same height and width as the rest of his body, requiring it to be stabilized with a tall sliding rack, the tip clipped in place above his head as he leans back evidently from fatigue. A photographer is shown behind a camera under a dark cloth with a hand extending out and holding a flash bulb, while a female figure with head obscured float above the title at the head. Previously from the collection of Jean-Claude Marcadé and Galia Ackerman, authors of the reference book on Eisenstein's erotic drawings "Dessins Secrets" (Le Seuil, 1999), in which are illustrated selected related works from the same series accomplished on the 29th through 31st of December, 1942 on pages 98 - 110.
The pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, Sergei Eisenstein, is often considered to be the "Father of Montage" and is widely acknowledged as a seminal modern artist. He is noted in particular for his silent films Strike (1924), Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1927), as well as the historical epics Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944, 1958). A prolific writer of aesthetic and sexual theory, he was also the author of an extraordinary oeuvre of erotic drawings which have remained less known, despite a series of exhibitions and monographs devoted to them over the last 20 years, focused primarily on the collection of the Russian State Archive and examples discovered in Mexican private collections. Both celebrated and disparaged as a successful practitioner of propaganda that served the Stalinist state, Eisenstein himself was at the same time absorbed with European Decadence both as an artistic school and aesthetic sensibility. He even declared: “Had it not been for Leonardo, Marx, Lenin, Freud and the movies, I would in all probability have been another Oscar Wilde.’’
The pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, Sergei Eisenstein, is often considered to be the "Father of Montage" and is widely acknowledged as a seminal modern artist. He is noted in particular for his silent films Strike (1924), Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1927), as well as the historical epics Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944, 1958). A prolific writer of aesthetic and sexual theory, he was also the author of an extraordinary oeuvre of erotic drawings which have remained less known, despite a series of exhibitions and monographs devoted to them over the last 20 years, focused primarily on the collection of the Russian State Archive and examples discovered in Mexican private collections. Both celebrated and disparaged as a successful practitioner of propaganda that served the Stalinist state, Eisenstein himself was at the same time absorbed with European Decadence both as an artistic school and aesthetic sensibility. He even declared: “Had it not been for Leonardo, Marx, Lenin, Freud and the movies, I would in all probability have been another Oscar Wilde.’’
Eisenstein, Sergei. (1898–1948). "To console the widow" - Erotic Drawing . Original drawing on paper in red and black pencil and crayon, titled in Russian "To console the widow", numbered 33 and signed by the artist and dated 30.12.42. 324 x 217 mm. The work depicts a male figure with an enormous penis approximately the same height and width as the rest of his body, requiring it to be stabilized with a tall sliding rack, the tip clipped in place above his head as he leans back evidently from fatigue. A photographer is shown behind a camera under a dark cloth with a hand extending out and holding a flash bulb, while a female figure with head obscured float above the title at the head. Previously from the collection of Jean-Claude Marcadé and Galia Ackerman, authors of the reference book on Eisenstein's erotic drawings "Dessins Secrets" (Le Seuil, 1999), in which are illustrated selected related works from the same series accomplished on the 29th through 31st of December, 1942 on pages 98 - 110.
The pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, Sergei Eisenstein, is often considered to be the "Father of Montage" and is widely acknowledged as a seminal modern artist. He is noted in particular for his silent films Strike (1924), Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1927), as well as the historical epics Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944, 1958). A prolific writer of aesthetic and sexual theory, he was also the author of an extraordinary oeuvre of erotic drawings which have remained less known, despite a series of exhibitions and monographs devoted to them over the last 20 years, focused primarily on the collection of the Russian State Archive and examples discovered in Mexican private collections. Both celebrated and disparaged as a successful practitioner of propaganda that served the Stalinist state, Eisenstein himself was at the same time absorbed with European Decadence both as an artistic school and aesthetic sensibility. He even declared: “Had it not been for Leonardo, Marx, Lenin, Freud and the movies, I would in all probability have been another Oscar Wilde.’’
The pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, Sergei Eisenstein, is often considered to be the "Father of Montage" and is widely acknowledged as a seminal modern artist. He is noted in particular for his silent films Strike (1924), Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1927), as well as the historical epics Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944, 1958). A prolific writer of aesthetic and sexual theory, he was also the author of an extraordinary oeuvre of erotic drawings which have remained less known, despite a series of exhibitions and monographs devoted to them over the last 20 years, focused primarily on the collection of the Russian State Archive and examples discovered in Mexican private collections. Both celebrated and disparaged as a successful practitioner of propaganda that served the Stalinist state, Eisenstein himself was at the same time absorbed with European Decadence both as an artistic school and aesthetic sensibility. He even declared: “Had it not been for Leonardo, Marx, Lenin, Freud and the movies, I would in all probability have been another Oscar Wilde.’’