Open today from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

A blue wave with a white cap makes up the bottom portion of the painting. The top half is a solid red sky.

Leonhard Lapin, "'The White Wave' from the series 'Signs'", 1978. Oil on canvas. Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union. © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / EAÜ, Tallinn

Dates

November 13, 2024-September 14, 2025

Location

Zimmerli Art Museum

71 Hamilton Street New Brunswick, NJ, 08901

Information

Admission at the Zimmerli is FREE to everyone. Tickets are not required for exhibitions

Painting to Scale

Gallery Closure: This exhibition will be closed from March 10 to March 21 for rotation of artworks.

Drawing from the Zimmerli’s rarely shown large scale artworks from the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection, Painting to Scale explores the constraints on access to materials that underpin narratives of “nonconformism” in the USSR. Artists from diverse republics managed to work either in large scale serial formats or single images, often painted in oil on canvas, despite the very real limits on space and access to exhibition spaces that characterized their professional lives. By highlighting important artworks that were painted/created on a large, sometimes monumental scale, the exhibition underscores the ambitions and confidence expressed by artists who, paradoxically, may rarely have had an opportunity to present them to a larger public. It suggests the need for a more nuanced and ambivalent view of professional access and accommodation in the underground artworld than has been typically presented.

A section of the exhibition will include a selection of works that focus on the artist’s identity, national and symbolic, depicted through traditional—figurative—and abstract representational forms. The second area addresses nature, whether by emphasizing its artifice or evoking a desired proximity to it; the third highlights the allegorical and duplicitous strategies that were shared by artists despite a diversity of visual modes.

Organized by Jane Sharp, Research Curator for Soviet Nonconformist Art.

Generous support for bilingual text was provided by Art Bridges Foundation’s Access for All program.

Text reading "Art Bridges Foundation" with a purple arch connecting the words.
   

 

Exhibition Preview

This exhibition draws from the Zimmerli’s rarely shown large scale artworks from the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection, Painting to Scale explores the constraints on access to materials that underpin narratives of “nonconformism” in the USSR.

Leonhard Lapin, Signed Space from the series Signs, 1978. Oil on canvas. Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union. © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / EAÜ, Tallinn 1992.0292

Leonhard Lapin, The White Wave from the series Signs, 1978. Oil on canvas. Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union. © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / EAÜ, Tallinn D06250

Maija Tabaka, (Jokers), 1970. Oil on canvas. Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union. D04710.

Aija Zarina, He and She, 1986. Oil on fiberboard. Gift of Robert E Falcone. © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / AKKA-LAA, Riga 1995.1020

Malle Leis, The Longest Day, 1977. Oil on canvas. Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union. © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / EAU, Tallinn 1992.1012