Flying Proletarian
Yuri Avvakumov
Russian, born 1957
1989–1991
A silkscreen on newsprint that overlays a towering, machine-like rocket and rows of repetitive worker figures across a Soviet newspaper, aiming to fuse architectural and industrial imagery into a political critique.
A bold red diagonal mast slices through the gray columns of print, its helix-like trusses and tiny, repeating seated workers forming a mechanical rhythm that simultaneously reads as blueprint, engine, and circus of labor.
Made at the end of the Soviet era, it revives and subverts constructivist visual language—using newspaper as substrate and architectural form as allegory—to question ideas of progress, labor, and technological utopia.
Medium
Silkscreen on newsprint
Dimensions
23 5/8 × 16 9/16" (60 × 42 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Committee on Architecture and Design Funds
Accession
743.2018
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
![Poster no. 24 of 25 from the series The History of the All-Union Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) in Posters (lstoria VKP[b] v plakatakh)](https://www.moma.org/media/W1siZiIsIjQ4MjEyMCJdLFsicCIsImNvbnZlcnQiLCItcmVzaXplIDEwMjR4MTAyNFx1MDAzZSJdXQ.jpg?sha=cef916a7459734b1)
![1905—October: Soviets of the Workers’ Deputies (1905—Oktiabr’: sovety rabochikh deputatov) (Poster no. 9 of 25 from The History of the All-Union Communist Party [of Bolsheviks] in Posters [lstoria VKP[b] v plakatakh])](https://www.moma.org/media/W1siZiIsIjQ2NzMzOCJdLFsicCIsImNvbnZlcnQiLCItcmVzaXplIDEwMjR4MTAyNFx1MDAzZSJdXQ.jpg?sha=3ce95480741fb165)
