"Girl with an oar" - so at first only the sculptures of Ivan Shadr and Romuald Iodko were called, which they executed at different times. However, later this name became a household name and began to be used when mentioning all similar statues, which one after another began to appear in various parks of culture on the territory of the USSR.
Curator and art historian Yekaterina Degot notes: “The very expression“girl with an oar”has become an idiom for Soviet kitsch. Hearing him, everyone who still remembers the Soviet Union starts laughing."
Statues of Ivan Shadr
Back in 1934, when the Gorky Park was being reconstructed in the capital, the architect Vlasov, who was engaged in it, came up with the idea of an interesting sculpture, which he planned to place in the pool next to the fountains. The figure of a nude woman was supposed to become a symbol of the equality of women and men in the Union. The management of the park approved the architect's idea, and the sculptor Ivan Shadr was entrusted with its implementation.
The model for the statue, according to numerous sources, was a student of the Institute of Physical Education Vera Voloshina. As a result, in 1935, on the main alley of Gorky Park in Moscow, in the center of the pool, a twelve-meter statue was erected depicting a naked young athlete with an oar in hand. Such dimensions were due to the ratio with the area of the pool, but the commission did not like such an impressive size and excessive sensuality, achieved thanks to the dynamics and plasticity of the forms.
In this regard, the central element of Gorky Park did not decorate it for long and was soon moved to one of the recreation parks in Lugansk. The park director explained this as follows: "in accordance with the criticism and comments of the visitors." Ivan Shadr had to make a second version of the sculpture, which is not so large and not so sensual. It was an eight-meter statue, for which gymnast Zoya Bedrinskaya became a model this time.
Now the sculptor has made the figure more feminine and romantic by stretching it vertically and removing the muscles. And although the athlete was completely naked here, her image was no longer perceived as sensual and was received by critics quite well, since it corresponded to the principles of socialist realism much more than the previous version. The statue remained in the capital, but was destroyed by the Germans in 1941.
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Sculptures by Romuald Iodko and their countless copies
Back in 1935, Shadr's colleague Romuald Iodko created a sculpture that became a prototype for replication, contrary to the popular belief that mostly Shadr statues were copied. She depicts a woman who is leaning on an oar, while this was not a nude figure, she was wearing a swimsuit. The author created a more famous similar sculpture for the Dynamo water stadium next year.
We can say that Romuald Iodko's version of "Girls with an Oar", made of plaster, served as the prototype for many samples of the so-called plaster socialist realism, which literally flooded parks of culture and recreation throughout the Soviet Union. This is easily explained by the campaign to promote Soviet sports, in which numerous sculptors from all over the country tried to prove themselves. In addition, Iodko's sculpture was more "athletic" and had clothes on, and sculpting such figures was much safer than following Shadr's example.
Lyudmila Martz, head of the 20th century sculpture department at the Tretyakov Gallery, explains: “Every minor boss in every small town wanted his own Girl with a Paddle. The ideal female figures, created by Shadr and Iodko, in their new incarnations have become heavy and masculine. Thus, the symbol of an active life position, health, a new wonderful time and communism, after repeated copying by mediocre sculptors, has turned into a symbol of bad taste and mediocrity.
However, in 2011, a nude "Girl with an Oar" was installed in Gorky Park in Moscow, which is a copy of the original statue of Ivan Shadr. Fortunately, its reduced version of plaster has survived, which was converted to bronze in the 1950s and is now in the Tretyakov Gallery. It was she who served as the basis for recreating the original creation of Shadr, which adorned the park for just six months. Soviet rowing champion Yulia Anikeeva, the author of the idea of the sculptor's return, considers the restored Girl with the Oar to be both a reminder of Soviet sporting prowess and a reproach to communist morals.
Lilit Sargsyan
