Rolling-Mill Shop at the Hammer and Sickle Plant
1930
In the years of the first five-year plans, one of the main heroes in fine art was the factory, and it was depicted as a Temple to Free Labour. Artists were interested in the diverse sectors of industry, gigantic structures, amazing mechanisms, the spectacle of the display, and worshiping the miracles of technology. In similar paintings, amid the factory colossi, the smoke and the racket, the flames and glints of metal, the workers are rendered as animate parts of a great mechanical organism. In Rozhdestvensky’s painting Rolling-Mill Shop at the Hammer and Sickle Plant, it seems at first that there are no people there; they cannot be seen. In the centre of the composition, which depicts an enormous factory floor, a blaze of fire bursts from the boilers, sending out thousands of sparks. The almost demonic scene of taming the element of fire is filled with sounds, momentum, heat, and contrasts in light.