 | Vitaliy and Alexander KOMAR AND MELAMID 1943 — Віталій та Олександр КОМАР І МЕЛАМІД • Виталий и Александр КОМАР И МЕЛАМИДVitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid are widely known as the founders of the Sots Art movement of the 1970s. The two-artist collective satirised official Soviet culture by transforming stereotypes of Soviet propaganda into a new, contemporary artistic language. Works by Komar and Melamid were destroyed by the Soviet authorities at the infamous "Bulldozer Exhibition" held on the outskirts of Moscow in 1974. That same year, Komar and Melamid were expelled from the Moscow Union of Artists, charged with the "distortion of Soviet reality and deviation from the principles of Soviet Realism."
Since the 1970s, Komar and Melamid have collaborated on various conceptual projects. In the early 1980s, soon after their emigration to the West in 1978, Komar and Melamid began a series of paintings entitled Nostalgic Socialist Realism. This series, which consists of thirty works, reflects its creators nostalgia for the lost fictional model of the world created by the Soviet system while simultaneously delivering sharp, critical barbs at Soviet culture.
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