Friendship’s End’ is a linocut based on the photograph taken in the April of 2022 by Glib Haranich capturing a demolition of the monument named the ‘Friendship of the Nations’ symbolising ‘unity’ and ‘brotherhood’ of the russian and Ukrainian people.

 

The Modernist and German Expressionistic aesthetics are applied to depict the example of Socialist Realist sculpture, which could also be perceived as an act of subversion. Although an attitude to Modernism would change throughout the existence of the Soviet Union, predominantly, especially in the period of Stalinism it was considered as formalism and was a prohibited aesthetic. In the Third Reich German Expressionism as one of the modernist movements was  perceived as the ‘Degenerate art’.